Category Archives: Musings

A mixture of musings…

27 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by in Brexit, Calder Valley, Musings, Politics

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To misquote Kings Henry II on Thomas a Becket – ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent weather’? It’s been another bleedin’ awful day in the Calder Valley. For the umpteenth in a row we’ve had rain, fog, low cloud and the sort of depressing weather that make you want to reach for a travel brochure that features white sand beaches and palm trees. Not that there’s much chance of that at the moment, unfortunately.

To add to the general merriment we’re also slogging our way through a turgid general election campaign where you wish an option on the ballot paper would be ‘non of the above’. I received my postal ballot today and found that we have a choice of Holly Lynch, the incumbent Labour MP – whom I respect, even if I can’t stand ‘Magic Grandad’, her party leader, or some of the lacklustre people he’s put on the Shadow Front bench. Then there’s the Lib-Dems, the Tories (whose candidate lives in Lancashire!), the Greens and the Brexit party. The woman who’s paid Farage her £100 to stand for the Brexit party lives way over East in Batley and Spen, the constituency where their Labour MP, Jo Cox, was brutally murdered by a far-right extremist.

The Brexit party candidate’s name’s Sarah Wood and all I know about this young woman is that I’m getting well pissed-off with her clogging my Facebook page with adverts like this! She admits she never voted until 2015, now she expects to be elected as an MP, but I’ll be damned if even she knows what she stands for. One of her videos filmed in the local market claims the Brexit Party will scrap local business rates and replace them with a ‘small’ tax on online retailers. It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to spot the flaw in that plan! This is populist politics at its basest.

“Ready”? Ready for what? Bunging Farage a few more quid?

Well, that and the fact her replies to some of the comments on her FB adverts don’t exactly make you think she’s a political titan who’s got much of a grasp of things. You know, like reality…

I’m hoping that Wood will split the brexity vote and allow Holly Lynch to retain the seat in order to help deprive Boris Johnson of a majority. Plus, we get to keep a decent local MP, so a win all round!

How the election’s going to play out is anyone’s guess, but I’ve been heartened to see how many young people (ie, under 35) have registered to vote before the deadline closed. The potential impact this could have can’t be underestimated, because they’re the one’s who have most to lose from Brexit, and it’s clear that Conservative Party Central Office are acutely aware of this as Johnson’s lead in the polls starts to disappear. I don’t believe for a minute that Corbyn is going to sweep to power. I suspect we’ll end up with another hung Parliament, but I am hopeful that tactical voting will produce more than a few ‘Portillo moments’ (when he lost his seat in a shock result in the 1997 general election). I came across this on Twitter earlier and hope it has relevance to Halifax too…

Politics and weather aside, I’m back on the rails again tomorrow, so expect the first rolling blog for a while. I’m heading back to London to get some pictures for a magazine, then pop over to an event that I don’t want to spill the beans about just yet. The reasons for that will become clear tomorrow! Typically, the weather forecast isn’t looking great wherever I am, North or South, the only difference is that the rain will be warmer in London!

The cat’s getting fed up of me!

26 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by in Down memory lane, Musings, Railways

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I’ve spent so much time at home recently due to the foul weather and my determination to catch up on paperwork and scanning old slides that I think our cat’s getting fed up of me getting under his feet (isn’t that normally the other way around? Ed). Thankfully, there’s a number of events on the horizon that’ll see me out and about a lot more over the next couple of weeks including a few jaunts back South to London and the South-East for both work and social reasons . I must admit that I’m starting to yearn for sunnier climes but I can’t see any chance of getting away until next year now – there’s simply too much to do. Once the dust has settled on the results of the general election I’ll have a better idea of my options. Such as – will it be planning for a holiday, or looking to seek political asylum away from Brexit Britain? It’s a good job I’ve been concentrating on scanning old rail slides at the moment rather than the 1000s of travel pictures I have, otherwise I’d really be feeling sick. Images of places like Wigan create little in the way of itchy feet compared to some of the exotic stuff I’ve got in the queue like Brazil, Indonesia or Tanzania. Here’s a good example why. Now, this is no dig at Wigan per-se (Honestly Sheila!) as I have exactly the same sort of shot of Clapham Junction in London, but this is what a shit-tip our railways looked like in 2002.

