Tag: railway

February 22nd – Passing through Telford on a flying visit in the morning, I noticed that the worksite for the new footbridge was oddly quiet. It seems test bores have been completed and are now being monitored for effects on the nearby built environment – including the railway itself.

Along the rails are mounted at intervals surveying datum targets which will be monitored – either manually, or by use of an automated theodolite – to see it recent operations are causing any movement.

A fascinating use of technology.

February 1st – On my way back, the weather was more patchy, but changing trains at Aston midday, I thought of the great genius that was Nuala Hussey’s Stranded in Stechford (she lived for a while near the station) and of the incongruity of the Britannia Hotel, still with the great lady resplendent, enthroned on the roof, but no longer atop a hotel with dreams of majesty but a backstreet cafe.

Aston has changed since I was a teenager, exploring this place and the love I found near here. We drank in pubs long closed, and laughed and dreamed and made friends and argued and loved. We still do most of those things, of course, but Aston, like many places of my youth, is lost to me now. All of the faces I knew here except one have gone as I grow old, either lost, separated or drifted apart, but whenever I stand on these platforms, high above the sprawling morass below, I remember those days and it makes me sad.

Although I’m sad for the people I no longer see, I’m most sad for lost sense of belonging, and for my youth. But all through my life I’ve passed through places like this, made them mine for a while, then life took me to other places, with different horizons, and life moved on.

Aston is just a wind-blown, suburban and somewhat desolate railway station; two platforms and a junction. But there are ghosts here. And they haunt me so.

I felt old. But like my ghost, my spirit remains. 

The train came, I hauled my bike onto it and I sat down.

‘Are you OK?’ asked a lady in the opposite seat.

Caught unaware, I wiped my eyes. ‘Just the wind I think’ I said, ineffectually.

‘It’s getting colder’ she replied. And offered me a tissue.

February 1st – I’d say February already? But it doesn’t seem like that. It’s been a hard, difficult, intemperate month I’m glad to see the back of it. But it is a shock we’re already a twelfth through 2018. But then, the first months of the year always go like that; a twelfth, a sixth, a quarter, a third. Such is the elegance of modulo 12.

Passing through Tyseley in the morning, with a surprisingly warm sun on my back, it was almost spring, with Easter primroses in the planters and a lovely feel to the city air.

Sadly, my joy is a little premature, but good while it lasts…

January 23rd – And, as welcome as a warm pair of slippers, I return to Shenstone in the dark.

The Canon again did some good stuff with the atmosphere here. I am adoring this little camera. Never thought I’d say that of this brand.

It was cold, and there was a strong headwind. But I was homeward bound, and Shenstone Station, like an old pal, is soothing in the darkness.

January 23rd – Tuesday. The cold is easing but my average speed is still lamentable. I’m feeling better, but still not well and the weather is… Challenging.

Returning from Birmingham in the 5pm dusk, at least New Street Station gave me some welcome late night feelings.

I’m improving. But a return to health and optimism can’t come soon enough.

January 10th – Sorry, more night shots. You must be sick to the back teeth of them, but I’m finding new low-light vistas opening up and it’s really turning my gears at the moment.

I crossed North Street, the umbilicus between Birchills and The Butts in Walsall, and stopped even though it was misty and cold, just to take a shot at the view from the railway bridge toward the town centre. 

This view is one of those that’s always much more impressive as a whole than one is able to capture in a photo, as it’s so wide. But tonight, I liked the light on the snaking rails, the lights from the collage and WHG HQ and the rising plumes of steam from the boiler flues.

I’d have played some more, but it was cold, and I was hungry. Som many things to try with this one. I’m dying to see what it does with a station at night.

December 20th – Returning through Shenstone, I popped into the village to the shop on an errand. Coming back down the village, I was reminded what a handsome pub The Railway is.

The extension in the foreground was once a chapel, then a butcher’s shop, but is now part of the stone-flagged lounge and has a large window it’s great to sit by and watch the world go by.

A lovely pub I’d almost forgotten about.

December 18th – I did return however in mist which was pretty eerie – coming back from Shenstone I was wary of ice but the biggest issues were remarkably daft driving (overtaking on a bend in reduced visibility?) and a huge pothole I narrowly missed in Cranebrrok Lane.

My muse, Shensone Station, looks excellent in mist with it’s metal halide lights, and rolling into an ethereal Brownhills from Shire Oak in the orange glow of sodium streetlights was pretty beautiful too, despite the traffic.

December 12th – Telford was stunning too; from the station which looked like a winter wonderland, to the old bridge now with one of the ramps to the Staples store removed to the cycleways which were packed ice and easily navigated on the studded tyres. 

Only problem was many of the laurel trees that line the paths were weighted down to breaking point with snow and were hard to get past.

December 5th – In Telford again, and the work on the footbridge replacement has taken an interesting turn. On the west-side steps, curling around the bridge pillar, a tortuous square spiral ramp is being built in scuffed and wood.

I assume this will be to take the place of the existing ramp, which must be in the way of the new structure, which is to be built closer in towards the station buildings.

That’s quite some ramp and it’ll be fun riding a bike up and down that…