I’ve just acquired a set of ten photos of the Malta Railway after closure – nothing special, they’ve all been published before and were commercially sold. But, handwritten notes on the back made me realise they’re older than previously described.

Each photo has a consecutive reference number marked on the back, along with a short description of the location. All but two, however, are dated, and dated to 1943 or 1944.

I was puzzled, because captions in one of the Malta Railway books state clearly that a number of them were from 1967. Now I think about it, this can’t be right.

For example, this view of the embankment running into Msida station would have to include the Church of Francis of Assisi on Triq Villambrosa if it dated any later than 1954, when the new church opened, but it doesn’t. Instead, the house on the far left, still there today, is missing its later neighbour.

Also in the set are two of the photos of the derelict engine No.1. These are the two undated ones, but known to have been from the early 1940s from other sources (though exact dates vary). It looks like someone was going round building a record of the Malta Railway sites and remains little more than a decade after closure, and in the closing years of WWII, but who?

A 1944 edition of The Railway Magazine includes two different photos of the closed line, credited to J G Wallace. Wallace seems to have been a prolific railway photographer, but was he responsible for more photography in Malta? How many more are in the set?