KWVR Beer and Music Festival, Autumn 2021

After much riding of the trains at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway September 2021 Gala, it was nice to have a second go at things a short while later, when they held their Beer and Music Festival.  It didn't take place in 2020 for... reasons... so the line seemed to have gone all-out to make up for it in 2021, with a variety of motive power in use, effectively creating a 'mini gala'.

I (Ben) was free on the Friday, which meant I was able to get some pics of the visiting class 27; I didn't get to photograph it during the Mixed Traffic gala as it had a mechanical fault for a bit, and when it did run I was too busy to lineside, or was actually on the train.

Glory-be, sunshine!  Already better than the Gala weekend then, weather-wise...

Damems level crossing.  I really need to get around to modelling this station at some point.

I strolled down to Keighley to see another visitor, 'Black 5' 45212.  Technically owned by the railway, but it spends most of the year running around Scotland on charter trains, only coming back for the winter.  

A new angle for me above, by poking the phone through some railings.

Climbing out of Keighley.

Seen again near Haworth on the Sunday, not an easy angle as Skipton Properties have closed the footpath, so I was standing hard against their barricades for this pic.  Gloomier weather, annoyingly.

Then there was "Bahamas", making a rare turn on the service trains having also returned from main-line commitments.  Another new angle for me in Keighley, requiring a bit of a scramble up a stone wall, though still on the public side of the boundary. Not as easy as it was ten years ago, I'm definitely getting too old for finding creative angles and climbing up walls and trees... I'll have to just join the orange-high-vis-army soon on the embankment at Oakworth.

Speaking of which, on the way out in the afternoon we dived into Oakworth for a couple of shots of "Bahamas" there.

The shot of the 27 made it into "Push and Pull", the in-house mag for the KWVR, along with one of the angles on "Bahamas" leaving Keighley, slightly justifying the effort of scaling the stone retaining wall.  Nothing in the mags, but then they'd been saturated by pics from the earlier gala.

KWVR- Railbus in the Autumn, 2021

Just a little post from this morning... The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway is our local line, and we both spend quite a bit of time riding the trains and taking photographs here about.  It did occur to me (Ben) that I probably take it for granted a bit, when it comes to the trains the line operates.

It's easy to forget the sheer variety and eccentric nature of the motive power this railway operates, but a consistent favourite of mine is this, the W&M Railbus.  Bought as a pair of vehicles back in the 1960's to operate the proposed public transport service (which never happened), the Railbus units have been a consistent feature of the off-peak timetables for getting on for 60 years.

I really like this unit; it's characterful, and the short size means it's easy to compose into photographs.  If it's running I try to make an effort to get photographs of it, more so at the moment as it didn't see much use during the early stages of the Covid pandemic... you can't really socially-distance on such a small vehicle.

When the unit started operating again in the Autumn of 2021, I managed to get a few pics on a sunny day, though my hopes of travelling a bit further afield on the railway fell through, so the shots ended up being on my usual patch around Ingrow and Damems.

Happily the diesel editor at Railway Magazine fancied a pic of the unit, though publishing deadlines being what they are it took until January 2022 to appear.  The Railbus is seeing more use at the moment, I'm hoping to get a couple of night shots of the machine in a week or so, with a bit of luck...

 

Welsh Pony 2021

Back on the Ffestiniog for these pics at the end of summer 2021; and specifically trying to get shots of my (Ben's)  all-time favourite locomotive, "Welsh Pony".

Restored in 2020, and suddenly finding itself in intensive use for the Covid timetable, "Welsh Pony" has had a very busy couple of years.  After spending quite a lot of my childhood visits to Porthmadog climbing over the semi-derelict hulk in the 90's, I managed to get a couple of pictures last year, not long after it entered back into traffic.

It had a repaint and lining-out however for 2021, so I wanted to get some more up to date pictures.  

Also, I'd built a model of it for the garden railway over the first Lockdown, and want to update and rebuild the model so I needed to get some new prototype shots before I commence the work.  The model was built when everything was shut, from upcycled bits of scrap and plumbing parts, and now model shops are open again I want to have another crack at it.

I ended up resorting to greyscale for many of the shots, on what was a day of very changeable weather.

Having had some success framing locomotives with flowerbeds on the KWVR, I thought I'd have another go here whilst they were still looking so pretty.

All in all, a successful jaunt; I have some nice pics, but more importantly, the information I need to significantly upgrade my model...

