Michael Messenger

A look at a vanished form of industrial transport, photographed in good black-and-white (and sometimes, pretty good colour for the early 1960s) on the verge of its extinction. The author also performed considerable feats of near mountaineering to access some of the more remote derelict quarries and inclines; certainly nowadays anyone trying to repeat his visits would be advised to set out with serious outdoor gear, whereas one is tempted to suggest that in the 1960s Messenger might just have scaled these mountains with little more than stout shoes, a pacamac and a thermos of tea...… (more)