Under the weather…

04 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by Paul Bigland in Down memory lane, Musings, Railways, Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire

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Down memory lane, Railways, Sowerby Bridge, Transport, West Yorkshire

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

03 Sunday Mar 2019

Posted by Paul Bigland in Memory Lane, Musings, West Yorkshire

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Memory Lane, Railways, Transport, West Yorkshire

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.

02 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by Paul Bigland in Nostalgia, Photography, Railways

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Nostalgia, Photography, Railways

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

01 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by Paul Bigland in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Politics, Railways, StopHs2

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Hs2, Railways, StopHs2

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.

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

Rolling blog: Monday meanderings

25 Monday Feb 2019

Posted by Paul Bigland in Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel

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Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel

05:07

I’ve been up since 04:45 as I’m starting the day with an early appointment in Birmingham, so I’m heading down to Sowerby Bridge station to catch the 05:57 to Manchester. Expect a varied blog with lots of pictures throughout the day as I’ll be doing a fair bit of travelling.

06:00

The walk down into Sowerby Bridge was rather surreal this morning as I could see the valley floor was shrouded in mist which was lit by a bright half-moon shining through otherwise clear skies. I only had the hooting of owls in the surrounding woods for company until I arrived in the town which was deep in fog.

Now I’m on the first train of the day, which is running on time and (at this stage) pretty empty although I’ve no doubt it won’t be by the time we reach Manchester.

The service is made up of a pair of single-car Class 153s so it’ll be interesting to see if this proves adequate this time on a Monday morning.

Whilst I’m sitting on the train I’m scanning the news and trying to get my head around the criminal stupidity of our Prime Minister, who has postponed any vote on Brexit until March 12th. UK businesses must be in utter despair. That leaves them in limbo yet again with absolutely no idea what’s happening. The point of no return has already passed for any that are reliant on imports from places like China. The last ship has already sailed that could guarantee getting goods here under our existing trade deals. Now no-one has a clue what terms will apply. For a Government to put its citizens and the economy in this position for no other reason than it’s own stupidity is breathtaking. The tragic farce of Brexit has already caused huge damage to the country and our politicians are piling on the agony. May continues this deception that her flitting back and forth twixt Brussels and London means anything other than increasing incredulity in Europe and a hardening of attitudes towards us, she holds a gun to her head and threatens the EU that she’ll pull the trigger. It’s madness, utter madness. Whatever happens in the next few weeks one thing is certain: it will only end in pain and humiliation for the UK – and all for what? Blue passports? How could we as a nation have been so stupid?

06:31.

After calling at Rochdale my train is half to two-thirds full of commuters heading to work. Dawn’s just breaking through a clear sky and Manchester looks like it’s in for another lovely day. Passing the brightly lit Northern Rail depot at Newton Heath the work to pay extra sidings for the company’s new trains is very much in evidence.

07:29

I’d no time to waste in Manchester as I decided to see if I could make an earlier train. A sprint across the city centre in record time allowed me to catch Cross-Country’s 07:05 to Bristol via Brum. Thankfully, it’s a five, not a four-car Voyager. Despite it being a peak train it’s well loaded – even in the unreserved coach B. Now I can relax with a Starbucks coffee off the trolley and admire the Cheshire countryside as it flies by me in bright sunshine.

08:01.

After calling at Stoke, my coach was almost full.

Now, after a stop at Stafford, it’s standing room only, with several people wedging themselves into the small luggage racks at either end of the car.

10:15.

Well, that was a busy little interlude! The High Speed Rail Industry Leaders (HSRIL) group was holding a PR event outside Birmingham City hall this morning. A giant jigsaw was used to show how HS2 will join up many of our major cities. The event was supported by the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, local business leaders and Transport Minister Nusrat Ghani amongst others. This presented some interesting photographic challenges for me and the other snappers in attendance due to the strong sun and heavy shadows, combined with the sheer number of people! Here’s a few pictures.

DG319116crop

DG319129CROP

DG319146crop

After the event I nipped off to enjoy the beautiful sunshine and visit some of the recent rail investment in the West Midlands. My first port of call was the extension of the electrification on the Cross-City line as far as Bromsgrove, where a brand-new station’s been built to replace what used to be there.

DG319175crop

Next stop? Redditch…

15:15.

After a trip to Redditch in glorious sunshine and the chance to get some library shots I headed back into the city to meet up with an old friend (and best man at my wedding) who works for Network Rail. He’d come up for a meeting, so we grabbed a coffee together before he headed back to London and I resumed my travels. I’m currently on the 15:05 from Birmingham to Shrewsbury which is standing room only. Mind you it is worked by a two car Class 170, which isn’t exactly helping!

16:17.

