Seventy five year old photographs ... and I don't know where! (help please)

Fascinating photos again. I particular liked the shot inside the train, and the shots of the shadows.

You guys are amazing on your research of possible places and ships.

BTW, to the person above who suggested they were going from the east of Canada, westward; ws anything said in earlier threads to indicate they went to Europe first and westward, or to the North American west coast and traveled east? If they former, you are probably right except for the amount of time. I doubt it would have taken them 2 weeks. But maybe so, depending on how long they wanted to stay in any one location.

Keep them coming, Keith. My only problem is I'm going to be sad when you have them all done.
 
France. The first photo shows the word ETAT on the antimacassar on the top of the seat. Here's a link to Euorpean railways mentioning stock delivered to ETAT railways.
http://www.railfaneurope.net/pix/fr/car/Etat/pix.html

Wonderful to feel the connection with her thinking, the shadows on the deck, that young man in the window light, the clouds and the sun on the stern of the liner, so many exposures decisively chosen.
 
Playing contemporary travel agent, I imagine that they began the trip on the Arlberg Orient Express train from Vienna to Paris through Switzerland. Then, a French train (Richard's Etat) to Cherbourg where they may have had a package with Canadian Pacific. CP offered oceanliners, terrific transcon trains and grand hotels from Montreal to Vancouver as a package. You could also take the southern loop to see Niagara Falls and Chicago. Significantly, CP used Cherbourg. (Good eye, Buzzardkid.)

"Empress of Britain"
eob30a.jpg


Empress of Britain boat trains became famous. As the Canadian Pacific was the only railway company in the world to own and operate trans-ocean steamers, so it had the only system where trains and ships were operated in co-ordination with a view to ensuring connections. Passengers leaving the Empress of Britain at Quebec, stepped aboard special trains bound for Montreal or Toronto on which were through cars routed to New York or Chicago. Sometimes, indeed, there were special through trains to Chicago. It all depended, of course, on the volume of business.
 
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The white liner looks like the P&O Strathaird in its' 3 funnel configuration (2 were falsies!) before the first and third were removed. The ship plied the Australian mail run before and after the war between the UK and Australia. I went to Australia on this ship when I was about 6 months old (so I'm told!) and returned to the UK on the sister ship Stratheden 7 years later. The ports of call were Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Bombay, Colombo, Aden, Egypt, possibly Marseilles and then Tilbury, England. So take your pick!
 
bigeye says 'Good eye'

:D

Happy to contribute, I really love these kind of scouting, trail tracking activities!

I also tipped off the Nomadic Preservation Society, that are putting an effort into restoring the 'Nomadic', the ship that was in picture #2 as 'Ingenieur Minard'. It's currently docked in Belfast, it was used to ferry passengers to Titanic and later as a troops transporter in both WWI and WWII. The Society was very happy to see those pictures, as they will be a great aid in reconstructing the top deck of the ship!

How about that!?
 
I do too!

The shots from the railing over to the battleship are taken from the Ingenieur Minard's top deck. The link says she primarily was a tender to ships for 1st Class passengers. (Which explains how a photo was made of the ship she sailed off in?) The 'shadows on white' pictures were probably taken as the tender came alongside to unload them.

The Arkansas was the only one of the 2-ship "Wyoming-class" to visit Cherbourg in the late 30's that I can find.

...she returned to Norfolk for a navy yard overhaul which lasted through the spring of 1936. That summer she carried out a midshipman training cruise to Portsmouth, England; Goteborg, Sweden; and Cherbourg, before she returned to Annapolis that August.

Since it is Cherbourg, then that is the USS Arkansas and the year is 1936.

.
 
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The liner does not look like the Strathaird. The stern, sloping down to the waterline, the wrap-around observation deck, the size and spacing of the funnels all look like the Canadian ship mentioned above. Beautiful ship. The sun on the stern, early morning or late afternoon, does suggest that behind it is either a north facing or south facing harbor. Fits with Cherbourg but I don't know the layout of Canadian ports.
 
This is amazing stuff guys ... you are to be commended! :D

I think the fact the the rolls were not stored in chronological order has made this a bit of a crap shoot so far. Once all sixteen rolls have been scanned some sort of order may form and we will have a better understanding of where this all started and where it finished ... and indeed as someone suggested if it was actually just one trip!

This was roll #9 and there are seven more to go (groan) so really we are only halfway there. The roll I scanned yesterday (#10) puts us back in Australia in Darwin according to the canister and it definitely is the Northern territory of Australia though Darwin itself is not seen. Wherever they stayed it appears to be the middle of nowhere and very few people seem to be around. The environment is about as Aussie as you can get!

Thanks for the input everyone and I'll post roll #10 tonight. :)

ps ... thanks for the PM Johan ... I'll contact that gentleman in the next day or so to let him know that it should be ok but I will have to confirm that with the ownwers when they return from overseas in a week or two of course.
 
Oh ... and just another reminder that the photos from all threads so far are on line here!
 
Those old liners sure are beautiful. I worked on Holland America and Princess Cruises in the 90s but even their oldest ships weren't very nautical feeling. As a Princess employee I did get to spend some time on some of the older P&O ships and they had more of that ocean liner feeling.
Today's cruise ships are an abomination!
 
Keith said:
This was roll #9 and there are seven more to go (groan) so really we are only halfway there. The roll I scanned yesterday (#10) puts us back in Australia in Darwin according to the canister and it definitely is the Northern territory of Australia though Darwin itself is not seen. Wherever they stayed it appears to be the middle of nowhere and very few people seem to be around. The environment is about as Aussie as you can get!
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When you post the photos from the NT, send the link to the folks at ABC Darwin: http://www.abc.net.au/darwin/default.htm The "Postcard From History" feature on their Web page gets a good response from the locals, and there are still a few people around from the war.
 
dragunov said:
Keith, could you post a raw scan of a negative? I'm curious how good/bad they can get.
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No worries ... I'll be scanning another roll later today and I'll pick one of the 'gems' and post it for you as scanned in the thread I'll start tonight! (Darwin #10) :D

I don't actually bother to keep a file of all the raw scans before restoration, individually they're close to 40 meg ... my hard drive isn't the most spacious and this project is already taking up sixteen gigs and we're only half way there. :p
 
Lovely picture of the Empress of Britain, bigeye. Perhaps hand coloured, but the girl's dress and the funnels resonate nicely. I love the stern of that ship.
 
photogdave said:
Those old liners sure are beautiful. I worked on Holland America and Princess Cruises in the 90s but even their oldest ships weren't very nautical feeling. As a Princess employee I did get to spend some time on some of the older P&O ships and they had more of that ocean liner feeling.
Today's cruise ships are an abomination!
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I think the photographer was captivated by them as well and I can see why ... they are quite majestic!


DavidA09015.jpg
 
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