NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David C
Date: 2020 Aug 23, 00:42 -0700
Frank thanks for your detailed reply.
I originally used the aximuth = NW method . I noted that the photo had been taken 70 years and two days previously so I used the Sun Facts Pro app to estimate the time as 1530 local time. I knew that I would be in the area the next day so considered visiting Woburn Station between 1400 and 1500 to photograph the shadows but there was 100% cloud. Then I realised that a few degrees error in azimuth gives a 20 min or more error in time so I abandoned the azimuth method.
Today I used the sundial method (I will try and use that term in the future) and deduced a time between 1440 and 1450. 1440 was consistant with a 1415 train. But...........
If the boy wsa on his way home from school it was likely to be after 1500. In 1950 there were three nearby schools that he could have attended. The closest (now closed) was only five minutes walk away and would not have required wearing of a uniform. It is not clear to me if he is wearing one.
In front of the boy there seems to be another child. The boy is not a boomer but his two siblings are. The three could stll be alive.
To summarise this is not a CN problem. It is a local history issue. People have very strange interests and I am sure that there is someone out there who has studied the minutiae of local schools (-;
