Category Archives: Railways

HS2 want people to choose the names of their first Tunnel Boring Machines.

15 Friday May 2020

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Today HS2 has launched a national vote to pick the names of the first of 10 giant tunnel boring machines that will excavate more than 35 miles of tunnel on the first phase of the UK’s new high speed railway between London and the West Midlands. Three names have been selected by local school children, they are Cecilia, Florence and Marie. The names with the most votes will be given to the first of two tunnel boring machines (TBMs) set to launch early next year. Much like ships, it’s traditional to name TBMs before they are launched and it is a long-held tunnelling tradition to give them female names.

tbm 3d model (1)

The TBMs will be operated by HS2’s main works contractor, Align JV – a joint venture formed of three companies: Bouygues Travaux Publics, Sir Robert McAlpine, and VolkerFitzpatrick. The machines will spend around three years digging the longest and deepest HS2 tunnels south of the M25, to South Heath in Buckinghamshire.

To vote, visit this link and vote for your favourite name. All three have been inspired by female scientific and medical pioneers.

Cecilia – named after Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the Astronomer and Astrophysicist born in Buckinghamshire who became Chair of Astronomy at Harvard University in the United States. Suggested by students at Chalfont Community College in Buckinghamshire.
Florence – named after Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, who spent many years in Claydon, Buckinghamshire where she wrote numerous books on nursing. Suggested by students at Meadow High School in Hillingdon.
Marie – named after Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice. Suggested by students at Maple Cross JMI and Nursery in Hertfordshire.

The name with the most votes will be given to the first TBM, due to be launched from a site close to the M25 early next year. The enormous, 2,000 tonne, 170m long machine will be one of two that will dig the 10 mile long Chiltern tunnels. The second machine, due to be launched a month later, will be given the second most popular name chosen.

The machines are being built by Herrenknecht in Germany. Their names are being chosen now so they can be fixed to machines during their manufacture, ready for when they emerge out of the factory.

After completion the first two machines will be disassembled before beginning their long journey to England. Once they have arrived on site, each TBM will be reassembled, ready to begin their life underground.

Launching the competition, HS2 Ltd Chief Executive Mark Thurston said:

“The launch of our first TBM will be a defining moment in the history of HS2 – and our work to deliver high capacity, low carbon high speed rail travel for millions of people across the UK.

“I’d like to thank all the schools that took part in the first stage of the competition and the pupils who suggested the three shortlisted names – Cecilia, Florence and Marie. Now it’s over to the British public to decide which will grace the side of our first TBMs.”

Daniel Altier, Align Project Director said:

“I would like to thank the pupils and teachers at the three local schools who suggested these three pioneering and inspirational women. Align would be very proud for our TBMs, that will incorporate the very latest technology and innovation, to bear their names.”

Voting closes on 5th June 2020.

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Lockdown. Day 46 (Friday)

08 Friday May 2020

Posted by in Coronavirus, Down memory lane, Lockdown, Photography, Politics, Railways

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Christ, if this is what life’s like when we’re meant to have loads of time on our hands due to lockdown, can I have my old one back, please?

My best intentions of getting up early went out of the window this morning and for the first time in ages I didn’t get out of bed before 08:00 which was a bit of a surprise as I distincly remember being awake at 06:00 and thinking ‘I’ll just have another half an hour’. Damn those snooze buttons! I wouldn’t mind but it’s not even mine as Dawn has control of the alarm clock/radio.

Once the day started it was a busy,- if slightly different one. Dawn’s on her ‘virtual retreat’ for the next few days, so I’m doing everything I can so facilitate and support her doing it but it does mean we’re living rather separate lives for the next few days. Dee printed out her schedule activities and stuck it on the fridge in the kitchen so that I know what she’s up to and when so that I don’t disturb her at a crucial moment, like meditation. This means that the living room is very much ‘her space’ and I’m relegated to using the back door to come in and out, not that it’s a problem.

Yet again we’ve had another beautiful day, weather wise. I shadowed Dawn on her morning walk, which meant that I got a lot of steps in early which makes a change. Recently I’ve taken to getting in an evening stroll to boost my exercise. Whilst it’s technically breaking the guidelines it’s not a problem here as our road is deserted at that time of day. I can walk for half an hour and not bump into another soul or even see a car as everyone’s stuck indoors. Why wouldn’t they be – there’s nowhere else to go!

Back at home I disappeared into the office to spend several hours scanning more old slides, The job’s no less tedious but at least I’m slowly making progress, although it is rather frustrating being stuck inside when the weather’s so good! I’d love to be out and about with the camera, but discipline’s required right now and it means I’m getting something positive out of lockdown.

Once immersed in scanning the day soon flew by. I’ve both laptops on the go at the moment so that whilst I’m scanning with one I can be watching Netflix or the BBCiPlayer with half an eye on the other. Sometimes the distraction’s provided by birds visiting the feeder hung outside the office window as it sees a constant stream of Tits who come to plunder the sunflower seeds I keep it filled with. I avoided the VE celebrations on TV, preferring to remember those who fought and lost their lives in my own way rather then join in what was starting to feel like a jingoistic celebration rather than a reflection on events. No doubt many would disagree with my interpretation, but then there does seem to be a coercive element to these things nowadays, rather like the ritualistic clapping for the NHS on Thursdays. When people are shamed on social media for not taking part, you know that things have gone too far. This pressure is also being used to stifle criticism of the way the Government’s handling the Covid pandemic, with some claiming that it’s somehow unpatriotic to criticise as it’s a national emergency and we should all be ‘pulling together’ (whatever that’s meant to mean in this context). This authoritarianism and herd mentality worries me. It’s too close to the right-wing media and political parties tactics of labelling people ‘traitors’ for opposing Brexit. We seem to be sailing far too close to an Orwellian totalitarianism nowadays, and it’s disturbing how easily some people embrace it.

