Category Archives: Railways

Down memory lane: Stratford (East London) lunchtimes in 1997

14 Thursday Mar 2019

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I’m currently continuing the marathon of scanning all my old rail and travel slides, which has led me up to memories of March 1997, 22 years ago…

Back then I was still living and working in London. Lynn and I had moved from Bromley-by-Bow in the East to a new home in Crouch End in North London but I still commuted daily to Bow as I remained working in social housing in those days. Rather than use public transport I’d cycle as it was quicker, cheaper and healthier. Having my bike at work meant that it was easy for me to pop down the road from Bow to Stratford at lunchtimes and get some pictures at the station. I was keen to do this as we were leaving the country for 18 months later that year and I knew so much would have changed when we got back (as it had when I left the UK between 1991 – 1992). Here’s a few pictures from those lunchtime sessions. One of the great beauties of Stratford (apart from the fact it was always busy) was that you never quite knew what would turn up!

06413. 86220. 13.30. Liverpool St - Norwich. Stratford. 12.3.97crop

Here’s class 86 no 86220 passing through Stratford with the 13.30 Liverpool St – Norwich on the 12th March 1997. 15 of these former West Coast workhorses had been transferred to the Anglia region when the line to Norwich was electrified in 1986. 86220 remained in service until 2002 when it was withdrawn due to a transformer failure. The rest remained in use hauling passenger trains on Anglia until 2005.

06407. 37046. Stratford. 12.3.97crop

On the same day EW&S operated ‘split box’ 37046 hauled a short civil engineers train through the station, heading for the North London line. These locomotives has a long association with the area, with many based at the old Stratford shed.  They still pop up today, 60 years after they first entered service. This particular loco was transferred to Europe for a few years to work on contracts building high speed lines in France. It returned to the UK in 2007 and was scrapped by CF Booth Rotherham in 2009.

06425. 365534. 315803. Stratford. 17.3.97

I popped back to Stratford on the 17th March when I snapped this unlikely combination. 315803 leads 365534 through the station en-route to the depot at Ilford. The BR built 315s were used on the Liverpool St – Shenfield services and are only just being replaced by the new Bombardier built Class 345s now. The 100mph Class 365s were the last BR built EMUs, having been constructed in 1994-95. The first 16 of the 41 strong fleet were used on the Southern region whilst the remaining 25 were used on services out of Kings Cross to Peterborough, Cambridge and Kings Lynn.

06427. 90138. Stratford. 17.3.97crop

EW&S operated 90138 heads for the North London line with a train of cars and vans from the docks at Dagenham or Tilbury. Stratford was and still is an important freight route, funnelling traffic from the Eastern ports through to the North and West. 90138 was eventually given its old number of 90038 back. It’s been stored unserviceable at Crewe since July 2005 and faces an uncertain future. To the right of the picture is my trusty bike, which I still use today!

06430. 47702. Stratford. 21.3.97crop

I was back to Stratford on the 21st March. Engineers trains often produced oddities such as this. 47702 has fallen on hard times. This former passenger locomotive was built in 1966, originally for BR’s London Midland region before being transferred to the Western region. In 1979 it was converted to ‘push-pull’ operation and worked high-speed (well, for then) services between Edinburgh and Glasgow. In 1990 it moved back down to the Western, working Thames valley services before they went over to DMU operation in 1992. It then ended up working Network SouthEast trains out of Waterloo before being transferred to Stratford in 1993. After being downgraded to a freight pool it was part of the fleet purchased by EW&S. In the picture it still carries the cast depot plate depicting the Stratford shed symbol of the ‘cockney sparrow’ although it was allocated to Toton by now! Whilst in Scotland it was named “St Cuthbert” but in this picture it carries the “County of Suffolk” nameplates previously worn by 47584. After a long and varied career the loco was stored at Toton in 2000 and used a source of spare before finally being cut up in January 2005.

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Rolling blog: Sun, snow and Sheffield

11 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by in Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel

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08:00

This was the view from our bedroom window this morning as the snow had returned late last night and this time it had crept down further from the valley tops.

DG319764crop

Thankfully, the roads below us remain clear so we shouldn’t have any problem driving over to Huddersfield to meet up with other members of the ACORP team before catching the train to Sheffield. Watch this space…

09:12

Away we go! After a quick visit to ACORP towers we’re now bouncing our way to Sheffield via the scenic Penistone line aboard a Pacer.

09:47.

