Network Rail Footbridges
In conversation with Luke O’Donovan
Last year, Network Rail and RIBA Competitions sought design ideas for accessible footbridges that could be used across Britain’s rail network. The competition looked for innovative concepts that challenged presumptions and raised the bar of future design.
More than 120 entries were received from 19 countries and the jury chose Gottlieb Paludan Architects with Strasky, Husty and Partners Ltd as the overall winner and Hawkins\Brown’s entry with WSP — a modular kit of parts — was highly commended.
As part of the ideas competition a retrospective study, LINK, capturing some of Network Rail’s 2,400 footbridges was carried out to accompany the competition, and was undertaken by architectural historian David Lawrence, graphic designer Alex Holden and photographer Luke O’Donovan.
We visited the competition exhibition month and were overwhelmed by Luke’s photos, and being the type of people who get excited by everything to do with railways, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask Luke a few questions about his photographs — and impressive challenge to capture Network Rail’s 2,400 footbridges.
CH: The logistics of photographing so many footbridges is an impressive challenge — can you tell us a bit about how you travelled between locations?
“On paper it might seem impressive, but the reality is that it was I was winging it the whole time!”
“I did have a crack at planning it properly, I had all the maps and timetables downloaded and had done quite a lot of research, but in the end I figured that there were so many variable factors that it wouldn’t have been feasible to plan a route that would reliably work for my needs.”
“I organised the stations into rough regional groups that are clustered together so I can do them all in one day, and within those groups I’d try and work out which ones I’d want to photograph in morning light, which ones in evening light, and work around that as best as I could. At the end of each day I’d commute to the next cluster so that I could get started as soon as the sun was up.”
“The order of the regional clusters was a bit up in the air though due to train disruptions, weird timetables and the unpredictability of the weather, so I’d generally be working with a schedule about 2 days ahead of me and working it out as I went along.”
CH: How many days did you spend travelling?
“The project took 20 days of shooting in autumn 2018.”
“Four days doing south-east England based from home, two days in the south-west with an overnight stay in Torquay, and then everywhere else I did in one go on a 14 day all line rover ticket.”
CH: What was the longest journey between footbridges?
“There were a lot of long journeys between cities, but off the top of my head I’d probably say getting to Torquay from Woking might have been the longest single journey, about four and a half hours. The northernmost station I photographed was Achnascheen, and the southernmost Torquay.”
CH: Did you have any long waits/tight turnarounds?
“Yes, everywhere! The most frantic one was at Thornaby (near Middlesborough) where I remember I had just 9-minutes to get a shot and switch trains because cancellations that day had put me so far behind schedule. Mostly I had an incredibly packed schedule, but there were was the odd stop where I was able to take my time to put together a really nice set of images, and even be a tourist for a few minutes in some places. The first train out of Dundee got cancelled so I had 20-minutes to enjoy taking a look at the new V&A Museum there (just the outside, it was really early in the morning so they hadn’t opened yet) which was amazing.”
“Llanfairfechan in North Wales was great too — there were only a few trains each day, and you had to wave them down like a bus, which was something I hadn’t seen before. As much as these irregular timetables stressed me out, being able to break up shoots with a quick trip to the beach by the mountains was quite nice.”
CH: Can you tell us what equipment you used or any changes you made?
“All of the images were taken digitally using my SLR camera, and other than a couple of minor colour corrections, 99% of the images are more or less the same as how I shot them. I know it sounds like a big cliché, but I do take a lot of care to get things as perfect as I can in-camera — for example at Port Talbot I was stood in the same position for almost two hours at sunrise waiting for the light I wanted, having also scouted the vantage point the night before. I say that I don’t mind small imperfections (for example an ugly signpost, or litter) in my images because they make them more believable and set them apart from hyperrealistic renders, but there is also a part of me which is very glad this artistic approach saves me a lot of boring photoshop work.”
“Conventionally wide angle lenses are popular for photographing architecture, but the lens I used for the most shots was the 50mm (tilt-shift), which gives the most natural perspective, similar to what humans see. At some of the the locations I also used a telephoto zoom lens — this was really important because it enabled me to find vantage points well outside the station from where I could photograph the footbridges in the context of their surroundings, showing how they can link different areas in a town.”
