Spotting 2024 – Week 9

Last week was a quiet one from a trains point of view. I had a medical appointment on Tuesday which ruled out any activity and Wednesday was scheduled for shopping. Then the weather closed in and we were subject to heavy rain for the rest of the week culminating in a very rare event – a Wingate & Finchley home game being called off for ‘Waterlogged Pitch’! So, my train specific outings were limited to Monday and even that was a bit of an odd one.

The initial plan for Monday was a trip on the Underground with the intention of crossing off White City as a terminating point for my Freedom Pass project. So I started with a Northern Line journey down to Tottenham Court Road where I waited on the Central Line platforms in the hope of getting a White City terminating service…

…After a while, with no trains stopping short at White City, I decided it was time to change plans – I’d go to Bond Street and take the Jubilee Line. I was thinking that I could go north to Stanmore and cross that off instead. Instead quickly became the watchword of the day as on arrival at Bond Street I discovered that there was a train going in the other direction that was terminating at North Greenwich – About face and off we go…

North Greenwich is one of those stations on the Jubilee Line extension – It serves the O2 Arena. It was temporarily the terminus of the line before the last section opened to Stratford and it is still a terminating point for some trains. Like most other stations on the extension, the platforms have screens to keep passengers away from the tracks…

…Though it sometimes feels like they’re there to stop enthusiasts photographing the trains🤣 However, they do give other photographic opportunities…

My day was now seriously off course and it was time to do something completely different. Instead of going to Stanmore, I decided to go back to Westminster and possibly pick up the District line from there. I’ve never visited Westminster station since the Jubilee Line was extended so I was seeing the ‘Sci-Fi’ interior for the first time…

…It’s like a set from Doctor Who and I would not have been surprised if I found some Cybermen on the escalators! By the time I got to the surface lines, I decided that perhaps I’d derail my day and go outside to see what the tourists were up to. It was cold and breezy along Victoria Embankment but the the leafless trees meant I could get a good shot of the Elizabeth Tower…

I strolled up to Trafalgar Square where I caught a shot of a Dynes Recovery truck…

…with a damaged Tootbus in tow. The bus was involved in a discussion with an overhanging tree on Holborn earlier in the day. It looks like the tree had leant more over the road after heavy rain and strong winds the previous day – setting a trap for any passing high vehicles. It will probably have to come down.

I found the Routemaster operated section of the 15 was back…

…However, it’s now a tourbus route rather than part of TfL’s services and hop-on-hop-off tickets cost £10 for a day. The rest of the day degenerated into a window-shopping exercise as I contemplated a new hat but never found one I liked. Despite all the ‘insteads’ of the day, I logged 80 sightings of which I needed 8 and I picked up 8 new units for haulage too.

Wednesday evening saw me out on an unplanned trip. Epi was attending the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London with a group of work colleagues. I travelled with her as far as the West Gate where they were meeting. It was an opportunity to get my steps in and to do a little night photography. Here is a view from the grounds of the Tower of London with Tower Place in the foreground and The Shard beyond…

After dropping Epi off, I made my way along the river path as far as Monument before heading up to Bank…

…A shot of the new entrance on Cannon Street that was built as part of the upgrade of the station completed in 2022. I decided to head home using one of my weird routes – Up onto Cannon Street station to catch 376002…

…across the Thames to London Bridge where I caught this shot of 377522…

…before taking Thameslink to Farringdon, Elizabeth Line to Tottenham Court Road and northern Line back home. I logged 28, none of them new and picked up 5 new for haulage.

I made the mistake of going out for a walk on a very wet Thursday and have now developed a heavy cold so I’m taking medication and staying indoors for the time being – As a result, I’m not sure what I will be doing in Week 10.

