It’s been a quiet start to the week here in Bigland Towers as the pair of us have been slaving over hot computers, ploughing through work that needs to be done. It was a shame as the weather was far better than was forecast. I could have been out with the camera working on another project I need to complete – but ho hum. What matters is that things are getting done as I need to clear the decks (and my desk) before Friday. To that end, scanning old slides is having to take a backseat once more, despite the fact I’ve only a handful of pages left to scan in the present album in the queue. Writing for money has to take precedence!
That means tonight’s pictures are last trip down memory lane for a little while, but I think it’s a good one…
Today’s pictures were taken in East London way back in 1993. This anonymous house, the last survivor of its terrace was number 193 Grove Road. The chap who resided there was a retired docker named Sydney Gale who’d lived in the property since 1939 and he wasn’t happy with the council, who were rehousing him in order to demolish the property to incorporate the land into a new park – hence the protest placard across the top windows. I was developing an interest in the changing face of the East End, housing issues and photography, and so one day in April I stopped to document the house. Little did I know just how famous, or contentious, the building was to become….
When Sydney finally departed a temporary lease was granted by the council so that a little-known artist could turn it into a temporary, full-sized sculpture. The artist was called Rachael Whiteread…
Whiteread made a full-sized cast of the inside of all three levels of the the property using thin, reinforced concrete, then tore down the original building to leave the cast of the interior still standing. ‘House’ as the sculpture was simply titled was unveiled to the public in October 1993 and generated a huge amount of publicity, both positive and negative. It was loved and loathed in equal measure. I stopped by one foggy morning in November to take these pictures. The fog seemed to make the building even more poignant.
‘House’ was always intended to be temporary, but there was a petition started to save it and even a motion in the House of Commons, but a prominent local Councillor hated it. ‘House’ won Whiteread the Turner prize on the 23rd November 1993. The very same day the council voted to demolish it. It was flattened in January 1994 and no trace of it remains. You can read more about ‘House’ here.
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/
The pair of us have had rather a lazy day today, indulging ourselves for once by not watching the clock or setting ourselves targets to let the day unravel at its own speed. Having served coffee and breakfast I still managed to be productive workwise by wading through a morass of picture editing and paperwork before lunchtime. Oh, the joys of freelance life!
The weather here in the Calder Valley remains mild and mostly dry, so we also managed to get out for a late afternoon constitutional, walking through our local woods where the trees have attained their panoply of autumn colours to look stunning. Heading downhill to the valley bottom we joined the canal for an easy stroll into Sowerby Bridge and a short interlude in Williams Bar where we enjoyed a quiet drink away from the masses. Well, what passes for ‘masses’ in Sowerby Bridge on a Sunday in October! I indulged in a pint of Arizona from our late friend Tony’s Phoenix brewery whilst Dawn pushed the boat out with a diet Coke!
The steep walk back uphill is always a little harder after adding some extra liquid ballast but we’re used to that. Now we’re home Dawn’s busied herself in the kitchen whilst I’m ensconced in the office looking at hotel options for my forthcoming trip to Scotland. I know what place that I won’t be staying! I stumbled across this ‘gem’ during my research. Clearly, some people are ‘extracting the urine’ when it comes to charging for accommodation thanks to the forthcoming COP26 conference!
I’ll leave you with a picture of the day which is far removed from Scotland or Yorkshire. I took it in Watchbell St, Rye, East Sussex earlier this week. I love this style of building, but I’d hate to think how much they cost to maintain. We live in a stone-built cottage that dates from the 1850s and that’s bad enough…
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/
The pair of us are having a local but active day here at Bigland Towers. Dawn’s been busy baking, experimenting with some cake and cookie recipies whilst I’ve been occupied in the office. I had a phone call on Friday afternoon that’s completely changed my plans for next week as it involves some commissions and COP26 so trips to Scotland beckon. Meanwhile, I’ve some articles to pen before I do, which means the week ahead’s going to be hectic.
As if that wasn’t enough, I’ve been trying to keep up the momentum on scanning old slides, which leads to today’s little picture story.
