The Last Years of Steam Around Worcester: From the Photographic Archive of the Late R. E. James-Robertson

Description

Robert Ellis James-Robertson (but always known as Ellis) lived at Worcester from the mid-1950s and travelled extensively around the country building up a large railway archive. In the early 1960s a few of Ellis's photographs were published in books and magazines and the credit 'R. E. James-Robertson' may be familiar to some. This book of mainly unpublished colour and black and white photographs has been created entirely from Ellis's collection within about a 35 miles radius of Worcester, it will appeal to railway enthusiasts, modellers, and those with an interest in local history. The time period covered is from the mid-1950s through to the mid-1960s, steam is the predominant traction throughout together with occasional shots of early diesel power. Coverage includes much of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire, plus the Birmingham area. Ellis and his wife Norah celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary in 2013, and Ellis passed on in April 2015 aged 92. Their daughters, Louisa and Fiona, contacted filmmaker and author Michael Clemens whose late father was a friend of Ellis's. Ellis's collection lives on today at films shows around the country given by the author and now in this first of a number of books using his photographic archive.

Clemens and his late father in the 1950s and 1960s lived in Worcestershire but travelled all over Britain, from Penzance to the north of Scotland, filming many now long-closed railways and the steam locomotives that worked on them. The movie film collection, the largest of its kind in the UK, has been released by the author on over thirty videos starting in the 1990s. The first volume of still photographs was published in 2007 and this is the author's twelfth book. The author's website can be visited at www.michaelclemensrailways.co.uk and contains many hundreds of pages of railway memorabilia.