Thankfully thinks have changed dramatically. It’s not that folk don’t still sometimes throw rubbish onto the tracks, it’s the fact Network Rail continually clean them and TOC staff no longer sweep crap off the platforms onto the rails as if it’s no longer their problem. Images like this remind me more of Indian railway stations than UK ones nowadays.

Expect one last update of 2002 slides tomorrow, then I’m firmly back in the present day…

Different days…

23 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by in Down memory lane, London, Musings, Railways

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This wasn’t quite the Saturday that I had planned but sometimes life has a habit of not being what you hope for. I won’t go into details but I found myself stuck at home today in absolutely miserable weather. For most of the day the valley’s been hidden behind a bank of low cloud, rain or fog or combinations thereof. The sun stood no chance!

So, whilst Dawn was out with friends and family, I spent the day holed up in the office scanning old rail slides from 2002 and managed to get 80 done in a marathon effort. As I was a resident of London in those days the current batch of slides are very focussed on the capital as I was always nipping out and about.

On the 29th May 2002 66073 backs into Kings Cross Goods Yard to pick up empty cement tanks to take them back to Ketton. The whole area was being redeveloped as part of High Speed 1 and there’s virtually nothing in this picture that still exists – including the location I took the photograph from! This is now a residential and commercial area full of high-rises. The cement terminal was relocated on the approaches to St Pancras.
On the same day a pair of North of London Eurostars stand at Kings Cross whilst on hire to GNER for the ‘White Rose’ services between London and York.
Here’s another scene that’s vanished and been completely transformed. On the 10th June 2002 a Silverlink Class 313 leaves Stratford Low Level in East London whilst working a service from Richmond to North Woolwich. This section of line closed on the 4th December 2006 and part of it was converted into the Docklands Light Railway.
The Trellick Tower in the background gives this location away as Old Oak Common in West London. on the 15th June 2002 the buildings which were going to be the maintenance base for Great Western’s new Class 180 ‘Adelante’ fleet was still under construction. Now all this has disappeared under stabling sidings for the Crossrail fleet. How quickly times change.

You can find the rest of the pictures on my Zenfolio website by following this link. It’ll take you to the ‘recent’ section which will allow you to see which galleries the pictures have been added to.

It’s cold up North!

19 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by in Calder Valley, General election 2019, Musings, Politics, Railways

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Actually, I don’t think it was just the North that was suffering from plummeting temperatures in the past 24 hours, but the mercury’s certainly dropped here in the Calder Valley! The pair of us has another early start and I was in the office before sunrise – glad of the fact the heating and associated electronics were generating some warmth as I slaved away over some more old slides. I didn’t think I’d have had time but I’m keen to get as many done as possible at the moment as I don’t know when I’ll get the time again and the ones I’ve been adding are relevant to some of the rail franchise and fleet changes we have coming up shortly. Looking back at them I realise how time has flown.

Here’s a example. This was one of the first passenger runs of a Virgin Pendolino, On the 30th April 2002 Virgin ran a press trip from Euston to Manchester Piccadilly to highlight the trains would be used on trips from London to the Commonwealth Games in July. It was a high-profile event that included Richard Branson, Brian Souter, John Armitt and many others. You can find the rest of the pictures in this gallery. In those days Pendolinos were only 8 cars, hence them fitting into photographs with the trains they were replacing.

The day wasn’t entirely devoted to nostalgia as I had to nip into Halifax to do some chores so I took a slight detour up to Bradford Interchange in order to be able to add a couple of modern shots to the archive, such as this. Here’s one of the new CAF built Class 195s pulling out of Bradford Interchange en-route to Manchester Victoria.

This evening the weather’s dropped back to miserable temperatures, so the pair of us are having a quiet night in. Despite the temptation, I’ve resisted watching the political ‘Leaders debate’ on ITV tonight. There’s several reasons. Neither of them look remotely like ‘Leaders’. I won’t learn anything new that I’ve not heard before and I can follow each camp putting their own gloss on things via social media – as well as see the honest commentary from those with no party – political axe to grind. The idea that these two jokers are the best the English political establishment can offer up is too depressing for words. My only hope is that by the time it comes to voting, enough people say “a pox on both your houses”…

Not the day I expected…

17 Sunday Nov 2019

Posted by in Down memory lane, I love my job, Musings, Photography, Railways

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The pair of us have had a quiet weekend at home for a change, mainly because Dawn’s been recovering from a bout of the lurgi and migraines, another two of which struck last night leaving her feeling drained today. Even so, we’ve managed to get some things done – if not everything we intended.

