It’s a damp and dreary day as I depart God’s own country (other epithets are available) for Derby in order to meet up with a bunch of old railway friends to remember one of our number who’s passed away. Neil Howard was an old railwayman of the BR school. Founder of the Aspergers/Tourettes Railway Touring club and leading light of the Kosovo ‘train for life’*, the stories of his life are legendary (as well as libellous). We’re meeting to swap stories of some of our exploits together around the UK and Europe and toast his memory.
Here’s Neil (left) with another sadly departed railway legend, Ray (Matey) Towell.
Right now, I’m on my first leg of the trip aboard a train from Halifax to Leeds.
*The ‘train for life’ was a brilliantly madcap scheme that saw a group of UK railway staff and others take a train of humanitarian aid from the UK across Europe to Kosovo via the channel tunnel. Hauled by a pair of Class 20s, their adventures included being held to ransom and death threats.
11:30.
After a short stay at Leeds I caught a Lincoln bound service, which has just left Meadowhall en-route to Sheffield. The further South I get the wetter the weather is. Sheffield’s looking distinctly damp, which means my camera may not see much use just yet.
21:15.
Well, that was a blast! An afternoon in the ‘Akex’ full of remiscing and laughter. Many of the stories aren’t for publication. Folks travelled from far and wide to be there, but I’m glad I wasn’t one of them as the latest storm has shut parts of the network North of the border.
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Yes, I’m still alive! There’s little time for blogging at the moment as I have other things going on right now, one of which is having a clear-out of stuff I’ve accumulated over the last 50 plus years of my life. In short, half a century of stuff that I’ve been clinging onto and (in some cases) that I’d even forgotten I had. It’s been an interesting experience. Some of it (mostly – but not all – old railway memorabilia) has ended up on eBay. You can find it here. I’ll be adding more stuff over the next few days. There’s a selection of old button and pin badges and comics that may be of interest to collectors of such stuff. Here’s a sample of what’s to be added.
YES always used to tour around my birthday and seeing them at the Bingley Hall in Stafford was my present to myself. It was the first gig I ever went to on my own as a teenager. Fond memories!
As for the rest, it’s either gone to charity shops – or the bin!
I hope to get back to blogging again soon, we’ll see. In the meantime, here’s today’s picture. Well, yesterday’s really. This was the sunset over the Calder Valley.
I’ve a small favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
2024 has started the way 2023 ended. Wetly! Although to be fair the downpours have mostly been confined to this evening. As I type this I can hear the rain bouncing off the cobbles at the back of the cottage. Thankfully, I paid attention to the forecast and got out for a long walk around the area and into Halifax earlier this afternoon. Everywhere was so quiet it was reminiscent of the Covid lockdowns. Most shops and businesses had taken the day off, only a handful of pubs and a few fast food outlets were open. Trains were running and from what I could see were very busy but I’ve no idea where people were going to.
Dawn had popped over to see her parents in Huddersfield so I had the cottage to myself this evening. Having completed all my self-set New Year targets and not fancying an evening stuck in front of the TV I decided to dig out my slide scanner and make some headway with clearing the final backlog of old slides I’ve never got around to scanning. The project’s got stalled of late but I had an email from a chap who seen some of my pictures from my old days in London, working as a Housing Officer in Tower Hamlets. He was fascinated to discover pictures I’d taken of the demolition and rebuilding of the old Lefevre estate in Bow, and asked if I had any more. I had, they were in another album stuck in the queue, so this evening I’ve scanned a few dozen. It’s rather ironic, as I discovered that the first batch were taken almost 30 years ago, in September 1994! You can find them in this gallery on my Zenfolio website, but here’s a couple of samples.
Demolishing the disused multi-storey car park at the back of the Lefevre Estate. Part of this had been built on the site of the old North London Railway station of Old Ford. You can find pictures of it in this page of the ‘Disused stations’ website. The page also contains photos of what the area looks like now. Contractors have arrived to start demolishing ‘H block’ on the Lefevere estate, probably in September 1994. None of the blocks on the estate had names. Only letters.