I knocked off slightly earlier than usual as it is Friday after all. I migrated to the bench in the front garden and sat with a beer, enjoying soaking up the glorious sunshine for a while until 6, when it was time to join the gang from the ‘Big 6’ for our weekly quiz session held on Zoom. Eight of us played this week, many of the gang joining from their respective gardens as they’d got the same idea as me. After weeks of lockdown and barely talking to a soul other than Dawn it’s great to have a semblance of normality restored by joining in the laughter and brain-teasers in the quiz, although I’m looking forward to the day we can restart this where we should be – in the pub!

The rest of the evening passed off quietly at home with the pair of us keeping occupied in different ways. I managed to upload more of my haul of edited pictures to my website, so felt the week ended well. Here’s a couple as an illustration. It’s a tale of two London stations…

3120. 47350. London Kings Cross. 02.02.1993crop

Here’s London Kings Cross on the 2nd February 1993. As it used to look before the recent refurbishment and when Mail trains still ran. It was far dirtier and more cluttered than nowadays, with lots of rubbish deposited on the oil-stained tracks. Railfreight distribution No 47350 stands at the head of a rake of vans carrying mail to the North. Class 47/3s didn’t normally operate these services as the locomotives had no train heating, so I’m assuming the booked engine had failed.

03137. 47853. 43072. Class 47 ex Nottingham. Class 43 is 16.00 to Sheffield. London St Pancras. 09.03.1993crop

Here’s London St Pancras on the 19th March 1993, with a Class 47 which had arrived on a service from Nottingham standing next to an HST set which is waiting to depart as the 16:00 to Sheffield. It’s safe to say that the station doesn’t look like this anymore! This area is now home to Eurostars!

If you want to have a look at any of the other pictures I’ve added to my Zenfolio picture website just follow this link.

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Lockdown. Day 44 (Wednesday).

06 Wednesday May 2020

Posted by in Coronavirus, Lockdown, Musings, Railways, Uncategorized

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Despite the routine of life at the moment, it still manages to throw you enough curved balls and surprises to make it interesting…

This morning Dawn was first out of bed as I’d had a less than perfect night’s sleep due to our moggie (Jet) deciding that what’s ours is his. He waits until you’re almost asleep then jumps on the bed to wedge himself between us. He’s such an old boy now (eighteen and a half) that most of the time we don’t have the heart to kick him off – but he doesn’t half take up a lot of room. So, despite the fact I’d had a relatively early night I hadn’t had a good one. Dawn bounded out of bed to do her exercise regime in the living room but the most active I got was to make coffee and retreat back to bed with the laptop and catch up with world events before a shower and my ‘commute’ to the office. It was a crying shame to be stuck indoors as the weather was stunning. There may have been a morning chill in the air first thing but that was because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky! Here’s the view from the road above our house (looking across Sowerby Bridge and the Calder Valley) as I walked up the hill to combine getting some of the food shopping for Dawn’s parents and daily exercise.

I’d have loved to have enjoyed a day outdoors, soaking up the sun on such a fabulous day but I had too much to do. I’ve not had chance to edit them and put the results on my website yet but I’ve scanned another forty old slides which include November 1992 to January 1993. It was a period when my life changed completely, so it’s quite strange looking back at them now and remembering. 

Part of the reason I’ve not got them edited today was that other things kept side-tracking me – but in a positive way. A picture request from a magazine saw me scurrying through the archives to dig out what they wanted, then I had a Zoom conference call scheduled to talk about the Community Rail Network awards. Oh, the joys of online meetings! Yes, they’re ideal for when needs must but the idea that these will render travel redundant in future is fanciful to say the least. There’s too many distractions or glitches and body language is next to impossible to read. I lost the call for a few minutes as we suffered a power cut – the second time that’s happened in a week. It was back in an instant but it took several for the internet to reboot.

Finally, I got chance to break away from staring at a screen and retreated into the garden with a good old paper copy of RAIL magazine to catch up on the latest industry news in the sun! The ‘dead tree’ media still has some advantages. You need no batteries or sockets, you don’t need to worry about flare on a screen and you don’t have to fret about a wifi connection. Oh, and you can also use the mag as a sunshade!

The clear skies and sunshine lasted right through to the bitter end when they were overtaken by planet’s rotation and replaced by a glorious dark night and a full moon. If I hadn’t so many things to do I’d have been tempted to set up my camera on a tripod up on the promenade and try some long-exposure shots. Sadly, with the length of exposure that I’d need for what I have in mind the local constabulary may be less than sympathetic in these coronavirus times.

Instead of star-gazing, here’s a look back at the past and the archive pictures I’ve been scanning today. This is Tilbury Riverside station in Essex, just a few days before it closed on the 30th November 1992. Oddly, despite the fact I’d lived in London since 1986, this was the only time I ever visited. I don’t know why, other than it obviously wasn’t a priority at the time, despite the fact I lived just a stones throw from the London, Tilbury & Southend railway in East London. Now, how I wish I had as Tilbury Riverside would have made a fascinating picture study. 

03062. 313787. In the last week before closure. Tilbury Riverside. November.1992 crop

This is how I remember much of the railways from my youth. Decrepit and decaying. Forget the rose-tinted spectacles, the one thing money wasn’t spent on was stations. How many were stripped back to bare platforms and had decent facilities demolished and replaced by bus shelters to save a few quid on maintenance and wages?

