Letting Off Steam

Those who know me well have always been worried that I am a bit of a trainspotter, and I’ve always enjoyed living up to the myth. For the record, I don’t take numbers (big brother Mark, now that’s a diferent story), I don’t buy the magazines, but I do appreciate trains. They’re big, fast, and they appeal to the small boy inside. Diesel, electric or steam, if it’s big and runs on rails, I’ll stop and watch it go by. This saddens Marie no end.

One Saturday in April 2008, Marie and I drove up to Whitby, where her Mum and Dad were staying for a week’s holiday. It was a typical British spring day, we had snow, sunshine, rain, wind, and we got cold. But on the way there, we took a dip down into an interesting looking valley, and came across – quite by surprise – the little village of Grosmont, which has at its centre a station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. And as we arrived in the village, we were met by this magnificent sight:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 26mm, 1/100 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Note rain spots on the lens – it wasn’t a day for the faint hearted. I had the trusty 18-200 lens on, one of the more pricey superzooms but crisp as nuts, especially with the handy VR switch on.

This is the ‘Union Of South Africa’, one of the last of the famous LNER Class A4 locomotives running in the world – often called the Gresley A4 pacific class, after Sir Nigel Gresley, who designed them (see the train named after him, below). These unique trains (more HERE) were among the biggest, and fastest, and the most handsome, ever built in Britain. They only made 35 of them, and sister engine ‘Mallard’ set a world steam record of 126mph in July 1938, just near where we currently live (on a downhill stretch near Little Bytham, between Grantham and our town Stamford). When I worra lad, every boy knew the name ‘Mallard’, and the speed, 126.

Marie admitted that it did look quite interesting, as much as a train can, but could we get on as it was raining. So we headed into Whitby where, after the blizzard, we took a pleasant walk out to the end of the jetty:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 18mm, 1/500 sec at f 5, ISO 200, hand held no flash. To those of you who live in California, this is what’s known as a proper day out with proper weather. You carry umbrellas, plastic bags, your clothes have hoods out of neccessity, not out of fashion, and you wear sturdy shoes, for better grip on slippery pavements and wobbly flagstones which splash water in your face when you step on them. You don’t worry about your hair, because nobody can see you anyway, on account of the driving, horizontal sleet. Note small lifeboat heading out to rescue more drowning holidaymakers.

For a while I wandered off and tried to ignore the hurricane and the downpour, to take A Photograph. But, for once, my creative muse had left me, so I took some hurried shots of fishing boats and crab nets:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/80 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Forget art, and artistic wide angles, this was useless, I had to point away from the rain to get a clear picture, and even I – who enjoyed cold, muddy, skiddy Sunday morning football matches much more than the warm sunny ones – gave it up as a bad job.

We regrouped in the marvellous Hadleys Fish Restaurant – so popular a chippy, you have to book well in advance. Luckily we’d been aware of the legend, and had been in earlier to reserve a table for four weary, wet adventurers.

 Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 60mm, 1/125 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Just using the D300 as a quick point and shoot on a nippy day out, you can’t really beat the Nikon 18-200 VR lens. The camera takes care of the exposure, usually it’s bang-on, and the lens performs just like you’d expect it to (given that it costs a few hundred quid). The meal, by the way, was as good as the legend promised. The Platonic ideal of Fish and Chips…

On the way home I dragged Marie back into Grosmont station, where the sun was finally out and I took a few more cheerful, colourful pictures. Here’s a particularly cheerful, colourful one:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 11mm, 1/640 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. I’ve worked on this one a bit in Paint Shop, but not a great deal – the original had some lovely rich, deep colours. Back on the Sigma wide angle, I’m uncritically in love with that lens, it lets you get right up close and still get it all in.

Here’s another, so close that the Andy Capp driver could have flicked engine grease onto my camera had he bothered to look:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/80 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. See the dark space to the left of the driver? There was a whole person standing there, but he was looking at me in a funny way, so I cloned him out, into oblivion. Lovely detail on this one. And my fellow trainspotters – Mark – might notice that big, blue engine and that 60007 number could only mean one thing:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 18mm, 1/125 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Isn’t she beautiful?

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/200 sec at f 11, ISO 200, hand held no flash. This is the ‘Sir Nigel Gresley’ itself, the original Class A4, in full steam pulling out of Grasmont station. Blimey I sound like a Rail Enthusiast hacker. But you have to admit, this isn’t something you see every day. Wonderful, isn’t it? Oh please, cynics leave now. Small boys young and old know what I mean.

This was a Good Day, the kind which leaves you feeling very much alive afterwards, and you can ask for no more than that, out of a day.