I mentioned a few days ago that the main priority of the last few days was to get steam in the blood and to see a marsh harrier or two.
My younger son took this picture whilst standing beside me this lunchtime:
For the record, that's 9f 92203 'Black Prince' on the 12.10 Sheringham to Holt on the North Norfolk Railway taken as the train was on Kelling Heath.
And then we went on to the Norfolk Wildlife Trust in Cley, and did see marsh harriers - which are superb.
My ambition was fulfilled.
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Purchased from British Railway for £3,000 in 1967 by wildlife artist David Sheppard. Reckon he got a bargain!!
What a beautiful evocative photo. Your son is really good!
Have you done the Tywyn to Tal-y-llyn line? Superb countryside (flanks of Cader Idris) and a river diverted by an interglacial period landslide to go through a narrow gorge into the next valley, in case anyone’s interested in geomorphology! What’s not to like?
I love the Talyllyn
Last did it last summer
And three Talyllyn 16mm scal coaches are on my workbench right now….only door handles and wheels to go
Bloody hell Richard – you’re really rubbing it now !!!!
Successful campaigner, blogger, influencer, bird spotter, author, radio and television speaker, father, husband, son, train spotter, accountant, wood wind player (or is it brass?), lecturer.
And you build scale models of trains too?!!!
I don’t know how you do it. I really don’t. Mind you – I’m glad you do!
Building large scale model railways has been a long time activity, but right now I seem to be doing a lot of it
If I sit one side of the table my son sits the other and gets on with his modelling and the world gets put right….
Wow!
That’s some photograph Richard.
A bet the Marsh Harriers were much more difficult to capture on camera however?
Not my photo – that’s my son
I did nit even try with marsh harriers – I just enjoyed them
I was congratulating your son through you Richard.
Looking at this magnificent beast, it is not too hard to believe the stories I’ve heard of these on the Southern region hitting nearly 100mph on 12 coach Waterloo-Bournemouth express services not long before they were scrapped.
It would have been dire for bearing life – but everyone knew by then they had no life anyway
The sound was magnificent when we went behind it – and as it crossed the common when that picture was taken
Hello Richard.
It’s the blue sky that gets me. I haven’t seen blue sky for a while, and I can’t wait for it to return. To get beyond this grey, bleak, imitation of winter, and resume hillwalking under never ending blue skies.
Looks like you got the weather as well.
We did
Yes – about the bearings on the 9F – such high speeds played havoc with the motion apparently but as you say, they were all destined to be razor blades or new cars.
Mind you – what a waste.
The pace of modernisation with British Rail at that time (that far from life expired locos were sent to the scrapyard) and the pace of BREXIT share something in common in my view!
Do we ever learn?
I recently got a really good book on the LMS/MR Horwich Crabs (I don’t know why I like them, but I do even though I never saw them in action – but I don’t know why I like Fowler’s 4F 0-6-0s or Staniers’ 8Fs either). And even though this was a 1920’s design, some of those Crabs were the last running loco’s on BR as of 1967.
With regard to the 8F one of the best days out I had with my late Father was on the Severn Valley Railway in the 1990’s where we went to the end of the line on a balmy summers day.
Whilst there we partook of some of the rather tasty guest beers they had in the bar there to such an extent that we nearly fell into the buffet room afterwards as we went to get something to eat. We sat in the first coach on the way back behind an 8F whose motion basically rocked us to sleep. Great day!
As much as I loved modernisation diesels (my era was the rail blue one) none of them ever rocked me to sleep like that 8F did nor the S15 that my Dad and I took on the very last day out we had together on the NYMR in the early-mid 2000’s.
Horwich Crabs – ugly beasts and shame about the tenders, but I see the attraction
I am heavily into Great Eastern steam – not surprisngly
But narrow gauge is my real thing now
Having said which there are about 1,000 books on railways in the house – two added last week on the Midland and Great Northern
As I said – I need steam in the blood