Saphos: Blue Peter to Carlisle - 12/02/26; Sir Nigel Gresley - 11/03/26; Britannia - 8/04/26

A couple of phone pics from Wednesday,



Penrith - With watering complete the tanker driver drains the remaining water onto the ground.




Carlisle - Despite all the hard work SNG was still gleaming in the afternoon sunshine. It proved difficult to get a picture without someone standing next to the loco as various people took their turn to be "snapped" however, the guy in the picture was just a pain as he wandered about looking this way an that, mmm!




Bob Hart, who was TI for the return trip, looks from the footplate as the class 37 draws the ECS and 60007 out of platform 3 at Carlisle station.

 

You would have been better off going over to P4

 

In 99% 0f cases it certainly does. The exception I can think of was once in 1990, when John Cameron stood on the track in front of 60009 at Appleby just for a few moments. I cherish that shot

This is the main reason I avoid stations for specials. Clueless narcissists ignoring the wishes and hopes of dozens of others, just to stand next to a nameplate for a hundred or so pictures, then looking vacantly at the motion, nuts and bolts, blemishes on the polish and anything else, while a dozen others fume, wishing he'd just take a step back out of the shot, so as not to pull the eye. Why can't people just stand back and admire from a few feet further away?

It's probably the same sort, who at airport baggage carousels insist on standing in the yellow hatched area, stopping the host of other people doing things properly from seeing when their own case is arriving.

 

You usually need to wait for the right moment, many a time I have had to wait for the people you describe to get out the way. With the improvement in quality of the cameras in mobile phones it is lot easier that it use to be with a conventional camera. Once some people stood back and admired the loco and it improved the composition.

 

I don't need lessons in sucking eggs in that regard. I have waited, and waited and waited in the past, they just stand there forever, then they are replaced by a clone. The world abounds with clueless and thoughtless people. They are a minority, but they make themselves noticeable a thousand times over their relative lack of numbers.