If you possess webbed feet, today’s very much been your time to be alive! Here in West Yorkshire the heavens have stayed open most of the day, so I’ve been happy to have plenty of things to keep me indoors. I’ve spent a lot of time adding another 80 old railway slides for sale on eBay. It’s a time consuming process but it’s worthwhile one as they’re selling well. Here’s one of today’s new additions.
As well as releasing them for sale I’ve spent part of the day decluttering – which will benefit some local charity shops. Other than that the day’s not been what you’d consider a shining example of the rock and roll lifestyle.
According to the weather forecast we’re in for another soggy day tomorrow. Add that aspect to the current Covid restrictions and I’m quite happy to stay indoors and be busy, whilst dreaming of opportunities in the future when I can do something like this again. Today’s picture of the day was taken in the Maldives on the 6th January 2004. There’s no worries about social distancing here…
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What a mixed day the first of the month’s been. It started off really well with a Zoom call as part of judging the Community Rail Awards. It was a very positive and informative hour that taught me something completely new that led to this blog. I’m not a great fan of Zoom meetings. They’ve filled a gap left by Covid but anyone who thinks they;re a genuine replacement for face-to-face contact needs their bumps feeling.
After we finished I had half an hour to get a brisk walk in before going into another very different event, which was the Siemens (online) press lunch conducted on Teams.
Normally Siemens organise an annual press lunch where we can all get together and talk with the companies UK Directors personally over a few hours at a very nice lunch in London. Obviously, the present situation precludes that, but Siemens understand the importnace of maintaining contact with people and arranged an online event. Those registering even got sent a lunchbox!
Despite the shortcomings of the platform and a few minor technical difficulties it was a very useful and informative event that allowed us all to discuss what’s going on at the moment and the issues that face the transport industry. Although not just now – as Covid is a blip – but in the near and far future. The burning post-Covid issue being decarbonisation. Yet again it was another event that made me realise why we’ll never stop meeting face to face, no matter what some people claim.
Having had my fill of meetings on the internet I escaped to confinesof the digital world to go for a stroll in the real one and soak up some of the Autumn sun before the sun set and I was trapped back in the web-world, catching up on work – and writing blogs like this, as well as looking for a picture of the day – and the one I’ve chosen from the archives is this…
The picture is of a stallholder in a market in Luang Prabang, Laos, which I took on the 6th January 2009. Like most pictures, it tells a story, but the story it tells isn’t always obvious.
The woman is plucking a chicken she’s selling whilst she’s on her mobile phone. The phone is the story. Laos is a country where much of its traditional infrastructure was bombed back to the ‘stone age’* by the Americans during the Vietnam war. Like most developing countries it found rebuilding hard. But then technology’s changed. One thing I noticed as I travelled through Loas was the number of wagons I saw on the highways carrying lattice steel masts for mobile phone networks. It’s those networks that are changing the face of the world.
Let me explain.
When I first went to India in 1985 many villages had only just got electricity. Many still had not. Once electricity (through a national grid) arrived, phones started arriving. Then televisions. In those days the Government donated a TV to villages. The TV would be kept in the local hall or temple and I vividly remember passing through villages where everyone would be gathered together to watch the latest Hindi soap-opera or religious film together. There was no individual connectivity to information – and only a state-run TV channel. Now, you can argue the merits/demerits when it comes to propaganda as is your whim. That’s not my point.
My point is how much infrastucture has leapfrogged from those times because of the advent of two things. Mobile communication technology and cheap solar power – as the Loations were finding out. Suddenly, all people needed was a cheap (often recyled) mobile phone and the world was literally their Oyster. There was no waiting for 30 years for power lines to arrive, just a phone mast.
Access to communication is a fabulous thing, but it’s also a double-edged sword, as we’ve seen in the past decade with the advent of weapons-grade misinformation through places like Facebook.
Are the Loations better off now? Time will tell..
* Bombing people back to the stone age has been a popular threat in American history.
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In my case, today was the discovery of the fact there’s a Bilberry bumblebee!
