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Well, sort of – ish…
I’ve penned the final part of my trilogy for RAIL magazine today. 12,000 words and lots of pictures will soon be part of their back catalogue (and mine). The first part appeared in print last Wednesday and it will be on sale until next Tuesday. Here’s a taster…
Now, having had a wonderful birthday weekend and got one year closer to collecting my senior citizens railcard I’m into another week (and soon another month), which means things ratchet up a notch.
I mentioned that I wasn’t going to talk about a new contract until the ink was dry, but today that happened. I can now reveal that I’ll be spending at least the next 12 months working for the Rail Delivery Group, updating and replacing their picture archive – much of which I took 10-14 years ago when RDG was ATOC. I’ll also be kept occupied with a slightly different commission for another client, but that one’s under wraps for now.
This means that I won’t be spending as much time at home as recently – although some people would suggest I’m hardly here anyway! A by-product of all this is that there’ll be plenty of time to blog about various themes, including Hs2, travel experiences and also the way the UKs railways continue to develop and expand. As you can imagine, documenting a year in the life of UKs rail network isn’t exactly something you do from your armchair…
In the meantime, I’m going to try and get some of the 1000s of rail and travel slides that I have in the archives – which have never seen the light of day – scanned and added to my Zenfolio website.
So, stay with me and enjoy the ride – and the pictures…
Paul Bigland 
Hello Paul, a delightful and informed series of blogs as usual. I assume some of them were written while travelling as there were more spelling issues than I can ever recall in the past.
My concern about Hs2 is not those driven to whinge about it who as you ably demonstrate, are on the wane, but the recent pronouncements by certain MP’s that once the first stage is built we need to consider the value of the next phase. As a Northerner this concerns me and I would welcome any thoughts you might have on this development
Keep up the blogging and the transfer of your pictures to Zenfolio.
Hello Kenneth, thanks for the heads up about the spelling. I’ve been back and had a look. Ugh! You’re right in that I was typing on the move, using my new phone – which has an annoying habit of changing words! I’ll pay greater attention to proofreading from now on. As for Hs2 and the attitude of some Nortern MP’s…
I suspect what we’re seeing is pork barrelling now. The haggling over who gets what to buy their support. What some of them fail to understand is that Hs2 is becoming indivisible from Northern Powerhouse Rail. You can’t have one without the other. So it would be a pretty foolhardy Northern MP who votes down Hs2, putting NPR in jeopardy! This point will become more obvious next month when TfN publish the plan for NPR that they intend to submit to Grayling.