It’s a beautifully sunny day here on the Penistone line as we bounce and rock towards Sheffield, where the weather’s not looking as inviting. We’ve been in and out of the snowline several times already. Initially the train was quite empty but we’ve picked up passengers at every stop, especially at Penistone and Barnsley, the main population centres along the line. Now this 3 car train’s earning its keep.

11:15

Despite my earlier concerns about the weather the sun’s beating down on Sheffield, making it ideal for a spot of photography before the conference starts after lunch. Here’s one the the unique tram-trains. Hopefully this trial will be a success and we’ll see vehicles like this become a common sight. Ironically, I came to Sheffield for an Acorp conference on tram-trains way back in 2009. After years of plans changing and procrastination, the trams finally started running in 2018!

15:03.

The conference is in full swing right now. The event was opened by the Mayor of Sheffield, Dan Byles MP, who welcomed everyone to the city and spoke about the importance of community rail.

DG319850CROP

Today’s mixed bag…

09 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by in Down memory lane, London, Railways

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Today’s been exactly that. So far I’ve spent it at home, sitting in my office and avoiding the gales and rain that battered the house this morning. Instead of braving the elements I’ve been catching up on some paperwork, then scanning more old slides. The latest batch are all from my days living in London in the latter years of the 1990s. I’ve now moved on from 1996 to 1997. I was keen to document as much of the changing UK rail scene as I could as Lynn and I were only a few months away from packing in our jobs and leaving the UK for 18 months to travel around the world. I was still working in Tower Hamlets as a Housing officer, hence many of these pictures being taken at Stratford, just down the road from where I worked. Here’s a couple of samples.

06305. 56066. Bow-Heck Plasmor. Bow Midland goods yard. 26.2.97crop

On the 26th February 1997 EW&S Class 56 (56066 for the number crunchers) sits in the old Bow Midland goods yard with empty Plasmor concrete block wagons, ready to return them to Heck on the East Coast Mainline. This service is about the only thing left in the picture that hasn’t changed. It still runs today! The background and surrounds to the picture have changed completely. The shot was taken from the Docklands Light Railway station at Pudding Mill Lane. This has been swept away by the tunnel portal for Crossrail and a new station opened on a new alignment further South. The housing estate you see in the background is the Lefevre, run by Tower Hamlets Housing Action Trust (or HATs as they were known). This is where I worked. My job was to manage this estate, which was being demolished in phases and the tenants rehoused in new, modern, low rise properties.

06321. 86246. 11.25 Liverpool St-Harwich. Stratford. 26.2.97crop

Another place that’s unrecognisable today. This is Stratford in East London. Class 86247 pushes the 11.25 from Liverpool St to Harwich through the station on the same date in 1997 as the last shot. The whole area’s been transformed through investment. The station’s been rebuilt and expanded. The area to the left is now the massive Westfield shopping centre. And, if you’d have told us this station would one day be the key gateway to an Olympic games, we’d have looked at you like you were mad!

OK, that’s enough memories. Now the pair of us are off out for a meal with friends in Mytholmroyd, Sue and Geoff Mitchell, who are stalwarts of the local station friends group. See you later!

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Rolling blog: London beckons…

07 Thursday Mar 2019

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07:50

I’m heading back to London today as I’m picking up a load of old slides that were with a picture library. They were digitised years ago and now the library is moving premises so wants to give them back. Rather than entrust them to the post I’ve arranged to collect them and do some work whilst I’m down there.

Unfortunately, the weather here in the Calder valley’s dismal, I just hope the forecast for the South-East’s accurate. I’ll keep you updated on my travels and any travails.

09:07.

Having just missed a train I was left kicking my heels at Sowerby Bridge station for 25 minutes in the cold, rain and sleet! Sadly, there’s no warm waiting room to seek refuge in. The station’s facilities were severely pruned in BR days, especially on the Leeds bound platform which I was on. There have been improvements. At least now there are ticket machines on both platforms and simple platform shelters, but they’re not much use in a Pennine winter other than to keep the rain or snow off you.

At least my train was on time, a refurbished three car Class 158 rolled in at 09:04 and now I’m seated in the warmth, heading to Leeds.

09:25

Me and my big mouth! We left Halifax packed to the gunwhales but on time. Then it all went a bit Pete Tong. We’re currently crawling from signal to signal for reasons unknown as neither driver nor conductor have made an announcement. Still, this has given me plenty of time to observe all the shiny scarlet painted Pandrol clips which attach the rails to the sleepers. Their colour betrays the fact a lot of the rails on the route have been renewed recently.

