Toton-Rail.co.uk : Railway Photography by Paul Robertson

Welcome...

Welcome to this website which I have created to illustrate some of my 20000+ colour slide & digital collection, depicting images taken between the early 1990's and the present day. I may also add some of my print collection in due course from the 1980's. I also collect slides taken "before my time" and some of these will be added to the "PR Collection" section of the website.
I decided to create this site after running a fotopic site for some time, which was convenient and easy to use, but I just wanted more control and to put my own 'stamp' on the site, rather than stick with fotopic who everyone now seems to have a website with.
I live in Toton and have been regularly taking photographs of the changing scene in the area since the early 1990's, hence the choice of site name. There is a page dedicated to the Toton Yard area, which gives a flavour of the layout of the Toton complex and a variety of photographs to show the changing scene in the area in the last 18 years or so. There is also a seperate page detailing the workings to, from and at Chaddesden Yard in Derby which provided a wealth of traffic and variety in motive power until the spoil trains operated by EWS ceased a few years ago. These workings were a mainstay of 'heritage' power to and from the area and as such created a lot of interest with photographers.
The rest of the website is laid out with pictorial sections grouped by classes. I hope you enjoy viewing the photographs on this site, all images published are the copyright of Paul Robertson unless stated otherwise. The pictures may not be used or published for commercial/editorial purposes without permission. Legal action may be taken in respect of any breach of copyright law. Please contact me by email via the address shown at the bottom of this page.

I have been photographing railways since the early eighties during my spotting days on print film, and changing to colour slides and making a concerted effort to improve my photography in the early nineties.

My first cameras were of the 126 & 110 varieties, later being given a basic manual 35mm SLR by a friend which got me further interested in photography. A subsequent birthday gift being a Praktika MTL5B, followed by an Olympus OM10. My first autofocus SLR was a Canon EOS 750 (for all of 1 day, which is all it took to realise it was usesless), very quickly upgraded to a EOS 1000fn which I used for a number of years and provided good sevice through the 1990's. I currently use a Canon EOS 5D mk11 with a Canon 50mm f1.4 standard lens, 24-70L & 70-200L lenses. I also still own a Canon EOS 3 film camera but this gets very little use these days, I'm virtually 100% digi only now.

I started my railway career as a YTS trainee at Leicester in the late eighties, and currently work within the rail industry in the Midlands. Family life and the loss of many of the 'classic' traction types has wained my interest in recent years but I'll still pop out for something local if the sun happens to shine.. Yes, Im a fair weather photographer as most of the photographs published on this website suggest, but I wasn't always like that and would happily go out for a days photography on cloudy dull weather days. The results are obviously nowhere near as good as sunny pics in my opinion, but everyone has their own opinions and views.

The 35mm colour slides are scanned in using an epson 4490 flatbed scanner, and tweaked with photoshop elements3 or CS2 and Neat image. Neat Image is highly recommended for removing noise from 35mm scans: Neat Image

I must thank the assistance of Andy Williams with my crash course in learning HTML, without his advice the journey would have been far more difficult, if not impossible. You can view Andy's excellent website here: Andy Williams photography

Please note that I am in no way connected to or work at Toton depot and I cannot arrange for visits or provide contact details for any persons wishing to make a visit to take photographs or other activities.

The pictures on this website may not be used or published for commercial/editorial purposes without permission. Legal action WILL be taken in respect of any breach of copyright law.