Pace Yourself

When the Worth Valley Railway went in lockdown, the line managed to turn some extra revenue by storing some redundant Pacer units on behalf of Northern (who'd slashed their own services down so much they didn't need them).

A couple of the railway mags asked if I could go and get some pics of the trains on their behalf, which I had to decline; the KWVR themselves requested that nobody break lockdown to see them, and even though I could technically have included them on my daily hours worth of exercise, the supporters FB group made it clear they'd effectively ex-communicate anybody who went to take pictures of them.  On top of which, I also felt the daily hourly exercise was for exercise, and knew with the local peer-pressure that if I dared go out with a camera I'd cop it off someone.

So the Pacers sat there, infuriating me; about the only newsworthy thing happening on my patch and I couldn't take any pictures.

What happened then was that I ended up in A&E in the middle of the night; I had severe pains in my side which 111 diagnosed as possible appendicitis.  An understandably knackered and annoyed A&E department got me to do star-jumps after 6 hours, said I couldn't do them with appendicitis and that after 6 hours it should have killed me if it really was appendicitis, gave me a paracetamol and sent me packing.

Having managed at 6am to secure a ride on an otherwise empty local train to Keighley, I then couldn't get a bus or taxi from there onwards.  So I decided to make the most of the situation and walk via the line, and snap some pictures on my phone on a nice sunny morning.

This is the view that has appeared just about everywhere else; personally I was happier with the street-level pics, but when everyone else went to get shots evidently the street was too full of cars for that.

Well, I might not be able to do anything with the shots weeks after every other photographer had been out to see the trains, but at least I could tick-off that I'd seen and photographed them.

Happily though I got a request for a shot after all, with the KWVR possibly running a commuter service.  Pic in the July-August Steam Railway.