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The past couple of days have seen me busy working from home which has been no bad thing as the weather’s been miserable and hardly conducive to wandering the world with the camera. OK, maybe the world would have been fun – but this corner of West Yorkshire hasn’t been!
Instead, I’ve been tucked up in the warm, editing the pictures I took around Manchester on Monday whilst mixing them with yet another batch of old slide scans from 1990. This little spree has added over 130 new pictures to my Zenfolio website. The contrast are quite fascinating as the UK’s railways have changed massively in the past 30 years and that rate of change is accelerating. Here’s a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean. This is how Sheffield and Cross-Country services looked like in 1990.

Meanwhile, in 2020…

The new selection of 1990s pictures includes shots from London, Ely, Newcastle, Scotland and Tonbridge. You can find them here. So far this year I’ve added nearly 1000 new or historical pictures, which means there’s plenty to look at or buy!
Tomorrow I’ll be more focussed on family matters rather than photography. After that Dawn and I are off to North Wales for a few days as it’s a friends 50th birthday. We’re going to be staying on Anglesey but I’m sure there’ll be time for a bit of blogging in between all the partying and photography. Let’s just hope that the weather picks up as Anglesey is a very photogenic part of the world and where we’ve booked to stay for a few days is an ideal location from which to explore.
The cross-country train brings back memories of the journeys I used to take as a teenager. I must say I can’t see the voyagers being much of an improvement. The trains themselves are OK but the capacity is shockingly low. Virgin made a huge mistake – doubling the frequency of trains was bound to increase demand, yet at the same time they reduced capacity to 200 seats per train in the case of the four-car voyagers. Madness.
Indeed Andy. Sadly, the Voyagers have been too short for too long. The growth of XC passenger numbers has far outgrown them. They’re really not suited as an intercity offering in this day and age. My hope is that they’ll be joined by cascaded Class 222 ‘Meridians’ as a stopgap and both fleets refitted internally to provide a more roomy atmosphere.