I’ve a small favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
I’m writing this because no-one (apart from his close circle of friends) will know of John Russell-Brown – or JRB as we called him. I have to admit I’m no longer one of them as I haven’t seen JRB for many years, but all will become clear later.
Sadly, JRB died of cancer on the 3rd October, in London. Apparently, he’d been ill for several years but decided to refuse any more treatment.
I first met Jon when I was applying to live in the housing co-op in East London which became my home for a decade back in the 1980-90s. JRB was a friend of friends and when I got a flatshare there in 1986 we were allocated a flat just a few doors down the same balcony from JRB. The whole balcony became thick as thieves as we had a lot in common – beer (real beer) being one of them, although thinking back to those times my poison was real cider. Oh, there was food too. Jon lived on his own and could be quite a private person. He never married and in all the years I knew him he never had a partner. That was never a problem. Many of us didn’t – we just all gelled. It was very heady days. Then, Jon was a dispatch rider, often travelling daft distances on his motorcycle to deliver stuff. These were the days before the internet – or Amazon when you could make a living doing such things.
Jon could be quite imposing in his leathers. He was tall, well-built (but not fat) bearded with close cropped hair. He was also a gentle giant. He had a stammer, which I think he was quite conscious of but none of us ever mentioned, why would we? He was just a lovely bloke – and very knowledgeable about beer – and politics. We became good friends and part of a small group I nicknamed ‘The Corbin drinking crew’ – Corbin House being the name of block on Bromley High St we lived in.
Jon was also very well read. We used to have parties in his small flat which was filled with books and beer memorabilia. I remember he used to make his own houmous which contained so many cloves of garlic you wouldn’t have seen a vampire for miles!
Sadly, when Lynn and I moved to Crouch End in North London I lost touch with Jon – apart from when I attended the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) where I knew I’d catch up with Jon as he was a volunteer on the Foreign beer stand. Sadly, moving to Yorkshire (and Covid) prevented me being there for some time.
But I’ve never forgotten Jon, or those fabulous and special days living in Corbin House. God, we used to have fun. Travelling around London to different pubs, attending the Canterbury beer festival and many others – and simply having a great time.
I’ve hundreds of pictures from those days but right now this is the only one I can find that I’ve scanned. I’ll do better soon. Here’s JRB flying kites with the rest of us on (I think) Blackheath in May 1995. I know I have better pictures. I’ll find one soon.
Jon may have gone – before his time too – but he’ll always live on in my memory, and that of all those of us who knew him. Sleep well, gentle giant. See you on the other side…
*This is another blog that will be fleshed out with more and more pictures as I have the time. When it’s completed, this message will disappear*
When I was passing through Peterborough station last month I realised I’d been visiting and taking picture’s around the station for over 30 years, making it ideal for a memory lane blog. In that time the stations changed tremendously, both in terms of trains seen passing through as well as physically, with the expansion and rebuilding of the station itself
So, here’s the start of my memories, with images taken back in BR days, in 1990.
It’s the 12th March 1990 and the pride and joy of Stratford depot in East London 47007 is heading South from New England sidings with empty 4-wheel tank wagons used on the Fletton flyash trains. The loco was named after the depot (at the depot) in November 15th 1986. It remained in service until October 1991 when it was finally withdrawn. It was scrapped at Booth Roe in Rotherham in February 1994. On the 8th June 1990 Class 08 number 08528 shunts Civil Engineers wagons outside Crescent Rd wagon repair shops which can be seen to the right of the loco. Peterborough was home to several of these shunting engines for use in the yards around the station. The wagon works closed many years ago but it’s grade 2 listed as it’s believed to be the only surviving timber wagon workshop in Britain – albeit the wooden frame is hidden behind asbestos cladding!
