Loose_Grip/Pete's photos

Freightliner Class 66 runs onto its train.

Blanket of cloud on the mountains overlooking Guincho Beach..

Great Central Railway. Loughborough. Visiting GWR Prairie 5199 departs from the station southwards with an observation saloon during the Steam Gala. Loughborough station entrance & ticket office can be seen on Great Central Road bridge. The photo was taken from the cab of British Railways 2MT 2-6-0 78019 which I was firing. We were held at the Outer Home signal gantry to wait on 5199's departure from Platform 2.

Tyseley shed. Great Western Railway King 6000 King George V, with its safety valves lifting, comes on shed after working a "Return to Steam" Special from London in October 1971.

GCR Loughborough shed. LNER O4 2-8-0 63601 footplate from the tender while getting steam up. I am trimming the coal forward before going off shed to pull our service train. The cab layout is simplicity itself & the engine steams on a candle. An excellent engine in many ways but perhaps not first choice for cold, wet winter days. Then again in 1912 when the locomotive was built designers didn't really care too much about the welfare of crews. Note the sheet in the tender - hooked onto the cab roof it's our only protection against the weather when running tender-first. She will be running her last trains for a while this coming weekend, 23rd-24th June 2012, as her boiler certificate runs out then. She did make it to 100 years old in steam though so come to the GCR to ride her for one last time.

Ivatt 4MT 2-6-0 43106 darkens the skies over Lancashire while filling its tender from the archaic looking water column. Her blower is hard on to lift the smoke & get up steam ready to depart the shed for the Severn Valley Railway at Bridgenorth and a new life in preservation. The only life Stanier 8F 48476 can look forward to is a short one before withdrawal in 3 days time & scrapping in December 1968. Although on this day there were two other Ivatt 4s on Lostock Hall shed this is the only one to survive & in fact now is the only one of its class in existence.

Cabside number Stanier Black 5 4-6-0 44845, built at Crewe in 1944. I am contemplating the last day of steam at Newton Heath & the fact that the filthy cab won't ever be cleaned again. I don't think that left hand window has ever been cleaned! This engine still had 50psi of steam in its boiler but by the end of the day would be cold & ready for its last journey to the scrapyard.

Paris Gare du Nord 2-8-2T 141TC12 departs September 1969. A second 141TC simmers in the adjacent platform on the left. All the atmosphere of a main line capital terminus. With the services out of Gare de la Bastille these were the last suburban steam trains in France. Quite a change from the Eurostars that arrive at these platforms today. My girlfriend of the time studied French at Aberystwyth University & was in Paris for an induction course at the Sorbonne to prepare for her year as a teaching assistant in Verdun. While she studied I photographed. She obviously took the course very seriously as she ended up marrying a frenchman! Still I took my photography seriously too & I still have a liking for french steam, paticularly these modern looking tanks.

Quorn and Woodhouse station & full semaphore signalling seen from the footplate of D1705 Brush Type 4 diesel approaching the station from the south. The Starter is pulled off for LMS Black 5 45305 waiting in the Up platform with a train to Leicester. This station has been restored to LNER condition and is the typical design of the Great Central Railway's main line to London with one island platform and access down from the road overbridge. The signal box, Up goods yard to the right & Down lay-by to the left were also typical. www.gcrailway.co.uk/ Their web page is well worth a visit.