This year, I’ve tried to hold myself to posting at least one post per month on this site. I’ve mostly, but not quite, managed it. Nevertheless, there have still been so few that at present, with ten posts on the home page, if you scroll down to the bottom you’ve gone back almost a year. The bottom post on the home page right now is this one from last August, about my summer holiday to Hastings.
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Keyword noise: holidays, Sussex, Hastings, St Leonards, Brighton, The Children, railway, miniature railway, Bottle Alley, Volks Electric Railway.
They say you can never go back again. Never cross the same river twice. The past is a foreign country, as the famous quotation goes. Sometimes, it can’t be avoided. Sometimes, though, it can be worth doing just for yourself.
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Keyword noise: holidays, Sussex, Hastings, St Leonards, The Children, Bottle Alley, railway, miniature railway, Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway.
A random selection
Published at 4:10 pm on December 31st, 2022
Filed under: Photobloggery.
As the calendar year is drawing to a close, and Yuletide is slowly coming to an end, here’s a selection of random photos from 2022 that I don’t think I’ve posted anywhere previously.
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Keyword noise: photography, holidays, Northumberland, Whitley Bay, Haltwhistle, Housesteads, Romans, archaeology, railway, trains, signalbox, Hereford, Hereford Cathedral, Penarth, De Cymru, South Wales, Caistor, Lincolnshire.
There are so many preserved and heritage railways in the UK—there must be something around a hundred at the moment, depending on your definition—that it’s very difficult to know all of them intimately, or even to visit them all. It doesn’t help that still, around 55 years after the “great contraction” of the railway network in a quixotic attempt to make it return to profitability, new heritage railways occasionally appear, like mushrooms out of the ground after rain.
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Keyword noise: Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire, Crowle, Crowle Peatlands Railway, railway, narrow gauge, photography, maps.
A visit to the Rheilffordd Ffestiniog/Ffestiniog Railway, back in April.
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Keyword noise: photography, rheilffordd, railway, train, steam train, Cymru, Wales, Gogledd Cymru, North Wales, Rheilffordd Ffestiniog, Ffestiniog Railway, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Porthmadog, Dduallt, Merddin Emrys, David Lloyd George.
Some South Wales railway history that is still around, but not for long
Published at 9:53 pm on May 12th, 2022
Filed under: In With The Old, Geekery, Trains.
Back on to my complex and fragmentary sequence of posts about the history of the complex and fragmentary South Wales railway network. It was prompted by news that Network Rail are working on upgrading the Ebbw Vale line to allow a better train frequency than once per hour, by widening the line from one track to two for a few miles around Aberbeeg. Changing the track, though, involves changing the signalling, and changing the signalling will involve getting rid of a little island of 19th-century mechanical signalling that still exists in Casnewydd/Newport. It’s the signalbox at Park Junction, in the Gaer area of the city.
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Keyword noise: Cymru, Wales, Casnewydd, Newport, hanes, history, hanes lleol, local history, rheilffordd, railway, railway history, trains, Gaer, Cyffordd Parc, Park Junction, Tredegar Park, Great Western Railway, signalbox, signalling, Monmouthshire Canal, modernisation, Network Rail, maps, RCH, Railway Clearing House.
A while ago—I can’t find the exact post—I set myself a target of having more posts on here filed under Trains than I do under Political. I think I even said the target I was giving myself was by the end of last year. Well, I’m still clearly a long way off that at the time of writing (58 versus 113) but this is an attempt to make amends. Right at the start of the year, you see, I went out for a trip on the Middleton Railway.
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Keyword noise: Yorkshire, Leeds, railway, trains, Middleton Railway, steam, steam trains.
Or, a special locomotive
Published at 6:04 am on June 12th, 2021
Filed under: Geekery, Trains.
In the last post I mentioned I’d been up to North West Wales recently, for the first time since January 2020. The first place we headed to, naturally, was the Ffestiniog Railway, and it was bustling with activity: five engines in steam, I think (plus one diesel), several trains shuttling up and down the line. I couldn’t stop taking photos, either on the phone or on the Proper Camera, of every train I saw. And one in particular was special.
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Keyword noise: Cymru, Wales, Gogledd Cymru, North Wales, Rheilffordd Ffestiniog, Ffestiniog Railway, rheilffordd, railway, train, steam train, Merlen Cymraeg, Welsh Pony, Porthmadog.