“It’s great fun being able to use all of this gear, but carrying it everywhere with me was challenging at times. Even though I was on trains all day, there were a few days where I was walking about 15km, including dragging a wheelie case full of my equipment and all my bags up hills in South Wales so I could get the urban context shots I wanted at locations like Pontypridd. It also meant I had to pack very, very light — I only had space for a couple of spare outfits.”
CH: How did you decide which of the 2,400 Network Rail footbridges to photograph?
“We decided that 100 was a good number of footbridges for me to photograph, both in terms of what I’d be able to achieve in the short timeframe we had, and what would be necessary to document the diversity of design across the network. There was a lot of research that went into narrowing down the selection — I was provided with a compendium listing every station footbridge, and between this and what I was able to find on the internet (big shoutout to geograph.org.uk and Geoff Marshall/All the Stations), I looked at reference images for almost all of the stations.”
“There was a bit of chasing ‘one of everything’ to document all of the architectural styles in use at different stations, but I was also interested in footbridges that I would be able to depict as part of the wider urban environment and that interact with their surroundings beyond the railway. And I’d be lying if I said there weren’t a few which were thrown in just because they look cool and I thought I could photograph them in an interesting way.”
“This project was special in that it wasn’t just about creating pretty images for the client, Network Rail were quite keen for me to document design challenges as well as successes, so I had creative license to approach the project from the honest documentary style that I wanted to.”
CH: Your retrospective study, LINK, breaks the footbridges down into various typologies — Landmark, Gateway etc.? What is your favourite typology?
“I found the ‘Space’ chapter really interesting — looking at footbridges like Clapham Junction or Reading, where rather than just being a simple passageway between platforms, the footbridges have become an architectural space in their own right, hosting shops and other small units. Also the ‘Pathway’ chapter, where I picked out footbridges which are used as a connection between areas on either side of the tracks, rather than only the station platforms. I think it could be exciting to see these two ideas to come together in future designs, with the possibility of footbridges that become public places which really add value to local communities. The Hawkins/Brown design which was highly commended in the footbridge design competition which ran alongside my work touches on some of those ideas quite nicely.”
CH: Do you have a personal favourite photo you took, and why?
“Probably my favourite photo to take was at East Midlands Parkway, which is right next to Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, close to Nottingham. It was a bit of an emotional one for me (yes train stations often make me emotional), it was the final leg of my the 14-day straight section of my journey, and also reminiscent of memories of looking out the train window to see the power station cooling towers in the sunset light from when I used to always travel back and forth between London and Nottingham. After waiting through an hour of grey skies, my patience was rewarded with two minutes of spectacular golden light, and I was able to wrap up with the shot I wanted, before finishing off the journey nicely by meeting with a friend in Nottingham.”
CH: You’ve probably spent more time looking at footbridges than anyone else in the country, is there anything that surprised you, or didn’t surprise you, that you didn’t realise until after the study?
“After spending weeks on trains I met my fair share of railway enthusiasts — so I wouldn’t be sure about that! Shooting the project, I was so fixated on producing images to meet my brief, that at the time I didn’t really consider that the body of work to come out of it could be a bit of a snapshot of Britain in 2018. Travel is a significant part of so many people’s lives, and I think that by capturing that process and the architecture around it all across England, Scotland & Wales, I’ve inadvertently created some sort of historical record of Britain through its railways. I’d love to be able to look at the series from the perspective of someone hundreds of years in the future.”
CH: And what is your favourite footbridge?
“I change my mind a lot, but right now Reading — I love the ceiling height windows with the view over the town.”
CH: And which footbridge(s) would you recommend people visit, and why?
“I’d definitely say it’s worth visiting a few of the more rural historic stations, places like Settle (North Yorkshire) and Betws-y-Coed (North Wales) have have some really well maintained quaint little station buildings with the classic lattice footbridge designs. There’s some incredible scenic railway routes and of course a much more chilled and friendly atmosphere than we’re used to with rush hour London trains.”
CH: Thanks so much Luke!
You can see all of Luke’s photos and a selection of entries from the 2018 RIBA Competition until 3rd April 2019 at RIBA Practice Space, 66 Portland Place, London, W1B 1AD.
The retrospective study, LINK, featuring an introduction from historian David Lawrence intro can be viewed here.
You can see Luke’s other work here.
