David St John Thomas

David St John Thomas is sort of a more modern Bradshaw, he's written several volumes of A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain, the one I'm interested in however is Volume 1 THE WEST COUNTRY.

His fifth revised version written in 1981 is just one of the many books I've been taking out of library's recently and I still love it when I find old paintings or photos of Dawlish of how it used to be, or how it still looks the same.

Water-colour by W.J.Dawson in 1848

There are of course only so many books with old photos of Dawlish and I am getting to the stage of seeing the same photos and drawings in different books now but one of is still this one I originally saw in David St John Thomas The Great Way West as it makes you wonder how it must have been to build this section of the south west railway.

An artists impression of the late 1840s from the
Illustrated London News

When I've been on a train home there's been several times the sea has splashed onto the train itself but never quite like in 1974 when this photo was made into a postcard to make travellers feel lucky when they went to Dawlish on a more pleasant day.

1974, the year that most of Dawlish's down platform was
missing having being destroyed in an exceptional gale.

South Devon Coast Path,

An imaginary Devon
setting by the artist
Vana Haggerty

In the past few weeks I've been researching journeys. Spending countless hours sat on the floors of book shops and library's going through books that aren't just about the trains themselves but that have photos of the places I'm familiar with and can relate to. I came across the book South Devon Coast Path by Brain Le Messurier and even though it's nothing to do with train journey's it's still telling you about a form of a journey only walking instead of on a train.

Flicking through I notice how the views of Dawlish are exactly the same as I see them as there's a walkway right along the railway, only these photo's below were taken over 30years ago in 1980.

The front at Dawlish.

Dawlish: It's sea wall railway was engineered by Brunel.

View from Langstone Rock, Looking towards Dawlish Warren.

Prints two and three

Now that I've learnt how to CMYK print I've thought I may as well keep going with it and theoretically my Prints should get better. With my first print I thought it ended up a bit too greeny, this may have been because the cyan was too strong so with my second print I added more magenta paint to mixer compared to the other three colours but annoyingly think all the prints became a bit too pink and also my levelling each layer was shocking, shows what happens when in a rush and trying to get things finished for an assessment.

Print 2: Rocks

So when it came to making up my third print I took the whole day to do it properly, and using the acetate to line up every single layer and I feel that it really shows. My third set of prints are a lot more lined up and clear and crisp and so because I was able to do this I'm defiantly going to do some more. 

Print 3: Rain

I think that a series of 5prints for the journey will be a good amount and so in the mean time I've been thinking of another journey I can record and then print. I can't think of doing another set of prints that aren't of the coastline, and another stretch of railway that is along the coast is when you change trains at St Erth for the branch ling to St Ives. I would love to print the classic shot of St Ives of the Harbour and multi coloured houses but if I remember correctly you can't see them when the train stops at the station at St Ives, but I'm half tempted to do a print of just a photo that I take, and you never know It could be nice for the sets of prints to end on a clean crisp shot showing that I've reached my destination perhaps?

Great British Railways

"In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain. His name was George Bradshaw, and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks. Stop by stop, he told them where to travel, what to see and where to stay. Now 170years later I'm making a series of journeys across the length and breadth of the country to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains." This is how Michael Portillo opens each and every episode of his series Great British Railway Journeys on BBC2.

George Bradshaw's hand book for rail travel.

In series one my mother recorded the episode when he stayed in Bath and since I've kept on watching onto the third series that's showing every week day on BBC 2. It's a show about the journey's you can take around Britain and Bradshaw writes about the things you shouldn't miss, things to see in every town you could go to by rail, and he's made me want to go to some places now purely from the 5minutes of him walking around them. I've love to watch the weeks of episodes when we went around Devon and Cornwall now because I wasn't paying as much attention to this show 2years ago as I am now, and I'd love to hear what he makes of the sight when a train passes through Dawlish. 

Opening credits shot of Portillo's series.