Tilbury Riverside is no more but the site is still rail connected as it’s now used by freight trains from the docks. When I’ve had chance to edit the other pictures I’ll add a couple more. Right now it’s time for bed as we’ve a busy shopping day ahead of us…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lockdown. Day 43 (Tuesday).

05 Tuesday May 2020

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Despite getting up before 07:00 I still didn’t get everything done that I’d hoped and planned to. So much for all this time we’re meant to have on our hands due to lockdown! On the bright side, I did achieve a lot. Having left Dawn in bed with our moggie keeping guard over her I made some coffee before heading to the office. It’s not exactly an onerous commute from the kitchen, one flight of stairs and I’m there! The first assignment of the day was to get a the next batch of slides scanned and edited whilst setting up another batch ready to join the queue. Whilst they’re scanning I normally have time to peruse the web and catch up on the days world and financial news in between. The media isn’t making as depressing and perturbing reading as it did a few weeks ago due to the fact so many countries are slowly feeling their way out of lockdown and making plans for the future. Quite how long this process will last before normality returns is anyone’s guess as this would depend on countries having a vaccine against Covid-19.

With this in mind I’m prepared to be in complete lockdown for another week or two yet. I’ve plenty to keep me occupied, so the only real negative impact on me is financial. I’m one of the lucky ones in that I’ve been able to adapt to lockdown without too much mental stress, as has Dawn. I’m not saying it’s been all plain sailing, but at least we’re both going to come out of this still married!

Dawn was back at work today and straight into conference calls, catching up with her colleagues and what’s going on in the world of Community Rail – a sector that’s not had it easy as many of the volunteer groups rely on people who fit into various ‘at risk’ categories.

It was during one of Dawn’s conference calls that the Dell engineer arrived to take another look at my laptop. To maintain social distancing he worked in the kitchen like he did last time. The machine’s now running sweetly (I’m typing this on it new) and I’m hoping the glitches have finally been sorted out and I’ve a machine I can rely on. I’m keeping my old one up to date as a precaution  and basing everything in the Cloud so if anything does go wrong I can rapidly switch between machines. In fact it’s quite useful having both running at times as I can use one for slide scanning and picture editing and the other machine for emails and paperwork. Who says men can’t multi-task!

Once the Dell engineer had left I took a break from staring at screens to get my daily constitutional. The weather was ideal as it was sunny but not too hot so slogging up through the woods to the promenade didn’t leave me in a sweaty mess. After being in lockdown for so long and missing the levels of exercise I used to get I’m trying to ramp things up by increasing my target from the daily minimum of 12,500 steps to 17,000 which means I then surpass all my targets. Thankfully we live in an area where I can do this without putting anyone at risk I’d be buggered if I still lived in North London as 7 miles around a 30 foot garden would be stretching things a bit!

Sadly, with Dawn still working I had to walk solo. Once back at home I settled back down in front of the computers and managed to get 60 old pictures done today. You can find them on my Zenfolio website in this gallery.

I’m moving on through the years now and passed a significant (well, to me anyway) landmark. I’ve finished the years 1989 -1991. 1991 was important to me because in the October of that year I packed in my job as a Housing Officer in Tower Hamlets, paid a years rent on my shared flat and headed off to South-East Asia for a year. By the time I returned in October 1992 I’d visited India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia. I’d also travelled all the way overland through the Indonesian islands from Sumatra to West Timor and even got as far as Darwin in Australia before running out of time and money! One day I’ll write up my experiences of those days, when backpacking was very different to today…

The trip means that there’s a year-long gap in my UK rail archive, just at a time when the railways were going through another phase of replacing loco-hauled passenger services with yet more multiple units. This meant I was kept busy before I left documenting how things were before they changed forever. Of course, what I didn’t know at the time was that rail privatisation was looming. There wasn’t going to be a general election until 1992 and John Major’s Tories looked unlikely to win…

Here’s a sample picture that shows how much has changed.

03035. 87001. 13.12 to Liverpool Lime St. 87021. 09.10 from Liverpool Lime St. London St Pancras. 12.10.1991 crop

On the 12th October 1991 a pair of Class 87s stand at the buffers at St Pancras station London. No, this isn’t a mistake! Due to weekend engineering work Services from Liverpool were diverted away from Euston and into St Pancras. The trains were diesel hauled from Nuneaton across to the Midland Main Line and then down to Bedford where the Class 87s could run ‘under the wires’ to St Pancras. 87001 (on the left) waits to work the 13.12 to Liverpool Limes St whilst I’d arrived from Liverpool behind 87021 on the right which had worked the 09.10 from Lime St. I’d been back to Southport for the weekend to say my goodbye’s to my family. A few days later I flew out on a single ticket to Delhi, India, where the adventure began…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lockdown. Day 36 (Tuesday).

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

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Today the weather really has changed. The broken cloud we had yesterday morphed into heavy grey, rainbearing skies this morning making the world look very different when I opened the bedroom blinds. It made me just how lucky that we’ve had over a month of near continuous sunshine just when we needed most. Imagine what people’s spirits might have been like going through lockdown when the weather was appalling?

Having kept my head down all Monday to complete my next article for RAIL magazine on the East London Line it was great to be able to put it to bed and get back to scanning my slide archive as that’s had to take a back seat this past week. I’ve several pages of my first set of pictures from 1989-90 to complete and I’m eager to get them finished as it feels like a milestone in what’s been a bloody long process! It’s not the most exciting of tasks, it’s very much a marathon, not a sprint, but after all these years it feels like the finisheing line’s in sight.