I’ve found myself concentrating on scanning old slides which is good in one way as I’m finally getting the pictures onto my website. I’ve almost finished an album of images from 2003 and it’s been a nostalgic experience as I was a rookie pro photographer who’d suddenly found themselves doing all sorts of unusual stuff with famous people like Richard Branson, Stirling Moss and Prime Minister Tony Blair to name but a few. It was the year before I made the leap from film to digital and looking back, I wish I’d done it sooner, but isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing? 2003 was packed full of really interesting events. Here’s just a small selection from the ones I’ve been scanning over the past few days

On the 27th September 2003 the first section of High Speed 1 from Fawkham Junction to the channel tunnel was officially opened by a press trip from London to Paris on a Eurostar. When passengers arrived we were greeted at Waterloo International by acrobats performing on the concourse.

We were then whisked across to Paris on a Eurostar set specially branded the ‘press express’ and fitted with TV screens which relayed the view from a camera placed in the cab. Here we are passing through Kent on HS1.

Then, in October…

Virgin Trains were maximising the publicity they could get from rolling out their new Pendolino train fleet. On the 20th October their PR people commissioned me to accompany Richard Branson and the Virgin team up to Liverpool where 390031 was to be named “City of Liverpool”. Amongst the VIPs joining in on the event at Liverpool Lime St station was the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Louise Ellman MP (2nd left) and Miss Merseyside (right).

It’s funny looking back at these pictures now and seeing just how the railways companies starting to regain their confidence after the turbulent Railtrack days and the spate of fatal accidents that helped see the organisations demise. It was still a rocky road as tragedies were still to happen but it was clear that things were improving. How different things look now, when the main problem the railway face is the lack of capacity!

I’ve added over 60 slides to my Zenfolio website this weekend. You can find out which galleries the rest of them are in by following this link. There’s still another 40 slides from this album to add which should be done this next week. After that, it’s time to delve into the storage box and see what comes to hand next…

Where does the time go?

12 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by in Musings, Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire

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Yesterday was our second wedding anniversary, but it didn’t go entirely to plan due to the fact Dawn’s gone down with the lurgi. Of course, this follows straight on from a fantastic weekend with friends where we (belatedly) celebrated my 60th birthday, which was last month. 15 of us congregated in London at Café Spice Namaste for what was a lovely evening.

On Sunday we made our way back from London to Yorkshire. Sadly, it was all a bit of a rush, but that’s because a few of us had a lie-in after staying up until 02.30. We were staying in a hotel in London’s Eastern Docklands and the weather was so good on the Sunday Morning we couldn’t resist taking a minor detour on the Emirates Airlines cable-car across the Thames to North Greenwich. This left us with little time to get the train our friends had booked from Kings Cross to Yorkshire, so I ended up doing my best London travel guide impression, using my knowledge as a former Londoner to navigate our way across the city’s public transport system. Here’s how things looked from the cable car.

The O2 arena in the foreground with Canary Wharf behind it. To the right in the background you can see the City of London and skyscrapers like the ‘Walkie-Talkie’ and the ‘Gherkin’.
The ever changing face of East London and the area around Bow Creek, with Stratford in the background.
Where Bow Creek joins the Thames is another hive of construction activity with the skyline dominated by tower cranes.

