09:15.
I’m having another crack at a day out with the camera and hoping for better weather than the miserable conditions I encountered yesterday. At the moment thinks are looking up. There’s clearing blue skies here in the Calder Valley although I’m not hanging around.
Right now I’m on a Northern service from Sowerby Bridge to Manchester, after which I’ll be heading to the West Midlands for the day. Let’s see how the day unfolds….
10:30.
The first leg into Manchester was a doddle. My train wasn’t busy so there was no problem finding a table bay to set up the laptop on – although the lack of power sockets on Northern’s Class 158 fleet can be a pain as you have to rely on laptop battery power. Many of the fleet (esp the ones cascaded from other operators) don’t have USB sockets either, so I always make sure my batteries are fully charge before leaving the house.
On arrival at Victoria I strolled across to Piccadilly. It can be a grim walk some days as the number of homeless seems to ebb and flow. Fourteen years of Tory (mis)rule and austerity have done the city and its population no favours at all.
Right now I’m leaving the city behind aboard on of Transport for Wales new CAF built Class 197s which is heading for Cardiff. This busy 2-car train will carry me as far as Crewe, my next stopping point.
17:00.
S’cuse the gap but I’ve been on the move all day with little time in between changes. From Crewe I headed down to an old haunt – Stafford. I spent many an overnight shift there in 2014-15 working for Network Rail on the Staffordshire Area Improvement Plan. This time my stop was just a few minutes. Long enough to change trains to head down to Wolverhampton where I changed once more before reaching my goal – Birmingham.
Unfortunately the weather didn’t live up to the forecast. Skies stayed grey and the temperature struggled to make it into double figures. Even so, I headed off on the cross-city line towards Lichfield, stopping off several times to take pictures en-route. I’ve not traversed the route for several years but changes are afoot as the old Hunslet built Class 323s are starting to be replaced by the new Alstom built Class 730s – a pair of which were out earning their keep, running between Lichfield and Bromsgrove. I’ll add some pictures later. Including shots from what’s the most interesting and historic station along the route at Sutton Coldfield.
There was another station that caught my eye. Wylde Green. It’s been adopted by a local station friends group who’re doing great work to make the pedestrian approaches a bee-friendly area.
Typically, just as it came time to head back the weather improved and the sun started to appear! Bugger! I reluctantly headed back into Birmingham New Street in time to get a few pictures in the Stygian gloom that constitutes platform level before catching the train I’m typing this on, a Cross-Country service heading to Leeds, then onwards to Glasgow.
17:36.
I’m glad I got to Sheffield ahead of time. The Cross-Country train I was going to catch is already 30 mins late at Birmingham!
23:00.
There’s plenty more stories I could add to this blog, but it’s late and I’m back at home trying to sort out stuff for my next trip tomorrow, which will see me travelling to Farnham via London. So, I’ll leave you with a couple of camera pictures from today – but expect another blog tomorrow…
I’ve a small favour to ask…
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