Plans to minimise my time in Manchester while on sabbatical have not been successful this week (or next). The weather turned during the day, as well, and it was quite cool and rainy by the evening. A pleasant morning on HB station though: just the latest in a number of occasions where the arrangement of fellow passengers on the platform has interested me.
Blog-wise, it’s two months since I pulled duty on a 6.32 train out of Hebden Bridge — arrives Manchester about 7.10, like this morning, if it’s feeling energetic. The bloke in yellow is the owner of the fold-up bike on the other side of the shot: he looks the least keen of all of them, but then again he has his onward transport sorted.
This is, of course, a quite different photo of platform 2 of Preston station than the one I took sixteen days ago: and I was heading in an entirely different direction — towards home instead of away from it. That’s my excuse anyway. No repetition!
Beautifully — some might even say, ridiculously — warm day today for February, with temperatures up to 20ºC in Hebden Bridge. It’s the half-term holidays as well as the weekend and all this tempted people out, including me, as the afternoon saw a decamp up to the in-laws’ place in Morecambe. Preston station was busy and well-lit; on such days it’s hard not to admire the durability and aesthetic qualities of your basic Victorian station architecture — love those pillars.
Another shot taken out of the windows of a moving train — grubby windows too. But I think the dirt is disguished well enough on this shot, taken from near Attadale station on the rather pretty Dingwall to Kyle of Lochalsh line. The sort of train journey that it’s slightly pointless to take for any reason other than just to do the journey…. but there are good enough reasons for that.
It’s not easy to argue against the premise that Blackfriars station, built on its own railway bridge over the river Thames, has one of the best views of any urban railway station — in Britain, only Durham really rivals it (*yet to appear on this blog….). I could have just poked my camera out of the window and, downriver, you’ll have seen the Tate Modern, the Shard (again), Canary Wharf, and — from further up the platform — Tower Bridge. And, as seen here, St. Paul’s. I did take that stock shot but it has, sort of, already appeared on this blog (on 1/11/13) so in the end I preferred this one, illustrating how most people who get on the train here probably don’t really care…
My summer holiday has been a long time coming this year and there’s the rest of this week to get through yet. Despite the later start to the day, I still feel like this guy.
This will probably turn out to be the last shot taken by my Canon Power Shot SX710 camera which since its debut on 27th June 2015 has put in sterling service every day since, including getting up to the top of Kilimanjaro and back. But the lens cover has been requiring the intervention of fingers to retract successfully for some time now and it’s been randomly freezing up, to be recovered only by removing the battery. I took the plunge and invested in another model this morning. Farewell then to the old one, it still does work so I’ll keep it as a backup.
Most of the local train service remains a scandal of national proportions (some 2,000 trains cancelled across Northern’s domain since the new timetable was launched, blunderingly, on 20th May) but I must admit I have been a small locus of punctuality all week. But no one should have to suffer a 6.30am train too often. Or, two of them.
Yes, this was me today (well, apart from the hair)…. and it’s only Tuesday…
This blog isn’t intended to be political and it’s been a little while since I had cause to depict the lousy state of the local train service. I know this can be a default position for the commuter, that it’s always terrible, but really, Arriva Northern have surpassed themselves in recent months with overcrowding and cancellations. I am lucky – I can organise my day to avoid peak rush hours, on the whole, hence the timing of this shot. Many cannot and are forced to put up with the same crap every week day.