Our trip back home was made easy by a straight-through trip on Grand Central to Halifax, where we caught up with our friends for a last drink in the Big 6 before home. Yesterday was far more relaxed as, apart from slipping out to get some shopping, we stayed in all day. Dawn wasn’t feeling 100% and the weather was filthy, so there was no incentive to venture out apart from me having a dental appointment to pick up a shield. It seems I’ve started grinding my teeth in my sleep. After nearly four years of the shambles that is Brexit I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised. Biting my tongue during the day and grinding my teeth at night seems entirely normal behaviour under the circumstances! To prevent excessive wear and tear I’ve now got a shield for my lower teeth which is to be worn at night. If only a solution to the Brexitshambles was that simple…

So, instead of the pair of us venturing out we spent the evening cooking. Dawn prepared a Flemish beef stew with beer before retiring to her sick bed, leaving me to take over and prepare all the veg and finish the cooking. I have to say, the stew was delicious!

We fell in love with this rich dish when we were in Bruges last month. With the weather being so miserable it seemed like the ideal comforting food to prepare, although we eschewed the traditional chips for a mixture of roast potato’s and red cabbage as an accompaniment.

Today I’ve been on nursing and shopping duties as well as working from home. There’s been plenty of news to catch up on, hence this blog on HS2 I penned this morning. I even managed to venture out for an afternoon constitutional, although I’ve not been breaking any records today! Hopefully tomorrow the weather (and Dawn) will begin to pick up…

Rain, rain, go away…

07 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in Calder Valley, Musings, Sowerby Bridge, Weather, West Yorkshire

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It’s been a wet and miserable day here in the Calder Valley, the leaden skies have been unloading on us since early this morning. If I had plans for an Ark I’d be tempted to dust them off, but then we live high up on the valley side, so if the flood waters ever reached us an ark is exactly what we’d need!

Earlier, I donned my waterproofs and took a stroll down into Sowerby Bridge in order to pick up some shopping and also to get some exercise. I try and walk 5 miles most days in order to keep fit and get away from staring at a computer screen. Today it gave me the excuse to check on the River Calder which runs through the centre of the town. It’s not at Boxing Day 2015 flood levels but it’s way above normal. Here’s the view from the bridge across the river looking East.

This is a still from 2014 showing how this stretch of river normally looks like!

Here’s another view taken from the left hand side of the first video clip, looking towards the railway. The river that joins the Calder under the railway bridge is the Ryburn. It was just the other side of the railway that the 2015 floods happened due to the sheer volume of water being pushed back from the Ryburn by a flooded Calder – just where Sowerby Bridge is at its lowest level.

Apparently, the railway line is closed due to flooding at a familiar weakpoint today, Walsden, to the West of Todmorden, where a culvert passes under the line, so the pair of Pacers you see in the video were the last train to make it through. I also hear that the road between Sowerby Bridge and Todmorden is closed due to flooding!

I’m now back at home in the warm, hoping that the Amber flood warning the Met Office has issued won’t cause us any more problems, but more rain is something we certainly don’t need.

Misty Monday…

04 Monday Nov 2019

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It’s the beginning of another week and it’s certainly got off to a soggy start! When I opened the bedroom blind this morning I couldn’t see more than a couple of hundred metres, never mind to the opposite side of the valley! The fog’s persisted throughout the day whilst the rain’s been intermittent and annoying, so it’s been a good day to stay at home and scan more old slides, which is what’s kept me occupied for most of the morning.

In between showers I did manage to venture out for my afternoon constitutional and drop off some old railway books at the Jubilee Refreshment rooms on Sowerby Bridge station. On December 5th they’re having a sale of books donated by the estate of the late Theo J Gray, and I’ve added a few of mine to help. All the proceeds will go to the station friends group, so if you’re in the area, pop along! Details are in the link.

Right now I’m back at home, catching up on admin and preparing for a busy week ahead. In the meantime, here’s a few samples of the pictures I’ve been scanning.

In 2003 I went on a Virgin Trains press trip which was a two day event on the UK’s longest train journey. This was aboard the 08.55 from Aberdeen to Penzance, which took fifteen and a half hours and crossed three of the UK’s most famous rail bridges (the Tay, Forth and Royal Albert) on one train. I wrote about the experience for RAIL magazine at the time. The weather was mixed, but by the time we got down to Cornwall we were treated to a classic summer evening. Here’s a shot taken from the HST as we sped through Cornwall to Penzance. The picture was used in both RAIL and Virgin Trains own magazine.
Here’s the view from the cab of HST power car 43154 earlier in the day as we crossed the Forth rail bridge with a coal train hauled by a Class 66 approaching from the South.

