Don’t read the time from the light here. Victoria station is much improved from twenty years ago, when I first started using it, but platforms 3-6 are still mere warrens, skulking under the overhead bulk of the Arena. Dark holes in which one can wait a while to find out if they’re running your service today.
Pictured on the wall behind platform 1 at Hebden Bridge railway station. This is the fourth slug to appear on the blog, and while one doesn’t normally associate the slug, as a species, with the idea of dynamism, I think this one does give it a shot. It’s not quite the crab on that Prodigy album cover, but it’s getting there.
And so, the trip back from London, and that invariably means King’s Cross is the departure point. I quite like the Giraffe café, on the balcony above the concourse — it’s a fairly agreeable railway station all round, in fact. Maybe the guy eating the sandwich might feel his depiction is a little unflattering but at least it catches the lunchtime moment.
I know I’ve mentioned this before but the station buffet and bar at Stalybridge really is one of the best there is: it’s worth breaking a journey there just to visit it. And here’s the bloke in charge. Clare was mildly peeved there was no lunch to be had today but other than that it kept up its reputation.
To cake or not to cake, that is the question, at the end of not just a working week but a whole term — I’m on my Easter break. Unless the French air traffic controllers stymie the deal, the next few posts should come from a country that has not yet appeared on this blog.
In terms of its aesthetics I quite like Blackburn station — at least at platform level (the subway below has been choked by excessive and largely non-functional ticket machines, though). The clutter of modern life throws off the symmetry of this shot but I gave it a go.
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?
And so ends February 2023, a varied month for me, some very interesting periods and some deadly dull ones. Photographically, it ends in a pub on Stoke-on-Trent station, mainly for lighting reasons. Though the beer was quite good too.
Clapham Junction station takes everything that Victoria and Waterloo stations have to throw at it, and as a result is apparently the busiest railway station in Europe, judged by number of trains. Except between midnight and 5am there can be up to 200 trains an hour passing through here, which makes it more than one every twenty seconds.
I like this golden spillage of light, and the seemingly random fractions posted on the top. I was here late on: this is the latest shot since 5th October 2020, in fact.
Had two portraits, of people seen incidentally while passing, that I liked today. This one won mainly by virtue of being in focus, but I did like the other too. She is an elegant presence on Harrogate station, though I shiould add, had just been told off by the staff for vaping. It happens to the best of us.
Being 42 