There used to be extensive freight sidings at Peterborough, including an old hump shunting yard called New England which was to the North-East of the station. The sidings still survive to this day but they’re mostly disused and overgrown as the days of hump-shunting and wagon-load traffic are long gone. At the far end of the sidings used to stand a lone signal box. It was already dilapidated and abandoned when I took this picture of it on the 12th March 1990. Its full name was “New England East Shunting Cabin A”. It disappeared a few years later. I always thought this would have made a good cabin for a preserved railway somewhere.
Now let’s move forward to 1996…
It’s the 19th September 1996 and a row of Class 31s sit in the loco sidings at the North End of the station. These locos would be stabled here most of the week until they were required for engineers trains at the weekend. As a consequence, they suffered from appalling reliability! This shot was taken on the same day in 1996 as the previous shot. Peterborough has a small, one-road locomotive depot which was used for fuelling and inspections, the shed provided at least some protection from the elements but little in the way of facilities. The locomotive in the foreground was already withdrawn and dumped at the depot to provide a source of spares to keep other Class 31s running. Such engines were known as ‘Christmas Trees’. A slightly different angle to the last pictures shows 37885. 37057. 37054. 37220 and 08529 stabled by the shed. 37885 was running in grey undercoat prior to having the new privatised EWS red and gold livery applied that’s carried by two of its sisters.
Also taken on the 19th September 1996 was this image of one of the single-car Class 153 units that used to work along the GN/GE joint line from Peterborough to Doncaster via Sleaford and Lincoln. If I remember correctly this ran every two hours. It was certainly a Cinderella service. Nowadays the route’s benefitted from a massive £270m investment (see this blog) plus the recent opening of the Werrington dive-under to turn it into a vital freight artery. Even the passenger service has been extended with the 153s being replaced by 2-car trains.
Let’s take another leap. This time to 2002.
Here’s power car 3311 leading a ‘North of London’ Eurostar set that was on hire to GNER to operate their ‘White Rose’ service between London Kings Cross and York. These sets had originally been built to operate through services from Europe to the North of England, but the services were cancelled and never ran. GNER was suffering from a stock shortage so in 2000 they hired in 2 of the sixteen car sets, some of which then had GNER livery applied. In 2002 They added a third train which ran from Kings Cross to Leeds. The leases expired in December 2005 when the sets were handed back to Eurostar and the trains disappeared from the East Coast Main Line.
Here’s 325012 calling at Peterborough with 1S04, the 16.01 London – Edinburgh mail on the 23rd May 2002. The city had always been an important hub for Royal Mail trains, hence the bridge just above the train which was used to take mail across to the large RM depot out of shot to the left of the picture. Sadly (and bizarrely), Royal Mail opted out of using rail the following year, although a change of heart in 2004 saw these trains return, but only to the West Coast. It was only in June 2013 that one service a day ran on the East Coast again, but by that time the Royal Mail facilities at Peterborough had contracted and sights like this became history. Now the London – Newcastle mail and return working both fly through the station just after midnight without stopping.
I’ve many more pictures to add, which I’ll do as time permits…
Today finds me in a reflective mood due to a number of recent events. Partly it’s the come-down from the buzz and excitement of the past couple of weeks being up in Glasgow for COP26. That was such an amazing time with so much going on that it’s unsurprising the rush wearing off is having an effect. Even so, I was actually looking forward to coming home, but things haven’t quite gone the way I was hoping.