Whilst I’ve been doing this I’ve been kept entertained by a pair of Blackbirds who’re nesting in a tree at the back of the house. They keep foraging for food on the shed roofs opposite my office window and I’ve been helping them by keeping an eye out for the local cats who consider the area their territory. I’m making the moggies feel uncomfortable enough that they don’t hang around, giving the Blackbirds a free-fly zone. We have a cat ourselves but Jet is an old boy who’s 18 and a half, so his bird-catching days are long behind him. Oh, he’ll saunter around outside, but he’s unfazed by our feathered friends nowadays are barely gives them a second glance. The fact he’s as deaf as a post probably helps as he only notices them if they intrude on his line of sight. 

I was so engrossed in the process of scanning and editing several batches of slies that the day flew by. before I knew it we were in to evening. Dawn’s got the week off from work so she’s been busy downstairs with DIY, and getting exercise that way, so I headed out for an evening constitutional on my own, in the rain! There was no way I was going to get my daily target of 12,500 steps. Even so, it was lovely to get out and experience the wind and rain on my skin after a long day sat at a desk.

Here’s a couple of the images I’ve been scanning. This is a classic image of a railway that’s gone forever. On the 8th March 1990 a pair of Class 56s pass at Barnetby East junction in Lincolnshire. Nearest the camera is 56088 with a loaded train of HAA coal hoppers on its way from Immingham Docks to Scunthorpe where the coal will power the steelworks furnaces. In the background is 56090 heading back to the docks with the empties. the signalbox and semaphores here lasted until Christmas 2015 when the area was resignalled. The Four wheeled HAA coal wagons are long gone too, having been replaced with much higher capacity bogie hopper wagons which are kinder to the track (amongst other things). 

0616. 56088. 56090. Barnetby. 8.3.1990 copy

Here’s another, taken at Peterborough a few days later on the 12th March 1990 when the Class 91 locomotives were brand-new. Here’s 91011, named ‘Terence Cuneo’ (after the famous railway artist) out on a test train before entering passenger service. Now, 30 years later the Class 91 fleet is slowly being phased out of mainline service with LNER, although several are planned to remain in traffic until 2022. Will this plan survive the downturn in traffic due to Covid-19? Who knows? 

0648. 91011. Peterborough12.3.1990 copy

If you want to have a look through more of these old photos, follow this link to the ‘recent’ section of my Zenfolio website. 

Lockdown. Day 31 (Thursday)

24 Friday Apr 2020

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I won’t even mention what the weather was like when I opened the bedroom blinds at 06:30 as you know the drill by now!

Thursday’s our ‘fun’ day as we escape the confines of the Calder Valley to do some essentials like check on the CRA office in Huddersfield and shop for Dawn’s parents.

But first we had a few chores and a bit of work to do at home in preparation, which meant we didn’t leave the house until 09:30. Driving over to Huddersfield took no time at all although the roads seemed busier than the past few times we’d done the trip. First stop was Sainsburys where the queue was moderate to fair. Everyone know the drill now. The only difference I noticed was that a lot more people are wearing masks compared to a fortnight ago. Both of us went in, me to shop for us two and Dawn for her parents. Most people were doing their best to social-distance but I did notice one thing – masks give people a false sense of security and some wearers get too complacent and too damn close!

What’s left on the shelves is still a bit of a lottery. Whilst the great bog-roll shortage had ended there’s still empty shelves, especially of tinned goods. I’m not sure if this is down to hoarding or problems along the supply chain. Some of the fruit and veg wasn’t top quality either but I think that’s down to whom the different supermarkets buy from. For examlle, the cauliflowers in Sainsbury’s are inferior to the ones in our local Tescos which are double the size and the same price.

Shopping done we headed over to the railway station so Dee could check on CRA’s water tower offices, sort out some paperwork and arrange for an electrician to get access to carry out a few repairs. Whilst she did I took advantage of the weather and a newly cleared vantage point to get a few rail pictures and keep my hand in!

68020

Every train that passed contained a mere handful of people and the station itself was eerily quiet. The town centre was busier but not by much! Subtract the itinerant drunks and vagrants and there were few people with a purpose other than transit. Why would there be when bugger-all’s open!

By midday we’d done everything we needed to do apart from dropping off John and Norah’s shopping and having a (socially-distanced) chat over the garden gate before driving home cross-country via quiet roads that must be great fun for the cyclists who use bikes for their exercise. What could be more ideal  – sunshine and empty roads!

Having returned to lockdown and deposited the shopping Dawn prepared a lovely tuna salad lunch which we sat and ate together in the garden whilst watching the world go by, soaking up some sun before we both returned to work for a few more hours. Whilst I was in the garden I noticed this water droplet on a Lupin leaf, which seemed like a good excuse to dig the camera out and play around with the micro lens.

droplet

 Seeing as there’s little opportunity for railway shots at the moment and I’m missing the creativity of using my camera I just might start playing around in the garden more. The time of year’s ideal as life is springing eternal all over the place. I’m seeing some unusual butterflies too, so hopefully, once I’ve got the work done that I need to do right now I can spend some time experimenting. 

 

 

 

Lockdown. Day 28 (Monday)

21 Tuesday Apr 2020

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Another working week began with me praying that Dell computers still sent out engineers to do site visits, It also began with me spending the morning finishing restoring on my old laptop to make sure it could keep me working until they did. To be fair the old machine was still serviceable – just ‘delicate’ and unable to operate without mains power as the battery was fried. It took me a couple of hours to reinstall various software and backups to make sure it was OK, which wasn’t time I was expecting to spend but it kept me busy until the Dell offices opened. I’ve always had service contracts on my machines that mean engineers do home calls rather than my kit having to be sent away. It’s a worthwhile expense and it proved so in this case. I spoke to a very lovely Indian lady who assured me that Dell engineers were still doing home calls and that they’d have someone out with me tomorrow (Tuesday) which was reassuring. Despite trying to power up the new machine and going through all the BIOS checks it looked almost certain the motherboard would need replacing. It’s bit of a bugger in a machine only a few months old, but that’s life. My last Dell developed a similar fault in the first couple of months them performed faultlessly (despite the battering it took) for the next four years until retirement.

