A week of trains and steps… Today I completed a consecutive 7 days of doing over 8000 steps. That’s an important thing for my health and wellbeing. Now I think I’ll ease back for the weekend before setting out to put together a string of 13 days for the next level. Why 8000 steps? I know that most of the fitness trackers suggest 10k steps but many medical sources suggest that this is a figure plucked out of the air – around 20 minutes spent walking at a brisk pace being more beneficial. So I’ve picked 8k steps as a target that I know I can achieve most days and I think having a target that you can do is important because failing your target all the time is demoralising and leads to giving up on exercise. That’s the background and it ties in with my Freedom Pass Project, my general trainspotting and other activities. So let’s have a photographic panorama of some recent outings that I haven’t reported…👍
For my Freedom Pass Project I still needed to take a London Underground train to Ealing Broadway. I sorted that out last Wednesday by picking up the Central Line from Shepherds Bush to terminate at Ealing. I spent 3 hours on the station during which time I saw 15 freight trains – that’s roughly double the norm. The reason for this is the closure of the line between Didcot and Oxford for major repairs to a failing bridge over the Thames. Many of these extra freights are intermodal services from Southampton Docks to destinations in the Midlands and Northern England. Here’s one such train…
…66413 heading a service from Leeds to Southampton – This would not normally have routed via London as it’s quite a detour! There are a lot of diversions and it’s putting a lot of stress on the available slots. Some freights were clearly sharing the same slot, cutting margins and causing minor delays for passenger services. For my US friends, this loco is wearing a livery based on the Genesee and Wyoming as that company now owns Freightliner.
I post a morning photo on Twitter every day. This started because I was helping a young Serbian friend with his photographic learning. Subsequently I discovered, when I stopped posting, that a couple of my other trucking friends had been enjoying the images. In particular, Jürgen, asked that I continue. So that is what I have done. We now share morning photos for our friends. Jürgen has been displaying some great shots of where he lives and I’ve been doing a mix of my usual😅 Here’s a shot that I shared taken on Ballards Lane in Finchley Central…
A visit to Clapham Junction always gives a lot of steps – just walking down to East Finchley Station and then changing at Bank for the Waterloo & City line before riding a Southwestern Railway service out to Clapham will give you over 4k steps in one hit! Then moving around the station to try and catch a flavour of what’s passing through can easily add another 6k! – It’s a big station 🤣 Here’s a Class 455 unit – now nearly 5 years beyond its intended retirement – amidst the weeds on the Wimbledon side of the station…
…While on the Richmond side of the station we have a Bow depot to Tonbridge train of empty hoppers behind 66764 of GBRf…
Epi wanted to take a walk over to the garden centre in Bounds Green while she is having a week off work. This is only 2.4 miles (5 mile round trip) but in North London that includes a few sharp climbs and the boredom of walking Creighton Avenue😅 Here’s a 102 bus on Alexandra Park Road close to our destination…
A trip out yesterday saw me visiting Hampstead Heath station where I caught a shot of the Hoo Junction to Whitemoor yard engineers train…
…A train of ballast on this occasion. Then I walked home over Hampstead Heath. I’ve been promising Jürgen that I’d take him for a virtual walk across The Heath and I took several images to post on Twitter for him. Here’s a couple of them…
…And while I’m out and about, I mustn’t forget my Trucking buddies – Here’s a nice example of a Scania P500XT at a building site on The Bishops Avenue…
Hope you enjoyed my week of exercise 🤣👍
Images from Finchley 