Part of that is due to hearing about the sudden deaths of two people. One of whom was an old friend. The other was someone I’d never met in the flesh but whom I’d spent years sharing social media with. I found out yesterday that a chap called Russell Saxton had died unexpectedly. Russell and I had been sparring partners (99% of the time on the same side) on social media for 15 or more years. We had a lot in common (politics, music, railways etc) but had never actually got around to meeting. Oh, we’d planned it. But other things always got in the way. But then you often think ‘there’s always next time’. Until there isn’t…
The other death was that of someone I’ve known for far longer. I first met Axel Honslaar in India back in the mid 1990s. Lynn had met him and his partner Lucie Walta in Goa, India when she was out there without me (on a work trip). Afterwards Lynn decided to have a couple of week’s holiday and pitched up in Arambol, Goa – a place I’d first introduced her to in 1993. Axel and Lucie had cycled all the way from the Netherlands to India and fell in love with Arambol. So much so they decided to stay and set up their own little business selling Dutch apple pies to the travellers and restaurants that lined the beach. They called their business ‘Double Dutch’. I met the pair of them when Lynn and I returned a year or two later. The four of us instantly hit it off. Axel and Lucie’s business really took off too. So much so that they ended up opening their own cafe, employing several local women which was a first as working in Chai shops and restaurants was a male preserve. The pair of them were philanthropists, not just employers, they did a tremendous amount of charity work (in fact Lucie still does). Off season they’d go to Nepal, where they started a small charity in the village of Barpak in Gorkha district. In 1998 Lynn and I joined them on one of the Nepal treks they used to organise to raise money for the charity. It was a fabulous 10 days trekking away from the usual tourist trails.
When Lynn and I visited them in Arambol we’d end up sitting with the pair of them, chatting and drinking – including Axel’s favourite local tipple – Old Monk rum. They were lovely times, but times change. Lynn and I last visited Goa in 2003, then we split up in 2010. Axel and Lucie also split up. Lucie stayed in Goa, maintaining the business and charity work, whilst Axel eventually returned to the Netherlands, but we all stayed in touch via Facebook, although that platform being what it is – you didn’t always get to see what each other were doing. Axel and I would swap messages and I’d always thought that – one day – when I was over in Holland I’d look him up and we’d swap tales over a few beers. So, you can imagine my shock when I saw Lucie post earlier this week that Axel had died. It was a beautiful message as – despite the fact they’d split many years ago, there was obviously still love and affection there.
The four of us had such happy times together back in the 90s and ‘noughties’. But now 50% of us are gone. Time waits for no man (or woman) but that universal truth doesn’t make those losses any easier. I can’t help but reflect on those amazing times and realise just how much I miss the experiences we all shared. Those were special times. Now I’m left with memories and the increasing feeling of ‘Carpe Diem’ as I’m not getting any younger…
So, today’s picture of the day is a reminder of dear Axel – and Lucie. I took this picture in December 1997 at the house they were renting in Arambol. It was a typical night at their place with lots of people, music and alcohol! Happy days…
Sleep easy Axel. See you on the other side…
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/
Today’s been a curate’s egg sort of day. I won’t dwell on the bad parts but the good ones are that I’ve managed to arrange some more jobs, sift yet more emails and paperwork, get my daily exercise in – and book tickets to see Paloma Faith for when she appears at the Piece Hall in Halifax next year. Oh, I’ve also managed to scan another bunch of old slides, this time from the 1990s, which has made me rather introspective as they’re of old friends and family that I’ve lost in the intervening years.
Some of the work I’ve been arranging is around the forthcoming COP26 conference and series of events in Glasgow in November. The importance of this major Climate Change conference can’t really be overstated, but looking at the record of our Government I can’t help but wonder if they’re taking hosting the event any more seriously than anything else they do. You know, like actually running the country for the benefit of the people who inhabit it, rather then the folk who donate money to the Tory party?
The signs aren’t good. Here’s why,
You’d think that decarbonising our transport infrastructure (the biggest single source of UK Co2 emissions) might be seen as a bit of a flagship policy and something to boast about at COP26? But then this happens – a story broken by an old friend on the International Railway Journal.
Yep, UK freight operators have been forced to revert back to diesel traction because of the rocketing cost of electricity! I’ll revisit this story in the next few days.
Meanwhile, here’s the picture of the day, which is rather a personal one. The tranche of slides I’ve been scanning include some of the one and only time my mum came down to visit me in London. After much persuasion Lynn and I managed to get her on a train to come and stay with us in the East End – an area she was fascinated with because of her Civil Service experiences in World War 2. One of her jobs was re-issuing ID cards to people who’d been bombed out of their homes. I remember her telling me that she knew exactly which cities and areas had been attacked because of the stream of applications they dealt with – even if it was never mentioned on the BBC due to wartime censorship.
