Category Archives: Photography

Back to the grindstone…

25 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by in Brexit, London, Photography, Politics

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After a fabulous weekend back in London I’m home and getting back into the routine (well, as routine as my life ever gets) of paperwork, picture editing, and preparing for the future.

I’m currently editing the hundreds of pictures that I took at the anti Brexit march on Saturday, followed by shots at a friends 50th birthday celebrations in Clapham later that evening. Here’s a couple of some of the brilliant banners and placards people carried on the day.

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Hopefully, by Wednesday I’ll have the full selection sorted. There’s also one or two new rail shots to add. Beyond all this work a chunk of the day was spent with a financial advisor to try and ensure my investments are as ‘Brexit proof’ as possible. I can’t believe we’re in this position, but there you go.

Whilst I’m doing what I can to protect dawn and I from the effects of the Brexitshambles, a lot of people are still signing the Revoke article 50 petition, which has almost reached 5.7 million this evening. Please, add your name by following this link.

petition

The petition’s already having an effect as some Leave supporting MPs with small majorities are looking at the number of their constituents who’ve signed it and started thinking ‘oh, shit’…

Whilst I’ve been busy typing Parliament’s been embroiled in more drama. MP’s have ignored the Government, voting to allow themselves more votes on a way forward – which May has said she’ll ignore as they’re only ‘indicative’. Three more of May’s Ministers have resigned too. Meanwhile, the Brexit clock’s still ticking and no-one has done anything to reset it. So, by simple operation of law, we crash out of the EU on the 29th of March, in 4 days time…

Simple Saturday and a trip down memory lane.

02 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by in Nostalgia, Photography, Railways

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I’ve had an uncomplicated Saturday at home, far away from railways – unless you count scanning old slides. The fantastic sunshine we had earlier in the week seems like a memory as we’re back to the dull and wet weather that’s far more typical for this time of the year.

Dawn’s been out running as she’s training for the Huddersfield half-marathon which she agreed to do in a moment of madness via her work. I’ve been pottering around at home editing pictures and keeping a wary eye on the madness in the world through social media. We did take a break from all this by popping out to our local pub, the Big 6, earlier this evening for a chat and time with friends but this is very much a quiet Saturday night at home.

The old railway slides I’ve been scanning date from the summer of 1996 when the railways looked very different. Privatisation was very much a new thing. Many passenger sectors had yet to be privatised, but even those that had didn’t always show a great change, as this picture shows. This is London Kings Cross on the 17th September 1996.

06160. BRUTES on the platform. Kings Cross. 17.9. 1996crop

GNER had taken over operation of all the intercity services in April of that year. Not that you’d know as all the trains still carried their old BR liveries, whilst platform 1 to the right is still lined with the old BRUTE’s (British Railways Universal Trolley Equipment) used for carrying goods to/from postal and parcels trains.

Meanwhile, over on the West Coast Main Line Inter-city passenger services were still operated by BR (Virgin wouldn’t win the franchise until 1997). Here’s a shot taken at Warrington Bank Quay on the 18th August 1996. The 11:30 to Euston was a failure and had to be assisted by EW&S freight locomotive 56070.  Sadly, I’ve no record of how far the Class 56 worked the train, although I doubt it was any further than Crewe.

06141. 56070. Warrington Bank Quay. 18.8.96.crop

Rolling blog. New Zealand day 12: Exploring Blenheim and Nelson.

09 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by in New Zealand, Photography, Rolling blogs, Travel

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We had an easy day yesterday after getting the ferry over to the South Island. We picked up our car in Picton for the half-hour trip to Blenheim, where we’re staying in an AirBnB for four nights. Not that we used the car much. We left it at our accommodation and walked into Blenheim instead. Mind you, I could get used to having this view each morning – we have vineyards across the road from us!

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We’re currently having lunch in Nelson, having driven here via Havelock. It’s quite a spectacular road as it climbs and hairpins its way through the hills to reach the coast. Nelson’s a lot bigger than I imagined. The place has a relaxed feel to it, with the small square below the church a lovely oasis of brew pubs and cafes.

dg315959. dining alfresco. nelson. new zealand. 10.1.19crop

 

As the old saying goes, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em! We stayed for lunch and a drink in the square and watched the world go by whilst enjoying a huge portion of calamari! The bar we sat outside was an old building that was converted to a pub – and a very good job they’d done of it too…

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I’ve been surprised at how many preserved railways there are in New Zealand, although most of them are small-scale efforts like this one in Nelson. It’s part of a local museum and has a short running line on the site of the original railway which closed in 1952. It only runs at weekends, but here’s the line and station at Nelson.

dg315973. grove station. nelson. new zealand. 10.1.19crop

 

