York Station for a Steam Excursion

A Christmas shopping excursion to York the other week incorporated a little bit of railway photography at the end of the day; with a railtour featuring two steam locomotives on a cold, clear, crisp day it would have been rude not to have popped along for a look...

Arriving at the station with half an hour to kill, the nice sunset wasn't illuminating anything more exciting than a soon-to-be-scrapped Pacer unfortunately.

HST under the very impressive roof.

6233 "Duchess of Sutherland" (which had earlier bought the train in from That London) arrived with the empty stock for the return to Ealing Broadway.  Interesting in that it was the steamer working it, and not an assisting diesel loco in sight which made a nice change.

A4 Pacific "Union of South Africa" was hauling the return leg, and arrived a little bit late.

Sadly by this time the sun had dipped below the horizon, but there were still some nice reflections possible in the streamlined cladding.

I mainly went for shots along the side of the loco; there was a proper scrum in the restricted space at the end of the platform, there must have been over a hundred photographers plus other interested passengers and families... I only managed the one shot from the front before being elbowed out of the way.

I was pleased by how the shots came out; after a disappointing week of photography under a Tupperware-lid sky, it was nice to get some slightly abstract shots of the A4; doubly so, as this is an engine I used to see a fair bit as a kid, but after next year it is apparently being permanently retired to a museum in eastern Scotland, so this will probably be the last time I'll get chance to photograph it.