So, here’s Mum looking comfortable in the ‘Sun in Splendor’ pub on the Portobello road on the 21st May 1994.
Mum loved markets and a bargain so she was fascinated by the stalls and butchers in the Portobello Rd and elsewhere in London. A trait I’ve obviously inherited…
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/
*warning, blog under construction. This is going to take a couple of days to complete and it’ll undergo a couple of incarnations as I revise it to add more thoughts of a tumultuous year. After all, it’s a slice of history…*
When we started this lockdown malarky 12 months ago how many of us would have thought we’d still be at it 12 months later and who would have thought so many people would have died, or that our lives would have changed (possibly permanently) in the many ways they have? No me for a start, but then neither did our incompetent Government. Anyone remember how long it took Johnson to agree to a lockdown in the first place? Many of us could see that it had to happen just by looking at the infection rates and what was going on in the rest of the world. The financial markets had already crashed, which made pretty grim reading for people like me with investments but no salary. The world was starting to turn in on itself. It was an anxious time.
I managed to squeeze a couple of jobs in just before the country shut up shop. These made me realise how unprepared we really were for what was happening. The first job was back in London where hardly anyone but Asian tourists and a few cautious people wore masks whilst folk ate drank and made merry as if nothing much was happening. I travelled on a lot of trains across London that day and outwardly everything looked normal, as this picture of one of the new London Overground trains in Hackney, East London shows.
The next day, on the 12th March I travelled from Halifax to Birmingham for a press visit to the High Speed 2 railway construction site at Curzon St, where HS2 were keen to show us the remains of the London and Birmingham railway steam locomotive roundhouse. I wrote about the day on a rolling blog. The train from Manchester to Birmingham (which was double its normal size) was absolutely heaving with people heading down to the Cheltenham Gold cup horseraces. 10s of 1000s of people from all the UK and elsewhere, converging to mingle during a pandemic when other countries were already in lockdown seemed like madness – which it was. I was actually glad to get home that day.
My final trip out was on the 20th (the day restaurants and pubs were told to close) when I travelled to Leeds and Manchester to get magazine pictures, showing the effect Covid restrictions were already having on the railways as travel began to close down with people staying at home in the face of an announcement to avoid non-essential travel made on the 16th. Three days later, a year ago today, Johnson announced full lockdown and that was that. Despite the fact that as an accredited Journalist I was allowed to travel to cover stories I was more concerned about protecting me and mine, so I heeded to call like everyone else. After all, weren’t we assured that this would only be for a few weeks? Besides, I’d plenty to keep me occupied at home…
That first lockdown felt weird. Planes disappeared from the skies, most cars vanished off the roads and only the trains and buses kept running to get key workers to their jobs. Thankfully we had glorious weather so I could sit outside in the front garden and enjoy the slightly surreal quietness that was only disturbed by cacophonous birdsong as the creatures celebrated the arrival of the nesting season. Once a week we ventured out to Huddersfield to get the shopping for Dawn’s elderly parents which we’d leave on their doorstop before letting them know it was there.
Social activities transferred to the internet and we all learned a new meaning for a old word: Zoom. The Friday quiz that a group of us used to meet up for in our local pub transferred online as it was the only way we got to interact with each other. We’d planned a trip to Berlin in June but that was cancelled along with all the other events. A ‘social calender’ became an anachronism.
But, it wasn’t all bad. Dawn was still working full time (just from home) and wasn’t furloughed. I managed to manage with a bit of help from schemes and whilst the photographic work dried up I had my writing skills to fall bak on, penning several articles for RAIL magazine. I lot of railway memorabilia ended up on eBay, which also helped. Meanwhile, I got stuck into tackling the massive project to scan 30 years of old railway, social issues and travel slides – a mammoth task which is almost coming to an end. We both got into a routine and thanked our lucky stars that we were OK and could come through this.
