David Gibson

My trainspotting career began, I am told, when I was three years old and was regularly reprimanded for standing on the sofa and pulling back the net curtain at my Grandmother’s house in Stockton-on-Tees to watch the trains on the North Shore freight branch which ran opposite. There were many rail-connected businesses and works on the branch which provided constant traffic, and access to the nearby Stockton MPD necessitated a reversal opposite the house, so reprimands were many.

A family move to Warrington in 1948 meant that for the next ten years I lived close to the West Coast Main Line but spending a few weeks each year during the summer holidays at grandmother’s in Stockton meant that my ABC books filled up quite well. The next move was to Carlisle where I have been for the last 64 years (2022), and it is well known that Carlisle is and always has been a classic location with, even now, six routes feeding into Citadel Station.

I always enjoyed reading ‘Trains Illustrated’ when at school, and came to know and admire the work of the well-known names of the contributing photographers. In 1980 I bought a Pentax ME 35mm SLR camera and started taking colour slides and black and white film, processing and printing the latter at a local community centre.

The change to digital came in 2006 with a Canon 30D, then a 60D in 2013 which still serves me today. I shoot in RAW and edit with Photoshop Elements 14 before converting the file to TIFF. I am part of the Cumbrian Railways Association (CRA) Photo Archive team and recently took over the scanning and initial cataloguing of donated collections for the CRA Archive using their Epson 850 Pro scanner, which has enabled me to scan some of my own slides and film. Cataloguing and archiving has taught me to record as much detail of the circumstances and subject of an image as possible, something I did not do in the early years.

In 2004 I was invited to join the Rail Camera Club (RCC) by member Walter Moffat and Secretary Stephen Crook after many years of being invited by Walter to look through the folios when they were in his possession. When Stephen sadly and suddenly passed away in 2011 I was asked to take over stewardship of the Club which I was honoured to do. It has been rewarding, with the Shildon Exhibition to mark the 100^th RCC folio, then the Young Railway Photographer of the Year Competition and exhibition and change of name back to The Railway Photographic Society to mark the 100^th Anniversary of its formation.

I now enjoy photographing anything involving railways both in the UK and in countries I have been fortunate enough to visit. I also photograph infrastructure and heritage railways, my favourite being the Great Central where I am a ‘Friend of the Great Central Main Line’ and a member of Railway Vehicle Preservations.

My approach to photography depends very much on the intended purpose of the images. Showing the railway as part of the landscape features in many images entered in the RPS/RCC folios, those destined for the CRA archive will include general views of the railway, architecture, significant events and infrastructure work, recording the changes that take place. Encroaching undergrowth, palisade fencing and ‘lookalike’ modern trains create challenges for today’s railway photographer, but I firmly believe that we have to find ways of overcoming these obstacles. We often question the future of Railway Photography and the hobby generally, but the success of the ‘Young Railway Photographer of the Year’ Competition gives me real faith in the future.

David Gibson

All images in this gallery ©David Gibson