On platform 13 in Victoria Station in 1906

Now I can’t tell you when the photograph was taken but the postcard was sent in March 1906 so I guess it will be around there and certainly no more than a decade earlier.

Popular postcards were reissued and this one might have been old stock.  Or  it is equally possible that Daisy who sent it might have been holding onto it for some time as she admitted to Walter that “I have 499 post cards,” although it is unclear whether these were in a collection or just waiting to be sent.

Any way this is platform 13 on Victoria Station which served the northwest Lancashire towns.  Our photographer has frozen a moment in time some time before the train departs. A porter unloads the luggage of the man standing next to him and across the platform the men and they are all men stand staring at the camera.

Now I found this a bit odd given that this style of photography had been around for a while and people were getting used to the man with the camera.  But on the other hand on a slow day on Victoria Station perhaps there was wasn’t much else to do.

I suppose that given the platform and the time which was 11.40 in the morning it might be possible to work out the destination of the train using a railway time table for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, but that is in this case a bit of curiosity too far.

Picture; from the collection of Rita Bishop, courtesy of David Bishop