Last week, I posted a little bit about the history of the railway junction at Pye Corner, just outside Casnewydd/Newport. There, the original route of the horse-drawn tramway opened around 1805 is now a quiet, grassy back alleyway, with the railway that replaced it a few yards away. That railway line, now just a single-track branch, strides over the road into Bassaleg with a complex series of three parallel railway bridges, imposing and monolithic.
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Keyword noise: Cymru, Wales, Casnewydd, Newport, hanes, history, hanes lleol, local history, rheilffordd, railway, railway history, trains, Pye Corner, Great Western Railway, Monmouthshire Canal, maps, RCH, Railway Clearing House.
For a few months now, I’ve been threatening to start writing a long series of blog posts about the railway history of South Wales, starting in Newport and slowly radiating outwards. The question, of course, is how to actually do that in a format that will be interesting and engaging to read in small chunks; and, indeed, for me to write. The “standard” type of railway history comes in a number of forms, but none of them are particularly attractive to the casual reader. Few go to the point of setting out, to a random passing non-specialist reader, just why a specific place or line is fascinating; just what about its history makes it worth knowing about. Moreover, not only do they tend on the heavy side, they are normally based either on large amounts of archival research, large amounts of vintage photographs, or both. Putting that sort of thing together isn’t really an option for me at present, especially not for a blog post.
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Keyword noise: Cymru, Wales, Casnewydd, Newport, hanes, history, hanes lleol, local history, rheilffordd, railway, railway history, trains, Pye Corner, Great Western Railway, Monmouthshire Canal, maps, tithe maps.
I deliberately didn't post this yesterday in case you thought it was an April Fool
Published at 9:57 pm on April 2nd, 2021
Filed under: Dear Diary, Geekery, Trains.
Talking about trains: regular readers will be aware that occasionally over the past few months I’ve been banging on about the Brecon & Merthyr Railway, a curious little Welsh concern that until 1922 operated two stretches of railway line. One from Brecon to Merthyr—actually, to Deri, a small village between Dowlais and Bargoed—and the other from Rhymney to Newport. The latter was originally built as a horse-drawn tramroad in the mid-1820s and its southernmost few miles are the last part of the Brecon & Merthyr Railway still in use, now just as a freight branch to serve Machen Quarry. In included probably the oldest viaduct on the railway network, which I’ll write more about another day. Occasionally someone proposes reopening it to passengers, together with the disused line from Machen to Caerphilly, but nothing ever happens about this.
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Keyword noise: rheilffordd, railway, Brecon & Merthyr Railway, Rhiwderin, Bassaleg, Machen.
Or possibly those of my subconscious
Published at 10:26 pm on March 17th, 2021
Filed under: Geekery, Trains.
Work has stolen and sapped all of my energy this week. I’ve still found time, though, to go out walking; and although the weather has been bitterly cold there are signs that spring is coming. The trees are full of songbirds, too.
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Keyword noise: photography, Cymru, Wales, Casnewydd, Newport, Mynydd Machen, rheilffordd, railway, cats.
The ongoing February, which feels as if it is the longest month of the past 12, is sapping my writing energy. Hopefully the oncoming spring will sort that out: today I saw my first queen bumblebee of the year flying purposefully around the neighbourhood looking for a spot to start her nest. This post is something of an appendix to the previous, with a few more photos. I’ve been repeating previous walks, but this time with the good camera.
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Keyword noise: photography, Cymru, Wales, Casnewydd, Newport, rheilffordd, railway, Bassaleg, rural, countryside, river, afon, church, eglwys, Brecon & Merthyr Railway.
One aspect of moving house, especially if you move to a completely different neighbourhood or another town altogether, is the joy you can have in exploring the new area, finding all the interesting corners and places to go. In the current hospitals-overflowing stay-at-home situation, this is a bit limited; but at least there is exploration that can still be done on foot. In Bristol I was getting rather jaded of all the places I could visit on foot, even when it led to interesting local history blog posts. Now, there’s a whole new set of avenues of local history to explore.
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Keyword noise: Cymru, Wales, Casnewydd, Newport, Tŷ Du, Rogerstone, camlas, canal, Monmouthshire Canal, rheilffordd, railway, railway history, Great Western Railway, hanes, hanes lleol, history, local history, walking, cerddediad.
