Spotting 2024 – Week 19

I hinted in my last spotting post that this would be a slow week with strikes and an overtime ban across the network. I additionally failed to mention a couple of health related appointments; eye-screening and dentists. So, for much of the week I languished at home. That, of course, isn’t quite true – I used the time to push on with my fitness regime of walks. There are a number of challenges that I’m signed up for this month – I have to say that Garmin Connect is really getting me involved😱😂 We’ll be touching on a couple of walking actions during this post👍

I weathered Monday to Thursday with local walks – a planned trip to Kew Gardens for the Bank Holiday Monday was rained off😒 It was Friday when I finally ventured out onto the rails. I decided to mix getting some haulage with a bit of spotting at Clapham Junction. Thameslink was running a poor service due to, I believe, being badly hit by the overtime ban. Although this delayed my journey a little, I was able to stick to my planned route via London Bridge and Waterloo East, picking up 2 Class 700’s and a Class 707 for haulage on the way.

From Waterloo I travelled out to Clapham Junction on Class 455, 5861. Even with reduced services, Clapham Junction was busy. It’s that time when students make their way back to Uni after the spring break as this colourful pairing sitting on the steps illustrates…

…Meanwhile – what else can you do but massage your mobile phone while waiting for your train?..

…Class 455, 5714 providing the spotting entertainment. One of the reasons for my visit was a celebrity 455 – 5868 has been repainted in the British Railways Blue / Grey livery it wore when it first entered service…

…back in 1984.

My journey home was an interesting one. Back to Waterloo, across to Waterloo East, on to London Bridge and then a train back to Farringdon. My intention from there was Elizabeth Line to Tottenham Court Road and Northern Line home. That all went fine until I reached the Northern Line platforms. Everything was at a standstill or moving very slowly and the platform was jammed with confused passengers / tourists. I assessed the situation and decided I’d head back to the Elizabeth Line. As I was leaving I heard a Code 1 announcement for station staff to attend the southbound platforms which is not a good thing as it suggests that someone had been injured.

I rode the Elizabeth Line to Liverpool Street from where I picked up an Overground service to Hackney Downs – this time travelling on one of the 710’s that I need for haulage. A short walk along the dedicated footbridge to Hackney Central and I was ready to catch my train to Gospel Oak. I have changed here before but was in too much of a hurry at the time to assess the station for train photography. This time I marked it down for a future visit.

At Gospel Oak I chose to take a walk along the road to pick up a 214 bus up to Highgate Village. From there I could get either a 143 or 263 home. Arriving just after 16:00, I found that Highgate School had just emptied out – spilling it students onto the pavement and inflicting them upon innocent intending bus passengers😅I took one look at the situation and decided to walk home from there – it’s just under 3 miles and with a slight detour, I was able to use my unplanned walk to complete one of my Garmin challenges! Spotting totals for the day: 173 logged with 8 needed and 9 new for haulage. I also did over 21000 steps!

Saturday: Guess where I went – yes, I headed back to Hackney Central to get some shots. It was a good day to go as some freights were diverting because of engineering works in Cambridgeshire. I did the weekly shop before I headed out and was little late leaving.

I had target freight that I wanted to catch. Time was tight and I should have missed it entirely, except it was running late. Even so I had to detrain at Canonbury to catch it…

…66192 on the Felixstowe North to East Midlands Gateway intermodal – that’s a ’66’ I need 😎

I then completed my trip to Hackney Central. Here’s some shots, starting with 66780 in Cemex livery on a Doncaster to Felixstowe service approaching from the west…

…One of the local Overground services operated by 378257, approaching from the east…

…Greater Anglia unit 720567, heading back to Ilford after a trip to Wembley for maintenance…

…and 66753 on the Felixstowe North to Birch Coppice run…

Definitely a good lunchtime’s spotting 😎 I walked back along the footbridge connection to Hackney Downs station where I logged 3 of the 4 class 710’s I still need and rode back into Liverpool Street on 710113.

My plans to go home were Elizabeth Line to Farringdon, then Thameslink to Finsbury Park. From there I was hoping to pick up one of the two 717 units I still need for haulage. I got to Alexandra Palace and was waiting for the next Welwyn Garden City service. Things then went pear-shaped – they started announcing delays due to a points failure. It quickly became apparent that this was going to be a major service issue. I realised I would have to change my way home. The bus options are not ideal for where I live. I decided I’d walk up the hill past the Alexandra Palace and then continue up the rest of the climb to Muswell Hill itself. I can get a bus from there. That is a fierce pair of climbs on a hot day – 3 weeks ago I wouldn’t have even contemplated it. This fitness thing is really getting into my life😅

Totals for Saturday: 68 logged of which I needed 6 and I got 2 new for haulage. I also complete 15k steps and was justifiably proud of the walk across Ally Pally😎 Where will next week take me? I guess I’ll find out – see you then👍

CWWC: May 9, 2024

End of the week and time I joined in with Cee’s Which Way Challenge 😎👍

I’ve been doing a lot of walking this week and you might think that would result in lots of Which Way shots. But a lot of the time I’ve been aiming for performance improvements, so that sadly isn’t the case.

Here’s a shot of the track to College Farm in Finchley…

…and, taken this morning on a relaxing Sunday walk, a path in Avenue House gardens…

Hopefully I’ll have more to share next week.

