Books Cumbria : History : Railways : Cumbrian Railway Photographer: The William Nash Collection Cumbrian Railway Photographer: The William Nash Collection Kate Robinson; Robert Forsythe £9.95 William Nash, from St Bees in Cumbria, became a railway photographer in his teens. This collection has been produced to mark the 50th anniversary of his death, with photographs compiled by his youngest daughter Kate and transport historian Robert Forsythe The book focuses on material covering the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway, standard steam gauge in Cumbria, along with his images of the railway-owned Lakeland steamers and a selection of Lake District landscapes. Publisher : Oakwood Press Published : 2002 Pages : 112 Format : Paperback. Illustrations : b&w photographs. Maps. ISBN : 853615926 Quantity:  Review The Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway, the Ratty, was a boyhood passion for William Nash. At the age of fourteen he was given a camera and set about photographing the locomotives and life on the 'smallest railway in the world'. Many of the locomotives had been built by Bassett-Lowke, who were one of the top model railway manufacturers in the early part of the twentieth century. The railway was constructed on a three inch scale and was a quarter of the size of a standard railway. But for a young lad it had all the steam and grime, the noise and bustle of a full-size railway. His pictures, taken in 1923, portray the trains themselves, splendid creatures in their polished liveries, energetically ejecting billows of steam from their small funnels. The Sans Pareil is shown pulling a train of open topped carriages out of the station. The train driver appears like a giant perched on the tender of the miniature engine. A less elegant engine was Muriel. She was a low-slung eight wheel tank engine. Instead of the gleaming round body of her sister trains, Muriel had a large rectangular riveted tank, but she gave of her best. In 1926 her work on the railway ceased and she was dismantled. However, her body was cannibalized and large parts of her went to the construction of the River Irt, which runs on the railway to this day. The railway was a busy line in those days. In addition to the tourist traffic, the line carried granite chippings from Beckfoot Quarry through a crushing plant at Murthwaite and on to the harbour at Ravenglass. William's mother, in the way mothers do, obviously insisted that he took at least one photograph of her. She is shown with a friend posing alongside Sir Audrey Brocklebank. Sir Audrey was a locomotive. William travelled the Cumbrian railways. Penrith was a favourite tramping ground, where he could watch the double-headed trains heaving their way up the steep gradient to Shap. These were mighty engines compared to the miniatures on the Ratty. The LMS locomotives that hauled the trains through Penrith were triumphs of British railway engineering, and William's photographs capture the excitement that these massive engines held for him. The line between Lancaster and Furness offered further possibilities with pictures of the locomotives pulling their trains across the Kent estuary. There are also some interesting pictures of work on the line. At Carnforth a train has been derailed. A man in a bowler hat stands and watches as a large gang of workmen try to right the train using hand jacks and pieces of timber. It was no wonder that William followed a career on the railways. He began working at a signal box during the General Strike in 1926 and later became Assistant District Controller at Rugby and at the end of his life was responsible for planning Royal Train journeys. He died, aged 43, in the Harrow railway disaster on 8th October, 1952. His collection of railway photographs has remained in the family, and his youngest daughter Kate has now assembled a collection of his Cumbrian photographs for this volume. The William Nash Collection is particularly interesting because it represents one man's enthusiasm for the age of steam. - Steve Matthews, Bookcase.