Friday 5th June 2015, 8.35am (day 1,380)
A day in Manchester, a day too far in the week if you ask me. But it was a glorious morning at Hebden Bridge station today.
A day in Manchester, a day too far in the week if you ask me. But it was a glorious morning at Hebden Bridge station today.
I’ve been in Manchester most of the week, although this hasn’t been apparent from the pictures. Victoria station, after years of being a rather dowdy old hag, is starting to recover from her major surgery and looking rather promising with it. Compare this picture to the last shot of platform 1: the light wasn’t as good today, but overall, it’s a big improvement. (Having inserted that link I note that shot was taken exactly 400 days ago, day 931.)
Taking shots in tolerably good morning light to pass the time waiting for my train in to Manchester, it was only later, after uploading, that I realised this chap ambling down the platform was my next-door neighbour Tom (who also works at the university). And so starts another week for both of us. But the mornings are getting lighter and this is never a bad time of year.
I admit I take many photos of railway stations and trains but at least I’m travelling on them at the time. I know it’s a fine line but I’ve never seen the point of people going to a railway station simply to watch the trains go by, and at Doncaster this practice is particularly prevalent. Pictured on my way home from Brighton this afternoon.
I’m glad I have set my life up in ways that get me round the Cumbrian coast rail line now and again, even on a damp Friday in January. This shot is taken from a moving train.
This is the oldest extant electric railway in the world, having been running since 1883. It runs along Brighton beach for just over a mile, eastwards from the pier — that station is the one seen here, in front of the Royal Albion hotel where we spent this weekend (our usual Brighton haunt, the Pelirocco, having been booked out by a party this weekend).
Joe had spent the weekend at my parents’ while we were in Hamburg, so I went to pick him up today. I could have hired a car and driven in two hours, but I took my time, went by train and savoured the day. I’m on holiday, who wants to drive.
Incidentally, this line is a rare example of one that was reopened (in 1995) after the infamous “Beeching axe” originally fell on it in the 1960s. The reopening happened under a Tory government too. Probably because it was a marginal seat, or maybe the party was still run by sane people at the time. Anyway; what you see here are the tracks extending out over a high viaduct over the River Hodder.
I seem at the moment to be spending most of my life on the move. Just as well that I don’t mind taking photos of railway stations, then, even if it does sometimes make me look like a trainspotter. I got quite a few photos today that were nearly very good, and even though there’s nothing spectacular about this one, I quite like it; this gentleman just looks very chilled out. All in all it does encapsulate what was another very beautiful day with great light, one on which it was far more pleasant to be hanging around outside than one has a right to expect in mid-December.
Lovely morning today, which at least means the three-day storm has passed over without flooding us again (though towns to the east were definitely not so lucky). Beautiful light at the station as I waited for the 0856 train in. And here it is, right on time.
Tomorrow is day 400 of this blog, so as I do with these milestones, I have updated the ‘best of the rest’ page with some more recent pictures that didn’t quite make the one-a-day cut.