With all this going on the day absolutely flew by. It was another beautifully sunny one but the biting wind I’d encountered on Sunday had hung around and even managed to inveigle its way down the side of the valley, so I was quite happy losing track of time in the office.

When I did venture out for the daily diet of park life and woodland walking Dawn and I combined it with a stroll to our local Tescos to pick up some supplies. It’s a far healthier way of going shopping than using the car and it kills two birds with one stone – you even get a bit of weight-bearing exercise thrown in by carrying all the bottles and tins back in rucsacs, making it a winner all round.

With having to rely on a less than reliable computer I knocked writing and picture scanning on the head. Instead I had a decluttering session in an effort to sort out some of those projects there’s never time for. I have three other old laptops cluttering up the place. My old one’s used to be handed on to Dawn for her personal use but work have provided her with some new kit so she no longer needs them. An old HP netbook that I used to travel with as a backup and a 12yr old Sony Vaio are now off for scrap, sans hard-drives which I’ve destroyed. I’ve kept the last machine (another, more recent Vaio) purely because it’s got a DVD player and I’d got piles of old pictures backed up on DVDs that I’d never had time copy and stick on hard-drives. Back in 2004-05 which is when they date from it was easy to use DVDs for storage. Picture files were smaller and portable hard drives were expensive but just a few years later with the price of hard-drives tumbling and reliability improving it made no sense to use DVDs. So whilst I’ve been doing other things this old laptop’s been whirring away on a filing cabinet, copying pictures – some of which I’ve not looked at for 10-15 years. Here’s an example. This was taken by a Spanish friend who was staying with is in North London back in October 2004. It shows me editing pictures at my desk. My, how many memories this brings back!

PA150179. Me at home in Inderwick. 19.10.2004

Despite the fact I’d gone digital 6 months before it’s clear how much clutter around me is due to taking slides. The rows of albums on the top shelf, the one in front of me, the blue boxes of slides above my head, the slide scanner, rows of undeveloped film and the lightbox. Oh, and all those DVD’s I’m just getting rid of now? Look to my right! As for my laptop – I can’t even remember that one now – although it’ll have been the first one I bought to go digital with, as the desktop setup could go nowhere.

Wanting a break from technology old and new I retreated to the garden bench for the sunset, when the view across the valley’s sublime. It’s made even better nowadays by the lack of traffic and the cars that used to use or road as a rat-run to escape the main roads nearby. I don’t miss them and It’ll be lovely if they never come back. Quite what permanent changes we may see to travel patterns (if any) is open to question, but I’d love to see any that mean we rely less on cars.

Our evening was spent with me deciding to do some cooking rather than just dig stuff out of the freezer so I tried a different cumin spiced chicken dish that I’d never cooked before. It was similar to a Korma in that it was creamy, but it had an underlying kick and extra nuttiness due to the cumin and chilis. Whilst I was busy in the kitchen Dawn had set up a ‘Zoom’ meeting with her parents in Huddersfield and her brother and his family down in Farnham so I dipped in and out of this as the cooking permitted. We had a very pleasant, domesticated and family-orientated evening before having an early night .

Tomorrow the Dell engineer arrives and my stress levels should decrease. Here’s hoping…

 

Lockdown. Day 27 (Sunday).

20 Monday Apr 2020

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I’m not going to be able to relate the full day’s antics as technology has begun to conspire against me right now – which in this situation is a bit of a bugger. The day started well enough, the weather has been stunning once more – if a little chillier than recently due to the increase in the wind. The amount of sunshine we’ve had recently has been wonderful. If anything has lifted the spirits it’s been the weather. How much more miserable would the whole lockdown experience have been if we’d had the days of persistent rain that we had at the beginning of the year? The ability to be able to get outdoors and top up the vitamin D levels has made a huge difference.

Despite it being a Sunday, our day started much like any other. I was up early to make the tea/coffee before leaving Dawn to doze in bed whilst I sloped off into my office to finish editing the latest bunch of scanned slides, then post my daily Twitter quiz. During the lockdown I’ve been posting a mystery picture of a station somewhere in the UK as a brain-teaser for people. It’s proved quite popular. Here was today’s. Can you work out where it is?

competition

Some are much harder than others. This isn’t the easiest as it only shows a detail of a station rather then  full building. In fact, it’s the platform canopies at York, on platform 4, outside the main station roof. One of my followers wasn’t fooled and got it right! The breadth of knowledge out there never ceases to amaze me. But maybe that’s because we’re all getting a little stir-crazy right now so many people are looking for an opportunity to exercise ‘the little grey cells’ as Hercule Poirot would have said. I enjoy setting these picture quizzes because I’m lucky enough to have thousands of my own pictures to use. I’ve always had an interest in railway architecture and the decades I’ve spent travelling have allowed me to build up a large collection of pictures to use.

As it was supposedly the day of rest I didn’t scan too many more slides as I needed to concentrate on other things othewise they’d never get done. There were household chores that needed to be done, although we’re still living off the batch-cooking that we’ve done and horded in our American style fridge-freezer. It saves us a lot of time during the week as we don’t have to think about cooking, but I must admit I do miss that experience sometime as I enjoy cooking and find it a pleasant diversion from everything else that’s going on arounds us.

