I had a couple of weeks break from Cee’s challenges but with Cee returning this week, it’s time to join in again. Here’s my selection for Cee’s Which Way Challenge 😎👍
On a damp grey day in Hampstead I took a stroll across the Heath – There is no one clear path here but many weaving around the trees…
A much clearer path in Hampstead – Christchurch Passage can be found behind the church of the same name…
Both the above shots were taken yesterday. Going back to last week and nicer weather, we have point-work allowing trains from platforms 1 & 2 to access the mainline at Peterborough with a fast train to Edinburgh providing the backdrop…
Finally, a view of Wych Elm Lane at Woolmer Green, near Knebworth…
…running through fields full of Rape in flower. Taken from my train back to London.
Spring moves into Summer in Norfolk – The months of May and June are a time of haymaking and preparations for the forthcoming harvest season.
It may be time to make hay but May started quietly – no contracts to harvest grass for hay or silage. I was surprised and a little disappointed – I had hoped to quickly earn the money I needed for that more powerful tractor. However, there was a job to harvest some weeds – Field 11 required purging and although it doesn’t pay well, the first week of May found me down amongst the weeds and a corn crop…
…I had been leased a JCB Fastrak – a machine I had considered as a higher powered tractor for my farm but ultimately rejected. It doesn’t quite meet the horsepower I want and, as I found on this job, its steering is quite a handful! The field I was weeding was field 11 – one of the largest and most awkward in the area. Thank God they gave me a very large weed-whacker!..
…For those wondering, the domes beyond are the biogas plant of which more anon. No sooner had I weeded the crop but I got offered a fertilizing job in the same field! Now that’s more to my liking and something I could do with my own equipment. That completed the first week of May.
The second week of May and the grass jobs are rolling in – It seems everyone wants to make silage. That’s good from my point of view as I will make a lot of money from those jobs. It was also a time of learning for me – I didn’t know that some of the mowing kit can produce swath rather than a spread of grass. So here I am in field 4 windrowing the grass ready for baling…
…If you can pre-swath the grass when you mow…Bingo – one less stage to making silage and a bunch of time saved!
Gaming note: Always keep up to date by watching play-though and tutorial videos as sometimes things change. Back in FS19, it was possible to get a mod for the Pottinger Novacat mowers that caused them to swath the grass. I had been watching for that mod to appear without realising that the in-game version of the Novacat in FS22 now includes that ability. I also was unaware that the Krone Big M mower also swathed – you learn something new on every play-through!
So here we are on another mowing job in field 6 using the Pottinger Novacat pairing to cut and swath the grass…
…behind the Case 340 tractor I’d been leased. Please note that you can set the mower to spread the grass wide should you want to make hay. As this takes a whole step out of the process of silage making – a huge time saving – You can imaging why I decided to sell my Claas Disco mower back to the shop and buy into the Novacat.
But that wasn’t the major story for May – The silage harvests and the excess bales produced put so much money in my account that I was able to buy that new tractor. I have been keeping you in suspense -There were several in the frame. The serious consideration fell on the Claas Axion, Massey-Ferguson 8S and the Valtra Q series. In the end I chose the Claas Axion 870 which gives me a 295HP tractor weighing 9.1t at a good price. Here it is about to leave the yard in June with the Rollant baler…
After that purchase, I was glad that I still had field 3 and field 7 to do contract work on and boost the cash in hand again. I experienced a delay in getting paid for some silage bales I delivered to the Biogas plant. It seems we overwhelmed its capacity to process the silage!
Game Note: – Certain production facilities have a limit on how much product they can process immediately and it looks like they haven’t taken your delivery. But if you check your cash it will be slowly increasing. Checking the silage bales in this case confirmed that one of them was slowly decreasing in volume. I have experienced this also at a spinnery when delivering large bales of wool.
I finished May by harvesting my own grass in the paddock after which I ploughed the existing crop in…
…Why? – you may be wondering. This field had never been ploughed and was not producing as much as it could if it had been. I inherited it that way so, with the Triangle field now growing grass as well, I felt I could plough and reseed to improve the crop of future harvests. I did hit a problem though – my seeder won’t fit through the gate so I had to hire a smaller Tume seeder…
…I have to say I was very impressed – just 2.8m width but, because it attaches directly to the tractor, so quick to align between rows.
In June I used all the extra money being generated to buy the full Pottinger Novacat set and put it to work harvesting field 7 for one of my neighbours – here we are being a good citizen and allowing traffic to pass…
By the 3rd week of June I was able to turn my attention to harvesting my Triangle field…
…I netted 23 bales of Silage from that and took the opportunity to check out my Barley crop in field 44 on the way home to the farm…
…I’ll keep this last batch of silage for when the price is high😎
July awaits and it will be the early harvest season. My Rape crop is in flower and my barley fields are looking almost ready. July will be a busy month😅
There are a number of future ideas for the farm. I think my next option is to buy another mid-sized field – probably field 9 as that is around the same size as field 1. I also know that I will need a sprayer for weed control next year and that is probably the top priority. I also could replace the plough that I have with a slightly larger one. I’d like to buy up one of the other grass fields as I now have all the equipment I need to run those effectively.
