Friday 12 June 2015

Sepia Saturday 283: Laying New Rails at Derby

Sepia Saturday by Alan Burnett & Marilyn Brindley

Sepia Saturday's theme image this week was taken in the early 1890s shows a number of railway workers standing at the entrance to a large tunnel in County Mayo, Ireland. Some years ago I published a scanned and digitally retouched image of a roughly trimmed cabinet card from my collection which I entitled, "A group of railway navvies from Sheffield, Yorkshire."

Thanks to information later received from fellow photohistorian Simon Robinson, I discovered that the workers were more likely to be excavating water reservoirs rather than railway cuttings, but that hasn't prevented it becoming the most popular page on Photo-Sleuth, and "navvies" being the most common search term for visitors arriving via Google. If you type "railway navvies" into Google's image search, it should be in the top few images. According to Google Analytics tools, in the seven years since it was published it has received 1839 hits, a steady stream of visitors averaging 5 per week. I have no idea why, except that it is a great picture. It's also one of my most pilfered images, having been reposted without attribution on a multitude of other sites including, I was surprised to learn, the web site of the Smithsonian Magazine (who should know better).

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Railway workers
Print (97 x 141 mm) mounted on thick card
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

Today I have a similar image of railway workers, likewise scanned from a roughly trimmed albumen print mounted on thick card. Sadly it's a little worse for wear, the photographic emulsion being considerably faded, the surface of the print showing a good deal of ly spotting, and having a large tear almost completely across the upper right hand quarter. the photograph shows a group of five railway workers standing across several sets of railway tracks, with several buildings visible in the background, including a possible railway station and platform at the far right. Judging from the clothing and headgear of the men, I suspect that it was taken in the late 1880s or 1890s, at roughly the same time as the theme image, and perhaps a decade or so earlier than my other navvies photo.

Image © and collection of Brett Payne
Inscription: Laying New Rails at Derby(?)
Image © and collection of Brett Payne

The intriguing thing about this photo is the caption written in black (or perhaps very dark blue) ink on the reverse. It's rather difficult to decipher but it may read, "Laying new rails at Derby" (or possibly Darley), and that is how it was advertised when I purchased it off eBay not long ago. If any readers can shed light on where the photograph might have been taken, I'd be very grateful to hear from you, either by comment below or via email.

19 comments:

  1. I bet this photo gets pilfered too. Their poses couldn't be better if they had had a choreographer arranging things. I suppose those are work clothes, but I doubt you'd see many men in vests today except ones made of reflective safety material.

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    1. Wendy - Yes, I won't be surprised, and I'm not particularly bothered, except if it gets used commercially.

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  2. Don't forget your shovel if you want to go to work ...

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  3. Wherever that is, it looks like a fairly large rail yard with switch tracks & all. And if that's a rail station in the background, it appears to be a rather fancy one! To me that last word on the back of the photo looks like Dolby or Dalby?? But that's my guess & worth about 2 cents. :)

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    1. Gail - Yes, I was tending towards that interpretation too.

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  4. Amazingly impractical work clothes, but the tools of the trade didn’t change much over the years I expect. It looks like Darly to me too.

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    1. Marilyn - The jury may be out on that one. I couldn't match the buildings with any that I could find in photos of Derby station in its various incarnations.

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  5. The digital repair job on the first photo on your earlier blog is amazing! I wish I could help you with the writing on this image. It is obfuscative isn't it? Yes I know that's not a real world :)

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    1. Alex - I was very impressed with that work too.

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  6. I was also impressed by the digital repair job on your previous post. I also learned a new word: "navvy."

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    1. Postcardy - I'll confess to not having been very familiar with the word when I wrote that original article. I guess it's lost its usage as machines have taken over the drudgery of that sort of work.

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  7. A new word for me, navvy. I hope you can learn where the photo was taken.

    I have a question about your copyright. I'm wondering how you can copyright a photo as old as this one when you purchased it recently. I thought the original owner had to maintain the copyright or pass it on to someone specific for it to have a copyright. I thought photos as old as this were in the public domain if the copyright was not maintained. What have I missed?

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    1. I don't have copyright of the original photograph. That copyright has almost certainly expired and, given that the photographer is at present unidentified, would be unenforcable anyway. I do own the photograph, however - it's not in the public domain, and I can claim both reproduction rights, and copyright on this scanned image. To be honest, I'm not too fuseed about it, but I really just put that in there to deter flagrant copying and commercial use.

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  8. If I had not already found my collectible niche, I think I would collect occupational photos like this. I wonder what prompted the photographer to pose these men? Commemoration of a new station? New switch?
    As to the navvies, not long ago I was researching an Italian name in a small Atlantic coastal town, and uncovered the 1900 census records showing hundreds of Sicilian and Napolitan men, all construction workers for an electric light rail line. I've always marveled at the millions of imported laborers from Ireland, China, Mexico, Italy, etc. who built America's early transport system.

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    1. Mike - In my first ever post on this blog, I included the following category in my interests:
      "Victorian photos showing aspects of ordinary daily life e.g. dairy maid carrying milk buckets, men making hay, cobbler with tools, young man on old penny farthing bicycle"
      which roughly equates to occupational photos. I'm fascinated by early examples. Sadly, the ones that I come across on eBay are usually prohibitively expensive on eBay, so I have to limit my purchases to those that have special interest.

      I suspect he was an itinerant photographer who jumped at the chance to sell another portrait, but the circumstances could be almost anything.

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  9. Got it! Thanks for the clarification, Brettt.

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  10. Great picture!!!
    It certainly convey a certain era [now gone].
    :)

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    1. Bruno - Sadly, the photographic emulsion's almost gone too.

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