17th December picture of the day…

17 Friday Dec 2021

Posted by in Merseyside, Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, Railways, Travel

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This morning I woke up to the welcome news that Johnson’s Tories had been humiliated in the North Shropshire by-election, losing a seat they considered theirs as a right to hold to the Lib-Dems. It was a massive 34% swing that saw the previous Tory majority of 23,000 become a Lib-Dem one of nearly 6000. One can only hope that this is the start of a shift that will see UK voters reject the kakistocracy we’ve had in charge ever since Johnson was elected in 2019. But I’m not going to hold my breath…

As if to celebrate the news the weather decided to grace the Calder Valley with sunshine. Well, the tops of the valley anyway, the lower levels have been hidden in mist for most of the day! Undeterred I decided to have a day out and head West with the camera, escaping the confines of the office now my computer problems have been resolved. If only every problem was as easily solved by a phone call!

My day out saw me heading West to old haunts, in this case Wigan, Southport and Liverpool where the weather held and sunshine reigned. I needed some pictures of the ‘new’ Class 769s (former electric trains converted to bi-modes with the addition of a diesel engine) and also the brand-new Class 777s for Merseyrail which are being built by the Swiss company Stadler. For once my luck held and I managed to complete my quest. 769s were running services to Southport and when I arrived one of the new 777s was sitting in the station whilst the crew took a break. I had enough time to grab shots of it at the seaside resort before getting ahead of it to take pictures at Hall Road on the edge of Liverpool. Sadly, by that point the sun had been overwhelmed by cloud. Even so, I managed a reasonable shot of old and new together, which is today’s picture of the day.

On the left is a Class 508 unit which was built by BR at York between 1979-80. These units were built as 4-car trains for the former Southern region and operated out of London Waterloo for several years before being reduced to 3-car trains and sent North to Merseyside in 1984-85 to replace the Class 503 electric trains which had been built by the London Midland and Scottish railway in 1938. Now it’s their turn to be replaced by the Class 777s one of which is seen here on a test run from Southport to Sandhills in Liverpool. 52 of these new units are on order and will start entering into passenger service sometime in 2022. There’s around half a century of the evolution of train design captured in that picture. I remember the 507-508 taking over services on this line over 40 years ago. Barring medical miracles I don’t expect to be around in another 40-plus years to see what replaces the 777s! Still, never say never…

If you want to look back at the Merseyrail system over the years you can find pictures going back to the 1990s in two different galleries on my Zenfolio website. Images from 2003 to the present day can be found here. Shots taken when the franchise was run by Arriva (from 1997-2003) can be found here – and pictures from the British Rail era can be found in this gallery, but you’ll have to do a lot of searching!

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances appreciate all the help that we can get to aid us in bouncing back from lockdowns. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

16th December picture of the day…

16 Thursday Dec 2021

Posted by in Bali, Indonesia, Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Travel

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Panic over – my laptop’s been repaired. A Dell engineer phoned me from Ireland this morning and talked through the problem, after which we set up the machine so that Mohan could take remote control of it and run through a series of diagnostics that identified and fixed the issue (a software glitch with Windows 10). I’ve done this before but it’s still weird seeing your computer take on a life of its own as someone else controls it and you become a bystander. At least it was a bona-fide Dell engineer and not a hacker!

I can now breathe easy and spend time backing up all my pictures off the machine and filing them away as I’d been intending to. Whilst the process was going on I had a chat to Mohan who told me he’s been working from home for 2 years now. I guessed as I heard his Golden Retriever barking in the background! Of course, his is the ideal job to have for working from home. Let’s face it – if he can control my computer from Ireland he can control it from anywhere. That’s one of the things that people who claim we should all be working from home don’t quite understand. Mohan is a man of Indian descent living in Ireland, being paid an Irish salary, but he could be in India being paid an Indian salary, which would considerably reduce Dell’s overheads. WFH could potentially mean a migration of jobs away from the expensive Western nations with their rates of personal and corporation tax – and don’t think that very thought hasn’t occurred to some corporations, so be careful what you wish for when you call for people to WFH. This is not what Brexiters think of when they bluster about ‘Global Britain’, but it is the reality, not the theory. Building barriers isn’t very clever in this day and age.