09:47

We’re now on our way from Bradford Interchange 12 minutes late. The crew have remained mute. There’s not been a single announcement explaining why, far less an apology for the delay. It’s a classic example of poor customer service. It’s not as if the PA isn’t working as the Conductor’s just announced the next station stop!

10:13

To add insult to injury, when we approached Leeds the Conductor treated us to the usual long-winded announcement about tickets, security and luggage yet she completely neglected to mention the we were late, never mind even offer an apology! This is simple, basic customer service and it’s where the railway is so inconsistent.

In complete contrast, I’m now on LNER’s 09:15 to Kings Cross. Before we left the Train Manager announced this Mk4 set was short formed (it’s had coach C knocked out for unscheduled maintenance) and offered repeated apologies to passengers with reservations, telling them which coaches had spare seats.

Talking of maintenance, due to the current shortage of Class 91s, I have this on my train! 90036 ‘Driver Jack Mills’

14:45

I’ve been too busy to blog these past few hours as I’ve been constantly on the move. I changed trains at Stevenage in order to catch a Siemens ‘people-lover’s in the shape of a 12 car Class 700 to Finsbury Park, then backtracked to my old stamping ground of Harringay on a decript Great Northern Class 313.

Walking down to Green Lanes evoked lots of memories. Far too many to share here. It’s still as vibrant an area as ever with some fantastic Turkish cafe’s and brilliant greengrocers. My destination was the station which bisects the lane high up on an embankment. The ‘Goblin’ as the Gospel Oak to Barking line is known was electrified last year. The electrification was completed late. Even so, the new Bombardier built Class 710 electric trains that were being built for it were even later and still haven’t entered service. The problem is, the old diesels were due elsewhere. Some have already left and the last three will depart on March 18th. As a stopgap, London Overground have converted three Class 378s from five cars to four and are using them instead. Here’s one at Green Lanes earlier.

It’s really rather odd seeing these units on the Goblin as they make you feel you’re on the wrong route and are really on the North London Line!

15:31

I’m now hopping across London from Finsbury Park to Brixton via the new Thameslink tunnel, Blackfriars and Herne Hill.

18:11

I’m heading Northwards again now after a busy day. It was lovely being back in Brixton again. Living in the Pennines is lovely because of the scenery, but I do miss the hustle and bustle of London and the sheer diversity of the place. After picking up two big bags of slides I had time for a mooch around the Brixton arcade which was very quiet as it was the end of the day. It’s gone upmarket. Now there’s lots of great looking little bars and cafes as we as all the butchers and fishmongers.

On my way back across town I cracked open the slide packets to see what there was and some wonderful memories came flooding back. The pictures date from 1990 to 2003. They’re a mix of social issues and travel photography from across the UK, along with some rail images. I’ve found memories of old friends and places, my days working as a Housing Officer in East London and a whole host of demonstrations and protests. There the Iraq war, ‘Fair’ fuel protest, anti Afgahan war and more. There’s even my nephews and neices! One day, I’ll find time to get the most valuable ones scanned…

20:49.

Well, my journey back all went a bit Pete Tong too due to late trains and dodgy connections. The East Coast Main Line has had another difficult day due to obstructions on the line and train failures. I won’t go in to much detail as I’d be typing a few thousand words. I did end up ‘doing a Jeremy Corbyn’ on my train out of London but in the peak that’s to be expected!

I’m now on a Cross-country service from York to Leeds! The bright side was that I managed to get a shot of an LNER liveried ‘Azuma’ under York station roof.

DG319757crop

21:47

It’s definitely been ‘one of those days’! My 125mph capable Voyager got stuck behind a late local service and staggered to Leeds where it arrived 10 mins late, so that was another connection missed. I’m now on the 21:39 Leeds-Manchester Victoria instead.

23:55

It’s time to bring this rolling blog to an end. It’s been a chilly walk home but, judging by the amount of salt scattered on the roads around Halifax, worse is to come. Let’s see what tomorrow brings. Goodnight folks!

Stop Hs2? Some people never learn!