The latest batch of slides were taken in 1994 when I was working as a Housing Officer in Bow, East London. Having left my previous housing job in nearby Poplar (where I lived) to spend a year travelling solo in SE Asia I applied for a job with Bow neighbourhood, was accepted and offered a position as Housing Officer on the Lefevre Estate. The name sounded far better than the reality. The Estate consisted of a series of brutalist 1970s deck access maisonettes linked together by walkways. Our office, located on the estate, wasn’t much better. Even so, I really enjoyed working there. When I accepted the job I’d been told that the estate was due to be transferred to a new Government quango called a Housing Action Trust (HAT), one of only 5 in the country. This would manage the complete redevelopment of the estate and 2 others adjacent. I had the option of staying with the council and being transferred to another housing job on another estate or being TUPE’d across to the HAT when it was established. Being adventurous and liking what the embryonic HAT Management team told me about what to expect and the opportunities to broaden my skills that would be on offer, I decided to sign up.
This meant that I stayed on the HAT estates for the rest of my housing career. A decision I never regretted although I’d no idea at that time what my future career looked like. I could write a book about those times, but that’s not the purpose of this blog. Instead, I’m going to talk about something else – one of the railways of that part of the East End and the changing face of London.
Our office on Lefevre Walk backed onto what had been a scrapyard, but before that it had been a railway. The North London Railway. It had been a Southerly branch from what’s still the North London Line (now the Overground) running through Old Ford, Poplar and Bow down to the London docks. I moved to East London in 1986 so never knew this line when it was open as it had closed a couple of years before. In those last days it had been a freight only line although I could still see the remains of some of the old stations like Bow Rd which had all closed in 1944 due to enemy action.
Sadly, I never researched the route by getting any books on the NLR. Nowadays it’s so easy just to look stuff up on the internet, but not in 1994. So, whilst I knew that the old scrapyard outside my office window (known as Yallop’s Yard) had been an old railway goods yard I never knew at the time there’d been an old railway station on part of the site. In some ways that’s not too surprising. The area looked completely different as in the 1970s an urban motorway (the A102M) had cut a swathe through the old factories and homes in the Lea Valley. Here’s some of the pictures I took in 1994, then I’ll link to something that shows you how it used to look even earlier. To say you wouldn’t recognise it now is an understatement. I don’t recognise the 1950s photos. Today, if you visited the area, you wouldn’t recognise it from my 1994 pictures either!
The Lefevre walk estate in April 1994 with my old office in the centre. The old railway yard is behind with the A102M beyond. After that is the canal with the London Borough of Newham beyond. When the estate was built no-one even tried to give the blocks pretty names, they just had letters. So some people lived in H Block. Nice! Sadly, time has dimmed the memory, so I can’t remember which blocks you can see here. Everything you see is gone now – apart from the urban motorway! The area to the right beyond looks very different now – that’s because it became the 2012 Olympic park. Who would have thought back then…Looking South from the corner of the block you can see in the previous picture. My old office is in the bottom right and the route of the North London Railway and Old Ford goods yard can be seen to the left. The Tower blocks beyond are in Poplar and were built on old NLR railway land. The edifice in the middle is the old Bryant and May match works which was then being converted into apartments. Just behind it is the Great Eastern Main Line with Stratford to your left. The match factory has an important part in social history due to the match girls strike. The goods yard and the route of the NLR are now buried under new homes. The road you see going off into the horizon to the right of the match works is Fairfield Rd. It used to take me 15 minutes to walk to work along it. Happy days!
Here’s a zoom shot showing the course of the North London Railway heading South. The first bridge is where the Great Eastern main line crosses. The second is the link from the GEML at Bow junction to the former London Tilbury and Southend line to Fenchurch St at Gas Factory Junction. The NLR route had been converted into a linear park several years previously (at considerable expense) but was now being taken for housing as London’s population – which had been shrinking since World War 2 was suddenly expanding again. See the red roofed building below the tower blocks? If you look to the right you can just make out the platforms of Bow Rd DLR station.
