Winter Cumbrian Mountain Express 2016

Or indeed no coat at all!

 

Cheers Phil , much appreciated . Steve

 

Thanks for the kind comment as it's much appreciated . Steve

 

Thank you for the kind words . Steve

 

Lovely stuff and box free too.

 

Don't bloody encourage him Steve

 

For the insane ISO the one at Kirkby Stephen is not too bad. What camera were you using and what do you use for noise reduction?

 

Cold weather, cold fire, at least the trip ran and those who chanced the weather captured some fine images. Not too late back into Euston either, 15 minutes or so by the look of it, hopefully someone who travelled will post a full report in due course.

And now we look forward to Feb 6th. But the long range forecast doesn't look all that good ...........

 

The criticism that Galatea got after the Cumbrian Coast Express holding up Oliver Cromwell over Shap last year was also about a cold engine with the Steam coming on at Carnforth. Opinion then was that to go from a "cold start" and then attack the Cumbrian Fells and Shap in particular was not the best practice. Running from Preston would have given a few miles to really warm the locos up.

That said if we had not had the slow run up Shap, would we have had the great footage of two steam locos attacking Shap together?

 

Johnb, with regards the camera it is on the right hand side and all the EXIF data for you to see is also displayed on the image page.Maybe if your not a Flickr member then it is not shown? However I shoot with a Nikon D750 a superb FX camera and yesterday the lens I used was the 24-70 mm f/2.8. I then put the image through the excellent Nik Collection software - Define to remove any image noise but to be fair there was not that much at all, the D750 handled the situation perfectly.

Thanks for your interest, Simon

 

There was some very slick work on this trip to regain lost time after the need to run single line from Howe & Co Sidings to Culgaith. Before that, the running over Grayrigg and Shap wasn't all that special with 28 and 27 achieved respectively at the summits, but 46233 got the job done and managed a slight acceleration around Scout Green after a noticeable drop in speed around Greenholme. This was rounded off with an average of the low 70s from Penrith to Carlisle, with an arrival fifteen minutes adrift.

After some brilliant work by the support crews to get the Duchess serviced in a short space of time, we departed a minute down. We were soon at Howe & Co Sidings waiting for the northbound service train to complete its journey; the unit was delayed and we ended up waiting for over an hour before we could proceed 'wrong road'. Consequently we were 87 down on arrival at Appleby but with thanks to all involved, the water stop was cut to just ten minutes and we were soon hitting the hard stuff to Ais Gill.

53mph was recorded at Ormside with the first stage to Griseburn completed in the high 30s, Smardale was passed at 49 but then speed dropped to 20 at Kirkby Stephen to negotiate what looked like another small landslip. The acceleration from this was very sure-footed with the 'Big Lizzie' entering Birkett Tunnel at 32 before rising to 43 at Mallerstang with the accompaniment of some lovely sound effects. Ais Gill was reached at 36mph in just short of half an hour from Appleby. Soon we were entering Hellifield 78 down.

We were away again in 13 minutes where we were rewarded with a surprisingly clear run through Clitheroe despite our delay. The climb to Wilpshire was steady but noisy with 24 at the summit. On arrival at Farington Junction we had reduced the decifit to 68 mins after some slick work all round. We were able to claw back more time with 'Les Ross' given its head with an unchecked arrival into Crewe 56 mins down where I left the train. Huge thanks to everyone involved to ensure that as much time as possible was regained and for most of all a very enjoyable day with 'Sutherland'.

 

Thanks for that, I assumed you were using a Nikon in view of the image quality, mine's a D800 and I use Neat Image for noise reduction. I have scrolled down and yes I can see the data panal, not seen this before but I have only just signed up with Flickr. I haven't got a spare five grand to test it but it would be interesting to see what a D5 image looks like at 1.328m ISO, you could probably get a result on Birkett Common in pitch dark.

 

or 502 in the tunnel!

 

A selection of snaps on my site: http://richardsteampics.weebly.com/recent-images.html Shap, (in the trees for shelter) Armathwaite and departing Appleby.
Really testing the ability of 'digital photography, -


Wires removed fairly obviously.

Richard

 

Thanks for bringing back some great memories. I was a passenger on the Brit - hauled train (Britannia btw, not 13) and we saw the smoke from Galatea ahead on several occasions. Not something I ever expected to see on the mainline in the twenty first century!