Found Photos, 35mm 828 Format Film Negatives

We recently suffered a death in the family and it's fallen to my brother and I to sort out the estate and possessions. My Uncle Geoff had been a keen photographer in the past and whilst few have surfaced so far, I was rather hoping to come across a collection of old photos of family and views showing elements of social life no longer with us.

The other day I found a tiny metal canister and it turned out to have a roll of black and white negatives in it. The film was 35mm wide but with only a single sprocket hole for each frame along the bottom edge of the strip. There were no sprocket holes at all along the top edge. A bit of research tells me this is 828 format film, created by Kodak in 1935 for their Bantam range of cameras.

The image format was 40x28mm, a touch bigger than the standard 35mm film, which itself had only been introduced the previous year in 1934. This is a full-frame from one of the photos. Locomotive 4478, named Hermit was built for LNER at Doncaster, entering service in July 1923.

I've no way of dating these photos but guess they are from the late 1940s or early 1950s. There appears to be evidence of an itchy trigger finger...! Winding on the film would not be as simple as a single action of a lever and would certainly not be motor-driven!

Whilst 35mm film came in its own canister which went into the camera, 828 film was a roll film with backing paper. The spool of film had to be held tight to stop light from getting to it as you loaded it into the camera and then threaded the loose end of the film onto an empty take-up spool - which had come from the previous film to have been shot. Depending on the camera either you wound the film on after taking a shot until the single sprocket encountered a pin that stopped any more film advancing, or you wound it on until the next frame number, printed on the back of the backing paper, showed through a tiny red plastic window in the back of the camera.

The remaining shots are of bands parading through Manchester town centre.

This is Manchester in the immediate post-war years. Gaps in streets are evidence of the work of Hitler's Luftwaffe. Bomb sites in and around Manchester remained common through until the end of the 1960s and sporadically even afterwards.

In the area of Piccadilly Gardens this shot has the Littlewoods department store in the background.

I quite like this shot though as it shows some of Manchester's trolleybuses. I can just about remember riding on them as a child. Manchester had nine routes covered by a total of 189 trolleybuses. Introduced in 1938 the last trolleybuses were withdrawn on 31 December 1966.

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Postcard: South African Steam Trains

Today a quick post - it's been a busy week, family things are taking up quite a bit of my time at the moment so to keep the blog going, here's a few postcards of steam trains in South Africa that were brought by Marlene of the Ladies-Over-The-Water (a while since they were featured) when she came for a visit in 1997.

The actual cards are up in the attic somewhere just at the moment so I can't be much more specific than "South Africa", though at least some are of the Orange Free State and Bloemfontein. Awesome photos though!

Howard Brothers Gallopers

I've just got in from spending the morning mooching around Fleetwood's Tram Sunday. Not too many trams in evidence, but we'll save the transport for another article, because of all the things on show, this took my fancy the most.

The carousel of gallopers presented by Howard Brothers of Derbyshire looked absolutely wonderful in the bright sunshine - yes for a change, the sun made an appearance today!

The ride has a three-abreast layout, is driven by steam from an onboard steam engine and has a 54-key Limonair organ fitted by the present owners, whose own website has a comprehensive history of the ride.

Built in 1886 in Kings Lynn, the ride's carriages for younger riders are decorated with paintings of 19th century military heroes such as Lords Wellington, Roberts and Kitchener.

The ride has been restored to a spectacular condition and with the organ playing and an occasional puff of steam from the engine made a great alternative to the static displays of buses and cars which were, perhaps, meant to be the main focus of the day.

Large versions of the photos: carousel, horse, birds, head,

Wrea Green Windmill

Oho! The scanning of my old negatives has moved on a pace! We're now into 1982! On the 1st of April that year I was taking photos of various windmills for an article that eventually was published in Lancashire Magazine. We are well blessed with windmills on the Fylde coast. The famous ones are on the Green at Lytham and at Marton where you get off the M55 motorway to head into Blackpool on the old road before the link from the old end of the motorway to the town centre car parks was built. But then there's Marsh Mill at Thornton, there's one at Staining, one at Kirkam and another nearby at Treales, one at Salwick and there are a couple over Wyre at Preesall and Pilling.

This one is Wrea Green mill. Wrea Green, or Ribby with Wrea, is a small village just off the A583 as you head from Blackpool towards Kirkham. It has a small and olde worlde feel to the village centre that gathers around, but allows plenty of space for, the large village green complete with duck pond.

In April 1982 the windmill at Wrea Green was little more than a ruin. The tower of the mill was there and the single storey building next to it, but the inside of the tower was empty and uncapped, showing signs of that all too common a fate for windmills - fire. The miller's skill was in regulating the flow of grain to the stones. Too fast and the grain wasn't ground properly so your flour would have hard lumps in it. Too slow and the stones would touch and spark and so you had a fire. Flour is combustible - and rather good at it! In this case however, the cause of the fire was an exploding steam engine!

Windmills make a bit of noise when working as you might imagine. Apart from the sails creaking round there are all those big wooden cog wheels clacking about inside and the stones spinning round and the sound of grain falling from hoppers... A neighbour was incensed when the mill was built. He planted a row of trees to block the wind. You can imagine how this may have led to a certain tense relationship between the miller and his neighbour... With the mill unable to use wind power, the miller turned to a recent invention: the steam engine. Now, what a noise that must have made! But alas for the miller and the bread lovers of Wrea Green - the engine blew apart and started a fire that gutted the mill.

