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I never know if these count as a dark red – the first is an EWS liveried locomotive and it’s definitely a ‘dull’ red…

…But I’m pretty sure LMS / British Railways Maroon (sometimes called Crimson Lake) counts as Dark’ when it comes to reds…

…And then there’s our Wingate & Finchley away kit from a couple of years ago…

…I just wish I had some shots of the Chrysanthemums I used to grow with the red and gold petals – maybe something to look forward to as I replant the garden… 🙂

Catch up with Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge Here.

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First day out on the rails for a long time. Main object was to catch up with one of the Waterloo to Windsor & Eton Riverside steam specials.

61306 ‘Mayflower’ runs through Imperial Wharf…

66785 halted by a red signal in Clapham Junction with sand empties as the weather closed in – it’s gonna be a very wet afternoon!..

Catch up with Cee’s Black & White Challenge Here.

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One of the things I enjoy about the Truck Simulator games is the selection of achievements you can work towards. Euro Truck currently has 46 Steam Achievements whilst American Truck has 26. Additionally, on World of Trucks there are another 18 to collect. New achievements get added with each new map or DLC so even the most active player will usually still have a few to collect.

The Achievements vary between a simple ‘Sardine – Use a Ferry’ to complicated long-term projects with some tight-for-time challenges too. The recent Heavy Cargo DLC brought 5 challenges apiece to Euro and American Truck and in the past week I have been trying to clear out some of those in Europe.

After the debacle with the Almonds that I reported in my ‘Bad Day in the Office‘ post a few days back I settled into a run of Heavy Hauling jobs. I had two targets in mind and the possibility of a third. Firstly I needed to successfully complete three perfect Heavy Cargo jobs in a row to get the Keep Calm and Haul Heavy achievement. This was completed with the following runs: –

Clermont Ferrand – Lyon Rex Tex 45 55t € 11,919 200km
Lyon – St Laurent Writigen 808 44t € 27,537 468km
St Laurent – Amsterdam Dozer Crawl Z35K 39t € 51,620 925km

Driving rain on a night run to St Laurent with a Writigen 808 Road Miller.

There was a bonus to this – St Laurent was the last of the Nuclear Power Stations that I needed of the five in France so I cleared the ‘Go Nuclear’ achievement at the same time 🙂

At this point it seemed that the ‘No Pain, No Gain’ achievement might be possible – shift 250t in 5 consecutive deliveries. If I could pick up a couple of Locomotive deliveries it could be done, but there wasn’t one. Instead there was the elusive Transformer that I needed to complete the ‘Time for Big Hauling’ achievement: –

Amsterdam – Linz Transformer PK900 47t € 48,590 1016km

So that was all 8 cargo types carried and another achievement down!

The elusive PK900 Transformer on the Autobahn near Frankfurt.

Sights now set on the ‘No Pain, No Gain’ and using 47t of Transformer as my starting point I proceeded to complete another 4 jobs: –

Linz – Mannheim Concrete Beams 51t € 23,328 617km
Mannheim – Clermont Ferrand Concrete Beams 51t € 30,928 903km
Clermont Ferrand – Lyon Rex Tex 45 55t € 12,060 203km
Lyon – Geneva Rex Tex 45 55t € 12,775 252km

That ought to do it I thought… But no! Unfortunately, it seems that this Steam Achievement is currently broken (something confirmed in the game forums). There’s one for parking the trailers as well that is also broken currently. A small disappointment which turned out to have a silver lining because I completed a World of Trucks achievement with those last two deliveries!