Mr Romanes

[52D]

Mr Romanes was a Pharmacist based in Duns in the Scottish Borders and an avid railway photographer. The business he started is still going but they have no records of his pictures. Over the years i have seen a few plus some more that are probably attributable to him does anyone have any knowledge of his pictures or know where any are located in books, collections etc.
The subjects were mostly local branch lines and the ECML on the Scottish side although he did venture South now and again.

[redtoon1892]

Little wonder he has hardly been heard of when the likes of Colourail,Ken Hoole,etc ,etc bought up many collections and claimed the credits for themselves without thought to the original photographer. I used to send my 35mm off to TruePrint, one day I was thumbing though a Bradford Barton pictorial book and lo and behold there was one of my pics, I knew it was mine as the locomotive moved on just after I took the pic and there were no other photographers present as it was 6am in Gateshead depot, a fellow photographer told me he never sent off film to these firms as they had a nice little sideline selling photos on as they had no copyright. I wrote to TruePrint on the matter but as you might expect I never got a reply.

[Dixie]

I made contact with the Romanes family thirty years ago and they told me then that they still had some of his photos but not negatives. Regretably, I never followed this up because I was caught up with a major job move. His photos used to appear in the Railway Magazine pre 1930. He was also a compatriot of the father of my friend, the late Cecil Sanderson of Cockburnspath. They used to haunt the cuttings south of the station en route to the summit, with their cameras. Are there any Romanes left in Duns or area? Dixie