Now I’ve a fully working laptop again I can concentrate on getting ready for Christmas and finish all the jobs I need to do before the festering season – which may be just that due to the increase in Covid infection rates. I certainly won’t be attending any large gatherings for the foreseeable future – especially indoor ones. I may be double-jabbed and boosted, but I’m thinking of others as much as myself. The people I feel for are those in the hospitality and travel trade, for whom this new variant couldn’t have come at a worse time – just as they were hoping the Xmas season would help boost depleted coffers. Only now they’ve got to face events without any government support. I’ll be doing what I can to give them support whilst still being careful.

Tech panic over I finally managed to get out for a walk today and get some exercise although that wasn’t without a surreal moment. Just as I left a large ‘Peppa Pig’ balloon appeared from the valley below and floated over the house before getting snagged in the trees beyond. I’m sure it’s a metaphor for something, although I’m not sure what! Maybe it’s an omen for the by-election which is being held in the Tory safe seat of North Shropshire today. As well as that Parliamentary seat there’s also 12 Council places up for grabs today. You can read all about them on the excellent ‘Britain Elects’ website as they analyse the make-up and history of each seat – and also provide the results via their Twitter feed at @BritainElects. It could be an interesting night…

Right, on to the picture of the day. This one’s yet another from the Indonesian slide collection but also quite simple. Whilst I was there in December 1994 the Lotus flowers were in full bloom. Almost everywhere we stayed had a water feature of some sort, from simple urns to huge ponds. This was one of them.

Taken on slide film with a 50mm prime lens, I’d love to go back and play around with similar shots now the technology at my disposal is rather more complex and flexible. If you want to see the rest of the Indonesian collection (which is still having new pictures added) you can find them by following this link.

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If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances appreciate all the help that we can get to aid us in bouncing back from lockdowns. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

Extinction Rebellion. ‘Tell the truth’ my arse…

16 Thursday Dec 2021

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Extinction Rebellion, Hs2

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Supposed ‘eco-warriors’ Extinction Rebellion have a simple slogan. It’s “tell the truth”. There’s only one slight problem with such a slogan. XR wouldn’t know what the truth is if it bit them! Far from telling the ‘truth’ they’ve got a long and nasty habit of making up stuff to feed to their gullible supporters, not all of whom are fooled. Here’s an example from Tuesday, when XR members in the North pulled yet another stupid stunt involving trains to/from Drax power station.

For a while now, @hs2rebellion and XR have been trying to claim that trees chopped down to build the new High Speed 2 (HS2) railway are being chipped and sent to Drax as biofuel. It’s cobblers of course, Drax use trains to move massive amounts of wood chippings from the ports of Liverpool, Immingham and Hull. These trains, weighing in at 2,400 tonnes each carry 1600 tonnes of biomass and operate nearly 30 services A DAY into Drax. The idea the power station needs or requires this to be supplanted by a few hundred tonnes of green woodchips moved by road from scattered sites across the route of HS2 is laughable, but that’s HS2Rebellion for you. The truth is what you make up.

Here’s what those biofuel trains look like. These are the services from Liverpool Docks to Drax which use very high capacity hopper wagons (wood-chip being light, but bulky). All biomass to Drax is moved in long trains of hopper wagons similar to this.

Now have a look at this nonsense and bluster from XR North via one of the useless anti HS2 protesters in Staffs who bills himself as ‘Run Away Jim’!

Their claims are a complete fiction for several reasons. 1. That’s not a biomass train. 2. That silly person didn’t stop anything as a few seconds into the video the train starts pulling away, leaving the bemused protester looking very stupid indeed as she delivers an intellectually incoherent ramble to camera. It’s an incredibly stupid stunt. Believe me, as someone who’s held the PTS (Personal Track Safety) qualification, I can tell you trackside near moving trains is a very dangerous place to be even if you’re fit, active and trained to be there. For a clueless elderly person it’s a potential death-trap. By encouraging such dumb actions XR are putting people’s lives at risk. Plus, it’s no fun (at all) for the railway staff and emergency services who might (literally) have to pick up the pieces. You can watch the whole, ridiculous video on the XR North Facebook page (link).

