A Shedload of…

…Well, Sheds!

When the vast majority of freight movements on the rail network are handled by a single class and the range of locations available to you to photograph them is limited, you have to fall back on some photographic trickery to achieve some form of variance in your shots. After all, we can all get that nice 50mm three-quarter view that was always the ideal – and we know that gets boring when the subject is always the same…

So here are some Class 66 locos (Sheds) in action – I hope I’ve got some good variance in my views…

Barking…

Stratford…

Stratford again…

Harrow & Wealdstone…

And finally, Harrow & Wealdstone once more…

Those of my followers with photographic experience will spot that I’m using a Tele-zoom for all of these. This type of lens allows you to control the light and surroundings in a way that a standard lens often can’t. The shots also tell you that I’m often seeking to show the locomotive in its environment but occasionally I will look for pure impact like in the third shot. It’s all about creating some variety to what we shoot while trying to capture the present for future transport historians.

CMMC – March Alphabet Letters Ch or Ck in the word

Last week both Euro and American Truck Simulator games were updated to version 1.40. This means that I have spent almost all week driving trucks to the detriment of everything else. Now I could post a Truck photo for this challenge but I’ve sorted out some other things instead.

The obvious to start with – Church…

…This is Holy Cross Old Church in Greenford Magna. Some parts of the building date to the 13th century although the wooden bell tower is as recent as the 16th century and the flint coating on the walls was added in the 19th century!

Perhaps a little less obvious, Football Pitch…

…This is, of course, Wingate & Finchley’s home. It is a traditional grass pitch. Quite a few clubs now have ‘all-weather’ artificial pitches.

And finally, I have a couple of Track Machines. These have a variety of roles in the maintenance of railway track. The first is a Stoneblower – used to force fine-grained ballast under the sleepers to level the track…

…That was work that would have been done by a gang of labourers in the past. The machine is more efficient and probably more accurate. There are many other types like Tampers and Ballast Cleaners, all allowing more efficient maintenance of what the railway companies like to call the Permanent Way. The second of our Track Machines is a Railhead Treatment Train (RHTT)…

…These are seasonal, coming out in the autumn when leaves are falling from the trees to keep the rail clean so that trains have good adhesion. These have been built to deal with a relatively new problem – it seems that the move to disc-brakes means that the trains wheels are not kept clean in the manner that they were by the old style clasp-brakes and a build up of leaf-litter results in a loss of traction and braking power. This type is a Multipurpose Vehicle – It can also de-ice the conductor rail in winter and in summer the water tanks can be replaced with herbicide tanks and the train deployed to kill weeds.

Catch up with Cee’s Midweek Madness Challenge Here.

10 Travel Photographs

Logically, travel photographs should show your means of travel, right? But, of course, they don’t. Most travel photo’s show images from the poster’s destination. Most of mine fall into that group too. But this shot is a genuine ‘travelling’ image.

When I was much younger, my train-spotting hobby took me far and wide around the UK and ultimately into Holland, Belgium and France I would book a week off work in the summer and, armed with a railrover ticket, head out for a week on the rails. There were no breaks in that week, except for one return home midweek to change clothes and get a decent night’s sleep. Washing was done in the toilet on the train and food was bought wherever it was available. Back then, in the mid 1970’s, there were trains that ran all through the night so plenty of sleeping options were available to the travelling enthusiast and it was quite normal to log close on, and sometimes over, 10000 miles in a week.

A good start to a week on the rails was to catch the first train of Saturday morning out of King’s Cross – a stopping service that departed at ten-past midnight with an ultimate destination of Newcastle. As one of the last services out of the capital on a Friday night it had more than its share of office workers heading home to the shires after an evening on the booze. Passengers quickly thinned out once the train got beyond Stevenage and by Peterborough it was only the long-distance passengers that were left. I believe the train rolled into Newcastle – and memory is not what it was – at around 0730. There was then time to grab something to eat from the station buffet before catching a train to Edinburgh.

And that is where you find me, on the train to Edinburgh as it approaches the Royal Border Bridge at Berwick-upon-Tweed…

…Times have changed – you can’t stick your head and camera out of modern trains like I could then, so this image would be very difficult to replicate now. Things were different back then and it should be noted that I understood the risks involved far better than many youngsters today. My Grandfather was a railwayman and I knew to stick just one eye out to survey the view ahead. Even the camera only ever went out as far as needed to get the lens clear of the door-frame. Even so, it’s not a practice that I would suggest everyone should partake in. Even in the recklessness of youth I was more careful than most 🙂