I’m on the move again after taking time to look at construction of Wolverhampton’s new transport interchange which is bringing together rail, tram and bus in one location. Here’s a view of the work going on to rebuild the station. The tram tracks will run in the foreground.

Tracks for the tram extension have been laid right up to the station approach. I’m assuming that once more work’s been done on the new station building space will have been created for them.

Sadly, all these signs of looking forward to the future were put into stark perspective when I saw this Government poster on the station.

This is what we’ve become. Our fellow EU citizens (like us) have had the right to freedom of movement for nearly half a century. Now we’re treating them like illegal aliens. They’re our friends, neighbours and work colleagues, even a husband, or a wife. How long I wonder before the posters appear asking to to inform on any EU national you think doesn’t have the right to remain? Maybe Teresa May will resurrect those vans that toured round with hoardings on them? What a nasty divisive country we’ve become.

17:49.

Whilst on a XC Voyager to Manchester I got into a chance conversation with one of the crew who happened to mention that one of their HSTs was working a Manchester Piccadilly-Bristol Temple Leads diagram, which is highly unusual. This prompted me to jump off at Stoke-on-Trent in the hope of recording event. Sadly, as we pulled in, it pulled out – which didn’t exactly make for a great picture!

I ended up drowning my sorrows in the new Titanic Brewery station bar which occupies the site of the old Virgin Trains 1st Class lounge. Now I’m back on another XC service en-route to Manchester.

Rolling blog: out of office…

20 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by Paul Bigland in ACoRP, Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel, West Yorkshire

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ACoRP, Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel, West Yorkshire

10:19

Well, out of MY office! I’m currently at ACoRP Towers in Huddersfield as I have a meeting about judging this years ACoRP awards and changes to the ‘It’s Your Station’ category. We’re getting more and more entries each year and the judging criteria needs to be refined to cope with this.

12:02.

It’s been a productive meeting and the IYS category been refined to reflects the growth in stations being entered. I’m looking forward to spending some summer days touring the country to visit more excellent examples of the work community rail volunteers and rail staff get up to. I wonder where I’ll get to this time?

Whilst I was in the meeting news broke that one more Labour MP and three Tory MPs have joined the breakaway Independent Group. There’s a clear feeling that the old parties are too in thrall to their extremist wings to put the needs of the country first. Good luck to the splitters!

Now I’m back on the rails for a while…

13:15.

I’ve popped over to York, where new trains are very much in evidence.

DG318981. 800107. York. 20.2.19CROP

Meanwhile, over on platform 2 under the magnificent curved roof…
DG318994. 68022. York. 20.2.19crop

Both these trains will enter passenger service later in the year, working from London to Scotland and also on Trans-Pennine services. When I see sights like this I have to laugh at the likes of Liam Halligan and Hs2 antis who insist money should be diverted from the project to invest in the North! Another thing they completely miss is that York gains fivefold. Not only does it benefit from new and longer Trans-Pennine trains it also benefits from the modernisation, electrification and enhanced capacity of the Trans-Pennine route. Meanwhile, the intercity fleet operated by LNER is replaced by brand-new Azumas. York will also receive Hs2 services running to Newcastle via the dedicated high-speed line that’ll be built as far North as Church Fenton. Finally, the old Pacers operating Northern services via the Harrogate loop or to Hull will be replaced by more modern trains. So much for Hs2 ‘starving’ the North of investment – Hs2 is part of the investment!

15:11

The weather’s deteriorated and I’ve a few chores to do back in Halifax, so I’m en-route via a rather damp Bradford. The Calder Valley line I’m travelling on now is another sign of investment in the North a £100m renewal & resignalling scheme was commissioned last October. I’ve just passed a new station (Low Moor) which even boasts of daily direct trains to London! Meanwhile, Transport for the North have even more ambitious plans for the line. Funny how none of this got mentioned by Halligan in his Dispatches hatchet job…

16:00.

After a spot of shopping in Halifax town centre I’ve retired for a swift half in one of the town’s excellent micro-pubs, the Pump Room.

These have opened up in the past few years, bringing new life to a town centre that’s seeing an increasing number of shops close. Another place worth visiting is the Victorian covered market.

21:24.

The day’s ending at home, where I’ve been spending time editing the pictures I’ve taken today and uploading them to my Zenfolio website. Follow this link to see which galleries they’ve been added to. Whilst it’s been a steady day workwise it’s been another extraordinary day politically. Some of this stuff you just couldn’t make up! The Labour party continues to descend into an unpleasant farce with the latest instalment being that Derek Hatton, who was only allowed back in the party 48 hours ago, has already been suspended! Apparently, some dodgy tweets he sent a few years ago have come to light! I can’t imagine that it’ll be long before there are more desertions from Labour as the party seems to be descending into a vicious internal war. Mind you, the Tories don’t seem to be in any better state. It’s like a fight’s broken out on the bridge of the Titanic just as the iceberg’s been sighted. God help us all…

Rolling blog: Another day, another train, another job.

