Photo 59/5

Red quarter-leather bound album (modern India Office Library rebinding, 19 February 1969), with prints laid down, the majority one per page. Most prints are uncaptioned apart from place names, written on the negative. A few of the earlier prints also have additional descriptive captions written on the album pages.

The album has a letterpress titlepage reading War Loan Special Train organised by Mr H.B. Huddleston, O.B.E., Agent, Burma Railways. August-September 1918. There is also one page of letterpress introduction by Ba Sein, Chief Clerk, Burma Railways, explaining that the album has been compiled for those associated with raising the war loan in Burma, praising the project as 'perhaps the first gigantic advertising campaign in the east through the medium of the Railway, and the object of this work is to preserve, in some accessible form, a record of certain outstanding facts connected with this novel attempt which otherwise are apt to be very soon forgotten and buried in oblivion'. The War Loan Train travelled almost the whole length of the Burma railway system, and the album consists of scenes from each location visited. The somewhat unvarying and monotonous choice of viewpoint for a large proportion of the photographs (from the carriage roof looking down onto the platform) is explained in a note on the reverse of Photo 59/6 (20): 'Only about a quarter of those who were on the platform come into this photograph [at Tatkon]. All photos of crowds had to be taken from roof of carriages as crowds so dense could not fit a photo otherwise'.