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Eric Treacy

Bishop Treacy

Treacy's railway photography was interrupted by service as an army chaplain during the Second World War. On demobilisation he became Rector of Keighley, Yorkshire and in 1949 was appointed Archdeacon of Halifax. These locations gave Treacy plenty of opportunity to photograph trains on the London Midland and Scottish and London North Eastern Railways routes in the north of England. In 1946 the first of many books of his images was published.

In 1961 Treacy became Suffragen Bishop of Pontefract and he was later also made Bishop of Wakefield. Despite his senior position in the Church he retained his passion for railways. He retired as a cleric in 1976, but remained actively involved in the railway preservation movement and served on the Council of the Friends of the National Railway Museum.

Treacy on the footplate of Flying Scotsman

Treacy on the footplate of preserved Class A3 pacific locomotive No 4472 Flying Scotsman.
© National Railway Museum / Science & Society Picture Library

Bishop Treacy died suddenly in May 1978 while photographing a special train at Appleby in Cumbria on the Settle and Carlisle line. The following year British Rail recognised his contribution to railway photography by naming an electric locomotive Bishop Treacy in his honour.

The Treacy collection of 12,000 photographs forms part of the National Railway Museum's archive of over 1.4 million images.

All the photographs for this exhibition have been printed by hand from the original negatives.