Shortly after I took these photos the mill was converted into a home and now has a new lease of life.

Windmills, Wind Pumps Watermills Index

Going Loco in Turkey

Monday, 24 August 2009. This was a little bizarre... After leaving the House of the Virgin Mary and Ephesus we travelled to Camlik Steam Locomotive Museum.

We had lunch here, in a huge dining room and sitting in groups of eight. The couple at the far end of our table announced they were from Poulton le Fylde! They were John and Sue, who we got to know more as the week went on. The meal was Turkish fayre and was very tasty. I really enjoyed it, though Fran wasn't in as adventurous a mood!

After the meal we had a short time to wander around the museum to look at the steam locomotives before carrying on in the coach to our next ancient site. Now, when you're on a day seeing things like the house where the Virgin Mary lived and Ephesus where two of the Apostles preached and the Temple of Artemis (still to come) which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World... it is just a little strange to have lunch in a train museum!

So we entered the gardens of the museum without any great expectations. How wrong could we be? This place was amazing! Almost strewn about the landscaped gardens were scores of steam locomotives. There were no guides, no attendants to say you couldn't prod, poke or explore... Just everywhere you looked there were huge locomotives, from England, France and Germany, many with strange wheel combinations: 2-10-0 ???

There was a turntable with locomotives surrounding it, there were short lengths of track with a complete train, there were trains just standing in the gravel, there was even a wild west type hand cart with see-saw action handle! There was nothing to stop you from entering carriages except from a lack of platforms. If there were steps you could get up and go in after making your own mind up whether the steps were safe or not. How refreshing not to have Nanny Britain making decisions for us! How delightful to know that had we fallen through stupidity we would have simply been told "Well it's your own stupid fault!". I hate this current culture we have where people can do the most stupid things and then sue someone else when they come to grief.

So I climbed into this carriage after examining and gently testing the footplate and step to get up and walked through, feeling my way before placing my full weight on the floorboards!

A mosque on the edge of the site suddenly crackled loudly with static and the tinny amplified sound of the call to prayer rang out - a strange tune to western ears and an ancient language that we could discern no words in.

A locomotive with a rather unusual boiler shape! What a magical place this was. A short time of contrast with the really ancient and religious sights we had already seen and were about to move onto.

And Aaaaagh! What a temptation this was! The urge to get up on the hand cart and try a bit of experimental handle pumping was... I resisted...

It was time to get back on the coach. We left the museum and had a brief look in a small but interesting pottery shop, then boarded the coach on the forecourt of a petrol station. But all these engines... standing in a garden... Bizarre! Wonderfully bizarre!

Pearls of The Aegean Cruise Index

Absolutely Steaming!

Back in the early 1980s we used to regularly visit the steam railway museum at Steamtown, Carnforth.

They had a shed full of old locomotives and carriages, a couple of really famous and one later-to-be famous engines normally standing in the sunshine (ah, remember those days...) outside the sheds.

The famous ones were the Nigel Gresley, easily mistaken for the more famous Mallard and of course, the ultimate in steam locomotives, 4472 Flying Scotsman.

The later-to-be famous locomotive was painted a dull black but is today better known in its red livery as the Hogwarts Express.

I was a keen member of the Blackpool and Fylde Photographic Society in those days and entered the photo above in one of the many competitions. A visiting judge said the locomotive was excellently placed but what a shame I couldn't have waited until the wind had stopped blowing so the reflection in the puddle would have been clearer.

He did admit that had I done, the train would have no longer been there but perhaps I should have waited as the train at the museum constantly goes back and forth along the line, passing the puddle on every occasion. Twit!

Did he not think I might have done exactly that and that the photo I entered was the best of the bunch? Well perhaps not because, in the days of film cameras, taking photographs was an expensive hobby and you thought about every shot! I was at the time, though, taking photos with a view to magazine publication and that meant forgetting about the expense of film in order to get that ultimate shot.

It makes me think now though, when people are so clearly shocked by Simon Cowell telling them they can't sing (when it's patently bloody obvious they can't sing) that a good bit of honest criticism is a rare thing. Politically incorrect you know. And other such piffle. Friends encourage them by lying through their teeth and saying "Yes, you're really good, you should be on telly!"

Have a look at comments on Flickr for instance. I've seen photos on there with scores of comments from admiring friends saying how great the photo is and offering all manner of meaningless awards. I look at them and want to add a comment saying "But it's wildly out of focus for Heaven's sake!!!" Try it...and see the abuse you get...

Larger Versions of the Photos: train and puddle, tank engine

A Train-ing Event

Well, I had a wonderful day on Monday as the JISC infoNet team ran a training workshop - on a train!

We hired the Tanfield Railway for the day with 4 carriages and as the train chuffed its way up and down the track, delegates got to grips with some Scenario Planning, looking at a different scenario in each carriage.

I was facilitating discussions in what I'm sure was the noisiest carriage - but then my boss commented that at least we had the noisiest presenter in the carriage so it evened things up... I have no idea what she meant...

With the initial journey set aside for looking at the scenery we softened the delegates up a little - they had a very intensive time ahead of them for the rest of the day.

Feedback is still coming in, but they certainly seemed to enjoy the day!

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