Railway Man’s collection is sold
TONY HENDERSON on the sale of books compiled by a man whose story inspired a movie
SOLDIER Eric Sutherland Lomax suffered the unspeakable ordeal of slaving on the infamous Burma-Siam Death Railway as a prisoner of the Japanese.
After the Second World War, he wrote a book about his experiences, titled The Railway Man, which was turned into the 2013 film of the same name, in which he was played by Colin Firth and his wife Patti by Nicole Kidman.
The film portrays how Eric, who lived near Berwick where he died in 2012 aged 93, met one of his captors after the war and how the meetings eventually ended in the two men making peace with one another.
Eric had a lifelong passion for railways and transport and industrial history, and now two of his collections have been sold on Tyneside.
At the Anderson & Garland auction in Newcastle, his collection of 19th Century and later books and ephemera, primarily relating to the Caledonian Railway and Scottish ports and harbours, fetched £433, including fees.
It included Caledonian Railway 1920 regulations for the Guidance of Train Examiners and Greasers, rules of the Caledonian Steam Packet Company Limited, 1907 and material from various other Scottish railway companies.
His other collection of 19th Century ephemera relating to Etna Iron and Steel Works, Motherwell, and letters, and receipts from coal companies and Tharsis Sulphur & Copper Co, which had a factory in Hebburn, South Tyneside, sold for £234.
Eric Lomax served in the Royal Corps of Signals and was stationed in Singapore when in 1941, his unit was captured by the Japanese.
He was sent to Kanchanaburi on the River Kwai in Thailand where he worked on the Burma Railway in conditions of intense heat, nearstarvation diet, disease and brutality.
The film portrays his torture by the Japanese for building a radio receiver from spare parts as a morale booster for himself and his fellow prisoners. The torture depicted includes beatings, food deprivation and waterboarding.
Actress Nicole Kidman paid tribute to Patti Lomax after her death in Tweedmouth, Berwick, in 2022, aged 85.
Kidman posted pictures of the pair together when she was filming in Northumberland, and wrote: “RIP Patti Lomax. She was all heart and soul.”