RAILWAY IMAGES UK (from the ANISTR archive) is an ever growing photo library offering both digital images of railway locomotives and trains and other railway subjects and also traditional photographs. The name ANISTR is one we devised to be a little bit different but it is of course simply an anagram of TRAINS! Our website and business operates under the RAILWAY IMAGES UK banner as that clearly describes what we are all about.
We began operation back in 2005 as probably the first fully searchable online railway image library. Initially trading under the name of BUTTS JUNCTION, a reference to a one-time location on what is now the Watercress Line, but we decided to rename ourselves because the name appeared to attract non-rail enthusiasts looking for quite different material!
Since then it has undergone several evolutions, initially as SOUTHERN-IMAGES, which led to the false assumption that it was only a source for one region of the country. Hence we then adopted a more general name PLATFORM14 which was in many ways our favourite manifestation, until we fell foul of a similarly named distributor of medical devices, and not wanting a repetition of the problems we had with the Butts Junction, we adopted a straight-forward 'what it says on the tin' approach and became RAILWAY IMAGES UK.
The backbone of our image library is the work of several photographers whose work has been published over the years, including Keith Lawrence, Nigel Kendall, Keith Widdowson, David Christie and John H Bird. We have also acquired collections and individual negatives and slides which we now own. Cleaning, restoring, tonally correcting and captioning negatives and slides is very slow and intensive hand work: a typical negative from the 1950s may occupy anything from 15-50 minutes before it appears on the screen. Hence we are always keen to welcome other contributors who have 'oven-ready' material to submit, to use a previous PM's optimistic phrase, which can be loaded up with minimal intervention by ourselves. Any sales we make of downloads, photographs or high-resolution images to collectors and publishers mean generous royalties are paid to the contributor. If you are interested and have high quality material please get in touch!
We wish to put on record our debt to several online databases which are invaluable sources of information. Firstly, the BR Database and secondly Railcar.co.uk and of course the Six Bells website of special trains
We are also extremely grateful to the many correspondents who have helped us to caption many of the old negatives and slides in our collection. The Social media forums, such as RAILWAY IDENTIFICATION GROUP, on Facebook, and the long standing SREMG (Southern Railway Email Group) have provided much guidance, to name but two.
Particular thanks go to Lee Ayling, Chris Ardy, Nick Bartlett, Steve Boulding, Tim Boyd, Colin Burnham, Bob Cartwright, Duncan Chandler, Ian Clare, Alex Clements, Leon Coast, Mel Cox, Amyas Crump, Brian Denton, Andrew Dyke, Steven Dyke, Paul Ebberson, Raymond Edwards, Malcolm Ellis, Liam Feeley, Chris Fletcher, Rob Fraser, Peter Gibbons, Geoff Harsley, Richard Hawkins, Derek Hayward, Spike Hodges, Trevor Hodgson, Jim Howie, Andy Jones, Michael Kaye, Anthony Keep, Chris Knowles-Thomas, Jim Lester, Saffy Mellor, Mike Morant, John Myers, Steve Nelson, Ron Neal, Alan Newman, Chris Osment, Colin Penfold, Chris Philipson, Dennis Pocock, Peter B Russell, Chris Sayers-Leavy, Andrew Snowdon, Clive Standen, Trevor Sharp, Andy Sturt, Martin Thomas, Kevin Wilson, Ray Viney -apologies to anyone we may have unwittingly overlooked
RAILWAY IMAGES from ANISTR.COM St Aubin House 7 Chawton Park Road Alton Hants GU34 1RG
POSTAL / ONLINE BUSINESS ONLY
Tel: 075 1009 9698
Email: info(at)anistr.com Please replace (at) with @ [anti-scam tactic!]