Monday 4th March 2024, 9.30am (day 4,575)
A metaphor of some kind? Quite possibly. We are all waiting for something. But at least the sun was shining on Hebden Bridge station this morning.
Waiting on platform 2
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: rail travel
The Tay Bridge, from Dundee Law
Monday 25th December 2023, 11.55am (day 4,505)
Ummed and ahhed over this one for a while (two days, as you can see) but in the end I decided to go for something without a Christmas reference at all. Except, of course, in what I’ve just said. Anyway — a view from my morning exertion up Dundee Law, the walk I usually try to take on Christmas morning in advance of the food bloat that is to come. This is only the second Christmas of my life that I have spent in Scotland, after a not-so-fondly remembered time in a cabin on Loch Awe in 1992.
Anyway — if a bit belatedly, a I hope you all had a happy Christmas, however you spent it.
Waiting at Dewsbury
Thursday 5th October 2023, 2.35pm (day 4,424)
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.
The 7:12 arrives, on time (nearly)
Thursday 21st September 2023, 7.15am (day 4,410)
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.
King’s Cross, as usual
Monday 31st July 2023, 9.55am (day 4,358)
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.)
Cattle truck
Thursday 2nd March 2023, 8.05am (day 4,207)
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?
Evening train home
Wednesday 11th January 2023, 6.10pm (day 4,157)
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.
Happy Christmas, peasants: love, Northern Rail
Wednesday 28th December 2022, 2.05pm (day 4,143)
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.
Rotterdam Centraal station
Thursday 25th August 2022, 10.30am (day 4,018)
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.
Leeds station
Friday 19th August 2022, 4.25pm (day 4,012)
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.
Being 42 