Railbus Wendesday- a walk, photos, and sketching

The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway are only operating their steam services at weekends at this time of year, but on the 15th of March they started their 'Railbus Wednesdays' timetable, which was very popular in 2016.  With a day spare and no particular plans, I decided to catch it along the valley to the end of the line, then walk back for a bit of exercise, photographing and sketching.

I had an errand to run in Keighley, but that gave me an opportunity to walk the first leg of the journey back up to Ingrow Station, and photograph the railbus running between Ingrow and Keighley on its first service of the day.  So it was up onto the riverside path which is very pretty, but also deserted and not particularly heavily used.

The railbus passing the farm near the entrance to the path.

Legging it up to Ingrow Station gave me a couple of minutes to snap some pictures on the platform before the railbus arrived, then it was a crowded journey up to Oxenhope.  I was pleased to see the train heavily used- tourists, locals, and enthusiasts alike.  I hadn't been able to buy a ticket at Ingrow Station, but the clippy on the train helpfully got off at Haworth and sorted it for me there.

Leaving Oxenhope Station, I took the path down the side of the Beck towards Haworth, which passes the end of the station.

I haven't done any sketching for a while, and thought I'd use the opportunity to see just how rusty I am.  I set a strict time limit on each sketch, and quickly did a few drawings.

The railbus departs for Haworth and Keighley.  As good a place as any for a bit of history, this is a diesel railbus made by Waggon und Maschinbau of Germany.  The railbus was a popular type of vehicle in Europe, especially Germany, for lighter-used railways and British Railways introduced a number of different designs, five types in all built in small numbers by different builders, to try and find a cost-effective solution for lighter-used lines.

They were a commercial failiur largely because the piecemeal nature of the orders, and the mechanical unreliability amongst other factors doomed them.  However, of the 5 W&M railbuses, there are 4 which still survive, and 2 of them are based on the Worth Valley.  This example is in top-notch order, and popular for the quieter morning services at this time of year (the second example on the line is stripped-down for restoration at the moment).  One 'feature' of the unit though is a very bouncy suspension on traditional jointed track, at speed it bounces around in fact in a way which our youngest finds very entertaining.

Railway history lesson delivered, on with the walk...

Then back onto the path.

I felt a little happier with this sketch, on the way to Haworth where the path squeezes through a stone wall.

Less happy with this sketch, couldn't really get the wind turbine and its movement in the pic...

Then it was onto the ancient bridge near Haworth, just time for another sketch...

...before the railbus returned.

Then it was down the slightly muddy path down the side of the line, towards Top Field.

The ruined farmhouse from the "Observe to Preserve" shots...

Probably my favourite shot of the day, though I wish that horse hadn't chosen that exact moment to move behind the telegraph pole and ruin the composition...

Then down through Haworth (via a stop at the Haworth Station shop) and onto Ebor Lane.

A pic from the top of the wall between Ebor Lane and Mytholmes Tunnel.

Then back onto the walk towards Oakworth...

The path pretty much stops at Oakworth, as the owner of the caravan park in the bottom of the valley doesn't allow a public right of way on his land.  So the only pic I could be bothered with was this shot of the flowers in the park at Cross Roads, up the hill.

Down to the bottom of the valley, and a little diversion onto the trackbed of the derelict Great Northern Railway which ran up to Queensbury then Bradford/Halifax.

Interesting ferns on the embankment, and the remains of the old drainage system.  I rather like the remains of the old industrial sites down here, bits of old brickwork, the abutments of old bridges and so on.

Damems Lane, usually flooded, was looking in better nick, though rumour mill has it that Skipton Properties are wanting to put some new houses hereabouts, so that might be why...

Final shot, and a usual location for me, before it was time to go do the school run.

All in all, not a bad day- its a shame the path vanishes in the middle of the valley, but in good weather it was a nice day.  It was good to see the railbus getting some regular use, and it was pretty well loaded every time it passed.  And top marks to the railway for running it- with a discount card, it made for a competitively-priced alternative to the buses.

Project: Happygoth...

So the previous posts have featured the hastily-done project "Observe to Preserve", which was based on an older project from back when I (Ben) was at college, and which was completed for the "Perception" open call at Cupola Gallery.

Today on the blog, a hastily-done project based on an older project back from when I (Ben) was at college, and which was also completed for the "Perception" open call at Cupola Gallery.

Dejavuuuuuuuuuu...

Anyway, when the "Observe to Preserve" stuff started going wrong when the weather turned, mixing up the shooting schedules, I had a cast around for something else which fit in with a definition of the term 'Perception' to use as the backup project, and decided to do something with this older body of work, "Happygoth"... 

So quick background.  Happygoth was a character I started drawing in about 2003, when locally in the West Mids goths were getting a bit of bad press.  People who wore black and who tended to hang around in an orderly group in a part of Wolverhampton city centre doing not very much at all were getting the hell beaten out of them by sports-clothes-clad thugs... and comment pages in the local paper were full of people who thought the harmless goths were the menace rather than the sports-clothes-clad thugs who were beating them up, because the goths wore black and listened to music with guitars.  Take that, society...

So anyway, I started drawing an overly smiley goth girl as a character in the proto-webcomic I worked on at the time, someone who tried to reassure Society by being perpetually cheerful.  When I was at Carlisle, a project on fashion photography gave the perfect opportunity to satirise the cynical rebranding of subcultures to make them more mainstream (which was happening a lot at the time with some of the big high street clothing chains) and so Happygoth made the leap from sketches to a photoshoot.  The only surviving picture I can find from the studio shoot is that one of the photo shopped billboard at Citadel station, above the design sketches from the shoot...

Towards the end of Uni I did the long-planned-for outdoor shoot with a new model, mainly to create some new images to use as posters in the planned expansion of the Model Village project.  Yet another shoot, with another model, took place not long after moving back to the West Mids so I could get some more images to use for a further expansion of the project, meanwhile Happygoth made the leap to the webcomic as a recurring main character back when it was a thing.

After the webcomic bit the dust, the project became dormant.  Until recently...

Wanting to do something with the project, but realising those of us involved with the shoot were getting a bit old to be mucking around dressing up in stormcoats in the woods as we crashed into our early 30's, I ended up reviving the project in a limited way as a possible commission for some T Shirt designs, back in late 2015.  That commission came to nought as I moved onto something else, and frankly this redesign of Happygoth was straying stylistically into 'Tracey Beaker' territory (shudder) so I took the original quick sketches, and developed them into something a little more geometric and stylised just as a project for myself... 

Above, one of the finished concept pics, with new hair colour, more geometric head and body, and a somewhat over-cluttered scene.

For the Perception call, I took those original pics, de-cluttered the backgrounds, and made the design if anything more geometric for this open call.  Poses and scenarios were based very much on what we'd done with the final Happygoth shoot.  This time there was no hand-drawing, everything was done straight into editing software.

For the purposes of the open call, I 6 new designs, a few of which are shown here.

Displaying them on the wall rather than a T Shirt meant coming up with a better way of showing them off than just flat prints, so I thought I'd try a multi-layered pic, so went for a hybrid of the newer character design with the older backgrounds.

The quick test pic above- all a bit rough, as the small frame was all I had to hand, and my printer wouldn't quite print to the right size, but at least it showed the concept I was after.

So anyway, after all that the gallery also didn't like this idea, which I don't blame them for because it really was a backup idea thrown together at the last minute, and it didn't really fit in with their open call.

But looking at the bright side, coming soon, Happygoth T shirts with a bit of luck...