Photographers > David McLellan
(107) L.662 - Taking rails forward
Thumbnail gallery: Grid view | List view
Universal Viewer | 
Mirador | Large image
Images and transcriptions on this page, including medium image downloads, may be used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence unless otherwise stated. 
| First World War 'Official Photographs' > Photographers > David McLellan > (107) L.662 - Taking rails forward |
|---|
| Permanent URL | https://digital.nls.uk/74548806 |
|---|---|
| Description | Railway construction stage 1, France, during World War I. A team of 18 men are walking behind each other in pairs up a railway track. Between them they are carrying a section of railway track. Each pair is holding a cross pole from which the track is suspended by a chain. Buildings and woods can be seen in the background. The caption claims that a mile of track was laid in a day. As a rail section is usually 60 ft long, this would mean 30 pairs of rails were being carried and fixed each day. [Original reads: 'OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN ON THE BRITISH WESTERN FRONT IN FRANCE. Rapid railway construction in France. Broad gauge railway at one mile a day. Taking rails forward.'] |
More information
|
|
| Description | Formerly a photographer with the 'Daily Mirror’, a newspaper which led the field in pictorial journalism, McLellan was appointed as an official war photographer in December 1917 along with Tom Aitken whose work also features in this collection. McLellan is especially noted for his work capturing the huge scale of operations on the Front. McLellan was one of five official photographers working on the Western Front, for the propaganda department during the last two years of the war. The photographers were driven to the site the authorities wanted them to photograph, which meant that most of their material was also largely censored. This did not, however, mean that the photographer did not get to know the people in the picture. |
|---|---|
|
More information
|
|
| Description | Photographs by named photographers. |
|---|
| Description | Black-and-white photographs mainly of the Western Front during the First World War. Official British war photographers took many of them for propaganda purposes. Unless otherwise stated, titles are the photographs' original captions. From the papers of Field Marshal (Earl) Haig (1861-1928). The Haig Papers also contain Douglas Haig’s diaries. |
|---|---|
| Shelfmark | Acc.3155 |
|
More information
|
|