Here’s a view of the Old Ford Goods yard and station site taken in October 1994 when the contaminated soil had been removed – hence the lakes! The former railway station was situated on the extreme right of the picture with the lines running along the base of the concrete wall. Behind is the wall of maisonettes that made up part of the Lefevre Walk estate. This next shot was taken in September 1994 from the top floor of one of the blocks you see above. A footbridge has replaced the original old Ford Road. The hoarding underneath it is the site of Old Ford Station. The remains of the North London Line trackbed can be seen as the green strip along the edge of the A102M.
Nowadays, with the advent of the internet, it’s easy to research images of what they area used to look like. The excellent ‘Disused stations’ website has the history of the railway and also some old pictures of the station and area. Even I was surprised by how the place used to look! Here’s a link to a look at a long-vanished part of London’s East End.
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After my travels of the past few days I’ve been very much ‘valley bound’ today – despite the temptation to stray as the weather’s been absolutely glorious with wall to wall sunshine! However, I’ve had far too much to do with editing the several hundred pictures that I’ve taken so far this week as well as preparing the ground for the articles I’ll be writing as a follow-on. This has meant I’ve been stuck in the office staring at a screen for hours at a time. I did manage to escape for a couple of hours this afternoon for my daily constitutional and wandered down into Sowerby Bridge to pick up some shopping, then strolled back along the canal before walking back through the woods. It was a complete contrast to the hustle and bustle of London. That said, I did really enjoy being back in my former home of 25 years. Despite my love of the countryside and the Calder Valley, I’m a city boy at heart! It’s why I can feel at home in some of the worlds great conurbations like Bangkok, or Delhi…
Having spent so much time in the company of others one of the first things I did when I got back was take a lateral flow test to ensure I wasn’t bringing home anything unexpected. The new rise of Covid is a concern. I’m praying that we don’t f*ck it up again, but the way many people behave (as if it’s all over – just because restrictions have been relaxed) worries me. I want to get travelling again in the new year but I’m worried that the UK is going to be seen on the world stage as ‘plague Island’ – as if being a laughing stock because of Brexit and our useless government isn’t enough!
Anyway, from a personal perspective it’s not been a bad day. As I’ve been penning these words the last batch of pictures from my travels has been uploading to my Zenfolio website (yep, I’m still working at 21:50) you can find the railway and travel ones by following this link to my ‘recent’ section which will show you what galleries the pictures have been added to. But, if you’re interested in the ones from my visit to the HS2 construction sites at Euston, you can find those here. I’ve several other visits to different HS2 sites lined up over the next few months, so expect a lot more blogs and articles about that. You won’t be reading much about the HS2rebellion protests as they’ve literally run into the ground!
So, on to the picture of the day. What to choose? There’s hundreds of new pictures taken over the past few days and dozens of old slide scans that I’ve not had chance to finish editing just yet. Hmm, OK, how about this? It’s a picture from the HS2 construction site and a perspective that very few people get to see…
Doesn’t look like much, does it? Just a hole in the ground. Except that in several years time this hole will be the site of the 10 HS2 platforms at Euston. A few years ago, this was the site of one of the biggest archeological digs in the UK as this was St James’s Gardens – which was previously a graveyard that contained around 50,000 burials, including Captain Matthew Flinders, the first person to circumnavigate Australia. This works changed the skyline of Camden and also London. See that building sticking up just to the left of the trees? That’s ‘the shard’ which you’d never have seen from here before.
Oh, and this isn’t the end of things. The site is to be excavated at least another 10 metres from the level you see here as there’s service passages and rooms to be built below the actual levels of the HS2 platforms. It’s a massive, massive job on a site that covers 60 acres of central London. I’ll be writing about it in detail for some magazines, so this is all you’re getting for now. Personally, I find it fascinating on so many levels (if you’ll pardon the pun).