Nelson’s a lovely little place with a great atmosphere. It’s used as a base by many tourists who go on to explore some of the national parks in the area. We popped down to one – the Nelson Lakes national park and beautiful Lake Rotoiti.

dg315993. lake rotoiti. nelson lakes national park. new zealand. 10.1.19crop

dg315994. lake rotoiti. nelson lakes national park. new zealand. 10.1.19crop

We drove back along highway 63, following a river valley whose name is associated with the wine industry: Wairau. Wairau Cove is on of our favourite New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc’s back in the UK, so it’s quite a kick to be here!

dg315998. route 63 through the wairau valley. new zealand. 10.1.19crop

Tomorrow we’ll be doing a vineyard tour, so export more wine-related blogging…

 

A Favour to ask

If you enjoy reading these blogs, please consider clicking on an advert – or two! You don’t have to buy anything, honest! The clicks just help me cover the cost of running this blog. Many thanks, Paul

 

 

My New Zealand pictures on Zenfolio.

09 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by in New Zealand, Photography, Travel

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This is a quick blog to say that I’ve had time this morning to edit and upload a far bigger selection of pictures from our New Zealand trip onto my Zenfolio website. I only post a snapshot of what I’ve taken on the blog – for obvious reasons. If you want to have a look at the full selection, they’ll be uploaded to this gallery. Expect a lot more pictures to be added now that we’re on the incredibly scenic South Island and also because now we’re hiring cars to get around, so we can stop when and where we like. Enjoy the pictures!

I’ll be writing my usual daily rolling blog later.

Saturday selection

22 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by in Musings, Photography, West Yorkshire

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It’s been one of those slow days where we’ve been pottering around but doing nothing special – partly due to the miserable weather but also due to recovering from yesterday’s entertainments! I shouldn’t really complain about the weather. Whilst grey skies and showers aren’t to everyone’s taste, drinking water is – and our reservoirs are perilously low this year after such a long, dry summer.

Most of our day’s been taken up with the mundane, the sort of everyday chores that fill up a lot of modern day life. Trips to the recycling centre and a local farm shop then braving packed supermarkets (honestly, you’d think people were preparing for the Zombie apocalypse or world war 3, not just Christmas) and finally, giving in and nipping up to one of our favourite local pubs (The Moorcock Inn) for a ‘swifty’ and a chat before a quiet night at home. Whilst Dawn’s busy cooking pan fried hake with sautéed potatoes and steamed broccoli I’ve retreated to the office to scan a few more old slides. Here’s a couple of samples.

05940. Signalbox. Canterbury East. 21.7. 1996.crop

Here’s Canterbury East signalbox on the 21st July 1996. Built in 1911 by the South Easter and Chatham Railway it’s now a grade 2 listed building. It’s elevated so that the signalman could see all the tracks beyond the station roof.

05950. 47725. Kings Cross. 2.8. 1996. crop

On the 2nd August 1996 Class 47 No 47725 sits in platform 1 of London Kings Cross with the stock of an afternoon mail train whilst an electric loco at the front prepares to take this service North to Newcastle at 16:30. Mail trains used to operate out of many of London’s termini until a new rail connected mail centre (the Princess Royal Distribution Centre, or PRDC) opened at Willesden in 2003. In those days these trains would block platforms for hours, nowadays you’d never get away with it as platform space is at a premium.

Right, I’ve been summoned as food’s ready. Now for a glass of wine and a film…

Slowly but surely, the old slides are getting scanned…

20 Thursday Dec 2018

Posted by in Photography, Railways, Travel, Uncategorized

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It’s a painfully slow process, but I’m determined that 2019 will see the majority of my old railway back catalogue scanned and available on my Zenfolio website – although the travel pictures will have to wait a little longer! The past couple of months has seen me slog through a several hundred slides from 1996 onwards. Right now I’ve got as far as July, having uploaded or replaced another 40 images today. My plan is to continue my way chronologically through the years up the point I stopped taking slides and went digital, which was on the 20th February 2004, almost 15 years ago now! With the benefit of hindsight I’d wish I’d done it sooner – but hey ho!

These old pictures show just how much the railway scene has changed in the past 22 years. They’re all from the very early days of privatisation, when the railways had been ‘sectorised’ but not everything had been franchised. The first passenger service to be privatised was SouthWest trains in February 1996. This is adding another layer of complexity to scanning as the pictures are split up into different galleries on my website that are dedicated to each operator, so I’m having to do a lot of historical referencing as well. Here’s a few examples of today’s batch.

