In 1966, at the age of 18, I was working as an apprentice fitter in my home town of Bolton. I decided that I needed something better than the family roll film camera to record the last years of BR steam and, short-sightedly, I spent the equivalent of two weeks pay on a rather fragile Helina 35mm compact. I should have spent three weeks pay on a Zenith 35mm SLR, which would have promoted all my photos into a higher league.

The Helina wasn't very robust and got knocked out of focus a couple of times, resulting in many of my photos being too poor to show.

Being able to enjoy seeing many thousands of BR steam photos that people have posted on the internet 50 years later is wonderful.