RARE colour photos discovered during the clearance of a house at Haworth have been reproduced in a new book.

The images – of trains and ships – were found following the death earlier this year of avid amateur photographer Peter Sunderland, who had lived in the village all his life.

A selection of the pictures now feature in Midland Railway Outpost – Lancaster-Morecambe-Heysham, by Martin Bairstow.

The author had worked with his friend’s black and white photos for many years, but the previously-unseen ‘treasure trove’ of colour shots took him by surprise.

“I knew Peter had taken a few – as I had seen slides lying around downstairs in his home under years of dust – but I’d no inkling that there were thousands more upstairs where friends and family never ventured!” said Mr Bairstow, a long-time member of the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway Preservation Society and a volunteer guard on the five-mile line.

“The three upstairs rooms were piled high with all manner of things and it took some time to locate and retrieve all the slides.

“While there was an enormous amount of duplication, there remain perhaps 3,000 worthwhile railway and associated shipping subjects spanning a 30-year period, starting in 1955.

“Coverage begins locally in the Worth Valley and extends to Scotland and Ireland and then to the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia.

“The biggest concentration of slides features scenes taken at the railway port of Heysham, to which Peter returned many times.

“Having looked through them all, I felt that some deserved to be shared with a wider audience, so I came up with the idea for the book.”

Leeds-based Mr Bairstow has written numerous railway books, but his latest work is his first collaboration with specialist transport publisher Willowherb Publishing Ltd.

Willowherb’s two directors, Alan Whitaker – a former journalist with Keighley News sister title the Telegraph & Argus – and civil engineer Jan Rapacz, were also friends of Mr Sunderland.

With supportive contributions from other sources, the book provides a comprehensive review of the railway scene – and that of the Heysham Harbour maritime operations – from the mid-1950s until recent times.

Mr Sunderland, who was 85, was educated at Keighley Boys’ Grammar School and then Bradford Technical College.

He worked as a textile designer until the late 1970s, when he was made redundant.

Mr Sunderland then became a stores clerk at the former Magnet Joinery in Keighley, until his retirement.

* Midland Railway Outpost – Lancaster-Morecambe-Heysham, a 112-page hardback, retails at £21.95. Copies can be obtained from willowherbpublishing.co.uk, Haworth Station bookshop, Waterstones in Bradford and Carnforth Bookshop.