05865. 31421. Springs branch TMD. Wigan. 08.7.1996crop

A shot taken from a passing intercity service of the former Transrail depot at Wigan Springs Branch. Transrail was one of six companies the BR freight division had been broken up into as a way of introducing internal competition. In the end it, Loadhaul, Mainline Freight, Railfreight Distribution (RfD) and Rail Express Systems (RES) were bought by  American company Wisconsin freight which marketed them as English, Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWS). Many of the old BR locos you can see in the picture were actually stored.

05887. 3202. Herne Hill. 30.06.1996crop

A Eurostar set led by 3202 snakes through Herne Hill in South London. These services would run for another 11 years, until High Speed 1 and St Pancras International opened in 2007.

05925. 31455. 31255. Wolverton. 14.7.1996crop

A pair of class 31s work an engineers train during track relaying work on the West Coast Main Line North of Wolverton. These old locomotives would sit idle during the week as they were kept purely to work these trains. That meant their reliability was poor, often leading to engineering work being disrupted. Note that the adjacent pair of tracks remains open. This would never be allowed today due to the risks it passes to track workers, who can be seen ahead of my Euston-bound Intercity service.

New Zealand, here we come…

17 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in New Zealand, Photography, Railways, Travel

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Today I put the finishing touches to our plans to visit New Zealand and booked the last set of accommodation for our month-long tour in December – January. It’s going to be an epic trip (and an expensive one thanks to Brexit and the devaluation of Sterling). I’ve wanted to revisit the country for donkey’s years. I was there in 1999 during an 18 month around the world trip. We’ll be visiting some of the places I saw then plus many new ones. Last time I made the trip entirely by public transport, this time we’re hiring a car to travel around the South Island – although we will be taking a trip on the Tranzalpine train from Christchurch to Greymouth which is one of the world’s great railway journeys. We’ll also be visiting one preserved railway near Dunedin, but the rest of the holiday will be taken up with outdoor activity and sightseeing as we’ve got a very busy schedule but then there’s no point in travelling half-way around the world just to sit on your bum!

One aspect I I’m really looking forward to is the chance to shoot more pictures. New Zealand’s a stunningly beautiful country but going through my slide archive I’ve been surprised at how few I took during six weeks there in 1999. I suspect that’s because it was towards the end of our trip and I was conserving rolls of film as Fuji Velvia was a rare (and expensive) commodity in that neck of the woods (and we still had Fiji and the Cook Islands to visit). Still, here’s one or two to whet your appetites.

T8899. Franz Joseph glacier. New Zealand 1999.crop

The Franz Josef glacier on the South Island seen from a helicopter just before we landed and went hiking on the glacier itself.

FR0644. No 7145. Kaikoura.NZ. 1999.crop

An intermodal train from Picton to Christchurch passes Kaikoura on the East coast of the South island. This line was closed after a devastating earthquake but re-opened earlier this year.

T9075. Queenstown. S Island. New Zealand. 1999.crop

Looking across Lake Wakatipu at sunset, Queensland, South Island

Expect a host of pictures from both North and South islands and regular blogs. It’s going to be good to take a break from the madness of Brexit before the sh*t really hits the fan.

Another change since 1999 has been in the ease of finding places to stay. Then, the internet was just taking off. I remember using dial-up in a post office in Yogjakarta, Indonesia to try and book a hotel, and how frustrating it was (but also exciting because of the possibilities). Now, I’ve been browsing properties via Booking.com and AirBnB from my smartphone!

The picture pile gets smaller…

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in History, Photography, Railways, Uncategorized

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After all my travels last week the first part of this week’s been spent at home trying to catch up on paperwork, picture editing and scanning more old slides in an effort to reduce the mountain I have to climb. If you’re interested in last week’s German rail pictures, you can find the full selection here and the travel shots here.

Meanwhile, I’ve made another dent (albeit a small one) in the railway slides. I’m currently scanning a couple of albums from 1996-97. Most of them have never been seen since I took them. A selected few had made it onto my Zenfolio website but now I’m being methodical and scanning complete albums. The beauty of this is that it creates a lot of space! The slide albums contain many duplicated shots because that’s what you did in film days – just in case an important picture was damaged or was out with a client and you needed a copy. I reckon I’m binning at least 30% of the slides I have because they’re redundant now once one’s been scanned. Here’s some of tonight’s batch.

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It’s a reflection on how technology’s changed over the past 22 years. The irony is that I remember working out that each of these cost me about 24p apiece when I added together the price of the film, developing and mounting – plus postage! In theory, I’m throwing away a lot of money!

Here’s a taster of what’s been scanned today.

05815. 37057. Ipswich WRD open day. 15.6.1996crop.jpg

Here’s 37057 at the Ipswich Wagon repair depot open day on the 15th June 1996. EW&S had taken over the BR trainload freight companies (Mainline, Loudhaul and Translink) earlier in the year and this was the first public outing of the new livery. 37057, 60019 and the inspection saloon 999504 had been repainted and were on display. So much has changed since those early days of privatisation!

