Today’s mixed bag…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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StopHs2: Shutting the stable door in Haddenham…

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Yesterday there was a local Council election in Haddenham and Stone, a ward on Aylesbury Vale council in Buckinghamshire. The seat had been held by a long-serving Conservative Cllr who had passed away at the age of 82. In yesterday’s election the seat was won by the Green Party’s David Lyons, a well known local Green party member who’d stood before, coming second in 2015. Here’s the result, thanks to the excellent Britain Elects website and Twitter feed

greens

So, with no UKIP or Independent candidates standing and the long-standing Cllr deceased, The Greens won the seat with an impressive 36.5% swing. Picking the bones out of this one would be interesting as it suggests a lot of voters have swapped allegiances for a whole host of reasons. Does anyone seriously believe UKIP voters decided to go Green en-masse?

Here’s a background on the constituency and the players from Britain Elects. It adds some valuable context.

Of course, Hs2 passes through the area and antis are falling over themselves to claim this is a backlash against the project. No doubt some of that is true – especially as preliminary construction work has started. This is no longer a project that was on the drawing-board. Now there’s visible evidence on the ground, which tends to concentrate a few more minds. However, it’s clear that Hs2 isn’t the only issue in the area, as some local Tweeters have pointed out. Housing is also a big issue with 500 new homes due to be built in the area.

halber

As is often the case in Council elections the party that won had put in a lot of effort on the ground and built up a following behind a local man. Add this the demise of a long-standing incumbent and some local issues like Housing and Hs2 and you can see why the Greens have managed to go from 2nd to 1st place. Was Brexit a factor as some people are claiming? Probably, but again, these are local elections which tend to reflect local issues, so you can’t read too much of the national picture into them and get a true image.

So, what does this mean for Hs2? Absolutely nothing.

For a start, these decisions are way above a local Councillors pay grade. Parliament, MPs and the Lords decide on these things, not Councils. This is the political equivalent of a flea trying to bite a rhinoceros. It’s also worth noting that the Council David’s been elected to will be abolished in 2022, so his shelf life isn’t long.

If those opposed to Hs2 had real political muscle they would have shown it long before this. 2010 would have been good, or in any of the local or national elections since. It never happened. Even if Hs2 was the primary consideration (locals suggest it isn’t), this is very much a case of someone shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted!

Update

I’ve done a bit of digging and found the actual numbers of votes cast, and the results from the May 2015 elections which is the last time the seat came up. You can draw your own conclusions…

haddenham

haddenham 2

Meanwhile, the Independent’s Europe Correspondent, Jon Stone (@joncstone on Twitter) has added this, detailing why some of the Nimbys in the area just might be upset with Hs2!

jon stone

Could we be faced with a delicious irony here? A Green party win because of a few disgruntled golfers? After all, golf courses aren’t exactly on top of the Green Party’s list of favourite things!

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

 

Rolling blog: London beckons…

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07:50

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

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

09:07.

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

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

09:25

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

09:47

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

10:13

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

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

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

14:45

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

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

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

15:31

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

18:11

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

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

20:49.

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

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

DG319757crop

21:47

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

23:55

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

Stop Hs2? Some people never learn!

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

duggan

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

petition

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

Southern railway nostalgia

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

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

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

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

Under the weather…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Somnambulant Sunday

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Today’s never really taken off for a whole host of reasons, one of which has been the weather. This time last week it was glorious, now it’s back to being cold, dismal and wet, with another storm (this one’s called ‘Freya’) on the way. We’d various chores planned and the hope was we’d get out for a walk afterwards, but the weather kyboshed that. Instead we sought refuge in our local pub for an hour and enjoyed a few laughs with some of the other locals. One (whom I won’t name) kept us all laughing with stories of his antics in his earlier years when he was still in the army (but on leave). Anyone who’s ever spent much time with ex-squaddies will have an inkling of what I mean! To say it’s not all ‘for Queen and country’ would be an understatement! For beer aficionado’s, here’s what was available at the Big 6 today.

Afterwards we drifted home and decided to have a relaxing afternoon that involved less activity and more care-free time. That said, Dawn’s been busy cooking and I’ve managed to get the slides I started scanning yesterday edited and on my Zenfolio website. You can find them via this link but here’s a taster. It’s another shot of London Kings Cross in 1996 in the very early days of privatisation, when the late, unlamented Railtrack was in charge of the network infrastructure.

06166. 43116. 14.00 to Aberdeen. Kings Cross.17.9.96.crop

Nowadays the station looks very different. Railtrack was abolished in 2002 and infrastructure became the remit of Network Rail. They spent several hundred million pounds on rebuilding the station, renewing the roof you see here and expanding facilities to the West. It’s a very different place now. Behind the clock (which has moved to the opposite side of the station) a new platform (0) has been installed where the old taxi rank once was. HSTs like this still visit, but they’ll begin to be replaced later this year by new Hitachi Azumas.

Now I’ve got the pictures scanned it’s time for a quiet night in front of the TV watching Netflix. We watch very little terrestrial TV nowadays as it’s mostly dozens of channels of rubbish.

Simple Saturday and a trip down memory lane.

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

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

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

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

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

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

06141. 56070. Warrington Bank Quay. 18.8.96.crop

Crunching the StopHs2 social media numbers. February 2019

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

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

Twitter stats

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

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

dead acc. 2013

dead anti acc. 2017

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

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

FB hs2

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

fb nutter

eu hs2

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

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

Bog-eyed!

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Having spent the past three days travelling I’ve had a day at home that’s left me bog-eyed because of the number of pictures I’ve had to edit and get onto my Zenfolio website. There’s now close to 200 new images which you can find if you follow this link to the recent section of the website where 16 different galleries have gained pictures.

To be honest, I couldn’t have asked for a better time to be stuck at home. The fantastic weather we’ve enjoyed for the past few days had morphed into more traditional weather. It’s been cold and cloudy with mist blocking off views of the valley since early morning. I didn’t leave the house until Dawn got back from work and we nipped out to our local for a bit of exercise and a beer. Now I’m back at home and editing a last few pictures in order to clear the decks for a busy day tomorrow which (hopefully) will involve blogging at greater length. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with one picture from yesterday which shows how our railways are changing. These Hitachi built Class 800 ‘Azuma’ trains for LNER are just some of the 7000 plus rail vehicles that have been ordered or delivered since 2014.

DG319533. 800103. Hitchin. 27.2.19crop

G’night!