I’d been on a Zoom call with the friends of Buxton station as part of my role as a Judge for the Community Rail Awards. Buxton has an excellent friends group who’re a great example of the work station friends do in their community beyond their local railway station. Whilst we were talking about their recent achievements Dave Carlisle mentioned that they’d built a huge flower bed outside the station using old railway sleepers donated by Network Rail (and there’s a long story about getting them from Crewe to Buxton during lockdown, but I won’t tell that here), what surprised me was that Dave mentioned 1/3 of the flowerbed was being dedicated to helping a local endangered species – the Bilberry Bumblebee!
Now, I knew there was many species of bee in the UK through working with my former CRA judge, Paul Cook of the Royal Horticultural Society. One of the delights of visiting different stations during the judging was seeing station flower beds literally buzzing with bees, but Bilberry bees? Here’s what Buxton have been up to (in their own words)…
“Buzzing Stations” project – along with Friends of Glossop Station, FoBS initiated this idea that has crossed the whole Peak District to included stations at Buxton, Edale, Glossop, Hadfield, Hope, Bamford, Grindleford & Hathersage.
The High Peak is home to the Bilberry bumblebee, under threat of extinction. Our work aims to help it thrive and survive. We built a huge (2m x 5m) planter unit from recycled railway sleepers (negotiated donation from Network Rail’s Redundant Assets team at Crewe and encouraged long-term partners, DB Cargo to collect them for us!), filled it with donated compost (from SITA/Suez) and plants, mostly donated (some from Morrisons, through their Community Champion, Rob Harrison). The plants were chosen to provide nectar to our bees prior to hibernation.
We are proud that the Bumblebee Express (the name of the planter unit devised as a media vehicle) was built under strict socially-distanced controls during lockdown.
We also intended to run Bumblebee Safaris from the station, but covid ruled this out, so we prepared a Self-guided version in leaflet form – launched on Heritage Open Day to complement their theme of Hidden Nature, 2,000 leaflets were printed. We were very proud when Jimmy Doherty commended our work as part of his recent TV campaign work, Jimmy’s Big Bee Rescue.
Legacy bumblebee artwork takes the form of an interpretation panel, bumblebees of the Peak District “spotters guide” (we negotiated permission to use the artwork directly with the Artist, Becca Thorne), “Make a Bee-line to Buxton” travel promotional poster (we purchased a special Licence to use the 1950’s image by Kenneth Steel) and commissioned a bespoke “special bees on a special landscape” mosaic from local community Artist, Jo Spencer.
It’s great to see the co-operation and information sharing that goes on between station friends groups and the innovative work this inspires. Living in the Pennines in West Yorkshire where bilberries are plentiful and bilberry pies are a local delicacy I was curious to find out if the bees existed here. Sure enough, they do, Here’s an illustration how the bees look from ‘Blooms for Bees’. The fun bit for me is how they remind me of railway workers high-vis!
Copyright Blooms For Bees
You can find out more about this type of bee here from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.
It’s fantastic to see the work community rail volunteers are doing in so many ways – despite the depravations of Covid and the difficulties that social-distancing and lockdowns have caused.
Perhaps, when all this is over, you might want to pop along and visit one of these stations and see the great work the groups are doing to grow the railways, help the environment and build their local communities. Your visit might even inspire you to get involved…
You can learn much more about the work and world of community rail here – an if you want to learn more about the Friends of Buxton station you can find them on Facebook here.
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Tomorrow we enter October, the month when the clocks go back. I’ve an idea – how about we put them back all the way to 2016? Before Brexit, before all the shit’s that’s happened since, and waaaay before anyone had even considered Covid. OK, I know it’s not going to happen. An hour is all we’ll get tops – but I can dream, can’t I?
Fatigue with the 21st century is setting in already as it’s not exactly got off to a brilliant start and I’m not going to be here for the long-haul, so it’s time to think about what I do with the rest of it.
I the meantime, I’m continuing to sort through all the baggage of my life. Here’s something I came across earlier, which harks back to a simpler age. You wouldn’t have Google tracking an ID card like this – and the only time I carried a mobile phone was when I was on call for work. It was one of those weird things with a carbon-fibre ariel but still seemed like cutting-edge tech at the time. It would be another 6-7 years before I got a mobile phone of my own as by then I’d swapped careeer and turned freelance photographer so needed one. Oh, and trust me, even then, the NUJ press card was a damned sight more sophisticated than this effort!