The comments on the XR FB page show that some people weren’t fooled and knew this wasn’t a biomass train. XR North doubled-down on the lie by pretending its a ‘local’ service bringing in woodchip – which is utter rubbish, because there aren’t any.

How do I know this? Easily. Can I prove it? Yes, of course.

What idiot protesters like XR don’t understand is that even freight trains operate to timetables and those timetables and details of the train types are available online. So, what was that train? Well, it’s very distinctive because of those ‘Interbulk’ container tanks atop flat wagons. It’s actually ash from Drax which only runs on a Tuesday and Thursday when it’s worked from/to sidings at South Milford North of Leeds before travelling down to Appleford near Oxford where the ash is disposed of. Here are the copies of the actual (real time) timetables for Tuesday. Now, I can’t tell which of the two trains this is, but one of the little revelations is neither the inbound or outbound working was delayed at all by that silly protester. Oh, another thing to note. Look at the weights of each train. It went into Drax empty and came out loaded – exactly the opposite of what a biomass train does!

The train was seven minutes late leaving Milford and seven minutes late arriving at Drax. Some ‘delay’.
The train was seventeen minutes late leaving Drax and clearly suffered no extra delays around Drax!

There you have it. Extinction Rebellion caught out lying and then when questioned they double-down on the lie. It’s time people started seeing these people for whom they really are – untrustworthy, dishonest and who couldn’t ‘tell the truth’ if their lives depended on it. Which (allegedly) they do…

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances appreciate all the help that we can get to aid us in bouncing back from lockdowns. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

15th December picture of the day…

15 Wednesday Dec 2021

Posted by in London, Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Railways

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You know it’s going to be one of those days when you start the day with an optimistic frame of mind and technology decides it has other plans for you. Today was one of those days. Having bounced out of bed, made coffee and sat in the office ready to start the day I booted up the laptop.

Only it didn’t. It absolutely refused to be woken from its slumber. The expression ‘Oh, sh*t’ was one of several that passed my lips as I realised my plans for the day were well and truly out of the window. Fortunately, I have an old machine gathering dust on a shelf so dug that out. But because it hadn’t been used since August last year it took me quite a while to get everything set up and (mostly) reconnected. You forget just how interlinked systems are nowadays so when passwords and other gubbins are updated, old machines don’t always ‘get it’. Finally, after a few hours of cursing and shouts of ‘I don’t believe’ it I was operational again. Ish. Apart from all the pictures and files I’d not had chance to copy of my main machine or back-up to the Cloud. I few emails to Dell later and a several missed phone calls and I’d arranged to get tech support in the morning that will hopefully coax my recalcitrant machine back to life (fingers crossed).

Needless to say, this ate up much of my day which was doubly-frustrating as the weather was gorgeous and the trips I had planned were canned, so all I could do was admire the view over the valley as I fought with various systems. Thankfully everything was up and running enough for me to be able to respond to a picture request from RAIL magazine without any more blood sweat and tears although I did rediscover another idiosyncrasy of laptops that I’d forgotten about. The wifi on my old Dell couldn’t blow the skin off a rice pudding! It doesn’t like working from the office as the signal is really weak and frequently drops out – not good when you’re sending hundreds of Mb of data, so most of my working day’s been spent sat on the bed as that room’s directly above the router! On the bright side, I was thankful that I’d worked over the weekend to get all the pictures from last weeks Community Rail Awards edited and sent out, otherwise my computer problems could have been ‘fun’ to say the least.

I’m being optimistic and hoping the the tech wizards at Dell can sort things out for me tomorrow and that the issues are software not hardware related. Frankly, I can do without the expense this close to Christmas and having had to have a camera rebuilt recently.

Sadly, all the new slides I’ve been scanning recently are sat on the other machine, so today’s picture is going to have to come from the archives. But what to choose? Oh, I know…

Here’s a change from the recent exotic travel shots I’ve been feeding you. Clapham Junction may be a lot of things but exotic isn’t a word that springs to mind. This unusual shot was taken on the 7th December this year. It’s a view of the station few people see because it’s taken from the apartment block where an old friend whom I was staying with has a flat.