06 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by in Hs2, Railways, StopHs2

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In the long list of failure of the anti Hs2 campaign, doomed petitions come close to the top. Time and time again they’ve started ones on the Governments petitions website, only too see it fall far short of the total needed. They’re a complete waste of time anyway as – in the unlikely event they reached the magic 100,001- all they’d do is secure a debate on Hs2 in the House of Commons. Note I said a debate, there’s no vote. Quite what antis hope to achieve is a mystery, but a new one’s been launched. Well, when I say a ‘new’ one, it’s actually been running for several months! To say it’s been under everyone’s radar is an understatement, but all of a sudden a few antis have decided it’s worth pushing via Twitter! Here’s a link to it. Poor John Duggan is one of the people desperately trying to puff it.

duggan

“Really rolling”? To date, it has a grand total of 1,604 signatures after 129 days.

petition

Problem is, to be anywhere near in with a chance it needed to average 555 signatures a day! It closes on the 24th April, in 50 days time. Sooo, that’s needing an average of 1968 signatures a day. Far, far more than it’s had in the last 130 days and every day it falls sort of that, the average goes up. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the problem here. I can’t even be bothered to crunch any other numbers on this as it’s so hopeless. I’ll wait until it reaches the end next month.

Why Hs2 antis persist with these polls is a mystery. The only thing I can think of is that some of them have fallen for their own spin and bluster and genuinely believe there’s mass opposition to Hs2. They’ve never twigged that when people answer (often loaded) questions in opinion polls it’s pretty meaningless. It doesn’t mean they’ll actually act on anything, and it certainly won’t mean they’ll change their voting intentions for an issue that never comes anywhere near the rankings of things people consider important in elections.

Still, it keeps them happy, and gives me more ammunition to show what a hopeless campaign the anti Hs2 effort is!

 

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Southern railway nostalgia

05 Tuesday Mar 2019

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I’ve spent the day working from home despite the weather picking up today. Problem was, I’d too many other things to do other than head out with the camera – plus I’d arranged to be at home whilst a parcel arrived for Dawn.

Thus the day was spent editing pictures, uploading more to a client’s website as well as finishing scanning the last of the latest batch of slides to see the light of day after decades in storage. One was a picture of this little oddity, taken at Brockenhurst in 1996.

06202. Swing bridge across the tracks. Brockenhurst. xx.9.96.crop

This is a swing bridge which gave level access from one of the two island platforms to the road as the only other way was over the footbridge. It was installed when the island platforms were built in 1888. The bridge allowed parcels trollies, newspaper and mail to move to/from the station in the days when railways were general carriers. It also allowed passengers in wheelchairs to exit the station. It was refurbished after this picture was taken, when lighter handrails were fitted. Nowadays it’s totally redundant as the station footbridge has been renewed and the new one includes lifts. It was an unusual feature in its day and I can think of few stations that would have had one, the only other one I’ve heard of was Eastleigh, also on the old Southern Railway network.

Under the weather…

04 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by in Down memory lane, Musings, Railways, Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire

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Not me you understand, that’s all of us. Storm ‘Freya’ has been providing some wet and windy weather here in the Calder Valley so I’ve been perfectly content to spend the day working from home. It hard to credit that this time last week we were basking in sunshine and temperatures that would have been more appropriate for May rather than February. Now the central heating’s back on!

My work at home’s very much been focussed on picture editing, uploading pictures to the RDG Flickr account for much of the day (God, I hate keywords!) before spending this evening catching up on scanning some more old slides in an effort to steadily whittle down the pile. Working at the current rate it’s going to take me at least 5 years to get the majority scanned, and as I’m not getting any younger…

Looking back at old pictures from September 1996, almost 23 years ago, is an odd experience for two reasons. One is seeing how much has changed on the UK railways in that time, the other is being transported back 23 years to the moment in time when I pressed the shutter to think “I remember that”. Here’s a pair of pictures from this evening’s batch, taken at Peterborough on Thursday the 19th September 1996.

06185. 37885. 37057. 37054. 37220. 08529. Depot Christmas tree. Peterborough.19.9.96.crop

The above view shows the EW&S depot (well, small servicing shed and fuelling point really) with mixed bag of Class 37 locomotives in a variety of liveries, whilst one of the yard shunters sit on the depot road. The view was taken from the Mayor’s Walk road bridge, just North of the station. Here’s the view looking the other way.

06176. 31466. 31407. 31xxx. 31271. Peterborough.19.9.96.crop

An equally mixed bag of Class 31s are stabled in the dead end road known as the Carriage Siding, waiting to be used on weekend engineers trains. As both pictures show, the assets weren’t exactly being sweated in those days! Now, in 2018, you’d be lucky to see one locomotive on the EWS (now DB Cargo) depot and the carriage siding’s mostly disused.

Simple Saturday and a trip down memory lane.