Stories in the media highlighting the growing death toll made is realise how fortunate we were. Some of the stories were really heartbreaking. Then friends began to contract Covid (and thankfully survive) or die of other causes. That was one of the hardest bits – not being able to meet up and say goodbye to old friends. I did attend one small (socially-distanced) funeral but that was in August when ‘lockdown 1’ rules had begun to be relaxed. When all this come to an end there’s going to be one big wake we get together to toast the memories of and swap stories about the friends who’ve gone…
Over the summer the Covid numbers dropped and the Government relaxed the rules, just as they’d imposed them too late, they relaxed them too early. In the interregnum, I managed to complete a week travelling around the railway network for RAIL magazine. It’s a biannual trip I’ve been writing for them ever since 2004, but 2020 was exceptional because passenger numbers where a shadow of their former selves. Even so, it was a fascinating trip to be able to cover so much of the country at a unique time and see how the rules worked (or in some cases, didn’t work) in England, Scotland and Wales – all of which had their own standards. Sadly, the relaxations weren’t to last. Local lockdowns began to occur again across England, with Liverpool going into the first new lockdown of a city in mid October. It became clear the Government was losing the plot as the ‘plan’ seemed to change depending on which Government minister was being interviewed before Johnson countermanded them.
Well, Christmas is almost upon us – and for millions more UK residents, Tier 4 will follow! I’m sticking to my pledge not to get into any spleen-venting over the festive season, but I’m sure there’s going to have to be a cathartic moment before all the joys the New Year brings. Maybe I should have bought a ‘smiley’ mask that I could have worn at the right times!
Anyway, we’re determined to enjoy the festive (or should that be festering) season, starting tomorrow – so you may find there’s another gap in my blogging. Just in case, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – and, let’s face it – it’s been one hell of a one!
But seriously, I hope you all find the chance for relaxation and enjoyment – even if you can’t spend time with family and friends because of the current restrictions. My heart goes out to all those people who’re feeling isolated because of the present situation. Please believe me when I say there are many people who’re thinking about you.
So, what should I choose as the picture of the day? How about this one?
Back in 2001 I was privileged to spend Christmas with friends in Denmark who had a large family. It was a riot in all the best ways. Here’s the tree…
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 need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Sorry for the lack of a blog yesterday. That was because last night was spent at the online Community Rail Awards – which was a brilliant event! Yes, it was sad not to be able to see people in the flesh, but the platform used by Community Rail Network to deliver the event had a lot of features that allowed interactions beyond just watching the ceremony so it was the nearest best thing. If you missed it and want to see the fantastic work done by community rail volunteers you can find the awards here on YouTube. Enjoy!
Now the awards are over today’s been spent playing catch-up on the slide scanning front. Only now I’ve started scanning my old world railway slides in tandem with the travel stuff that I’ve been doing these past few weeks. Today I’ve added another 60 old slides that I took in India in 1991 when steam locomotives were in everyday service. Many of the pictures have never seen the light of day before as I never got around to scanning them in the past. It’s been a real trip down memory lane for me as – despite the fact they’re almost 30 years old – as soon as I saw them it seemed like yesterday, but my – how the world’s changed since then! So here’s the picture of the day, which I took just a few days after my 32nd birthday, in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India…
A metre-gauge Class YP 4-6-2 ‘Pacific’ No 2000 comes off a train and passes one of the many semaphore signal gantries that guarded the station at the time. This scene’s changed out of all recognition in the 21st century, so I consider myself fortunate to have seen it like this. I remember UK railways in the age of steam, but I was too young to get out and about to appreciate those days. Experiencing the end of Indian steam was the nearest I got and it gave me an inkling of what it must have been like. In those days India had a massive metre-gauge network that covered almost the entire country. Now in 2020 most of it has been converted to broad-gauge and electrified. You wouldn’t recognise Jaipur station now.
Over the next week I’ll be adding more – including steam shed depot visits at Delhi, Jaipur and Jodhpur. I’ll also be adding more travel pictures from Australia, so it’s not all about railways.
If you want to see more of the Indian railway scans, follow this link.
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 need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Paul Bigland 