The trains in the foreground are a pair of Southwestern Railway Class 707s which will soon be displaced and cascaded to Southeastern trains as (despite the fact they’re only a few years old) SWR have planned to replace them with an even newer fleet of 10 car Class 701s built by Bombardier in Derby. Only the 701s are very (very) late and riddled with faults which is causing more than a few headaches all round. So, this is a sight that will eventually pass into history.

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances appreciate all the help that we can get to aid us in bouncing back from lockdowns. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

14th December picture of the day…

14 Tuesday Dec 2021

Posted by in Bali, Indonesia, Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, Travel

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My usual apologies for the absence of blogs recently. This has been due to trying to clear the decks in the run-up to Christmas, the odd festivity – and the fact my diary keeps changing due to the uncertainties around Covid regulations and the reactions to them as people try and work out what to do – such as scrabbling around trying to find Lateral Flow Test kits after Johnson dropped his latest bombshell on the NHS without any prior warning. To be honest, we’re lucky on the flow test front. Whilst I was up at COP26 in Glasgow kits were being given out on Glasgow Central station so I picked up several boxes to bring home. Try getting them now. Dawn tried online only to be told there’s not one available for 30 miles! Quiet how people are meant to do a daily test when there’s no bloody test kits available is a mystery known only to Johnson. Anyone would think he’s making this up as he goes along. I mean, only a complete idiot would announce such a policy without checking that there’s sufficient stocks of test kits available, wouldn’t they? Oh, wait…

In response to the news I’m seeing a number of things being cancelled. Thursday’s annual Railway Carols service in London was cancelled at the end of last week and postponed until 2022. This week I’ve had a dental appointment cancelled with just 48 hours notice. I know of many other people who’re seeing Xmas meals and parties cancelled at short notice – just what the hospitality industry needs right now. Now, I understand the need to stay safe, I really do – but this is turning into yet another omnishambles and there’s a lot of very unhappy people faced with making tough choices who’re looking at what’s coming out about Johnson and Co’s behavior this time last year and thinking ‘you’re having a laugh!’. Actually, what many people are saying is far more expletive-driven but I’d get banned from a lot of social media for articulating it verbatim and with the passion it deserves. It will be interesting to see how all this anger may manifest itself in Thursday’s by-election in the Tory safe-seat of North Shropshire. Maybe some of us will be getting an early Christmas present.

Maybe the new Covid variant will do us all in the UK a favour by finally dropping the scales from some people’s eyes so that they finally appreciate just what a bunch of incompetents and shysters have in Government at the moment, but I won’t be holding my breath. Instead, I’ll be trying to make the most of the festive season and hope 2022 will be the year we finally see the back of all this crap.

OK, sorry for the political rant but some times I’ve got to do a spot of spleen-venting. I’ve tried to be a good boy recently, despite everything that’s going on (and don’t even get me started on the Brexit shambles otherwise we’ll be here all night), but sometimes needs must.

Right, back to cuddly, fluffy things like the picture of the day. Today’s is another in the series of old slides I’ve been scanning which were taken in Bali in January 1995.

These brightly painted outrigger fishing boats are pulled up on the beach at Padangbai on the Eastern end of Bali. Padangbai’s the port for ferries across to the island of Lombok further East. Between them you cross the Wallace line. This is a faunal boundary line drawn in 1859 by the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace and named by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley that separates the biogeographical realms of Asia and Wallacea, a transitional zone between Asia and Australia.

Behind the boats are a row of simple beachside restaurants where fresh fish straight from the boats would be sold freshly grilled or baked. You really can’t get much fresher than that!

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances appreciate all the help that we can get to aid us in bouncing back from lockdowns. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

12th December picture of the day…

12 Sunday Dec 2021

Posted by in Bali, Indonesia, Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Travel

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I’m off to a good start – I got the month right today! Yesterday, for some unfathomable reason, I managed to move us back a month in time until a friend (thanks Trevor Stone!) spotted the error and Tweeted ‘November’? Oh, the joys of getting older and trying to do too many things at once!

