The archives of the Great Western Trust include the photographic work of London born John Drydon Edwards, who went on to attend Oxford University. This selection of his work offers glimpses of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex and London steam.
The well respected railway photographer John Drydon Edwards sadly passed away on 20 January 2022. John was born in London in August 1938 and from an early age had a great interest in railways, and later in railway photography. According to his notes, his first pictures were taken in January 1955 using a Kodak ‘Hawkette II’ camera, and later a Kodak ‘Vollenda’, both 620 roll film cameras. However, for the majority of his black and white photography he used an Agfa ‘Isolette II’. This medium format 120 roll film camera was fitted with a good quality F4.5 Apotar 85mm lens. His interest in photography was such that he also processed and printed all of his own negatives. There is no doubt that he had a great eye for a photograph, and looking through his notebooks it is obvious that he was also very critical of his own work, only keeping images that were well composed, sharp and correctly exposed.
In 1957 John went up to Worcester College, Oxford where he read philosophy, politics and economics. During his time at Oxford he extensively photographed the local railway scene and this resulted in John Alves using a number of John’s Oxford images in the Trains Illustrated article ‘Resorts for Railfans: Oxford’, published by Ian Allan in December 1959. A feature of the article were John’s multi-negative panorama shots of the railway at Oxford. Over the yea
