The Elf Express

The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway managed, somewhat against the odds of this nasty year, to run a Christmas service.  There's not many railways that have been able to run within the Covid restrictions, but being as pretty much everywhere around here is in Tier 3, and they have a very organised system for waiting and boarding the trains, they were allowed to open.

This was good for us, as it meant that at weekends, whilst indulging in our allowed allotted exercise periods, we could snap some pictures of the trains whilst walking in the valley.  Our Childs are a bit old for the Santa trains, but we're booked on for the Mince Pie services with a bit of luck, assuming Boris doesn't drop us into Tier 4 before then.

The first Saturday of the Elf Express (the first weekend after Lockdown 2 ended) was rather nice and sunny; a bit more sunny in the country end of the valley, so the majority of shots that got published online were taken around there (compared to mine in suburbia) but I still enjoyed taking pics out and about.

The Sunday was a bit gloomier, though if you squint you can just about see the snow on the distant hills; we'd been hoping the snow might have hit lower down to add a suitably festive atmosphere to the pics, but hey-ho (or ho-ho, if you prefer).  Anyway, this was when we went for a walk out in Haworth, as 08993 shunts our family-favourite loco "Big Jim" around the sheds.

Elf Express with 78022 passing the shed.

08993 in the morning gloom.

I went back out to get some more pics when the Christmas Hols started; Phil at the railway asked me to get some more broadside shots of the carriages for the railways website.  This proved somewhat tricky, as the light was a bit poor.  Also, the paths around Oxenhope and Haworth were a sludgy quagmire.

Typically it brightened up a bit later on, when I wasn't in a decent enough location to get proper side-on shots.

I headed back out the next day when we got home from running some errands, but it was already late in the afternoon, and a very 2020 gloom was settling over the land.

High in the hills above Haworth, twinned with Mordor...

Challenging conditions to photograph the trains, but I managed to get some panning shots of the carriages.

The day before Christmas Eve, me and Elder Child were out in Haworth running errands, so I thought I'd try and get some last minute shots.  The 4F was running what might well be its last trains before the loco is withdrawn from service, so I wanted to make sure I got a pic or two of it.

We ended on a new angle for us, from the new housing estate.

Well, it was nice getting some shots of the railway; even as the world descends even further into the plague-y-nightmare, it felt genuinely very calming to be able to go out taking pictures of trains.

Thing is, these were just the daytime shots; I'd also been heading out in the early evening making the most of the trains running in the dark for some abstract pics, more of which anon...