Today’s been a quiet day here at Bigland Towers. It’s the one day of the week where a lie-in is in order. Mind you, the fact the weather was dull and dark wasn’t exactly an encouragement to leap out of bed. When I did most of the day’s been spent catching up on work, making lists of all those things I should have done but haven’t – or cooking. The cooking bit meant that the pair of us did get out for a short walk, but only to a local supermarket to pick up the last few ingredients I needed to make tonight’s meal.

On our way home from the concert last night we decided to throw caution to the wind and get one of our rare ‘take-outs’ from an Indian cafe/restaurant we knew in Huddersfield. This was only our fourth during the whole of lockdown and beyond so you can et the idea of how rare a treat it is. We’d eaten there before so were looking forward to it. A combination of chicken Balti, Prawn Curry, Saag Aloo and a Garlic Naan set us back £30 which was a heck of a price increase over 2 years ago. Not only that, the quality was nowhere near as good as before. We were both disappointed but then we remembered why we rarely get take-outs. We can cook far better meals ourselves. So, to make up for the let-down I cooked a way superior (home-made) dish tonight that was far tastier and as cheap as chips in comparison – a Malaysian Yellow curry packed with chicken and vegetables which fed us both and left enough to add to our collection of home-cooked ready meals in the freezer.

This brings me (tenuously) on to my picture of the day. I’ve managed to scan a few more old slides from Indonesia, where the quality and cost of food is far superior to what we get in *dear* old Blighty. But then so much is grown locally – as this picture shows. Much as I love walking around the Pennies, there’s something rather special about wandering through the rice paddy fields of Bali…

I too this picture in January 1995 at Tirtagangga in Eastern Bali on a walk from the homestay in the fields where we were staying. The fields are kept irrigated by an amazing system of ducts and channels which allows water to cascade from the mountains to the sea. It’s said that the local ‘Banjars’ (village councils) always make sure that the farmer at the bottom of the system is put in charge of irrigation as it’s in their interest to ensure that water gets through!

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances appreciate all the help that we can get to aid us in bouncing back from lockdowns. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

11th December picture of the day…

11 Saturday Dec 2021

Posted by in Huddersfield, Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, West Yorkshire

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Apologies for the lack of blogging recently. This has been due to a busy work and social calendar. Yes, social! Despite the latest tightening of the Covid rules (rules that of course only apply to us little people, not to the people who make them) we managed to have a very successful Community Rail awards, then I joined a group of old friends in London for our first Christmas gathering since 2019. Today Dawn and I joined her mum to watch her dad perform in the Honley male voice choir who were taking part in a Christmas Carol service in the gorgeous Concert Hall at Huddersfield town hall. So it’s been a very sociable time. As usual we’ve both been taking lateral flow tests between events to ensure we’ve not contracted Covid and to keep ourselves and others safe. Fingers crossed, we’re still in the clear.

There’s still a couple of events in the calendar before we finally wind-down for the festive season but this next week I’ll mostly be based at home as I wrap up various projects and prepare for the end of the year. I can’t say I’m going to be sorry to see the back of 2021. We’d all hoped it was the one that would see us escape from the Covid restrictions, but that hasn’t exactly gone to plan has it?

Anyway, I’ve still a few blogs to complete and new ones to write before the end of the year but tonight I’m going to call it a day and leave you with a picture from today, taken at the carol concert earlier.

The choir appeared with the award-winning Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band, conducted by Steven Roberts and the young ladies of the Rastrick High School Chamber Choir, directed by Charles Rhodes. It was lovely to be back at such a wonderful location and be able to hear live music again. Something that both audience and performers had really missed. Oh, my father-in-law is 2nd from the left in the 3rd row down from the top.

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances appreciate all the help that we can get to aid us in bouncing back from lockdowns. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

The Community Rail Awards 2021…

09 Thursday Dec 2021

Posted by in Community rail, Photography

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I’ve been too busy to blog today as we’ve been preparing for tonight’s Community Rail awards at the Guildhall in Southampton. We should have been here last year but Covid put the mockers on the event so we postponed it for a year. Tonight’s event will be hosted by Jools Townsend, Chief Executive of Community Rail Network plus Mark Hopwood, MD of GWR and Claire Mann, MD of Southwestern Railway. As I’ll be busy throughout the event I’ll add pictures when I can to give you a flavour of the evenin – so stay tuned. We’re kicking off in 10 minutes (at 17:00) when the drinks reception begins – so stay tuned…

Rolling blog. Southampton cruise…

08 Wednesday Dec 2021

Posted by in Community rail, Community Rail Network, Photography, Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel

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10:00.

