Re-photo

Sir Nigel Gresley hauls the steam special over the River Thames at Staines

I’m not a railway photographer, and my main interest in trains is in using them to get places. So I had considerable sympathy with the woman I had a short conversation with on the riverbank after I had photographed the steam special going across the bridge over the River Thames. She felt it was old-fashioned and far too noisy and would have preferred to see a modern train on our lines.

We have seen considerable modernisation on the railway since I’ve moved to Staines, with several generations of new trains, complete replacement of track with long sections of welded rails and more. So far this has resulted in a considerably slower and less frequent service to London – and of course in costs that have increased considerably above inflation.

Actual travel times have increased – the so-called “fast” services now taking around 20% longer than they used to – though it is useful that they now stop at Clapham Junction rather than racing through it.

Actual travel times are longer still. In the old days you could arrive at the station for a train that was timetabled at 10.23 at that time or even a few seconds later,  jumping on it even as it started to pull out and buy your ticket from the guard – or at your destination. Now you need to allow at least 5 minutes to buy a ticket – longer at busy times (and if there is an international on at Twickenham it can take 30 minutes). You may then have a short queue to get through the newly installed ticket gates, and the train doors are likely to be locked half a minute before the scheduled departure time. All in all, you need to allow almost half as long again for the journey to Waterloo.

But also for me, the sound of a steam engine is still exciting. It takes me back to my occasional bike rides up to Southall and that long footbridge (closed last time I was there) over the tracks along which Kings and Castles thundered at speed. The sound and the steam and smoke all add up to a great feeling of power.  And the two places where I photographed are only a couple of minutes on a bike from my home!

The engine hauling ‘The Cathedrals Express’ was  ‘Sir Nigel Gresley‘, the 100th Gresley Pacific, built in 1937  by the London and North Eastern Railway who honoured the designer of the class by giving the locomotive his name, and now owned and maintained by a devoted charity.

I photographed it coming into Staines, along with around 50 rail enthusiasts who had also come to watch. It stopped in Staines for a few minutes to pick up passengers for an expensive day out. I got on my bike and cycled down to the River Thames to take some pictures as the train swept across the bridge. Here I was the only photographer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 02:24 pm and is filed under My Own Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.