Transport

British Railways Standard 7 4-6-2 70013 Oliver Cromwell was stabled in Barnetby Up sidings for the night prior to working the Tynesider railtour from Cleethorpes to Morpeth the next day.

Verdun station in the snow. The semaphore signal is pulled off & North British 2-8-0 140C246, built in Glasgow in 1917, slowly pulls away light engine by the bridge prior to dropping on to its cement train in the station to the left & departing tender first around the bend in the distance to the north. These trains still ran in August 1972 when I passed through Verdun again & lasted until September 1975 I believe. A locomotive of this class, 287, pulled the last regular steam train on the SNCF between Troyes & Sainte Colombe on 24th September 1975. According to AJECTA who have restored 231 there are eight of these engines preserved, 246 is not one of them. I participated in several railtours pulled by 140C231 in the late 1980s when I lived in Paris - must scan some of those photos.

Fighting against the fierce gradient and the curvature JS 2-8-2 8167 pulls its load of side-tippler coal trucks out of the deep open cast pit at Sandaoling.

Sunset light over Leicester London Road station looking south from Swain Street bridge. Cross-Country Class 170 diesel multiple unit 170113 is stabled in the Up carriage sidings while an unidentified East Midlands Railway 43xxx HST has just arrived into platform 2 with 1D43 the 14.34 St Pancras International to Nottingham.

The Great Western Railway began passenger services from the terminus on Cliff Road in Newquay in 1876 and expanded the facilities over the years to accommodate the hordes of holidaymakers arriving by train. Times have changed... this two-car Class 150 diesel multiple unit, 150261 on 2N05 the 11.12 Newquay to Par, and one truncated platform are sufficient for today’s traffic. The original station forecourt on Cliff Road has been replaced by a nondescript 1970s construction housing a nondescript cafe but I noticed behind the rubbish bins that the granite stone wall of the original building was still in situ albeit boxed in by the newer walls. Things fell apart at bit last Friday but now we are back again I wish everyone HFF & have a great weekend.

When the tide is out at Rock/Padstow the river Camel becomes an area of wide sandbars. The famous Doom Bar at the mouth of the estuary was very dangerous to shipping in the days of sail and even today boats can come to grief on it. It's a nice pint too...

Heading east GB RailFreight Class 60 diesel 60056 with 6E36 the 01.45 Liverpool Tuebrook Sidings to Drax biomass train has just passed Heaton Lodge Junction north of Huddersfield on the ex-Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Calder Valley line at 06.54. The shot was taken from the footbridge over the ex-LNWR New Line which now joins the Calder Valley line at Heaton Lodge East Junction off left. The footpath continues under the LYR line in a very low tunnel and up the hill past the stone building. HFF & have a great weekend.

Dwarfed by the Rocky Mountains a Canadian Pacific freight train heading by 4 unidentified locos - probably EMD SD40s - passes Kananaskis heading east towards Calgary. I was attending a Mobil Oil Tectonic Geology course through the mountains and should have been listening to the description of the rock outcrops here but the chance of a photo of a train in this fabulous landscape was too much of a diversion. Mount Yamnuska, right, & Old Goat Peak, centre, are part of the Rocky Mountain Front Range and the abrupt change between the steeply dipping, folded & thrusted rocks in the west and the flat lying Interior Plains rocks to the east is dramatic. Here Middle Cambrian carbonates have overridden Cretaceous Belly River Formation along the McConnell thrust fault. (I may not have been listening but I still have the field notes!)

British Railways Standard 9F 2-10-0 92212 is approaching Woodthorpe in the pouring rain. This weekend was the 2013 Woodford Steam Gala and this is the first train of the first day; the 09.15 to Leicester. HFF and have great (& not rainy!) weekend