Well, I hope our trip’s a cruise! We’re currently aboard Northern’s 09:44 from Halifax to Manchester Victoria on the first leg of out trip. Despite yesterday’s storm the railways seem little affected, which is great news. OK, out trains a couple of minutes late due to slippery rails and low adhesion, but when the weather’s as wet and windy as it has been that’s hardly a surprise. One of my first tasks this morning (well, after making coffee, obviously!) was to peruse various website to check on real-time train performance. Suitably reassured I’m relaxed about the trip.

Having stopped at Hebden Bridge where we picked up another member of the CRN staff we’re now on our way West though a dank and dismal Calder valley. At least Hannah and Dawn have added some colour!

12:05.

Everything’s going to plan! Our journey across Manchester went without a hitch and we rendezvoused with the rest of the CRN advance party at Piccadilly. Now we’re settled in on a 4-Car Arriva Cross-Country Voyager for the long trip to Southampton, which wouldn’t be everyone’s cup of tea (4 hours 18 mins on a Voyager probably qualifies for an ‘Iron Man’ award!) but so far, the train’s relatively empty so we’ve room to spread out.

The weather’s improving as we head South too. The rain was hammering on the roof of Piccadilly but here in Stoke-on-Trent we’ve managed to encounter some sunshine and a smattering of blue-sky. Meanwhile, the CRN staff have turned the train into a mobile office, sorting out some last-minute changes to the awards.

Yep, I’m outnumbered by the fairer sex…

14:10.

Leaving Birmingham we called at International where a railhead treatment train was sitting between turns Seeing these vehicles working this late in the year seems unusual, but as some leaves are still clinging on to trees by their metaphorical fingernails it’s hardly surprising. It’s been a long autumn!

Right now we’re heading for Oxford in the best weather I’ve seen for days as we’ve blue skies spattered with high cloud rather then the wall to wall dullness that’s been the norm. Our train’s filled up but seats are still available and the atmosphere’s stress-free.

15:30.

And it was all going so well…!

After an amble along the Thames Valley to Reading as we were already 5 minutes late we ended up kicking our heels for quite some time as one of the train crew who was meant to be joining us was stuck elsewhere. Five minutes became ten, then twenty, then twenty five, then – finally, whoever we were waiting for turned up and we got away twenty six minutes late. But we’d lost our path, so we were nearly 30 down by the time we passed Southcote Junction. We’re now at the mercy of signallers regulating the service and slotting us in as they can…

17:00.

Made it! As I predicted, we lost more time en-route, finally arriving in Bournemouth 39 minutes late. Judging by the amount of young women hardly dressed for the season who were joining the train as we departed there’s a concert in Bournemouth tonight!

We’re currently relaxing at the hotel sorting our kit out whilst watching the latest political omnishambles unfold via the TV. The PM’s Press Spokesperson, Allegra Stratton has announced her resignation but I don’t that’s going to stop the awkward questions. Such as – which press members of the Lobby attended, because it’s painful to watch some sections of the media completely ignoring the story. The suspicion is that there was a lot of colluding going on here and a lot of people have questions to answer – including the Metropolitan police. Now we’re being told there’s going to be a Prime Ministerial announcement at 18:00 which is sounding like another attempt to say ‘look over there’. Meanwhile, we’ll be watching the announcement with a drink in hand, hoping Johnson’s not going to try and pull a stunt that could affect tomorrow’s awards…

Rolling blog. The return…

07 Tuesday Dec 2021

Posted by in London, Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel

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I enjoyed a very convivial night with an old friend in London last night. We didn’t bother going out. Instead we enjoyed a quiet evening in at his home overlooking Clapham Junction station, eating home-made chicken casserole and sharing a bottle of red wine whilst we swapped news and stories. This morning we were both up bright and early to shoot some local railway interest in the shape of railhead treatment trains (RHTTs) and a steam train which was working through on a special. Here’s the shots I took on the camera that I couldn’t post earlier.

