1: Wandering Worcester and the Wirral

Hello, and a warm welcome to the new Railwaymedia blog.

I've been toying with the idea of creating a blog since Christmas, but after a few abortive attempts using Blogetery, which I gave up as the site seemed to think I was spam, I've decided to run with this on Blogger. I suppose I should really have read a few blogs first before starting my own, then I might know what I'm meant to do; but hey ho, I hope I don't bore everyone too much! I'll start off with a resumè of what I've been up to so far this year (all 11 days of it).

 

The second day of January I nipped out in car to get a couple of shots of the class 150s transferred up to Northern from London Midland. I'd had word both former class 180 diagrams on the Preston to Manchester route had pairs of these on but one turned out to be a pair in Northern livery and this one above only had one in green. The kids really enjoyed being dragged round in the car to get the shots. Well, they moaned a bit, but I think secretly they enjoyed it.
 

The following day I diverted for a bit from Birmingham to Great Malvern, principally to get a shot of the soon to be closed signalbox at Churchill and Blakedown. A nice old Great Western signal box and I understand that the Worcester area is due to be resignalled, possibly this year, so further visits to this section are definately required to document the infrastructure.

 

On to this week and needless to say as I'm off work the weather is rubbish. I went with a friend over to Liverpool on Monday. Every shot of anything vaguely moving required 800ISO, so largely I didn't bother and we just toured pubs (or to be precise Wetherspoons). Totally off the subject but I really can't work out their food pricing. If you go in different ones yourselves just check the menu's: Chilli Noodles and Chicken varies from £3.79 to £5.30 (no doubt more at airports and some in London). Sometimes branches under half a mile apart have wildly differing prices. Anyhow, it made a change and a good day out, though only managed five pictures of class 507/508 units and a couple of stations in the area that I've not previously got record shots of.

 

We were both suprised though to see 508111 has acquired an advertising livery for The Beatles Story. We spotted it crossing the road bridge at Wallasey Village whilst we were between Wetherspoons on a bus so we jumped off to wait for it to return from New Brighton. The light was that dire though that even a stationary shot of the thing didn't show the livery up well. The 'livery' is though a massive improvement on the dreadful usual colour and state of the trains though.

 I hope you've managed to get to the end of my first ramblings without getting too bored. The plan for tomorrow (the 12th) is to get up early and head round past Barrow for the new DRS loco-hauled passenger train; though I'm doubtful if it will even be light by the time I see it. Keep an eye on this blog and I'll let you know the results! Bye for now.