Now sometimes it is the unremarkable picture which offers up a story.
The train was passing through Derby on its way from Bristol to York and Lois caught the moment mainly I suspect because Derby was where mother grew up and where I spent many holidays.
As such it is a place I have often written about but in truth with little affection.
That said it plays an important place in our family who grew up in a small area bounded by Traffic Street, the railway station and the canal.
Like many in the early 19th century they were agricultural labourers who migrated to the nearby town and made a living as handloom workers, domestic servants and in the new engineering works.
And when the time they came acquitted themselves in the armies of the old Queen and later still in the great global conflicts of the last century, but always they returned to the same small collection of streets.
Of those that left and never returned, one is buried in a war grave in Thailand, two crossed the Atlantic and mother settled in London.
It’s a set of family stories which could be replicated countless times and all that makes it different is that it’s my family.
And I had come to forget that story which makes Lois’s picture very timely and has set me off on a whole new quest.
Picture; Derby Station, 11.47, Sunday September 13, 2015, from the collection of Lois Elsden
As such it is a place I have often written about but in truth with little affection.
That said it plays an important place in our family who grew up in a small area bounded by Traffic Street, the railway station and the canal.
And when the time they came acquitted themselves in the armies of the old Queen and later still in the great global conflicts of the last century, but always they returned to the same small collection of streets.
Of those that left and never returned, one is buried in a war grave in Thailand, two crossed the Atlantic and mother settled in London.
It’s a set of family stories which could be replicated countless times and all that makes it different is that it’s my family.
And I had come to forget that story which makes Lois’s picture very timely and has set me off on a whole new quest.
Picture; Derby Station, 11.47, Sunday September 13, 2015, from the collection of Lois Elsden
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