GBRf electro-diesel 73141 leads the railhead treatment train into Clapham Junction. This is a circular working as 3W90, the from 04:35 Tonbridge West Yard.
‘Black 5’ No 44871 steams through Clapham Junction working 1Z56, the 08:46 London Victoria to Bristol Temple Meads special service.

Bidding adieu I stopped off at the station long enough to grab a few more pictures but as the weather was grey and miserable I didn’t hang around. Instead I did a mini-tour of London’s Major stations rather than sit on the underground. My first stop was Waterloo. As someone who lived i

n the capital for 25 years but who left a decade ago I’m fascinated by the way the city’s skyline has changed – and the mass of skyscrapers you pass on the railway through Vauxhall on the way into Waterloo is a supreme example of this. The area has changed out of all recognition, yet new developments are springing up all the time.

At Waterloo I swapped from South-Western to South-Eastern metals to head across to another place that’s nothing like when I was a Londoner – London Bridge station. Its £1bn makeover has turned it into a place you’d expect to find in Mainland Europe, not the UK. I didn’t tarry and caught a Thameslink service across the river to another station that’s been transformed – St Pancras International – although that redevelopment’s 14 years old now which seems hard to believe.

What hasn’t changed much was the streets of Somers town which I strolled through to reach Euston. There’s been some gentrification, but it sill has the feel of one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in Central London. One can only hope the redevelopment of Euston station that’s about to happen will deliver on its promise to make deliver positive change to the area.

I’ve now taken my leave of London on another Avanti Pendolino, this time bound for my birthplace. Liverpool. We’re already North of Rugby, but the weather remains just as gloomy as it was in London.

13:15.

I changed trains in Crewe as I was hoping to catch some of the new Welsh or West Midlands trains out on test but today wasn’t my lucky day as nothing was running. The weather was grim and I’d had a message from an Irish friend that he was in Manchester this afternoon so I didn’t hang around. As ‘luck’ would have it a Transport for Wales service to Manchester was running 35 mins late due to the weather and stuff being blown onto the line, so I caught that the 2-car 175 when it turned up.

Only to find out it was being cancelled at Wilmslow! Well, if it gets there! Right now it’s struggling to get through Sandbach in what’s known as ‘poor railhead conditions’ (greasy rails).

13:45.

My Wilmslow wait was a short one. No sooner had we arrived and unloaded that the Avanti Pendolino we’d held up came in on the adjacent platform and we were away again! The weather here’s crap. Wet and windy, so I can see why there’s some delays.

– Off one…
– and straight on to another that had been trapped behind us as we slipped and skidded to Wilmslow!…

Once at Manchester Piccadilly I decided discretion was the better part of valour as heavy rain and electronics don’t mix – and don’t another trip to the camera shop again, so I sought refuge in a nearby hostelry where I waited for Neil, my Irish friend to catch up with me off his train from Southport. Whilst I waited the clouds gradually cleared and the temperature dropped as a result which made for an attractive if chilly afternoon. Neil arrived in time for a swift pint before we went to catch the 15.29 To Scarborough, one of the few locomotive-hauled passenger services to cross the Pennines nowadays. Typical of today – the train was late coming off Longsight depot so we left Piccadilly 15 minutes late. Even so, it was a pleasant trip East as we had the front carriage to ourselves, an unheard of experience on Trans-Pennine Express before Covid struck and still unusual today. Our time together was brief as I bade Neil farewell at Huddersfield as Dawn was working at the CRN office in the old station water tower so the pair of us drove home together.

21:00.

It’s now the end of the day. The wind’s really beginning to gust and howl outside as the next storm’s reached us, but we’re out of harms way at home indoors preparing for tomorrow’s jaunt. The two of us meet up with other Community Rail colleagues in the morning to begin the trek by rail to Southampton in order to prepare for the Community Rail Awards on Thursday. I wonder how that trip will go? Will this new storm Barra make things awkward I wonder, as there’s already reports of flooding in Hampshire. We may be in for an interesting journey…

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