In the longer term I have thought about getting into Sheep but there isn’t any market to sell to. I also looked at market gardening and met the same problem. Perhaps I might set up a farm shop to sell tomatoes, lettuce and other produce? I need to do some in-game research on how that will work.
The week started quietly – probably because I was getting more acquainted with my new Garmin Vivoactive 5 watch. Currently, it’s giving me a lot of fitness incentivisation – I just hope I can keep it up although it also advises when to ease off and have a less active day. So today I’ve stuck to one hour of walking at a moderate pace and now I’m resting in front of the pc😅
One of the things I have mentioned a few times is that my trainspotting outings were as much about getting a bit fitter as watching trains. That theme continued with my Thursday outing this week – A trip to Peterborough. I haven’t been to Peterborough station in something like 40 years – I dropped out of trainspotting in the late 1980’s and moved to planes. And, although I did visit the Nene Valley Railway back in 2008, I didn’t visit the mainline station. Here’s what the track layout at Peterborough was like when I last did some spotting there…
Peterborough Track Plan – Courtesy of Simsig.
The track layout looks similar today except that bay platform 1 has gone. Platform 2 is now 1. 3 is now 2 and a new platform 3 allows trains to stop on the up fast line. The down fast still has no platform and platforms 4 & 5 are as in the diagram. There is a new island platform where the Flyash siding was – 6 & 7 – with additional tracks provided to allow passenger trains access to the Whittlesea lines. The Goods Loop remains. The station has two footbridges, one accessed by stairs and the other by ramps. What an ideal place to get some exercise while trying out all the photographic angles😂
Peterborough is on the east coast mainline from London to York and on to the North East and Scotland. It is also on cross England routes from East Anglia to the Midlands and beyond. This makes it a busy station for both passenger and freight services. Time to look at some of my day’s photographs.
91110 in Battle of Britain Memorial Flight livery heads a King’s Cross to Leeds service through on the down fast.
158773 working a Liverpool to Norwich service.
800210 arrives at platform 4 with a London to Lincoln service.
170501 forming a Peterborough to Doncaster service via Spalding and Lincoln.
755328 terminating from Ipswich – After a 10 minute break it’ll be going back to Ipswich again.
…That’s a glimpse of the passenger services and I haven’t mentioned the Thameslink trains that run all the way from here to Horsham on the south coast via central London! It was one of these that I travelled out on from St. Pancras.
As for freight – it was very busy. I logged 16 trains passing through in the 3.75 hours I was there. Here’s a sample…
66747 on Network Rail hoppers from Whitemoor Yard (March) to Mountsorrel Quarry to collect some Ballast.
66105 approaching on the Stamford Lines with a Mountsorrel to Barham (Ipswich) aggregates train.
66778 on a Felixstowe North to Birch Coppice (Tamworth) intermodal service.
66567 on a Tinsley (Sheffield) to Felixstowe North intermodal.
I haven’t covered everything in this post, just given a flavour. On the day I logged 131 locos and units of which I needed 31! That’s a good return. I also picked up both Thameslink units for haulage along with a couple of underground units too.
Saturday was an away match for Wingate & Finchley at Margate – An opportunity to take the high speed service from St. Pancras. In truth, when you’re going to Margate or Ramsgate, it’s only really high speed as far as Ebbsfleet. After that you’re on the normal tracks and travelling at the same speed as the other trains. The journey time saved is only 12 minutes compared with taking the train from Victoria. However, there is another advantage to paying the extra – two services for every one from Victoria! On Saturday however, signal problems at Ramsgate and a broken down train resulted in some disruption to the service. I had intended to catch the 11:37 via Ashford to Margate but that was cancelled. Fortunately, I had added in plenty of slack in my trip down to St. Pancras and I was able to get on the earlier 11:20 service. This routes to Ebbsfleet and then trundles around the north Kent coast calling at many of the larger towns along the way. In the end, routing that way took me past Hoo Junction and its stabling point where I logged 5 locos of which I needed 3! I also picked up a couple of the Class 375 3-car units working the north Kent branch lines, so it was a good result all round. The same can’t be said of the football which we lost 2-1 against a Margate team trying to escape relegation – I guess they needed the win more than we did but we must get a result against Carshalton next Saturday to finish in the play-off’s. Here’s a view of the seafront at Margate…
…And here’s 395027 arriving with my train home…
Totals for the day, 50 logged of which 9 were needs and I picked up 4 new for haulage😎👍
Hoping to fit in some more trips next week while continuing my fitness projects.😅
Images from Finchley 