The bad thing about Lego is that if you’re just going to build the kit out of the box, it costs quite a lot of money compared to the time it takes to build the thing. The good thing about Lego, though, is that you can actually complete a project in a reasonable amount of time. Regular readers of this blog will be aware just how many half-finished craft projects I post about on here, and just how few completely finished ones there are (um, none). The Lego I posted about last week, by comparison, is already done! After three sessions, the kit is complete. I’m still not entirely sure why it merited an “18+” age guidance on the box, but it certainly did include lots of fiddly bits.
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Keyword noise: Lego, toys, railway, trains, model, model trains, Swiss Crocodile.
It’s strange, having a birthday that falls not long after Christmas. For a while now I’ve been past the age of receiving very many birthday presents, so a while ago I deliberately went out and bought myself a present, and put it away, waiting for my birthday. This year, too, my birthday was relatively close to moving house, the strange period in which everything frivolous, everything not house-move-related, has to go into stasis until the move is over. My present to myself was a Lego kit, and last night I was finally able to start to build it.
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Keyword noise: Lego, toys, railway, trains, model, model trains.
Regular readers might have noticed that the site has been quiet since the weekend. It’s been quiet because I’ve been somewhat busy moving house: one of the most stressful things you can do in life, or so everyone always says. The previous post was written whilst I was surrounded by removal men trying to pack everything up into well-padded boxes. A strange experience, sitting in a corner of your front room trying to keep yourself occupied as all around you all your stuff is picked up and handled and wrapped and boxed away.
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Keyword noise: Cymru, Wales, Casnewydd, Newport, moving house, rain, countryside, afon, river, railway, rheilffordd, Brecon & Merthyr Railway.
A couple of days ago, it was the hundredth anniversary of a significant event in British railway history. If you’re a train nerd, you’ll know what it was from the title of this post. If you’re not, let’s start with this photo of the Severn Valley in rural mid-Wales.
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Keyword noise: railway, Abermule, Abermiwl, Wales, Cymru, Powys, accident, Cambrian Railways.
When the weather forecast says there’s going to be snow I’m always slightly cynical. For one thing, I’m suspicious the forecast always errs on the side of caution when it comes to snow. Secondly, in this part of town, snow falls less and sticks less than on the higher ground of high-altitude suburbs like Clifton and Horfield. In Easton, the snow is rare and quickly turns to slush.
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Keyword noise: Bristol, winter, seasons, snow, death, cemetery, Greenbank, Eastville, Easton, Greenbank Cemetery, history, local history, railway, disused, Rosemary Green.
Regular readers will know I’m the sort of person who always has an eye for odd little details, odd little quirks of history or mechanical gubbins. You’ll probably be unsurprised to know that this has never really changed much.
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Keyword noise: railway, rheilffordd, Cymru, Wales, Gogledd Cymru, North Wales, Rheilffordd Ffestiniog, Ffestiniog Railway, photography, couplings.
Occasionally, when I visit The Mother, I look through old photos. Either family ones, or ones from my own albums. My first camera was a Christmas present I’d asked for when I was age 7 or 8: a Halina-branded Haking Grip-C compact camera that took 110 cartridge film. With a fixed focus, a fixed shutter-speed and a choice of two apertures, it was an almost-entirely mechanical beast. The shutter was cocked by a lever which engaged with the film’s sprocket holes (a single hole per frame on 110 film) and the only electrical component was a piezoelectric switch attached to the shutter, for firing a Flipflash bulb if you’d inserted any. I might still have an unused Flipflash somewhere.
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Keyword noise: Cymru, Wales, Gogledd Cymru, North Wales, rheilffordd, railway, Blaenau Ffestiniog, Rheilffordd Ffestiniog, Ffestiniog Railway, Mountaineer, The Alco, train, steam train.
Or, some completely fictional history
Published at 10:26 pm on October 16th, 2020
Filed under: Geekery, Trains, Being Crafty.
The other week, I wrote about how there are just too many interesting railways to pick one to build a model of, which is one reason that none of my modelling projects ever approach completion; indeed, most of them never approach being started. Some, though, have developed further than others. In particular, I mentioned a plan for a fictitious narrow-gauge railway in the Rhinogydd, and said I’ve started slowly aquiring suitable stock for it. What I didn’t mention is that I’ve also put together the start of a history of this entirely invented railway. I first wrote it down a few years ago, and although it is a very high-level sketch, has a fairly high level of implausibility to it, and probably needs a lot of tweaks to its details, I think it’s a fair enough basis for a railway that is fictional but interesting.