 

Fairborne Railway research visit, summer 2021

I (Ben) am on a bit of a mission over the coming few years, to visit every preserved railway in North Wales.  Top of the list was Fairbourne, the far side of the estuary from Barmouth.  I even camped near this railway as a child, but for some reason never got round to visiting it.  We did it as a matter of urgency because Fairbourne is scheduled to be abandoned (town, railway, and everything else) when the sea levels rise.

We tried earlier in the summer of 2021, but the weather was horrendous.  The drive out to the terminus happily coincided with the one gap in the poor weather that day.  After this, the rain got so heavy that we had to drive at 10mph as visibility was so low.

The other reasons to visit were two-fold; first, to get some photographs of the abandoned section of the line for a thread on RMWeb...

...and secondly to get research pics for a model making project that was on the boil over the summer.  A full layout-build of a fictional seaside miniature line, for a competition run by Hornby, the layout took a lot of inspiration from Fairbourne.  There'll be more on this in a forthcoming blog on the model-making thread soon incidentally, as it's due for a feature in the Feb 2022 British Railway Modelling mag.

The return visit later in August was rather more successful, weather-wise, and this time we rode the train from Fairbourne iteslf out for a picnic at the dunes.

OK so it still wasn't exactly suntan and beachball weather, but at least it wasn't chucking it down.  We had originally toyed with doing the circular trip, where you walk over Barmouth Bridge and get the ferry over the estuary, but the weather didn't look too grand for later in the day so we settled for a train ride and a stroll.

The replica Darjeeling 'B' class was doing the honours alongside the replica of the Welsh Highland Railway "Russel".  A really nice machine this, very eye-catching.

These were two very useful visits, and it's a nice little line.  So far we've clocked about half of the preserved railways in North and West Wales, so we'll have to start planning on where to go in 2022...

 

Middleton Railway Gala September 2021

Time to start clearing the backlog of posts that built up before Christmas; the combinations of some commissioned work, some article writing, and applying for new day jobs rather meant some stuff was missed, so here we go;

The weekend after the KWVR September Gala, it was the turn of the Middleton Railway to host an event.  I (Ben) love the atmosphere of this line, a complete contrast to the 'usual' preserved railways; small locomotives, home-made carriages, and an urban setting.

A highlight of the gala events is they run trains over the Balm Road branch, the little-used connection to the mainline.  There can't be many railways these days where trains operate on lines like this with no fencing, and with ungated flag-protected level crossings.

Looking bright and shiny, the newly restored No.6.

It was also the last major event for the H class.  It's a special loco to me (Ben), for three reasons.  First, it's characterful, it's about as close to a real-life 'Ivor the Engine' or Hornby clockwork toy as you can get.  Secondly, it was a photograph of this loco in an ancient book I had as a child which first got me to learn about the Middleton.  Thirdly, it was the first loco I ever photographed on this line, during an opportunistic stop on the way back from a gallery job in Sheffield about 8 years ago.

Here's the reason I like the Balm Road Branch.  You just can't beat that atmosphere!

This sort of industrial backwater had long-gone by the time I got into railway photography, but I grew up with books full of pictures of railways like this.  A single track and short trains winding through woods and industrial landscapes.

It looks surprisingly rural given it's in urban Leeds.

It also helps (in an admittedly sad way) that all the lineside fencing gets stolen or vandalised, it does mean you can -very carefully and sensibly- get nice low-angle shots from relatively near the tracks.

Amy was testing her new camera out on the day too, the first time she's used it for a preserved railway shoot since she got it.  These shots are hers, though by this point she was competing for angles with several other photographers as the line got busier.

We've missed doing Middleton during Covid; they put on a great show, as usual, and it was noticeably busy with visitors which is a good sign.

I (Ben) had a shot published in The Railway Magazine, my first steam loco shot with them for a while...

...and a cover for the November bulletin of the Industrial Railway Society.

A couple of shots from earlier in the year too; just before the Middleton reopened to the public, they ran some goods trains for the benefit of enthusiasts and invited photographers to come down and see the last runs of 'Slough Estates'.  The above was in Railways Illustrated (and the shot below from  the Vintage Carriages Museum is one of mine too!)... 

...and the Industrial Railway Society bulletin in the summer.

One last nice surprise, a Middleton shot published in the Platform 5 guide to preserved railways.  By weird coincidence, it was a shot of mine from this angle, but showing a diesel, which was included in the previous edition too.