Jobs done I headed out to get my daily steps in. There was not time to venture furthers so it was the bog-standard route though the woods along the prom and through the park. The only difference this time was the biting wind that greeted me when I hit the top of the hill! We live in a sheltered, sunny spot just down from the brow of the hill on the valley side, so we’re often unaware what’s going on above us. It’s only when we summit the hilltops and come into contract with the prevailing winds from the North which pass over us that the thought occurs “I may be a little underdressed for this”…

Back at home I retreated into the office to catch up with a few last bits, which is when the evening really turned to ratshit. Through a Facebook post I found that an old friend had just passed away after a long illness due to contracting Covid19.

John Farrow was the mastermind behind the railtour company UK Railtours. He’d originally set up Hertfordshire railtours which he ran successfully for very many years before selling the organisation. He’d also set up another railtour brand, the ‘Blue Pullman’ back in the mid 2000s. I’d first travelled with John’s tours back in the early 1990s and got to know him in later years through my photography work for magazines and the rail industry and I ended up working for him on several occaisions. We got to know each other and would meet up at various events or on his tours whilst I still lived in London. Of course, many of these social events would involve pubs, or imbibing various beverages. John was a passionate supporter of the railways and a mine of information. He was also a lovely man, and his passing will be mourned by a lot of people. His enthusiast railtours and dining trains brought a lot of pleasure to an awful lot of people. They were happy times and I’ve a lot of fond memories form those days. I’m digging through my archives to find some of the pictures as I realise very few of them made their way onto my new website. But here’s one gallery – a trip on John’s ‘Blue Pullman’ dining train back in 2006. RIP John, we’ll all get together to give you the send off you deserve when all this crap is over.

Whilst trying to delve through the archives to find pictures of John I noticed that my laptop wasn’t charging. It’s not the first time as the charger has been a bit skittish in the past. My new Dell machine charges through USB-C sockets. These are good in that I can swap ports to charge, meaning wires aren’t always in the way as the power lead can be moved from side to side, but they’re not exactly what you’d call ‘robust’. They’re much smaller than the original USB ports in order to allow modern laptops to lose some weight. Forget coming with a DVD player or any of that lardbutt technology from the 1990s – 2000s, these modern machines are as thin and lightweight as a book of Boris Johnson’s kept promises!

Despite my tinkering my laptop was losing the electrical will to live and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Quickly Googling the problem suggested the issue wasn’t unknown and it would probably require my machine having a new Motherboard. Oh, deep, deep joy! Just when the country is in lockdown! It being too late to contact Dell I had to let the machine bleed its last whilst hastily resurrecting my old Dell XPS laptop which was gathering dust on a shelf. Its still works, but it’s carrying far too many battle-scars after a four year life travelling the world. The battery’s shot, the screen’s starting to suffer fading and the body’s battered and fractured after dropping out of my camera bag on to too many hard Asian hotel room floors. I curse the day that Lowpro decided to make a camera bag where the laptop compartment zipped up on side – on the outside. Forget to zip it up properly and your laptop rapidly exited the side in freefall! But, it’ll do for now until I can get the new machine fixed – just don’t expect any old slides to be scanned these next few days as my focus is going to be elsewhere.

 

 

Lockdown. Day 25 (Friday).

18 Saturday Apr 2020

Posted by in Coronavirus, History, Lockdown, Musings, Railways

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The end of another working week, not that the concept means much nowadays! The pair of us kept occupied throughout the day in our respective offices, slaving away over different things, allowing the time to really whizz bye. If my work was different and I had nothing to do I might find the whole lockdown process difficult. As it is – it just allows me to concentrate on things I’ve been meaning to do for years without the distraction of travelling the country. I can’t think of the last time I spent so much time within a 2 mile radius of home! Although I’m here physically my mind’s ranging in both space and time as I’m researching an article on a railway in East London and scanning pictures from around the country taken 30 years ago. There’s plenty to see and do even within the four walls where I spend most of my time.

The fantastic weather we’ve been having seems to be on the turn right now. The temperatures plummeted and the wind’s sprung up. It’s a real contrast to yesterday when I had to break out the suntan lotion. Hopefully it’ll encourage the folk who’ve been tempted to break out of social isolation to retreat back into their homes. I know that it’s impossible to trust the statistics for the number of Coronavirus infections but the numbers for Calderdale are still remarkably low compared to neighbouring authorities. I’ve no idea why, but it does give a small shred of comfort to know that we’re *possibly* in one of the safer areas. It certainly encourages you to stay put anyway…

The news isn’t all bad. Today the FTSE 100 stock market had a bounce upwards by nearly 3% althought the volatilty of the markets could easily see that gain wiped out pretty quickly, especially as the virus news from the USA isn’t good. The projections from the states look like they’re going to rocket and Trump is a big part of the problem. Statesman? He’s a snake oil salesmen and a lot of people are going to lose their lives because of him. To see the religious right and the gun nuts out on the streets because their ‘freedoms’ are being limited is bizarre, but then that’s USA for you. This really is social Darwinism in action. Could it signal the turning point of populist politics? It’s far too early to tell…

Having slogged away all day I did make a converted effort to make up for it by getting my 12.5k steps in after sitting in front of a screen all day – even if it was by sticking to a well-trodden route by now. Spring has most certainly sprung and our local woods are bursting into leaf with the Bluebells following on behind. Hopefully we’ll have a lovely display to this year to help lift the mood. I do love woodlands and we’re very lucky to have so much of it on our doorstep – as well as all the creatures that inhabit it. Funnily enough, the one feathered friend I’ve not heard yet this year has been the Woodpeckers. Last year they were constant. It was like living next to roadworks and pneumatic drills!

