Wednesday 11th June 2014, 4.15pm (day 1,021)
A sunny moment captured through the window of a train on the opposite platform. What I want to know is whether the cat is also intending to catch the imminent Manchester service.
A sunny moment captured through the window of a train on the opposite platform. What I want to know is whether the cat is also intending to catch the imminent Manchester service.
OK, I am repeating a theme from three days ago, but there you go. I spend a lot of time on trains and railway platforms. This may be the right time to catch platform 1, anyway. As the renovations proceed, over the last couple of weeks it has lost its roof, allowing the continuing pleasant sunshine to fall on those waiting for their trains home. And the roof leaked anyway.
When awaiting the 8:56 morning service to Manchester, stand by the first station sign board beyond the edge of the canopy. That’s where the front coach stops and there are plenty of seats. Because it was a gloriously sunny morning, my spot was occupied by these guys today, but their cute dog caught great rim-light so I let them off.
I continue to be in a long run of time spent at home and around familiar places. This mural, next to one of the entrances of Manchester Victoria station, has been here a very long time, since the services round here were run by the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, rather than Northern Rail. The red lines on this map were theirs. Some have now gone but quite a number remain actively operational.
Very useful on some Friday nights, after you celebrate the end of the week at the pub, or possibly at the Moshi Monsters movie at the cinema next door.
A reasonable proportion of the population of Hebden Bridge live on the water, specifically, the Rochdale Canal. These private moorings spread along the canal for a few hundred yards in the direction of Mytholmroyd (to where I was walking this morning, dodging the muddy puddles on the towpath).
This is the oldest extant electric railway in the world, having been running since 1883. It runs along Brighton beach for just over a mile, eastwards from the pier — that station is the one seen here, in front of the Royal Albion hotel where we spent this weekend (our usual Brighton haunt, the Pelirocco, having been booked out by a party this weekend).
Taken more because I think the black, cruciform traffic cones are kinda cool, also because I like the way Hebden Bridge’s funeral parlour is right next to the gymnasium. As far as I know there is no connecting door.
My train was slightly late, but this one left just at the right time. I don’t know if this picture is quite what I expected to be when I took it, but it was always going to be today’s photo.
After the party, the journey home. I do this trip quite a lot. Since they finally removed the scaffolding from around Blackfriars station earlier this year, it really does have a bloody good view, up there with Circular Quay station in Sydney — but with slightly cleaner windows.