Tag Archives: solo-travel

It was nice whilst it lasted…

23 Sunday Feb 2025

Posted by in Photography, Railways, Travel, West Yorkshire

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

My weekend at home is drawing to a close but it was nice whilst it lasted. My body-clock has been reset back to UK time, although I’m still waking up early, which is no bad thing. Maybe it’s my age! Sadly, the weather here in the Pennines wasn’t conducive to outdoor activities. When I got up at 07:00 the wind was already howling, with the promise of rain later, so staying at home seemed like the sensible option. Besides, I’d plenty to do, what with picture editing and preparing for my next trip away. In fact, the day flew by. I’ve managed to edit and caption dozens of pictures which you can find in the following galleries (the links are built in).

Indonesian railways

Aircraft and airports

Here’s a couple of samples to pique your interest.

Yes, that is a small child stood in the middle of the tracks waiting for a train to pass outside Duri station! Trespass is endemic on railways in SE Asia (including Indonesia) but then many railways have shanty towns backing onto the tracks which people then use as their backyards. The train itself is an ex-Japanese Class 205 set. Introduced in 1985, the 205 series were used on both JR East and JR West lines. 524 205–0 series vehicles were shipped to Jakarta between 2013 and 2020. They form the backbone of the capital’s suburban train fleet.  
Garuda Indonesia Boeing 737-800 number PK-GFM seen at Jakarta’s Soekarno Hatta airport on the 3rd February. The aircraft has been repainted into a retro livery which was used by Garuda in the 1960s.

There’s still several hundred pictures in the queue for editing, but they’re going to have to taka a backseat for a while as I’ve more immediate concerns. The other job I had to do (apart from unpacking and repacking) was confirming my travel arrangements for getting to Norway on Monday. This will see me returning to Manchester airport – albeit with a much smaller suitcase! I’ll have time to blog throughout the trip as it’s a fairly leisurely affair. I don’t fly until 17:15 and even then it’s via Schipol airport in the Netherlands. I won’t get to my hotel until around 23:00 but there might still be chance for a snifter in the bar with colleagues from the UK and elsewhere. The press event itself doesn’t actually start until Tuesday but we’ve got a lot to fit into the two days.

OK, time to go. The pair of us have both had a busy day. Now it’s time to eat and enjoy each other’s company before I head off again.

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/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312