Meanwhile, here’s a sample of the pictures I’ve been scanning. This isn’t the best quality as it was a crap day weather-wise but it’s the incidentals that matter.

0458. 31450. Crewe. 11.02.1990crop

This is a Class 31s being backed on to Crewe shed by the depot pilot in February 1990. At the time I’d have cursed the cars in front for not allowing me a clear shot. Now I love them for the fact they didn’t, because it’s the cars that capture the spirit of the age and date the picture! They’d have belonged to rail staff who worked at the depot. What I appreciate as I scan all these old pictures is the ones where its those incidentals that tell the story. It might be paraffin lamps, old parcels trolleys, staff uniforms or even passengers fashions. They all set the scene and make you appreciate what has changed in 30 years. As Joni Mitchell once sang in ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ – you don’t know what you’ve got ’till it’s gone…

 

StopHs2. The fat lady sings…

15 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Coronavirus, Hs2, Rail Investment, Railways

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This morning the Government announced that it has Given the HS2 rail project ‘Notice to Proceed’ which is the final hurdle the project had to clear before the main civil engineering work begins. It’s been clear this was going to happen since February when the Government announced it was going ahead with HS2 after studying the Oakervee Review but the announcement removes the last vestiges of doubt and allows the joint ventures tasked with building HS2 to get spades in the ground.

It’s also the final nail in the coffin for the anti Hs2 ‘campaign’ (a term I use loosely). They’d run out of steam and ideas years ago but recent events like Brexit and now the economic damage from the Coronavirus only made HS2 more likely. Why? It’s a shovel-ready project that has massive cross party support. The boost it can give the UKs crippled economy is obvious to anyone who puts economics before dogma. Why on earth would the Government not go ahead? To say the debate about HS2 is dead and buried would be an understatement but there’s still a few who want to try and pretend otherwise.  Of course, none of them can answer one simple question. It’s one they’ve ducked for years. How are you going to stop HS2? 

Cue tumbleweeds…

The anti HS2 ‘campaign’ has been on life support for years. It’s been hanging on, wheezing away through press releases and the occasional rent-a-quote interview from Joe Rukin but most of the Nimbys who were their backbone have sold out, moved on and given up. This has been evident in the gradual decline in the number of people agitating on social media, or signing petitions (more of which later). Let’s remember, they’ve not had a national public gathering since 2013 or demonstration since 2014. All their ‘national’ groups have collapsed of faded away, as has their action group network, which has had nothing to do since the Phase 1 bill got such a stonking majority in Parliament in 2014 – 6 years ago. It’s been a downhill trajectory for them ever since, including in every general election – and there’s been a few of them!

So what’s left? 

Well, Rukin’s still hanging around like a bad smell, mainly because he’s failed to find a proper job, despite years of looking. That said, StopHs2 haven’t been heard from since March 25th until today, when Rukin issued the sort of moan that’s been his trademark for several years now. Apparently, according to Uncle Joe, the Government is “shamelessly opportunistic” in deciding to give HS2 notice to proceed as “there is next to no scrutiny taking place” due to the covid-19 lockdown.

No ‘scrutiny’? He’s having a laugh! Apart from the fact every MP on the route is having their ears bent by their local Nimby population, Rukin seems to have forgotten his friends at Extinction Rebellion! These ‘eco-warriors’ have bombarded social media and anyone they can think of with hundreds of hours of tedious videos recorded on their smartphones as they ignore the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. Hs2 staff can’t even fart without some useless protestor catching it on video and screaming that it’s ‘ecocide’ or a ‘wildlife crime’ or that the workers are breaking the social distancing guidelines!  

Extinction Rebellion are now the frontrunners in the opposition to HS2 – which isn’t really saying much as they’ve been as spectacularly useless on the ground as StopHs2 have been on the political front and the likes of Chris Packham and his Solicitors, ‘Pay Day’ have been in the courts (Don’t you mean Leigh Day? Ed). XR arrived on the scene a while ago and have an impressive 100% failure rate, despite all their exaggerated claims. Having failed to stop any work at Harvil Rd near London or anywhere in the Chilterns they set up camp at Crackley Wood in Warwickshire just before the lockdown. 

Long on bluster and vapid rhetoric but short on numbers (there’s only a couple of dozen of them) they promised their social media voyeurs that they were going to ‘save’ the woods and stop HS2 in its tracks. Needless to say, they’ve done no such thing. Outnumbered and outwitted by the National Eviction Team and HS2 security staff time and time again they’ve become increasingly shrill as their bluster has been exposed (often by their own videos!). They managed to get less than a dozen people into trees in both Crackley and Broadwell woods. They lasted but a few days before NET officers had them down. What was funny was seeing one of the tree protesters boasting on social media about how the woods were ‘theirs’ the day before he was unceremoniously hauled down and arrested! He was arrogant enough to assume that the fact NET were biding their time before evicting them meant they’d won. So, NET:11 – Extinction Rebellion: 0! To add to their woes, those arrested are now having bail conditions set that mean they have to leave Warwickshire and go home. For some of them this is tears at bedtime stuff. It’s like a kid being grounded and screaming ‘it’s not fair!’. Welcome to the adult world, where your imaginary ‘people’s courts’ don’t set the rules, the real authorities do. 

Because of all this the ‘eco-warriors’ have become deflated very quickly. They’ve believed their own bluster and completely underestimated the sheer size of the HS2 project. This isn’t some little local bypass they’re trying to stop. This is the largest infrastructure project in Europe and the logistics behind it are gargantuan. You could see that realisation starting to sink in when contractors moved in to begin clearing a path through the edge of Crackley woods that HS2 will pass through. This wasn’t a few blokes with chainsaws, this was massive modern machinery that could clear a mature tree in a matter of minutes.