OK, meanwhile, here’s the picture of the day, which is somewhere that could literally be centuries away. This is sunrise over the city of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India, taken in November 1991 when I was on the start of a solo trip around Asia. The view of the fort town was taken from the window of the old building I was staying in. Imagine opening your bedroom window and seeing a view like this?
I spent several days here before booking a 5 day camel safari out into the Thar desert, which is another story (when I get chance to scan the pictures). The people I travelled with were a real multi-national bunch and we had a ball. Sleeping out in the desert in a bed of camel blankets whilst watching for shooting stars was an amazing experience.
I did meet one young German girl back in Jaisalmer for whom the dice really didn’t fall as well on one of these trips. She was the only other person with 6 Israelies. I admired the way she dealt with the situation. Seasoned travellers will know what I mean…
I hope you enjoy these pictures of the day, for me it’s funny how they trigger so many memories and stories.
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Just a straight picture today, no rants or biography as I’ve been too busy sorting out work commitments and scanning a few old slides – just to try and keep up the momentum.
I took this shot on the 25th May 2018 at Broadway Junction, New York. I love industrial as well as railway archeology and this fits the bill. The NY metro is elevated at this point and there’s lots of abandoned routes under the existing lines, you can see the girders that supported them sweeping around in broad curves.
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Another manic Monday where the hours available were too few to fit in all the tasks at hand…
Despite that, I have had a productive day, even if a chunk of it seemed to revolve around eBay! I had a lot of orders to fulfil this morning, posting pictures and other railway memoribilia countrywide. Plus, I’ve now loaded another 60 plus old slides for sale, with as many again to follow on Wednesday – which should keep me busy when bids close on Sunday! The money’s certainly coming in useful and filling a budgetary gap. Here’s a sample of today’s listings.
I’d hoped that the Covid situation would have started easing now and the tap on work pipe-line would have started to open, but the spike in Covid cases has kiboshed that. Thankfully, I still have several writing jobs to keep me occupied…
I did manage to take a break from staring at a computers screen in order to get some exercise, pick up some shopping and post packages. My timing was excellent as the skies cleared whilst I was out and I had a perfect window for a break on the rocks over looking the Calder Valley, where I could soak up some sun (and vitamin D) whilst answering a few emails. Within an hour of me getting home the weather had turned deathly dull, leaving the day unrecogniseable and giving me no excuse but to knuckle down to some work – not that there’s much else to do at the moment because of the new Covid restrictions!
OK, it’s time for the picture of the day, which combines two loves. Travel and railways. I took it on the 14th December 2010. This is the magnificent railway station in Lucknow, Northern India. It’s a city I’d always wanted to visit but this was my first time. I was travelling through Asia for several months and was trying to arrange an interview with the head of the Delhi Metro Corporation for the International Railway Journal. Then India clamped down on visas because of terrorism and it all got very complicated!
A superb example of what became known as Indo-Saracenic architecture. Lucknow Charbagh station. It was designed by J. H. Hornimen and opened in 1923. Its architecture is a blend of Rajput, Awadhi and Mughal styles.
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There’s no long preamble to today’s picture, other than to say it’s bloody cold here up in the Pennines so we’re having an easy night in and the heating’s on! This picture’s from somewhere you don’t need radiators. I took it in Trindidad, Cuba on the 5th January 2006.
An old man pauses to relight his cigar as he takes his Cockerel for a walk – as you do in Cuba…
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No politics today, my spleen may still need venting but I’m giving it a day off. Instead I’m happy that I’ve finished the first in the trilogy of articles I’m writing for RAIL magazine about my week long trip around Britain by rail. Part one covers three days, so to me it feels a little rushed. Trying to describe all my experiences in 4000 words is always difficult as there’s so much stuff that I have to leave out – which is the hardest part of writing them. A week travelling around the UK by rail is enough to fill a book, never mind a series of magazine features. Hopefully people will enjoy it anyway.
I’m now going to have the weekend off to concentrate on other things. So – without further ado – here’s the picture of the day, which was taken on the 2nd February 2016 in Galle old town, Sri Lanka.
I’ve always enjoyed Art Deco architecture and this restored house really caught my eye. I’d have loved to have seen if the inside matched…
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I’ve had a busy day with Zoom calls for the Community Rail awards and also more ‘type-swiping’ as I continue to scribble my next series of articles for RAIL magazine.
