A rash of these has recently appeared on platforms 4 and 5 of Manchester Victoria. What do they indicate? Buried treasure perhaps? One can do all sorts of things with metal detectors these days, microwaves, etc. Or maybe a water diviner has been on the case with a sprig of hazel. Either way it seems brave to announce the discovery to the public in advance, as it were.
The 8:10 to Wigan Wallgate, via Manchester, decided not to bother this morning so there was plenty of time to appreciate the light pouring down the tracks and platforms: everything positioned just so at 8:25am. In fact the person depicted here had lifted their head a little, a moment before I pressed the shutter, so the full rimlight-and-red-hair experience was not forthcoming, but never mind, it has still mostly worked.
The roof is immediately recognisable for, yet again, I am at King’s Cross station for the final leg of a journey home. Still, as railway stations go, it’s decent enough, and infinitely better than Euston, down the road. That really is it for the holidays however. Quite a number of fellow passengers on the 10.30 train were obviously international students making their way north.
Another railway station — but it’s been a long journey. Either this one is a complete mess or it is an interesting collage taken through the window of the Eurostar as it passed through Lille Europa. We traversed four countries today, with France being the only one which we did not touch soil at some point, but nevertheless, it can provide today’s shot. On the left, Joe, coming on holiday with his old folks for the first time in years. Where we are going, you can find out tomorrow.
I have been to a few of the world’s railway stations and the view from Blackfriars, built on a bridge over the Thames, is surely one of the best there is from any station. Turning one’s back on the trains to concentrate on it is quite logical.
Time to go home, and from London, journeys home invariably start at King’s Cross. Platform 5 for us today, though still with half an hour to go from this point in time before the 9:40 departure to Bradford Forster Square, changing at Leeds.
I await the 12:07 train to Retford, they are presumably about to get on the 12:10 to Sheffield and Leeds. I took this from in the exact same position on the opposite platform, that is, sat on the edge of a flower bed under the footbridge: which explains why, for once, I think all the angles and perspectives are exactly right, not to mention their legs and heads lining up very well. There’s the mobile phone, of course, but we can’t have everything.
Manchester Victoria was significantly less populated at 8.15pm this evening than it would normally be on a Wednesday. In the end though, the reason was obvious. But I did make it home in time for the second half.
In effect, this was the last leg of my journey home from Scotland — I had to take the hire car back then came home on the train. There’ll be plenty of shots of the local area in the next three weeks, I’m not going anywhere. You find all of this stuff fascinating, I know.
Chester is a city that has maintained its pre-WW2 architecture better than most, and going black-and-white seems appropriate today. It also hides the anomaly that is the bright blue of the sign for bus stop S3. Yes, I was in the beer garden of the Town Crier at this point, but at least it was after noon. Just.