Bure Valley Farm

High Summer in the Bure Valley – Time to harvest the crops sown last Autumn. These are exceptionally busy months with my own crops reaching maturity in 4 fields but also jobs to do on other farms. A chance to earn some money and to store our harvest for when the prices are better. So we’re all good – right?…

In this post we’re going to meet a form of Cascade Effect. In electric and mechanical engineering cascade effect often leads to a system wide failure. In this instance though, it means that I have taken some decisions earlier than initially planned and that has introduced some financial pressures. What has caused the cascade effect? If you recall, I have been working to introduce precision farming across my fields. This should mean improved crop yields and therein lies the cause which I have exacerbated by a choice made this July. On with the report…

I started with a large harvest job on another farm which resulted in me storing over 8000ltrs of surplus wheat in my silo. I was then in a position to check the existing yield values for my fields prior to beginning my own harvests…

…universally red and orange with the exception of my grass fields which have already seen improvement and field 14 for which there is no last harvest data. The first fields to be harvested are 41 and 44 which have our Winter Barley. Here we are in field 44…

…and in the display on the bottom right you can see that where we have harvested, the yield is much improved over the previous year’s crop. Between the two fields we produced nearly 40000ltrs of Barley😎

Now I have to wait for the next crops to mature. That should be the Spring Wheat in field 14 and the Rape in field 43. In the interim I got on with harvesting for other farms. Sometimes when using large machinery, you can’t fit the header to the harvester within the field and I caused traffic chaos on the B1149 in mid July…

…preparing a leased Claas Trion 720 to harvest field 20 – big field requires big harvester and header! I should add that I was really impressed with this harvester. One to consider for the future when I own larger fields. Much more in ‘the now’ was the trailer I was leased – a Fliegl Gigant…

…This trailer opened my eyes to the possibility of reducing my delivery trips when harvesting by increasing the size of my current trailer. Previously I haven’t given it any thought as the John Deere 7810 was close to its hauling limit when the Rudolph trailer was full. With the Claas Arion, I could easily handle a trailer with increased capacity. Something to investigate at the end of the month.

In the interim I had an interesting addition to my farm mid-July. A mobile phone company approached me to allow a mast to be erected in the corner of field 14 which gives good line of sight for communications across the valley. That will bring in some rent from the company every month, so I agreed.

Last tasks for July were to fertilize the grass in the Triangle field and to clear up after my Barley harvests – baling the straw and taking it off to the animal dealer for bedding…

…A last boost to the funds. Then I popped off to the dealer to discuss trailers. Ultimately, the Fliegl was overkill with its hydraulic ram operated discharge system. I found I could get a normal hopper trailer of similar capacity from Rolland for £38k – £14k less – that would meet my needs. The dealer would pay me £26k for the Rudolph if fully repaired and repainted. This was my first unplanned expense of the period. The net cost of the trailer upgrade worked out around £16k, leaving me with £117k in the bank at the start of August. The balance is ok, I can swallow that I was thinking…

The first week of August – my Wheat and Rape fields are ready to harvest. For no better reason than it’s closest to the farm, I decided to deal with the Wheat in field 14 first. Actually, I was eager to see what the yield was like. So here I am with the work part complete, emptying the harvester into my new trailer…

…with the new mobile phone antenna visible in the background. You get an impression of how high above the valley we are here and I can understand why this would be a good location for mobile phone coverage. The yield in the corner screen is about what I’d expect for the soil type in this field, so a job well done. The new trailer proved to be a good choice, allowing me to deliver the grain to my silo in one trip…

…with just 870ltrs of Wheat left in the harvester which it delivered when it was returned to the yard for refuelling after the field was complete.

At this point I realised that there might be a problem. I have 3 fields remaining to harvest, including my largest one. The crop yield for Rape I can guess but the yield from Soya is an unknown. My Silo can hold 200000ltrs but it already has 80000 stored. It is possible that I will run out of grain storage. That would leave me with three options. Sell the surplus crop that I can’t store, build a new silo at the farm or buy another yard where a silo already exists. While all are good options, the option of buying another yard has always been on the agenda as part of the farm’s expansion – it’s just that I hadn’t planned on doing that just yet. Weighing up building a new silo on the existing property vs buying a yard with silos already in place, I was surprised to find that the construction option was more expensive! In those circumstances, I decided to buy the yard over at Little London…

…Which includes a very nice 800000ltr silo group…

…into which I delivered the Rape seed after harvesting field 43.

Now I have a need for funds as the £60k isn’t going to cover the cost of other items I will need – a weed sprayer for example. I also need to lime the fields that have been harvested and then there’s the maintenance… The woes of being a farmer😅 Fortunately, you can usually rely on something cropping up that will help out – like a silage job…

After mowing this neighbour’s field and selling most of the ‘bonus bales’, I was back on the healthy side of £100k. My new yard has given me proper covered storage for Straw and Hay bales…

…and a nice hard-standing area for my silage bales…

…That’s a lot of Christmas cash sitting there!

I started talking about the cascade effect – we have seen how one thing leads to another. The new yard will need lights and I’m probably going to need a Telehandler for shifting bales around as well as a fuel point. So much for buying another field around the size of field 1 – That will have to wait a while.

This post is already over-long, so I’ll leave you now. I will continue working the rest of August in the background. Please join me again when I report on Bure Valley Farm in Autumn 😎👍