The Restoration & Archiving Trust
The Paul Riley Commemmorative Show
This show demonstrating the skill with the camera of the late Paul Riley is available in two forms with differing content in the first half of the show. One illustrates more of his more conventional pictures from around the British Isles in the early years from 1961 onwards whilst in the alternative version many of these are replaced by later shots from abroad with more pictorial impact. The former is exclusively in colour whilst the latter does include a handful of black & white images, the medium in which he first made his name as a railway photographer through pictures published in magazines in the 1960s culminating with the shot of which he was most proud taken in February 1967 of former LMS Jubilee class 4-6-0 number 45562 'Alberta' heading a northbound railtour through the Lune Gorge working hard over Dillicar troughs picking up water that is overflowing the tender in backlit sunny conditions. Regrettably a decent copy of this photograph is not available but it was taken with a telephoto lens to set the train back into the landscape, this shot was typical of the high impact photography using longer focus lenses in which Paul Riley was an early pioneer.
The second half of this show concentrates on the high impact colour images taken on various routes around northern England during 1967 & the early part of 1968 although it starts with a few preservation era scenes taken prior to Pauls death in 1976 and continues with some locomotive shed & night shots. Scenes around Coventry, his home city, are included early in both versions of the first half which then continue with scenes around Britain ending up back near home at Birmingham New Street. The solely UK version simply has more scenes between the two locations whereas the other continues across the channel to France, Spain & Turkey.
A few pictorial scenes from the show appear below
