Transport

My first ballon flight - fantastic! Dawn over Bagan.

At speed on Inle Lake, Central Myanmar.

The Quorn Up Home signal is showing an emphatic green as Great Western Railway Hall 4-6-0 4953 Pitchford Hall makes a lively run into the station. This is another shot taken during the Don Bishop photo charter yesterday. In fact in the distance the serried ranks of hi-vis'ed photographers can be seen.

Great Western Hall 4-6-0 4953 Pitchford Hall. We were the crew on the afternoon turn of a photo charter with 6 coaches between Quorn & Swithland. Here we had finished the run-pasts into the station and were loading up before moving south to Swithland in the hope of finding more sun. This gave me a chance to grab a frontal shot - otherwise most of my photos were taken from the footplate.HFF and have a great weekend.

Sunrise over the Bagan plain. This was taken nearing the end of our 45 minute dawn flight as we descended to land in a field southeast of Bagan.

A different kind of fisherman on Lake Inle. He is “fishing” for lake bottom weeds to use as fertiliser on his crops in the floating fields behind. The pile that he has already gathered appears to be about to engulf his boat.

Sunrise over the ex-LNWR Standedge Route and the former Paddock All Saints Church as an unidentified Trans-Pennine Class 185 dmu enters Paddock cutting on 1K06 the 06.04 Hull to Manchester Piccadilly running 7 minutes down.

Stanier Jubilee 4-6-0 45699 Galatea, beautifully turned out as 45562 Alberta, climbing the 1 in 125 gradient towards Diggle Junction box and Standedge tunnel with the Cotton Mill Express. The timetable had the loco looped at Diggle for 20 minutes so we expected the driver to be shutting off by this point but the train was actually held at Stalybridge instead. It was running 30 minutes late so the Diggle stop was dropped and she was really working hard through here. The backdrop is the W.H. Shaw Pallet (formerly Dobcross Loom) Works, reputedly one of the largest factories of its type before its closure in 2006. Dating from 1860 it was being demolished at the time of my visit.

Ex-LNER Gresley A4 4-6-2 60009 Union of South Africa pulling away from Barrow-on-Soar with RTC's Yorkshireman railtour, 1Z35 06.36 Ealing Broadway to York.