Right, that’s enough for now. Enjoy your Friday folks…
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We’ve had a quiet but busy day here at Bigland Towers. I’ve been whittling down a list of ‘things to do’ both business-wise and socially, whilst at the same time lining up some jobs for the future with varying degrees of success. During the process I received a phone-call from a work-colleague of 12 years standing who’s become more than that as we see each other as good friends. She wanted to let me know that she’ll be leaving her job by the end of the year but wanted to tell me herself rather than me find out on the grapevine. I was delighted for her as she would be crazy to turn down the opportunity she’s been offered, but also sad that we probably wouldn’t work together again as she’s leaving the industry completely. Such is life, when you’ve been around for so many years as I seem to have been now you often see people come and go. Some of them you miss, others not…
Apart from that note of sadness it’s been a positive day. The weather’s been kind I’ve managed to bump up my exercise regime as a consequence and still get a lot done. Oh, there’s several blogs in preparation too – all I have to do now is find the time to root out the pictures for them.
As well as everything else I’ve also managed to get around to scanning a few more old slides. Not a huge amount, but the logjam is starting to be cleared once more. When the photographic work quietens down again (as it normally does in December-January) I’ll be rattling through slides at a much faster rate. Normally, January would be our big holiday. Dawn and I would get away for at least a month in SE Asia and I’d often stay away much longer, but Covid’s put paid to those plans, at least for now. Instead, I’ll be clearing the decks of various projects here in the UK. But, in homage to warmer climes and those long trips to exotic locations that have been the mainstay of my life for so long – here’s the picture of the day from today’s scans. I took this picture (on slide film) on the 14th December 1993. This was my hotel in India – honest!
The building you see is the Umaid Bhawan palace in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. The palace was begun in 1929 as a job creation scheme as the area was suffering from a severe drought that deprived many farmers of their living. It was commissioned by Maharaja Umaid Singh and designed by the British architect Henry Vaughan Lanchester (a contemporary of Edwin Lutyens). The Maharajah’s ancestors still occupy the majority of the 347 room building, but when I was there part of it had been converted into a hotel. Lynn and I hadn’t planned to stay there, but it was Lynn’s first time in India and we’d had to sleep in the luggage racks of a packed overnight train from Delhi, so I thought a bit of luxury was in order as a commiseration. Of course, in 1992, the cost of luxury was very different to what it is today and the room we had was actually quite reasonable! That evening we sat out on the balcony you can see here, sipping cold beers, watching peacocks wander the lawns and through the bougainvillea bushes. Then at sunset, a sitar and tabla player appeared to give us our own personal performance. Magic! If you want to see more pictures that I took at the palace, you can find them here.
Oh, to be able to have the freedom to do these things again…
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The start of a new week and the end of another month has been a mixed sort of day here in the Calder Valley. It was heralded by torrential rain and winds that beat against the bedroom window as the kind of dawn chorus you really don’t want to wake up to. Fortunately, I wasn’t booked to go anywhere and Dawn has the next fortnight off so I was happy to leave the weather to it whilst I pottered around at home, finishing another magazine article and getting my copy and pictures out to the Editor.
As the day progressed the weather grew tired, the wind and rain abated and the two of us nipped out into Halifax to meet Dawn’s parents for coffee for an hour at the magnificent Piece Hall, which was quiet due to the conditions. Caffeine levels topped up we went our separate ways in order to pick up some shopping and attempt to buy petrol. Thankfully, Yorkshire folks are less prone to panics, so whilst the Sainsbury’s garage in the centre of town was busy, it had fuel and the queues only stretched into a handful of cars – which is just as well as we’re driving down to Shropshire for a week in a few days time!
Back at home I retreated into the office to tidy up a few projects I’ve got in hand and finally get around to scanning a handful of old slides that have been sat on my desk for the past few weeks. The welcome return of commissions and work around the country has meant I’ve neglected that mission recently. As much as I wanted to, I can’t see me getting all the pictures scanned by the end of the year, but I won’t be far off. 2022 will certainly see the last ones completed – much to my delight!
I certainly won’t be getting any done tomorrow as we have have the funeral of our dear friend Tony Allan to attend. With everything that’s happened since he died I’ve not had chance to write the blog about him I’d in mind. Hopefully, tomorrow will provide a few more stories that’ll allow me to add other dimensions. Tony was quite private about sections of his much-travelled life and private family life, so I’m hoping to learn more as Dawn and I only knew him for less than 10 of his nearly 70 years. Sad as it will be, we’ll all be adjourning to our local pub afterwards where we’ll celebrate his memory with his own Phoenix brewery beers.
