Dewsbury is not my favourite place for various reasons but it has one saving grace — the railway station, and the excellent pub which is attached. I didn’t have time to visit that establishment today but no matter. The little girl stepped out from between the pillars at the right moment. And she’s being good, not going over the yellow line and all that.
Regular early morning shots seem to have mostly disappeared from the blog; this is the earliest, and the first before 8am, since 20th January, and that was taken when coming into Addis Ababa airport so not exactly normal circumstances. Other than that this is the earliest since 7th October 2022. In all that time Northern Rail might have run a whole morning’s service which didn’t contain at least one train that turned up just that few minutes late…. but I doubt it.
Almost every one of my trips to London ends here. Now and again I might leave in a different direction, but mostly it’s on one of the half-hourly Leeds services: we all watch the departures board over there, to see if this will be one of those times where LNER give us all more than about eight minutes’ notice. (Today, they did.)
Documentary. I got on this train at 7.56am at Hebden Bridge. A few minutes later I got off it again, at Todmorden (where this shot is taken), thanks to it being, as you can hopefully tell,. a stupidly overcrowded two-carriage cattle truck, and waited for the next one. On Monday I have to spend about 10.5 hours on a train…. what we do for our kicks, eh?
Made use of a facility that I haven’t accessed since December 9th, namely Manchester Victoria station. It’s not a bad place — when it works — and certainly way better than it was when I first started using it regularly in 2005, when it was still largely a hole in the ground.
But in all honesty, this is a picture of her trousers, which I think are excellent, particularly the shape they make.
I didn’t go out today, and alongside the poor weather, here is a good reason why. I don’t normally do this kind of thing on here, but observations must be made, in photo form, of the ‘helpful’ information currently available on the Northern Rail web site. Nobody in ‘Authority’ really gives a toss one way or the other, so here we are. Twelve and a half years in power and this bunch of idiots can’t even provide a working railway. Or is it the unions’ fault, somehow? For what though, expecting that all that rubbish spoken in 2020 about how important ‘keyworkers’ are might actually translate into an ability, two years later, to at least sustain their rewards in the face of the rising cost of living? (See also nurses, postal workers, etc.)
So be it. The two trips I have to make before the (ostensible) resumption of ‘the usual service’ on 9th Jan. could have been done on the trains, instead I am obliged to use less environmentally sustainable means. Sadly I don’t expect 2023 to be much different, throughout.
In my mind’s eye there is a perfectly symmetrical version of this shot. But in the absence of its reality, this one will do.
This was the third of eight railway stations passed through today (nine if you count Wageningen bus station) as I travelled from a small provincial town somewhere near the centre of the Netherlands to a small provincial town somewhere near the centre of Great Britain (Hebden Bridge). And so ends my 11th complete year of doing this blog.
On the move again — a schedule dictated by the rail unions. I support the strikes, though. Anything that pisses off the morons currently running this country must have some validity.
Passengers in various states of thought and repose, as the train pulled into Rochdale on the way into work. Or, I suspect for the guy immediately opposite me, home after a rather heavy night.
For the duration of this visit, and certainly today, its final morning, Dundee has basked in balmy sunshine that is atypical for the city. It contributed to a pleasantly chilled out wait for the train heading back south, which I think this couple epitomise. (My journey was fine all the way to Bradford, after which it descended into a farce of the kind only Northern Rail seem able to manufacture, but that’s another story, hours in the future.)
Being 42 