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RIP Bob Mason, former chief photographer at the Hull Daily Mail. Worked with him on many jobs, including the truly traumatic Lockington train crash. Here are two of his best - the Royal Station Hotel fire (1990) and the Phillips Oklahoma tanker crash (1989) off the Humber .
I was working a Saturday shift at the Mail’s old Jameson St office when our Beverley reporter rang to say she’d heard an unusual number of sirens, put in. a call and found out the fire crews were heading out for a reported train derailment near Lockington.
Another reporter and I jumped into a works car equipped only with a walkie-talkie radio (no mobile phones in 1986) and we set off without really knowing what we would about to see.
The Bridlington to Hull train had collided with a van on an open level crossing which was in open countryside. When we got there, the long straight road leading to the crossing had been closed to traffic so we set off on foot.
It was a warm summer morning and in the distance we could see someone running towards us. As the figure got closer we saw it was our colleague Bob Mason, camera swinging from his shoulder and sweat pouring from his forehead.
“It’s terrible. I’m heading back to the office,” he said as he ran past us. Somehow, he’s got to the scene before anyone, got his pictures and was now on his way back to the photographic dark room at Jameson St to process them the old fashioned way.
His images from that awful day were brilliant and still stick in my mind.
