big jim

oooh, thats going to be a if i need to put one in the headshunt in chirk, it only just fits a 56!!

going back a few days, a couple of pictures from banbury road on the bicester branch, the siding the train is stood on is the same one we laid the ballast in a couple of weeks back!! EDIT: revised pics added

and a couple from the bodmin diesel gala

A couple from 'our man down south' His job was to extract 60096 from St Blazey with 56302 He worked Cardiff Canton 0Z60 to St Blazey on Friday and in his own words enjoyed saying "light diesel Blazey" to the signaller, arriving a little late due to following a unit from Plymouth through Cornwall, it was the first time he had taken a grid over the Royal Albert Bridge and was surprised that there wasn't any photographers about!! The pics are from Friday evening in st blazey where there were a few railway staff awaiting the arrival he posed the 56 and 60 for a photo and once coupled the evening sun shone before departing right time as 0Z61 to Bodmin.

my other half doesn't know about mine!! there are quite a few on ebay around the £100 mark which is what i paid for mine, despite being "second hand" it was infact unused the app it runs with is available through the app/android store, regards ios 8 there are a lot of reviews saying that since the update the lens will not work however i'm running ios 8 on the pad and it works a treat, i've yet to update the iphone which i'll do later, so i'm hoping that when i do it will still work!!

its only pencil, it will rub out!! i actually got it for my little un, a bit of a james may moment, its meant to be played with, to be honest a couple of the coloured stickers have been peeled a little bit so its only worth a tenner at the most, if i were to sell anything i'd sell the box and instructions alone horsetan, it was from a independent local shop rather than a chain, a few years back in the same shop a fellow chiltern driver picked up some drinking glasses for 10p that he sold on for about £30 as he knew what he was looking at on the shelf, similarly my wife picked up some versace shoes for £1 from a different independent shop, the old dear behind the counter tried to drop them to 50p as they needed re-heeling but my wife insisted on paying the whole £1

sorry, yes it is the sony QX10 lens

got a new toy today from CEX in banbury.... looks like a lens but its infact a stand alone camera but where is the view finder i hear you ask? well it works by wifi and syncs up with an android or apple phone or tablet and used that as the viewfinder, as you can see the camera is on the dash and the ipad is showing what the camera is seeing as well as seeing what the camera sees you can zoom in and out as well as adjusting exposure etc from the pad, the camera has a 10X optical zoom which is a bit weird to see moving in and out remotely when activated!! i experimented by attaching the camera to the fence using my sainsburys gorilla grip style tripod and pushed the shutter from over by the van! and this is what i got very pleased with the results, i took those using the 'intelligent' mode which adjusted the exposure etc for a night time shot the camera is actually 18MP so pretty decent, should be interesting to use it for high up shots as ive ordered a "selfie stick" which is basically a 1m extendable pole with a camera mount on the end! i'll still use my 30x zoom camera but this one should be handy to use should i not want to carry the big camera around

Wasnt sure whether to put this in bargain hunters or the smile thread! Just got this from a charity shop in banbury, lurking at the back of the shelf for £2 but worth a fair bit more An original 1981 rubiks cube, complete with box and instructions Dunno if i'll still be smiling later when i throw it against a wall in frustration

it rained all night, the only time it was dry was while i was sat in the tunnel for an hour!

fell over did ya?

a few from last night did a bescot to bicester north with a rail delivery train, ran into bicester and run round to face north before dropping the rails in ardley tunnel quite interesting to run through there at 3mph as opposed to the 100mph i used to do, there are a lot of waves of stalagtites in there where the water has been running down through the bricks, its a shame they werent in a place i was stopped to get some pics! iphone pics again last night first up bicester north prior to running round at 01:30 and after the drop at 04:00 sat just outside ardely tunnel waiting to head back north back in tomorrow on a ballast drop on the bicester town branch!

back to my own work for a change! i was asked to do a move from crewe to carlisle yesterday afternoon but because of other drivers annual leave, rosters, rest days etc they were a bit short of drivers it was left until later in the day so i could do an extra bit of work! only iphone pics again as I wasn't carrying my proper camera first bit of the job, 66849 from crewe lnwr to carlisle lurking in a dark corner, 90050 lit up by the 66s tail lights we got delayed leaving lnwr by a track fault that shut the only way in or out as well as the fast lines so we finally left at 22:30, 90 mins late and into carlisle at 00:45 where it was taken forward to millerhill then it was a taxi to preston where 6C37 was waiting for us to take north as the other driver was finished for the day and any futher would have been over his hours, amazingly despite having to be taxied to preston we left on time back north nice little combo of 56096 and 56105 running in multi, ready to depart at 02:50 they gave a spirited run all the way, they certainly go well in multi with the empty wagons, shap was a breeze! and running round in kingmoor at 05:00, we had to do a couple of extra shunts so we missed the first train back to crewe which was annoying to say the least we managed to get one at 07:00 though and i finally got to crewe at 09:00 and im off to sleep now, back in tonight for a trip to bicester north on a rail drop!

A few of the 37s from 'our man at the scene'.......... Barry Island station in the old bay platform now part of the Barry Tourist Railway where 37's are being used for training for RHTT The shed in the pic is new and never used, money was put into the Barry tourist railway by council, but everything is just left some of Dr Who was filmed here! http://www.barrytouristrailway.co.uk/ split on Barry shed for pic Cab refurbishment or repaint

The driver training on them said he'll send me some more next week

Just one pic from the whole of last week, on nights so didnt bother with the camera, snapped this on the iphone though Its just about the only passenger train booked round foxhall curve in didcot, (milton jn to didcot north jn), routed that way for route retention of XC drivers, it doesnt run that way all the time and its rare for it to be stopped at foxhall jn so i grabbed a shot of it while it waited at a signal check A varied stack of jobs next week, carlisle, bicester, chiltern line, ratcliffe amongst others!

from the bbc article.... Network Rail said it was investigating how the truck became "overwhelmed by the incoming tide". king canute on his lunch break maybe?

well they made it to cardiff i wont be learning/refreshing them straight away but hopefully i'll be on the 60s very soon

Just got in from work, didcot to toton with the coal train, gonna get an hours sleep now, run the kids to school, collect someone who has bought my car from the station, go the doctors and hopefully be done by 11 so i can get back in bed for the afternoon before heading back out to work at 18:00!!

Not me on them (but driven by a fellow forum member) this pair are about to leave WWH for cardiff Looking good

As i say i know the east west (ie bristol bound) XC use 'the dark side' (galton jn-droitwich) as a diversion when the lickey is closed etc but the north souths (banbury bound) are knackered, its not just passengers though, i dont know oxford to worcester so cant divert that way and i doubt that may FOCs drivers do know that way either, then you throw in the RA index, trailing weight limits etc and the job stops!

i was travelling back from london bridge worksite yesterday and contemplated coming down the chilterns, glad i didn't! thing is what alternative route do the north south XC trains have when something like this happens, pretty much none unless you have a traincrew who know oxford to worcester where they can head up the lickey or carry on through stourbridge which i know they use as a diversion never mind, one day soon there will be the option of going over to bletchley from oxford

at least if you have any electrical problems at a show and you cant run trains you could plonk a figure on your signal gantry and 'close all lines' its a shame he wasn't sat under the signal arm or the bobby could have incapacitated him by pulling the signal off and knocking him out with the arm!

one thing that strikes me about the above superb pictures is that the ricoh staduim has very good lighting compared to some venues