God, but I miss when you could go out to take photographs. Technically I suppose as part of my 'hour a day Boris-ercise' I still could, but there's enough curtain-twitching going on to make me wary even walking to the end of the drive to get the bins, and carrying a camera isn't something you'd normally do on a jog. I doubt any railway mag would touch the pics if I saw something, photographed it, and sent it off in case they suspected I was breaking quarantine. Plus locomotives have dash-cams, and I don't want to appear on some 1984-esque National Rail most-wanted list.
So lets go back to the heady days of, oh, about a month ago. I love the Settle-Carlisle Railway Webcams; no more just going out to take pictures on-spec, you can see what's coming by looking at the Ribblehead or Horton cams, with plenty of time to fill a flask and get somewhere lineside in a location that's a bit less Middle-Earth for when the trains pass my neck of the woods an hour later.
Generally, I don't bother photographing Sheds (class 66 diesel locomotives) on the mainline, because they're boxy and uninspiring and blinkin everywhere. DB Schenker examples are either dirty, dull maroon and gold, or shiny but still bland red and grey, Freightliner ones are dull green with a bit of yellow. I make an exception however for unusual livery examples, and bless 'em, GBRF know the value of painting some of the fleet in weird and wonderful colour schemes to attract the photographers.
This one has been on my 'to see' list for over a year; I've never managed, because it so rarely does the Airedale line. But one morning whilst checking the webcams whilst I was working from home, there it was trundling through Horton in Ribblesdale station. Just time to make my way to Utley by the time it had gone up to Ribblehead, run-round, and headed back south. This is a vintage livery from the 80's, and the 66 looks magnificent in this colour scheme.
The only shame of it is that I never get photographs from this location published; I do from a minutes walk away, a high-angle shot from a footbridge, but never the low-angle ones from this spot. I suspect they look too much like trespass shots.
The next day I mugged my Father-in-Law to give me a life up to the Dales in the Landy so I could shoot a couple of miniatures projects on location; the last time I was up there taking pictures was the above shot, just before Christmas when Amy was on Jury Duty and I had the car (DBS class 60 on the southbound Gypsum working).
I got the model shots done in the morning, and we dared hope that the Blue Shed would be rostered on the quarry train again; the sky was blue, the sun was out, we were in the beautiful Dales, but no. A bog standard shed.
We stopped off by Ribblehead; sun still out, and would be shining the right way for the return working and also the southbound Gypsum; which ended up being cancelled. So no decent train shots here.
I got a picture of it anyway, racing through Settle, whilst we stopped off for lunch on the way home. But a bit disappointing session (even more so knowing I won't be getting up there for a bit. I suspect it's the sort of area where in these current conditions you'll end up in a wicker man or something if some of the locals don't recognise you). Still, I'll just have to keep on eye on the Webcams...
Just a quick pic of the model shoot; this is scheduled to appear at some point later in the year in Garden Rail Magazine, so I'll post a bit more about it nearer the time. I'm doing more Garden Rail stuff at the moment but having to (shock, horror) actually shoot the pics in my garden, rather than pass-off one of the most beautiful locations in the North as my back garden, as above.
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