So, I’ll bring this blog to a close with the picture of the day, which is from the slides I’d scanned today. These were a batch that have never seen the light of day since I shot them back in July 1992. Taken in Java, Indonesia, they’d never even been catalogued as part of the film had been damaged soon after they were taken, so they sat in their sleeves waiting for me to get around to doing something with them. It’s taken a while…!
This shot was taken as I was wandering through Yogyakarta towards the end of the day. I love stree photography and always look out for snapshots of life like this. Stallholders whose shops lined the pavement had packed up for the day to allow their places to be taken by the night food markets, one woman found it all too much and decided to ‘power-nap’ by wrapping her head in a newspaper. The effect novel and all a bit Klu Klux Klan but it certainly caught my eye!
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It’s a been a very quiet day here in Bigland Towers, mainly because I’ve been the only one here. Dawn’s been back in the Community Rail Network office in Huddersfield, which would normally leave me and the moggie. Only now there’s no moggie, and the place seems very empty without him. Jet always used to wander into my office to see me when I was working if he needed food, or just attention. He was happy to sit on my lap whilst I scanned pictures or typed, only now he’s no longer around and I have to admit I really miss him.
Empty home aside, I’ve been kept busy writing about my ‘3 peaks by rail’ adventure for magazines, so the day’s passed quickly. I did manage to get out for my daily constitutional and pick up some shopping, but then it was back to the grindstone. Not that I’m complaining, I have work, a roof over my head and lots to look forward to – unlike some…
I’m looking forward to having these few days at home before travels commence once again. Next week I have a press trip lined up, a funeral and then a holiday. Well, two out of three ain’t bad – as the old Meatloaf song goes.
So, on to the picture of the day. As I’ve not been scanning any old slides recently I was in a quandry over what to use, so I decided on this, which is a shot of how the urban realm can be vastly improved when we make the decision that people come before cars. This is the recently revamped station forecourt at Doncaster. Previously it had been dominated by the motor vehicle. Previously, most of the area was a car park. Now it’s been transformed into a place for people – and art (hence the railway themed sculptures to the right). If only more of our towns an cities followed suit…
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/
Ah, the last day of summer – and it wasn’t a bad one weather-wise. Unfortunately, I was stuck in all day catching up on editing the mountain of pictures I’ve been taking these past couple of weeks in order to get them out to clients and/or on my website. My Zenfolio site now hosts two new galleries. One of pictures from the Infrarail/Railtex trade fair (which you can find here) and another from the ‘3 Peaks by Rail’ trip which you can find here. Oh, I’ve also added a variety of rail pictures taken out and about. They’re in various galleries, but if you follow this link to the ‘recent’ section of my website It’ll highlight which galleries they’ve been added to. If I manage to have a sufficiently early start tomorrow and clear the final items I need to have finished I might be able to venture out and make the most of the first day of autumn as the forecast remains good.
I suspect I’ll be tied to home most of the rest of the week as I’ve a couple of articles to pen about the 3 Peaks trip, and there’s a couple of blogs I’d like to get sorted out too. They’re not going to be about any HS2 protests as they’ve collapsed. There’s nothing happening at the moment until the final waste of space that’s the Wendover ‘protection’ camp is evicted, which will be anytime now. As predicted, the MPs debate on September 13th was another pointless exercise that achieved nothing at all. The room, which can hold about 50 MPs wasn’t even full. The ‘usual suspects’ who oppose HS2 trotted out the same tired and trite arguments and spin. All it was was an exercise in grandstanding. It was clear from the comments on some of the anti HS2 Facebook pages that people were expecting far more and were bitterly disappointed. Now it’s over, they’re left with nothing. There’s still going to be plenty to write about with HS2, but that’s going to be about the civil engineering and ecological mitigation work. I’ve several visits lined up for the autumn, so watch this space.
In the meantime, let’s move on to the picture of the day, which comes from my recent travels. Here’s Wasdale Head in Cumbria, the nearest settlement to Scafell Pike. The hotel you see in the bottom of the picture’s the Wasdale Head Inn which was an ideal spot to while away an hour whilst I waited for the 3 Peaks teams to come down from the mountain.
