Christ Almighty you have no idea about the shite that is the local train service. Don’t think that the one you see here is pictired trundling happily onto the platform — instead it is hanging there, just for arbitrary reasons. Not only that, but it’s the first train out of Hebden into Manchester for some hours. The giuy’s face says it all. In the end I didn’t even bother.
The 09:47 service from Ribblehead (ex Carlisle) to Leeds is more or less on time. This is the Settle-Carlisle railway, one of the country’s finest. In the background, Ingleborough, definitely the best-looking English mountain outside the Lake District — it’s 3,730 days (or 10 years, 2 months and 16 days) since it made its first appearance on here, on my 45th birthday day out (26/8/2014). And as it’s a good place to come for a day out, on the first appearance of sunshine for about two weeks — it was worth coming back.
A Friday night in London, but not for leisure purposes. Technically, I am working here tomorrow. Arrival at my place of residence tonight (a Travelodge, nothing glamourous or particularly metropolitan) was not until about 15 minutes after this was taken.
Still, there is nothing wrong with being in London — it’s a fine city and that fact certainly explains why this is the fourth-most depicted place on the blog, this is shot number 144 from London, meaning it’s appeared roughly once every 33 days, or only just less than once a month on average.
And so, the journey back, via Brighton, St Pancras, King’s Cross, Leeds and Hebden Bridge stations. Pictured — the fourth of these. It’s now time to find inspiration at home for a while, in various senses.
I spent the whole day, from 1.30am in Toronto when we boarded the plane, until 6.45pm when arriving back in Hebden Bridge, on a series of rather overcrowded tin pipes. If we included Heathrow Airport itself as number 2, this train at King’s Cross was the fourth, and the most overcrowded pipe of all — the East Coast main line going into spasm once more thanks to some ‘operational incident’ or other. But at least I was in a seat. Home now, anyway, and no more flying aboard for a while. I need a rest.
More weather, but it was better today, and anyway I don’t care as once again I am leaving the country. Whether conditions will be improved where I’m going, who knows. The first part of my journey was by rail — this shot was snapped at about 90mph somewhere in the vicinity of Peterborough.
Not only did this peak hour train turn up with half the usual number of carriages, thus assigning itself instant CTS (Cattle Truck Status) — but it was also 23 minutes late at this point, being scheduled to pass through Rochdale at 8.37. Grin and bear it? Bollocks to that, I wasn’t grinning at this point, put it that way.
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.
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.
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?
Being 42 