Whilst I’ve been doing this I’ve been keeping one eye on the news as I watch UK events and wonder. I’ve stayed away from political commentary and events recently. Partly for my own sanity but also because some people get upset by it. Today I can’t let the utter madness that engulfing our country pass without some reference.
There’s now just 99 days left before we exit the transition period that’s kept us in the EU and we’re no nearer a deal than we were 4 years ago. If one isn’t struck next month, then there’s not enough time left to do so – which means we crash out of the EU with ‘no deal’ – and the usual suspects will blame anyone (and everyone) they can think of without once taking responsibility for their mess. It’ll be the ‘remoaners’, the people who didn’t ‘get behind’ Brexit, or the Judges, or anyone else who could see what a shit-show this was going to be as their natty three-word slogan (and my, don’t the like those) ‘take back control’ was nothing more than a sick joke.
All the promises of the Brexiters have evaporated like Unicorn farts. Now we hear that the Goverment is proposing a border around Kent to prevent 1000s of trucks clogging the county as they won’t have the paperwork needed to cross the channel. Oh, and then there’s the new border down the middle of the Irish Sea. You know, all those things Brexit fanatics dismissed as ‘project fear’. Of the ‘sunny uplands’ of Brexit we were promised there’s absolutely no sign. Instead, some political zealots still spin the line about ‘opportunities’ they can’t define – or name. Remember these clowns and their claims?
Meanwhile, our economy is about to take another hit from Covid as restrictions are tightened because some people (especially the young) ignored the memo, so a weakened economy is about to take a further hit from something that was entirely avoidable – the Brexitshambles…
Even if a last-minute, face saving deal with the EU is arrived at (and looking at Johnson’s talentless Cabinet I’ve grave doubts that’ll happen) we’ll still be in a worse position than we were. It’s mad. Utterly mad – but welcome to Britain in 2020. The only vision is myopic.
OK, I’ve got that off my chest, so it’s time for a picture of the day which reflects a different time when one country was finally coming out of nepotism and near dictatorship after decades of misrule. I took this picture in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia in June 1998.
President Suharto had (finally) stood down earlier in the year. Students like this had been in the forefront of the campaign to oust him, with many losing their lives. This group were supporters of Megawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of the first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, who Suharto has ousted in a political coup in 1967. They used to demonstrate through the centre of Yogyakarta most days and that’s when I got this shot.
Sadly, Megawati, although elected, proved to be less than capable. However, Indonesia has come through turbulent political and economic times. A sobering thought for the UK is that in 20 years Indonesia is predicted to oust the UK as the world’s 6th most important economy – and we know what’s helped that come about…
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The weather’s been stereotypically grim up North, with low cloud, wind and rain most of the day, so the Calder Valley – well, what you can see of it – hasn’t been at its best. My day’s been spent type-swiping, as an old girlfriend once described her secretarial duties! I’ve been busy writing up part 1 of my Railrover trilogy and (as usual) the problem isn’t what to write – it’s what to leave out. 12,000 words over 3 articles souns a lot until you realise that’s only 4,000 words per article and one of them is three days worth of travelling the country. To be honest I could easily fill a book.
Whilst I’ve been ‘type-swiping’ (copyright Mary Jones!) I’ve been bouyed by the reaction to an article that’s hit the bookstands today. I’d written an eight page piece on the Tay bridge disaster and Sir Thomas Bouch (the man who designed the structure) for RAIL magazine a couple of months ago. It was a complex article as it required a lot of technical research to tell a story many people weren’t aware of. So, when you see reactions like this from an expert in their field it makes you feel it was worth the effort…
Hopefully people will find my travels around the UK’s rail network as interesting!
All this brings me neatly to the picture of the day – which was used to illustrate my Tay Bridge article. This was taken on the 29th May 2019. It shows the new bridge with the piers of Bouch’s ill-fated structure in front.
It’s a fascinating story as this was (thankfully) the only major railway accident in which their were no survivors. You can read the full story in the latest copy of RAIL magazine which is on sale today (you can buy electronic copies by the way…)
I’ve a favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Paul Bigland 