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Keyword noise: railway, fake history, narrow gauge, model railway, model trains, Porthdwyryd & Dolwreiddiog Railway, Cymru, Wales, Ardudwy, Gogledd Cymru, North Wales, Rhinogydd.
Today: we went to wander around Leigh Woods, just outside Bristol on the far bank of the Avon Gorge. It’s not an ancient woodland: it is a mixture of landscapes occupied and used for various purposes for the past few thousand years. A hillfort, quarries, formal parkland, all today merged and swallowed up by woodland of various forms and patterns, although you can see its history if you look closely. I love walking around damp, wet countryside in autumn; although today was dry, everything had a good soaking yesterday and earlier in the week. The dampness brings out such rich colours in photos, even though I didn’t have anything better than the camera on my phone with me.
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Keyword noise: Bristol, Leigh Woods, photography, River Avon, railway, bridges, viaducts, Bristol & Portishead Railway, giant redwoods.
Or, why are there so many different trains in the world
Published at 11:57 am on October 3rd, 2020
Filed under: Geekery, Trains, Being Crafty.
To the Severn Valley yesterday to play with trains, possibly for the last time in a while. I’m not on the roster for next month, and as the pandemic appears to be getting worse again, who knows what will happen after that point. The pandemic timetable makes it a quiet day, just four trains in each direction, and only one crossing move. Here it is, with one train waiting in the station and all the signals pulled off for the other to have a clear run through.
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Keyword noise: Severn Valley Railway, signalbox, railway, signalling, train register, shooting, television, Geoffrey Body.
Back to the railway and the quiet post-viral timetable it is running at the moment. One nice thing about this timetable is that it gives me the opportunity to take my camera along and photograph the trains when they’re stood still, and the station when there’s no trains about. Normally you’re too busy to have chance for that sort of thing.
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Keyword noise: photography, railway, steam train, Bewdley, Severn Valley Railway.
Up to North Wales for the weekend, to help out with the trenau Sion Corn. My Welsh isn’t good enough yet to actually speak it, but good enough to understand when I hear one of the drivers trying to persuade a small boy that the loco is actually powered by a dragon inside the firebox, a la Ivor The Engine. The boy wasn’t having any of it.
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Keyword noise: Cymru, Wales, Gogledd Cymru, North Wales, Porthmadog, Rheilffordd Ffestiniog, Ffestiniog Railway, rheilffordd, railway, steam train, Boston Lodge.
In which we suspect that some TV cameras might be taking the train
Published at 5:48 pm on June 17th, 2010
Filed under: Geekery, Media Addict, Trains.
Regular readers over the past couple of years might have noticed that I quite enjoy spotting the filming locations of the paranormal TV drama* Being Human, filmed in a variety of easily-recognisable Bristol locations: Totterdown, Bedminster, Clifton, St George, College Green, and so on. Not for much longer, though, we thought: although the first two series were Bristol-based, the third series is apparently being moved over to Cardiff. Whether it will be the recognisable Cardiff Cardiff of Torchwood, or the generic anycity of Doctor Who, remains to be seen; but this was all clearly set up when, at the end of Series Two, the protagonists were forced to flee the house on the corner of Henry St and Windsor Terrace for an anonymous rural hideout. No more Bristol locations for us to spot, we thought.
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Keyword noise: BBC, Being Human, Bristol, drama, filming, First Great Western, ghost stories, railway, St Philips Marsh, television, Totterdown, trains, vampire, werewolf.
In which we have a trip out by train
Published at 5:50 pm on June 1st, 2010
Filed under: Dear Diary, Geekery, Trains.
Never mind “Spring Bank Holiday”: it’s June, and it feels like it’s summer already: last weekend, we had a day at the beach, and both ended up horribly sunburned. As shorts aren’t an option for work, I winced every time I moved my legs. Yesterday: a bank holiday weekend, and beautiful sunshine again, so we went off for a cream tea and a steam train ride.
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Keyword noise: Buckfastleigh, countryside, Devon, railway, River Dart, rural, seasons, South Devon Railway, Staverton, steam, steam train, summer, Totnes, travel, weather.
Every so often, search requests come in for things like “disused stations on the Paris Metro”. I’m not entirely sure why, because this site doesn’t have very much content at all on that topic. All there is, in fact, is this post from a few years ago, which wasn’t really about disused Paris metro stations at all: it was more about all the various interconnection lines and mysterious secret underground depots that you can see from a passing train.