I love the lighting conditions here as you never quite know what you’re going to get! This day it was low cloud and fleeting glimpses of the sun, but that’s the Lake District for you…
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/
Sorry for the lack of blogging these past few days but both Dawn and I have been enjoying our break in London. The National Rail Awards was a brilliant event that we took some time to come down from. The next day we’d arranged to meet up with a couple of old friends and spent a lovely afternoon in Clapham catching up with them whilst eating and drinking alfresco in balmy weather. The past few days have been incredibly sociable, which has been wonderful. The chance to see people in three dimensions rather than two is something that’s been sadly missing these past 18 months.
On Saturday I took Dawn for a wander around the streets of Central London using my knowledge of the city gained from having lived there for 25 years. That said, I’m amazed at just how much has changed in the past decade since I left. Some quarters are almost unrecognisable whilst others have the levels of building replacement that hasn’t been seen since the war. London’s growing. Upwards…
How sustainable this growth is in a post Brexit world is very much open to question as the strains on the economy are obvious. If you’re willing to work for them the hospitality industry would tear your arm off – but could you afford somewhere to live? The Brexitshambles and the consequences of leaving the single market and customs union are biting – despite what the Government and Brexiters would like to claim.
After our wanderings and enjoying visiting an old haunt on the Thames we headed home. Today we’ve had a lazy one at home, spending the time ensuring we’re Covid safe by sticking all our travel clothes in the wash before relaxing then getting out for a short walk on the moors before a quick visit to one of our favorite pubs – the Moorcock Inn on Norland Moor.
Now ’tis time to relax at home before the start of another busy week. I’ve several articles to write and a load of pictures to edit. I’m expecting to spend most of the week at home, but…The weather forecast is suggesting we may be in for another period of warm weather and sunshine, so I’d be foolish to waste it. Let’s see what happens.
In the meantime, here’s the picture of the day, which was taken yesterday from the South bank of the Thames outside an old haunt, the Founders Arms pub next to The Tate Modern. This pub has a lot of outside seating which offers superb views across the river to a city skyline that’s ever-changing. When I first moved to London only two of those skyscrapers existed and the ‘wobbly bridge’ in the foreground wasn’t even thought of.
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/
I’m slowly recovering from last week and the exertions of both Infrarail/Railtex then straight into Tthe Railway Children’s ‘3 Peaks by Rail’ extravaganza. Most of Sunday was spent catching up on sleep as I knew I’d need to recharge the batteries for this week, which has another hectic travel schedule. But today’s been spent slaving over a hot computer as I’ve been editing thousands of pictures from the events in order to get them out to clients as this is the only day I have free. Fortunately, I’ve managed to get almost all done. The last few can get done whilst I’m travelling tomorrow.
I’ve another early start as I’m travelling down to London for a press event that I can’t talk about until its over. I’ll be blogging about it when the time comes as part of tomorrow’s rolling blog. Sadly, the weather forecast for the capital is looking pretty dismal tomorrow so I may not be there too long. We shall see…
In the meantime, here’s today’s picture, which was taken on the ‘3 Peaks’ train as it returned from Fort William and crossed the beautiful Rannoch Moor. The trip to/from ‘Fort Bill’ is stunning. It’s one of the UK’s great railway journey’s. I wish I’d had more time to enjoy the trip but I was busy working aboard the train. Even so, there was the opportunity to get one or two shots and this is one of them. The railway enthusiasts amongst my readers will know how rare a sight a BR Blue Class 47 loco would be on this line.
This particular locomotive is now numbered 47614 (again). It was new in June 1964 and numbered D1733. Renumbered as 47141 in January 1974 it gained the number 47614 in June 1984 before becoming 47853 in February 1990. As well as many numbers it’s had many owners. After the end of BR it passed to Virgin Trains, then private operator Riviera Trains who then sold it on to DRS. In 2018 it was acquired by current operator Locomotive Services Ltd (LSL) who’ve renumbered it back to 47614. It’s rather appropriate to see it back in Scotland as it was a Scottish allocated engine between 1974 and 1989.
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