You can find the rest of the pictures by following this link to my Zenfolio website. I’ve added nearly 300 old slides from 2000 and 2003 in the past few weeks, meaning there’s plenty to look at! I’ve still a couple of hundred pictures from 2003 to scan which I’m hoping to have done in the next couple of weeks. After that I’ll see which album next to be dug out of storage and added to the queue. There’s still plenty of slides from the 1990s to be done yet, therefore I may step further back in time for the next one…

In the meantime, expect plenty of new pictures to be added in the next few days. I’m working in both London and Birmingham on Wednesday, then returning to the capital at the weekend for quality time with old friends.

Easy Sunday…

03 Sunday Nov 2019

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– well, sort of! I was actually up early as our cat insists that on a weekend it has the right to sleep on the bed. How it knows it’s the weekend we’ve never been able to work out, but the moggy can. This meant I was given an early morning alarm call when Jet decided he needed to be fed. As I’d given in to him and Dawn was happily sleeping I sloped off into the office to scan some more old slides I’d prepped.

With such an early Sunday start we both decided to ‘carpe diem’ and make the most of the day by having an early breakfast and going for a long walk through along the canal into Sowerby Bridge, then up through our local woodland (Scarr woods) which is looking superb at this time of year. What was lovely to see was the way some people place Halloween pumpkins in the woods, which can either delight – or scare the shit out of you!

Back at home we continued our productive time as Dawn got into ‘domestic Goddess’ mode in the kitchen to produce a fiery Thai Green Curry from scratch (no pre-prepared pastes here) plus a gorgeous Lemon Drizzle Cake. I spent my time on household DIY (yes, I know – the bathroom) before ploughing on with the never ending job of mounting and scanning more old slides. I’m currently doing an album from 2003 which contains a lot of stuff from Virgin Trains days. I’m looking forward to having them done now that the franchise is about to come to an end as it will be an appropriate tribute to a company that really did a lot to improve the image of the railways in the publics perception.

In the meantime, here’s one of the other slides I’ve been scanning. This is a view across London Waterloo taken from the London Eye back in 2003. The city’s skyline has changed a bit since then, as have the rail services. In those days the old BR built slam door stock was still in use and Waterloo International would be in use by Eurostar for another 4 years.

The months (and seasons) roll on…

01 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by in ACoRP, Calder Valley, Musings, Railways, Weather

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Here in the Calder Valley October began exactly where September left off – in the rainclouds! The rain’s hardly stopped all day except for a few moments when you feel emboldened enough to set foot outside, then it creeps back laughing and soaks you! I went for a walk up through our local woods earlier, all the paths had been turned into rivulets as the ground’s so sodden the water’s nowhere else to go. Apart from me, a few soggy squirrels and a couple of determined dog-walkers the woods were deserted. For the past few days I’ve been lucky to see the other side of the valley, never mind further afield.

I’ve not minded too much as I’ve got plenty to do at home. In fact, this enforced sojourn has allowed me to catch up on a huge amount of paperwork and also led me to have a bit of a clear out of stuff I’ve been hoarding for years but never looked at for decades – and certainly not since I left London. You see, this month hold a rather significant birthday for me. It’s my 60th, and it’s make me somewhat introspective. When you’re younger you collect all sorts of ephemera and stuff you physically clutter your life up with. I’m now of an age where I’m thinking “do I really need this stuff anymore? What value is it going to add to my remaining years”? It’s not as if I haven’t got enough to keep me occupied with all the pictures that I still need to scan so that they see the light of day after decades of sitting in albums. Some of this decluttering is actually a catharsis, allowing me to focus on what’s really important.

Tomorrow all this changes as we escape the valley and me the office to head down to Telford for the ACoRP awards. The weather forecast promises something other than continual rain, so I’m hopeful I’ll be able to get a few library shots to add to the collection as well as everything else. No doubt there’ll be a rolling blog or two coming your way at the same time. In the meantime, here’s a couple of pictures from last years awards which was held in Glasgow.

Compare Richard Salkeld (left) of LNER with Scotrail MD and awards presenter Alex Hynes.

Enjoying the drinks reception before the serious business of the night starts – the awards themselves.