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Keyword noise: Arsenal, Croix Rouge, disused, Metro, Paris, railway, underground.
In which we look at an old diesel train and a newer steam train
Published at 11:18 am on July 17th, 2009
Filed under: Geekery, Photobloggery, Trains.
Another thing I mentioned that I hadn’t posted really: some pictures of old trains. Which, I know, isn’t something unusual for this site. But I did rather like this one:
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Keyword noise: diesel, diesel hydraulic, Hymek, LNER, Peppercorn, photography, preservation, railway, steam, steam train, Tornado, Washford, Somerset & Dorset Railway.
Today’s big news story: the East Coast rail franchise is to be temporarily taken into state hands, because the company running it, National Express, has decided that they can’t make the huge wodge of cash that they have promised to pay. Which, to be honest, many many people could have told you was a little unlikely.
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Keyword noise: East Coast, ECML, GNER, National Express, NXEC, railway, Sea Containers, transport.
In which we consider the Wensleydale Railway
Published at 9:07 pm on June 3rd, 2009
Filed under: Geekery, Media Addict, Trains.
Sometimes, when we’re idly sitting on the sofa after work, we put the telly on and can’t even summon the energy to change the channel. Instead, we leave it showing things we’d never normally bother watching; but sometimes that throws up an interesting gem. Like tonight’s One Show for example. We wouldn’t normally watch The One Show, but occasionally it does have some interesting inserts. Tonight: an item on the Wensleydale Railway.
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Keyword noise: BBC, railway, steam, steam train, television, The One Show, transport, Wensleydale Railway.
Another camera-equipped wander around the city
Published at 11:29 am on April 17th, 2009
Filed under: Photobloggery, Trains.
More weekend jaunts around Bristol.
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Keyword noise: alley, Bedminster, bridges, bridge rail, Bristol, broad gauge, church, footbridge, Hotwells, photography, rail, railway, Southville, swing bridge, Vauxhall Bridge, Wapping Road.
If you get involved in some hobbies, some fields of interest, you have to get used to the fact that you’ll end up finding yourself alongside older men with unpalatable views. If you like trains, for example, you will sometimes find yourself alongside elderly trainspotters who haven’t yet worked out that there might be a link between “being single” and “not washing”. You get used to hearing them espousing rather reactionary viewpoints, such as “we should send them all back to their own countries”, and so on.
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Keyword noise: bigotry, books, chauvinism, Jeoffry Spence, railway, sexism.
In which we look at the detailed plans of the Guided Busway
Published at 11:39 am on April 7th, 2009
Filed under: Geekery, Political.
Long-term readers will recall that, particularly last November, I’ve been covering the local guided busway developments: to whit, the West Of England Partnership, the quango which is, you could say, the haunting ghost of Avon County Council, and its plans to turn an old railway line into a private buses-only road. Sort of. Railway lines, of course, aren’t generally wide enough for that sort of thing; so they will mostly be building half a road.
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Keyword noise: Ashton Vale, Bedminster, Bristol, Bristol Harbour Railway, buses, guided bus, Prince St Bridge, railway, Southville, Spike Island, transport, West of England Partnership.
In which we go to Bath
Published at 10:38 am on February 13th, 2009
Filed under: Photobloggery, Trains.
Back in December, for K’s birthday, we took a day out to Bath.
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Keyword noise: Bath, Bath & North East Somerset, Brunel, chapel, Great Western Railway, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, photography, railway, Somerset, Sydney Gardens, telegraph pole, Walcot Chapel.
Another day with no morning bus services, and the roads gridlocked. I walked K to work, taking the camera with me, and watched a lorry get stuck on the hilly part of Bedminster Road. Trying to get towards Ashton, it stopped in a queue of traffic, then realised it couldn’t get started again without risking sliding back down the hill. It sat there, impotent, with its hazard lights flashing, as everyone else tried to drive round either side of it.
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Keyword noise: Bedminster, Bristol, carriages, Class 67, falling, falling snow, First Great Western, ice, night, Parson St station, photography, railway, snow, weather, whiteout, winter.
In which we wander around Clifton and Hotwells, mostly
Published at 10:31 am on January 30th, 2009
Filed under: Photobloggery, Trains.
More buildings around Bristol.
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Keyword noise: Avon Gorge, balcony, Bristol, ceiling, cliff railway, Clifton, Clifton Rocks Railway, Clifton Suspension Bridge, column, Corinthian, door, Freeland Place, funicular, Hotwells, market, photography, railway, River Avon, St Nicks Market, toilet.
