A book by Terence Dorrity, published by Lightmoor Press, 228 pages, full colour, Illustrated throughout.
If scruffy, rusty and weathered industrial locos float your boat, then this book is going to give you endless buoyancy, like a giant set of waterwings in perpetuity. You'll also have a big smile for hours, or if you're like me, for days after reading it.
The author, Terence Dorrity, was a keen photographer/enthusiast in the early sixties, otherwise the decade of free love, drugs, pop music, mini skirts and the last glowing embers of steam. He started out with a basic camera trying to capture Castles and Kings from his rather gentrified local station of Stratford on Avon, where the bard and his reputation held sway over everything. The sixties were not going to get in there- which would be fine with me if Castles and Kings still thumped about in the town, preserved in some sort of brunswick green tinted aspic. But the young Mr Dorrity had heard tell of the steamy delights of "Industrial Railways" and began to seek them out- not easy, since he was young and without much money or transport.
Enter stage left, his Dad, who is revealed as a top fellow in all respects! Despite having no interest in railways, he began to chauffeur his son, and perhaps the occasional friend, to industrial sites where a column of steam was rumoured to have been sighted, or a whistle heard. As Dorrity tells us, the man hung about waiting, uncomplaining while our lad scurried about snapping what would turn out to be epic images of a vanished time. I wonder if he knew he was enabling something special, laying down quality scenes for future historians to drool over? His Dad even took advantage of "business contacts" to secure access to hours of boredom for himself- so that his son could photograph the Stewarts and Lloyds fleet of steamers. Lastly, his Dad had the gift of charming watchmen and jobsworths who controlled access to places, perhaps having some sort of magic paper that persuaded these people to let him inside the noble halls of grime and the cloisters of enchantment. What a man!
My mate Dave's dad was like that. He drove us to fourteen or fifteen sheds in the sixties, I've always been terribly grateful, even though I couldn't articulate it at the time. My own Dad never even thought of it. The nearest he got was telling me "There's a steamer at Hartshead this 'arternoon." Which left me to take the bus or bike it to try and photograph the rare beast. Of course, I got chucked off, but it didn't matter, I had none of Mr Dorrity's talents with emulsion and shutter speeds.
I'm grateful to Terry Dorrity's Dad, because he encouraged his son in what became a lifetime's virtuous endeavour. Not just taking photos, but encapsulating the atmosphere and drama of those sites- I don't know how he did that, all I succeeded in doing was getting telegraph poles coming out of loco chimneys. Actually, there is one of those on the cover, but somehow you don't notice it immediately. It's also better than anything I did.
The book covers England, Scotland and Wales and is split further into sub-categories like coal and docks etc. The photos are not huge, but they are large enough. You can sense that it's been a compromise between size and number of photographs. I just can't believe how many there are, and all with interesting captions, too. I don't have to labour the worth of the shots for modelmakers either.
Personal favourites for me are his Waterside photos, and those of Maerdy and Mountain Ash. Oh, and not to forget the Aberdeen Barclays including "Mr Therm". I'm glad that our Terence kept on keeping on, taking industrial shots. They are now a significant resource- I'll wager he never thought of them that way.
These places are all gone now, landscaped, built over, the locos gone to their Valhalla for rusty heroes. Sometimes a notice, an interpretative board remains, taunting the reader with "Hey, this is how interesting it was before we knocked it all down and created this featureless dump!"
I'm glad, too, that the subjects of the photos were little known or regarded. It gives them a further sense of poignance. Imagine today, Terence would post a few of his pics on social media and within hours there would be videos with guys in front of camera going "Guys, guys, I've found a place where these Thomas the Tank engine things hang out!" Insta would be full of posts like "Have you been to the steamy fastnesses of Waterside?" Sometimes it's best that the past keeps it's secrets, for there are no places left unturned today. Far better to let the likes of Terence Dorrity, Tom Heavyside and Gordon Edgar interpret it for us.
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