I’ll try and get some more done soon. Right now I’ve got other tasks in hand, including finalising our trip to New Zealand in December-January, plus, I’ve just found out I’ll be working in Birmingham on Thursday.

Down memory lane (1995).

18 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by in Down memory lane, History, Photography, Railways

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My wife had a night out in Leeds with friends last night, leaving me to my own devices, which gave me chance to start scanning some of the thousands of old rail and travel slides I have sitting around in albums. Most of them have never made it onto my website, so no-one’s seen them since I took them. Even I’ve forgotten what’s in them!

The album I’ve started working my way through now consists of old railway images starting in summer 1995 and going through to summer 1996. I wasn’t as prolific a photographer in those days. I was living in London, working as a Housing Officer and Lynn (my first wife) and I were saving up to buy a flat in Crouch End before going off travelling for 18 months. Most of my pictures were taken around London at weekends when I could nip out for a day, or on days off when I could get further afield

Now, 23 years on, it’s fascinating to look back on the pictures and see how much has changed on the railways.  These were the early days of rail privatisation. Railtrack had taken over from British Rail, the ownership of passenger rolling stock had been transferred to the three ROSCOs (rolling stock leasing companies) but most services were still run by shadow franchises as it would take until 1997 for everything to be privatised. No-one really knew how things would pan out in the end.

Here’s just a few pictures from the series I’m scanning. You can find the full series  starting with this picture.

05323. 60072. Didcot. 21.8.1995 crop

Most Class 60s like this one were only 2-3 years old back in 1995 but they’d already developed a reputation for unreliability. Here’s 60072 ‘Cairn Toul’ passing through Didcot with a train of BOC tankers on the 21st August 1995. Now Didcot’s a mass of overhead wires as the line’s been electrified and most of the Class 60s have been in store for years, including this example.

05336. 91016. Kings Cross. 14.9.95crop

Then (as now) most East Coast Intercity services were in the hands of the Class 91s, which has been introduced between 1988-91. Ironically, one (91019 as was) has just been repainted in the livery you see here as the 91s are to be replaced by Hitachi built ‘Azuma’ trains from next year. Here’s 91016 at Kings Cross on the 14th September 1995.

05340. 86251. Euston. 16.9.95crop

A day later, just down the road at Euston, loco-hauled still ruled West Coast services which were in the hands of the 86s, 87s and Class 90s. Here’s 86251 ‘The Birmingham Post’ stabled in the loco holding sidings.

05373. 47843. 11.25 Birmingham International - Manchester Piccadilly. 18.11.95crop

Cross-country service were still in the hands of unreliable Class 47s hauling rakes of Mark 2 coaches. Here’s 47843 at Birmingham International with the 11.25 to Manchester Piccadilly on the 18th November 1995.

05391. 310102. Wolverhampton. 18.11.95CROP

Also on the 18th November, 310102 arrives at Wolverhampton on a local service from Stafford. These 75mph slam door units were originally built for regional services out of Euston in 1965-67. 102 (originally 310055) was one of 11 renumbered as they were transferred to the ‘Provincial sector’ to operate service around Birmingham. 

A wet Wednesday in the Calder Valley

07 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by in Calder Valley, Musings, Photography, Travel, Walking

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I’ve had another day working from home –  which has been fortunate as the weather’s been pretty mixed to –  say the least. One of the beauties of homework is that I can nip out for an afternoon constitutional when staring at a screen and a numb bum combine to force me to take time out.

Right now the woodland around where we live is at its autumnal best as the leaves have turned from green to a range of coppers and yellows, depending on the type of tree and its location. All I need now is some spare time and a sunny day to get a few pictures to really do it justice, rather than a couple of shots grabbed on my phone in the woods I’ve just walked through. Still…

Here’s the view from the edge of Halifax, looking across the Calder Valley. See what I mean about the trees?

Right now I’m down in Sowerby Bridge, taking a break from the rain before walking back up the hill to home. The weather’s closed in and the skies have opened. As a photographer, I really don’t mind the rain. OK, it could be a bugger if you were trying to shoot some picturesque calender shots, but the way light reflects off wet surfaces is a delight to play with – as are the colours. I’ll update this blog with a couple of examples later.

17:53.

Here’s what I mean, these pictures just wouldn’t have the same impact if it hadn’t been raining.

DG201371. Tram 3069. Piccadilly Gardens. Manchester. 21.11.14crop

FDG2464. Tracks in the rain. Limerick Jn. 22.10.05