Share Your Desktop – January 2024

Middle of the month and time to join in with Clare’s Share Your Desktop Challenge😎👍

On the gaming PC this month I have a shot of Miss Lola hauling a tank of Anhydrous Ammonia from Kansas City (KS) to Corpus Christi (TX)…

The image was taken on US169 in Kansas where there is a mix of farmland and wooded areas. That’s a magnificent Oak tree on the right – an excellent piece of work by one of the mapping developers at SCS Software. Miss Lola is our Kenworth W990 and is a bit of a ‘Lady of the night’ with purple underfloor and marker lights that really show brightly in the dark. With a 455HP engine and 12sp automatic box, she’s ideally suited to the lighter agricultural deliveries and currently is returning the best mpg in the fleet.

On the photo PC we have an image taken on my street…

London Fire Brigade appliance DPL167 has just left the station on a shout, its lights shining brightly in the gloom of a winter’s afternoon. I live around 400yds from the Fire Station so this is a part of my normal day😅 I always wish the firefighters good luck as they pass👍

Trucking Digest

It’s been a while and our trucking world grows. My readers will have seen the occasional mention of Trucking events intervening in my photo challenge posts. Tonight I’m going to quickly report on the recent delivery of the West Balkans map and the associated event which, because of the time of year, became embroiled with the annual Happy Hauloween event and also our Breast Cancer Awareness drives too.

To set the scene, a while back SCS Software released the Road to the Black Sea map which took us through the east Balkan countries to Western Turkey. To me, it seemed a bit odd at the time as it left a huge gap between the Italian map and the most immediate countries to the east. While driving through Romania and Bulgaria to get to Turkey was ok, it just seemed a little illogical to go that route first – leaving a large black hole in the cohesion of the map. This release rectifies that issue.

As with all map releases there was an event but this was also a bit different – Leaving aside past precedent, this event tied the new West Balkans with the existing East Balkans to give us 2 World of Trucks Achievements to collect. We were required to deliver to or from 15 cities in the new West Balkans map for one achievement and to do the same in the older Road to the Black Sea for the other. The event was called Cruising the Balkans and ideally, you might pickup a string of jobs delivering from one map to the other and back, but that didn’t happen in my experience.

I started out from Marseille in my MAN TGX, Clovis, heading into Koper, Slovenia – Probably the nearest city to my start point😅 But from there it was a lot of hard work getting loads to meet the targets for the achievements. Initially the truck was wearing our Pink Ribbon livery for Breast Cancer Awareness…

…Seen here with some Lavender which complimented the paint scheme😎 Only a short time into the event and the additional Happy Hauloween event kicked in. Fortunately the two events could co-exist although at the expense of doing Halloween jobs in American Truck – While most were done in Europe, Dog actually got to do three…

…Looking pretty good in the orange but happier once back in a more Mack oriented Green😅

Of course, Clovis had to adopt a suitable Halloween colour scheme too and spent the next couple of weeks hauling a mix of Halloween trailers and normal jobs while knocking out the Balkans event requirements…

..Along with the needs of the Happy Hauloween event👍

I covered over 14000km before I met the requirements of the Cruising the Balkans event – a total of 30 cities delivered to or from across the whole of the Balkans. Then there were the Steam Achievements to do – 5 of those! We had to visit all of the cities on the new map, go to all the locations with a cutscene and drive on a particularly tricky road between Bijelo Polje and Pristina referred to as The Serpentine. There was a production chain set of tasks to complete – easiest done by taking quick jobs – which went from bauxite ore through to a completed motorhome. Here I am completing that last delivery for that set of tasks in a classic Renault Magnum…

Finally, there was a trip down the Adriatic Coast from Rijeka to Nikšić via Zadar and Split. A lovely if challenging drive with some great views…

This new map DLC is an absolutely wonderful addition to the simulation and sets a high bar for future additions. We know that upgrades to older maps are ongoing in the background and we’ve seen the improvements made in Germany and Austria to bring levels of realism to our driving experience that were undreamt of a couple of years back. We’re promised the Switzerland update soon and also the next stage of the update to California covering the Stockton area – we’ll get to Los Angeles eventually! And – We can expect Kansas, Nebraska and Greece in the next few months… It’s a breathless time for us virtual truckers!😅