02 Saturday Mar 2019

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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

Crunching the StopHs2 social media numbers. February 2019

01 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Politics, Railways, StopHs2

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Yep, it’s that time of month again, as February morphs into March I’ve manfully ploughed my way through hours of rubbish to ignore the hyperventilating and crunch the actual numbers. There’s been more mush than usual in February as Hs2 antis were cock a hoop at the fact Hs2 would be featured in Channel 4’s Dispatches. Once again, they hyped it as the ‘smoking gun’ that would finally kill off Hs2! How many times have we heard that now? Allied to Dispatches were efforts by the same small group of right-wing Journo’s associated with the residents of 55 Tufton St to spin as many negative articles as they could in the media. We were (un)reliably informed that Teresa May’s Cabinet couldn’t wait to kill off Hs2 and that it was only a matter of time now. How many times have we heard that one too? Needless to say, February came and went – and so did Liam Halligans lazy and badly researched Dispatches programme (filleted here). Despite all the froth, Hs2’s still here. Informed sources who’ve been talking to members of the Tory party have told me this was always a non-story, that it was posturing by individuals who privately admit there’s no chance of Hs2 being killed off at this late hour. To say that the Cabinet are rather more concerned about an issue beginning with B would be an understatement.

So, what’s all this hoo-ha done for StopHs2 on social media? The answer is – very little. Here’s their Twitter statistics over 2019.

Twitter stats

As you can see, they’ve gained 2.5% more Twitter followers this month. 166 in total. The irony of this is that’s more than the total number of people who’ve retweeted any of their nonsense. The largest amount of retweets they’ve had all month has been 122, which is just 1.8% of all their followers! Not exactly Twitterstorm material, is it? Their average is a paltry 23.1, which is a miserable 0.3%! When you consider 6,6 million people live in the 63 constituencies Hs2 passes through, 6650 followers is pathetic. It’s 0.10%! Whichever way you cut these numbers, they’re tiny – and this is after 9 years!

Wading through StopHs2s twitter timeline one thing becomes obvious. How mind-numbingly banal most of the stuff is. StopHs2 spend most of their time tweeting links to stories in newspapers or from other media outlets. In fact, anything they can find that’s critical of Hs2, or the railways. What they don’t do is Tweet news of their ‘campaign’ because there isn’t any! Rukin wasn’t even interviewed for Dispatches, he spends most of this time throwing around childish insults on Twitter. The only instance of anything resembling a grassroots event happened yesterday when a few hundred people turned up to protest at an Hs2 event in Calvert Green (Bucks) and that’s it. This isn’t the stuff of a campaign going anywhere other then into the history books as a grand failure. A quick look through StopHs2’s followers list soon shows the problem. Many of their followers gave up years ago, like this pair.

dead acc. 2013

dead anti acc. 2017

This problem hasn’t escaped the attention of some of the Right-Wing backers of their campaign as an increasing number of pro Brexit Trolls and bots have been reprogrammed over the past month to include anti Hs2 tweets – as I’ve blogged about here.

Right, now let’s have a look at Facebook.

FB hs2

For some reason Facebook stats on the number of followers isn’t available right now. As you can see, activity’s increased since January thanks to Dispatches, but the numbers (bearing in mind the 6.6m living on the route) are appalling. There’s something else too. Of the 49 posts made by StopHs2 all but the last two were nothing more than links to media articles. There were no notices of forthcoming events from ‘action’ groups like meetings etc. Nothing that would reflect a campaign that’s actually going anywhere. Like Twitter, it’s always the same handful of names posting comments, many of which are either completely bonkers or pure bluster, like these…

fb nutter

eu hs2

I expect stophs2 March social media stats to be on the slide again now all the ‘excitement’ has died down. Both Panorama and Dispatches have flopped and the penny’s going to drop sometime that Hs2 is continuing. In the meantime, their little band gets ever smaller as more people settle, sell up and move away from the route. Meanwhile, work continues along phase 1 in preparation for the notice to proceed with the main civils work and Phase 2a continues its journey through Parliament. No-one’s stopped Hs2…

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Rolling blog: The morning after the night before…

27 Wednesday Feb 2019

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It’s a beautiful morning in London and the sun’s already cracking the flags. I’m sipping coffee in my hotel room in preparation for the day ahead whilst recovering from last night.

Yesterday’s Bradshaw address was a very interesting event, not so much because we learned a huge amount about what will be in the forthcoming Williams report (we didn’t) more because the event was packed with the great and the good from the railway industry and everyone talks. Afterwards, the Rail Delivery Group held an informal get-together for the media and other colleagues, which was just as informative as the main event, but Chatham House rules and all that. All I will say is that the night ended in the company of a long-time friend called Rupert (whom most in the rail industry will know) so it it was great fun, but I’m paying for it this morning!