We discovered, the other week, that occasionally, just sometimes, if you drag yourself out of bed early on a Saturday morning and get down to our local railway station (1 train an hour if you’re lucky, to Weston-super-Mare), you can see something a bit more interesting than normal…
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Keyword noise: Bristol, locomotive, Parson St, photography, railtour, railway, steam train, Torbay Express.
In which we visit the Bodmin & Wenford Railway
Published at 10:30 am on November 30th, 2008
Filed under: Photobloggery, Geekery, Trains.
This week: it’s mostly trains
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Keyword noise: Bodmin, Bodmin & Wenford Railway, Bodmin General, Cornwall, engine, Great Western Railway, heritage, locomotive, photography, railway, station, steam engine, trains.
In which we discuss the West Of England Partnership’s misguided bus proposals
Published at 11:55 am on November 11th, 2008
Filed under: Political, Trains.
Through my door the other day: a leaflet from the West Of England Partnership, the organisation made up of local councils* that replaced the dead and unlamented Avon County Council. It’s about their proposals for a guided busway scheme in this part of the city. A new road, in other words, limited to buses only. Some of the buses on it would be expensive new buses cunningly disguised to look like trams, and running on “sustainable fuel”;** the rest would be the boring ordinary diesel ones that already serve this area. It would replace the current park-and-ride buses in this area, which are already the nicest and most modern buses in this part of the city. So, frankly, I don’t see why that’s the bus route that most urgently needs replacing.*** You can see their proposals for yourself, on the Partnership’s website – they very carefully avoid using the term “guided busway”, and instead call it “rapid transit”, using the word “bus” as little as possible.
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Keyword noise: Ashton Vale, Avon, Bristol, Bristol Harbour Railway, buses, Cumberland Road, guided bus, heritage, Mark Bradshaw, marketing, public transport, railway, West of England Partnership.
In which we describe the wintry countryside
Published at 10:31 pm on January 8th, 2008
Filed under: Dear Diary, Trains.
Struggling, out of breath, up steep steps up a hillside; turning back and looking down to snap a quick photo. Reaching the top, and turning again to adore the view; gasping for breath in the cold January air. Wandering along the clifftop, past all the other Sunday walkers, and watching gliders taking off: the growl of the winch cutting out, then the whistle of the towline falling to ground, and the glider passing quietly overhead. A random dog jumping up my leg, as I stop to take a photograph of the glider.
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Keyword noise: Battersby, Battersby Junction, ink polaroids, Kilburn, railway, station, Sutton Bank, Yorkshire, Yorkshire Gliding Club.
A spare weekend: we went wandering, in the car, and on foot. We drifted through the moorland village of Levisham, as untouched a village as you’ll find in Yorkshire, with one road wandering through it across a broad green. Ambling downhill, we reached the railway station. We watched a train pull in, and shunt about, great clouds of steam rising in the December cold.
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Keyword noise: artists, Christopher Ware, heritage, Levisham, North Yorkshire, North Yorkshire Moors Railway, NYMR, railway, studio, Yorkshire.
In which music and trains make us happy
Published at 10:09 am on December 8th, 2007
Filed under: Artistic, Media Addict.
Every month I promise myself to start Blogging Properly again, and every time I’m tired.
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Keyword noise: Butterley, Derbyshire, gig, glockenspiel, indie, Indietracks, live music, Midland Railway Centre, music, railway, review, Ripley, The Deirdres, The Icicles, The Poppycocks.
From the recent search hits: “sir thomas bouch blog”. Somehow, I doubt Sir Thomas Bouch is likely to have a blog. For one thing, he’s dead.* Secondly, he was always more interested in building railways than writing about them, or about anything.
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Keyword noise: bouch, Dean Cemetery, Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, engineer, etymology, ferry, grave, history, memorial, railway, Tay Bridge, Thomas Bouch, train ferry, trains, urban myth.
In which the readers speak up and demand photos
Published at 9:58 pm on October 23rd, 2007
Filed under: Geekery, Photobloggery, Trains.
Here at Symbolic Towers, we pay attention to our readers. If they send in tips, we pass them on. Mr E Shrdlu of Clacton writes…
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Keyword noise: E Shrdlu, The Plain People Of The Internet, Grosmont, London, London Underground, nonsense, North Yorkshire Moors Railway, NYMR, photography, railway, secret, secret tunnels, trains, underground, Yorkshire.