15 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by Paul Bigland in RAIL magazine, Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel

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Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel

07:45

It’s a beautiful (if slightly chilly) morning here in Yorkshire and an early start for Dawn and I.

I’m currently on a Trans-Pennine Express service from Huddersfield heading for Manchester as I’m on my way to meet a colleague from RAIL magazine in Birmingham for a job in the West Midlands. As usual, it’s standing room only on the train. I’m looking forward to TPE introducing their new five-car “Nova 3” trains later this year as I might actually be able to get a seat and get some work done!

Hopefully, Cross-Country’s Manchester-Birmingam service might be a little less rammed. We shall see…

08:12

For once, the weather’s the same on both sides of the Pennines, it’s just as sunny here in Manchester as Huddersfield. My train’s an airport service via Manchester Victoria and the Ordsall curve. It’s been interesting to observe how many passengers embark/disembark at Victoria – more than I expected, suggesting this is a very useful service.

08:33

Sometimes trains running late can work to your advantage! When I arrived at Piccadilly I managed to catch a Cross-country service heading to Bournemouth which left 6 mins late as it was delayed on its inbound working. It’s a 4-car Class 220, so it’s quite busy but I’d no problem finding a perch as the seat reservation system’s not working. No doubt this could cause some fun and games en-route…

09:17.

It looks like the 30 minutes I banked by getting an earlier train is about to be spent. Our Train Manager (who’s very good at keeping passengers informed) has just explained that we’re likely to be delayed by at least 20 mins as engineering work to repair a bad bridge bash didn’t take place last night. This means there’s reduced line capacity between Norton Bridge and Stafford.

Whilst I’ve been on travelling I’ve taken time to catch up on the news – which is a depressing and dispiriting experience nowadays as the Brexit shambles continues. The more I see of the political circus in Parliament and the spinelessness and unwillingness of most of our MPs to face the reality of the disaster that’s heading our way is horrendous. We’re living in extremely perilous times – yet our politicians are playing political games with no sense of urgency or signs of real leadership. We have a double whammy. We have the worst government in living memory and also the worst opposition. If someone had written this as the outline of a book, publishers would have rejected it as being too far-fetched – yet here we are…

09:35.

We’re currently stationary and in a queue of trains waiting to get through Norton Bridge due to the bridge bash, which has reduced the West Coast Main Line from four to two tracks.

10:02.

We’ve just started moving again and we’re finally approaching Norton Bridge (North of Stafford) to get onto the main line. We should have arrived in Birmingham 4 minutes ago! Now we’re stopped in the old platform at the closed Norton Bridge station as an intermodal has been put out in front of us, so I can see the delay getting worse…

Marc, the Train Manager and the rest of the crew aboard are doing sterling work keeping passengers informed (and placated). The frustrating thing about this whole situation (which is going to cost the railway a LOT of money) is it’s down to a careless lorry driver who (So I’m told via social media) did a ‘runner’s despite hitting the bridge so badly they left a huge crack in the bridge parapet which has had to be removed. Here’s the view as we passed.

10:27

We’re finally pulling out of Stafford over an hour late. I’ll miss my appointment with Paul Stephen from RAIL and have to catch him up.

11:13

After a dash across central Birmingham from New St to Snow Hill I’ve caught the 11:13 to Stourbridge. Snow Hill’s a funny place. I’ve never understood why Brummies made it into yet another cheerless, subterranean station. You’d have thought they’d have had enough with New St, but no. They buried the reopened station under a multi-storey car park!

15:59.

Phew! Job done. I spent a very interesting few hours with Paul Stephen and the team running the unique Stourbridge shuttle service using Class 139 people movers.

Now I’m heading North on another packed 4-car Voyager bound for Manchester. Hopefully, this one will make it past the bridge bash without delay.

16:13

Hooray! All four WCML tracks are open and we’ve passed the bridge bash without delay.

17:07.

Another phew! I had a 6 minute connection at Manchester Piccadilly but my XC service crawled through South Manchester and arrived 5 late into platform 5. It was only the fact my train door was aligned with the stairs and the TPE service from platform 14 was a minute late that I managed to sprint across the footbridge and make my connection with 30 seconds to spare!

My journey was short, only as far as Manchester Victoria, where I had the luxury of yet another 5 minute connection but this time it was with our stress! I’m now on the 17:20 from Victoria to Leeds which is formed of a curious and creative coupling. A former Scotrail Class 158 (789 for those who care about these things) and a venerable Pacer, 142091! Masochist that I am, I chose the Pacer!

Rolling blog:Happy Valentine’s day!

14 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by Paul Bigland in Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel, West Yorkshire

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Railways, Rolling blogs, Travel, West Yorkshire