I’m going to make my way home by meandering up the East Coast Main Line and have a look at some of the huge changes that are taking place as I go, so expect lots of words an pictures later…

11:15.

After leaving my hotel near Kings Cross I walked over to Euston to check out progress on building Hs2, the new high-speed railway. Every time I visit something’s changed. There’s a huge amount of work going on as old buildings are torn down to make way for the expanded station, which is spreading to the West. I couldn’t help but crack a grin at seeing all the work going on then thinking of the few remaining Hs2 antis on Twitter who insist that none of this work means Hs2 is actually being built! Talk about kidding yourself!

Afterwards I headed back to King Cross to begin my meander North by catching a Great Northern service as far at Potters Bar, a place I have mixed memories of, and this is why.

Within an hour of the crash happening I got a phone call to my North London home from RAIL magazine, commissioning me to cover the accident. I ended up spending several days at the scene, documenting the tragedy and the subsequent recovery operation. Journalists from all over the place had been scrambled to cover what was a major news story. The best vantage point was stop a wooden fence in the beer garden adjacent car park, which is where many of us ended up. I remember helping a rather posh middle-aged woman to climb the fence and we got chatting. She explains that she was a photographer who normally worked for ‘Horse and Hound’ magazine but had got a call because she lived in the area!

After the first couple of days the weather turned an rain set in, which bade life difficult for everybody. A huge crane had been set up to remove the car of the crashed train that was wedged under the station canopy and we were all keen to get a shot of the lift, this meant hanging around for hours and many of us took shelter in the pub! ITN had set up a huge cherry picker in the pub car park which they used for filming. Whilst they were waiting to go on air the ITN crew joined us in the pub and I got talking to Nicholas McGinty, their reporter. Nick wasn’t exactly dressed for the weather so I lent him my waterproof jacket whilst he did his piece to camera. In return, he arranged for me to go up in the cherry picker to get pictures! We met again a few years later at another rail tragedy, Ufton Herbert, Nick remembered me and I got another go in that cherry picker too. Thankfully, those times have changed and there hasn’t been a fatal rail crash since 2007.

12:35.

I stopped off at a famous bottleneck on the East Coast Main Line, the two track section at Welwyn North. There’s been talk of quadrupling this section for decades but it’s no easy (or cheap) task at it contains a lengthy viaduct and two tunnels.

15:00.

I’ve slowly been making my way up the East Coast Main Line, making the most of the stunning weather to top up my photo library with shots at some locations I’ve not visited in years.

It’s been an interesting experience that’s brought back many happy memories but also shown me how rapidly this stretch of railway’s changing. All the Great Northern services to Peterborough are now worked by the Siemens built, 12-car Class 700s. Now they go via St Pancras Thameslink and across London to Horsham instead of terminating at Kings Cross. The intercity fleets are changing too. Hitachi built Class 800s are up and down on test on a regular basis and are due to start displacing the BR built HSTs and Class 91s in a matter of months. They’ll also replace Hull Trains Class 180s. It’s not just the trains either. Network Rail is busy renewing the overhead lines and replacing cable headspans with portals.

16:48

I’m gradually getting North now after stops at Peterborough and Grantham. It’s such a gorgeous day that I want to make the most of the weather and get a few more shots in the can. Sadly, after all the rebuilding that’s gone on, Peterborough isn’t the photo opportunity it once was. That said, it’s interesting to observe operations there. The amount of intermodal freight trains that have to cut across the Northern approaches to the station to get to the Ely route and on to Felixstowe must be a train planner’s nightmare! No wonder Network Rail are building the dive-under from the GN/GE joint line.

18:20

I’m on the last leg after a final change of trains at Doncaster. Yet another LNER ‘Azuma’ flew past, luckily in full branding. That done, I couldn’t resist a visit to the Draughtsman, the tiny real ale bar on the station which opened in 2017.

Now I’m on Grand Central’s 18:04 service to Bradford Interchange, which takes me straight to Halifax and home. Tomorrow’s weather forecast isn’t great. The run of fantastic weather’s coming to an end, so it’ll give me chance to have a day at home catching up on paperwork and plans – as well as editing all the pictures that I’ve taken over the past couple of days!

20:45

Right, time for a ‘swifty’ in my local before heading home. It’s goodnight from me…