In which we get a bit pedantic
Published at 12:58 pm on April 11th, 2007
Filed under: Media Addict.
I was expecting to be disappointed by the ending of Life On Mars, and, of course, I was. There was no way, to my mind, that they could wrap everything up and leave everyone happy, because too many contradictory things had gone before.* The ending I had in my head was, to my mind, a better one, but that of course is because it’s the sort of ending I like.
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Keyword noise: Baconian, BBC, conclusion, drama, East Lancashire Railway, fantasy, finale, John Simm, Life On Mars, railway, television.
In which we go over some railway history
Published at 1:40 pm on March 14th, 2007
Filed under: Geekery, Political, Trains.
More notes on the Lambrigg and/or Grayrigg train crash from a couple of weeks ago. Continued from here.
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Keyword noise: accident, crash, derailment, facing point lock, facing points, FPL, flexibility, Grayrigg, history, junctions, Lambrigg, maintenance, points, Potters Bar, preventative maintenance, railway, railway history, signalling, shunting, trains.
In which we delve into railway history following a recent accident
Published at 2:17 pm on February 27th, 2007
Filed under: Geekery, In With The Old, Trains.
Some notes on the Lambrigg rail accident (also known as the Grayrigg crash in the media).
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Keyword noise: accident, crash, derailment, facing point lock, facing points, FPL, Grayrigg, history, Lambrigg, points, railway, railway history, signalling, trains.
Or, a walk along a famous railway line
Published at 10:28 pm on February 3rd, 2007
Filed under: Photobloggery, Trains.
In which we revisit the past
Published at 10:30 pm on January 23rd, 2007
Filed under: Artistic, Photobloggery.
Photo post of the week: photos from the archives, because I haven’t been out and about. These are all from 1996, I think; so this is what the 1990s looked like, to my eyes at any rate.
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Keyword noise: Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, beach, black and white, footbridge, history, photography, railway, seashore, dunes, sidings, tower block.
In which we go by train
Published at 8:39 pm on December 27th, 2006
Filed under: Photobloggery, Trains.
Time for a winter holiday photo special, as I’ve spent the day with The Parents, looking at steam trains. Much like I did last Christmas, in fact; except last Christmas I was still using a film-powered camera, so the pictures didn’t make it online for quite a while.* It’s high time I did more photo posts purely for the sake of posting photos. Future ones will not all be of steam trains, I promise.
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Keyword noise: engine, GCR, Great Central Railway, Loughborough, photography, railway, steam engine, steam train.
In which we visit London
Published at 9:04 pm on August 15th, 2006
Filed under: Photobloggery.
Or, photo-post of the week.
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Keyword noise: Arnos Grove, clouds, ferry, ferry terminal, London, London Underground, North Woolwich, panorama, photography, pier, railway, Thames, underground, Woolwich, Woolwich Ferry.
In which we listen to a friend play
Published at 9:31 pm on July 15th, 2006
Filed under: Artistic, Photobloggery.
One of the events from my trip to London recently: a gig by the band Montoya, at the Betsey Trotwood pub in Farringdon.* I have an interest to declare, of course: John, Montoya’s lead singer, is someone I’ve known for years, and don’t see at all often enough.**
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Keyword noise: Betsey Trotwood, Farringdon, gig, indie, live music, London, Metropolitan Railway, Montoya, music, photography, London Underground, railway, Ray St Gridiron, Widened Lines.
I was a little doubtful when I saw, on the front page of Friday’s Guardian, the tagline “Steam trains – the great aphrodisiac”. I do like trains, but I wouldn’t say that about them.
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Keyword noise: culture, locomotive, railway, ritual, romantic, steam engine, steam train, The Guardian, Simon Jenkins, trains.
Two small things today, because I’m too sleepy to write more.
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Keyword noise: 1970s, books, death, Glasgow, Glasgow Subway, history, Jan Mark, literature, obituary, photography, railway, reading, subway, underground, Zeno Was Here.
In today’s Guardian, an interesting article with a firsthand experience of being arrested as a terrorist suspect, for trying to catch a tube train whilst carrying a rucksack and wearing a big jacket. And, interestingly, it includes a list of things that the police are looking out for that mark you down as a potential terrorist.
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Keyword noise: David Mery, fear, London Underground, railway, overreaction, policing, terrorism.