TransWilts & The Arts Society Kington Langley complete successful 'Railway 200' Photographic Competition

‘Down The Line’

A photographic Competition to celebrate 200 years of the Railway

Having worked with TransWilts in the recent past on Art @The Station together we decided to explore the potential of a photographic competition as our local contribution to the nationwide series of activities being developed to celebrate the bicentenary of the railways. This offered opportunities for various age groups to participate easily and then upload their images to the TransWilts website.

TASKL successfully applied for a Patricia Fay Fund Memorial Grant to work with TransWilts to celebrate Railway 200.  Sophie Martin at TransWilts also successfully applied for a grant from the rail industry. This was to cover the technical work needed to organise the management of images, collating them and sending them to the judges. This was a more mammoth task than we had anticipated. Quotes had to be provided for putting the images on to the weather proof boards that would be installed at the stations. That’s before Health and safety had their say!

The theme was ’Down the Line’ and the outcome was to be display boards of the winning photographs to be placed in each of the seven stations in ‘Down the Line’ from Swindon to Warminster.

We had over 200 entries covering a wide age range which was really exciting - most local but some entries from further afield. Spreadsheets were developed by Sophie to track all the submissions in the various age groups.

Finding judges was one of TASKL’s contributions. In June 2025 we were very fortunate to have Charlie Waite, a TAS lecturer and a world class photographer, lecture to our society.  He wowed our audience as he demonstrated how he looked at landscape, colour, light and composition in his photographs. When I asked him if he would be a judge he immediately said yes as he thinks photography is such a vital art form to support.  

Noel Palmer, Director of Palmer Publicity Services is also a photographer and designer and having been on shoots with him I was also aware of how colour, composition, texture was important in his work.

Paddy Bradley MBE, Chair of TransWilts has a long history in community work and education. His views on the images suitable for the different stations was very important.

We are so grateful for their time and expertise to whittle the 200 entries down to 50 highly commended and then 21 to be displayed in the stations.

The 200 entries from across Wiltshire and also across the country was many more than we expected. Submissions came from all the age ranges and the photographs were exciting, creative and thoughtful.

Certificates were given to all the entrants and vouchers to those with the final displayed work. The boards are now displayed at the stations, as well as posters setting out the whole project. We thank everyone who sent in their photographs and everyone who supported us throughout.

Although the whole process was much more complicated than we expected we now have excellent examples of what the railway means to our communities.

Hopefully we can display more of the work in the waiting rooms in Chippenham. We are also in the process of creating a digital book of all the photographs that we can send to the entrants, judges and interested groups and organisations as well as displaying them have on our websites.

The link to the Digital Flip Books are below

https://taskl.org.uk/railway-200/

Heather Leach

AVR The Arts Society Kington Langley