The L&B from the Air

Aerial Photographs of the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway

“Less than a decade after the first powered flight in 1903 the Royal Flying Corps had been formed by the military and went on to play a significant role in the First World War including aerial reconnaissance. Shortly after the War a pair of aviators founded Aerofilms, the first commercial aerial photography company in the UK.

Over the next few years the pioneer Barnstaple photographer Ralph Knight – a veteran of the Royal Flying Corps – frequently went up in a friend’s biplane to photograph North Devon from the air.

Lynton & Barnstaple Railway Trust member and professional aerial photographer Philip Lane overflew the route of the L&B in a helicopter three times in 2005/6 while he was working in the area and captured a series of superb images of the trackbed, much of it still visible seventy years after the line closed in 1935. He returned on 1st of October 2015 and his shots on that flight provide the majority of the pictures on the following pages. “