Of course, the other problem for the ‘eco-warriors’ is their inflated rhetoric. Many of them are hopelessly  out of touch with the real world. Their heads are full of conspiracy theories and mouths with diatribes about capitalism. Their lack of knowledge of how the real world (rather than the one they’ve invented for themselves) works is bizarre. They bandy the words ‘illegal’ and ‘crime’ around like they’re going out of fashion, without an iota of self-awareness or realisation that, actually – they don’t make the laws and saying that something is ‘illegal’ doesn’t actually make it true. The old expression about ‘barrack-room lawyers’ springs to mind.

At worst, these people can be a nuisance to the early stages of HS2 as clearance work continues. But my prediction is that they’ll soon get bored and wander off to whatever’s the next bee in their bonnet. After all, there’s enough new roads being built, but they seem to ignore them for some mysterious reason. Oh, there’s another thing. XR grossly exaggerate their support. The latest doomed stophs2 petition on the Government website has produced some very interesting results so far. To give you an idea, here’s a map of signatures of their 2017 petition which closed after 6 months with less than 30,000 signatures. Look how you can trace the route of HS2 – both phase 1 and 2 – and look how nothing registers in quantity anywhere else. 2017 petition

Here’s how the latest petition stands at 18:00 on the 16th April. Notice a difference? 

2020 petition for blog

On the first petition it was very evident where HS2 went due to the number of people living on the route signing the petition. Not just on phase 1 either. There was one noticeable spot in Yorkshire on phase 2 (Hemsworth). Now look at the difference. Phase 2 of HS2 doesn’t even feature and only a handful of constituencies on phase 1 turn darker than yellow. Instead (bizarrely) you have constituencies like Stroud, Ceredigion (Mid Wales) and St Ives featuring – all those well known ‘hotbeds’ of anti HS2 activism? So why on earth…?

Because of Extinction Rebellion, that’s why. This is a map that shows where they  obviously have active local groups. Well when I say ‘active’, let’s crunch some numbers. Here’s how many people in these areas have actually signed as of 16th April. 

hippies

Mmm – so, a bunch of old (and young) hippies living miles away from the route are going to stop HS2? I think not… These areas will ring bells with anyone who remembers the ‘glory’ days of the counterculture. Whilst there’s no doubt many of these people have a genuine concern for the environment, they’re also a ragbag of conflicting beliefs, not all of which are savoury, or ‘enlightened’. There’s the usual anti capitalists, more than a few conspiracy theorists (chemtrails being a favourite) and – sad to say – an undercurrent of racism.

Here’s a Facebook post from Terry Sandison who is at the Crackley Wood camp. He regularly bombards social media with videos, but this is the other stuff he doesn’t generally share on the anti HS2 groups – for obvious reasons…

Terry Sandison 

Sadly, this is not an isolated thing. Lizzie Williams, the founder of StopHs2 has gained herself a reputation for xenophobia and anti-Semitism following Tweets like this one from January 2018.

mad lizzy. Jan 2018

“My” country?  Or there’s this one from earlier this year…

lizzy racism

One thing the ‘greens’ have never noticed is just who they’re in bed with when it comes to opposing HS2. They’ve never asked themselves how on earth they can be on the same side as UKIP, the BNP, Britain First, the National Front and For Britain who all oppose HS2. Not to mention the likes of right-wing lobbyists the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Taxpayers Alliance. You’d think alarm bells would be going off all over the place, but no. The sad truth is there’s quite a few eco-fascists out there (Sorry Robin W, I know you hate me pointing that out). 

Oh, there’s another weapons-grade hypocrisy about the Extinction Rebellion people. They keep banging on and on about HS2 site workers, bailiffs and the Police not ‘social distancing’ – without the slightest understanding of what the rules actually are. How in God’s name is any member of the police expected to arrest someone at a distance of 2 metres? Or a security guard prevent someone intent on causing disruption trespassing? To any sane person it’s obvious nonsense but it doesn’t stop them banging on and on whilst claiming they’re goody two-shoes and practising ‘self isolation’. Really? Allow me to introduce you to Ross Monaghan. Ross was at the Crackley Wood camp where he utterly failed to stop HS2 but he did a very good job of posting hours and hours of rambling video to Facebook and elsewhere. As if by magic, he’s now appeared in Jones Hill wood near Gt Missenden, where he’s recorded his latest video.

Monahagn 2 This is 68 miles away from Crackley Woods! Essential travel? Socially isolating? What a bunch of hypocrites! There’s more. This was posted on one of their facebook pages the other week by someone who wanted to break the Covid lockdown to travel from East Anglia to join the Crackley camp. 

pallinder 2

Notice no-one, including Lizzy Williams, tries to discourage him? Exactly the opposite in fact. It’s just another example of the utter hypocrisy from these people when they talk about HS2 workers and Covid-19. These people try to claim the moral high ground but their actions betray that. They only call on the law when it suits them. 

Whichever way you cut it, the ‘campaign’ to stop HS2 has reached the end of the road. The grumbles may rumble on for a while and the ‘eco-warriors’ may make a nuisance of themselves for a bit, but that’s all. Now the main Civil Engineering contractors are mobilising and the project is entering the real construction phase. Now I’m looking forward to being able to focus more on the actual construction of HS2 rather than documenting the long history of failure of the campaign to Stop HS2! I’m sure the ‘eco-warriors’ will still feature occasionally whilst their daft antics continue, but the rest is history. We’ve taken a long time to get to this stage, but it’s finally here. The shovels are ready…