Railway Archive: The Last Main Line

During the year 1894, a young man in his late teens took a photograph of the new railway being built through his home town of Leicester. At that time, he would have had no idea that this, and all his subsequent images, would eventually make up one of the finest and most important collections of railway photographs anywhere in the world.

The man in question was S. W. A. Newton, a Leicester photographer who just happened to record the entire construction of the Great Central Railway's London Extension - Britain's last main line railway.

This is his story.