Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2011/01/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Thanks Jayanand, the narrow gauge line to Simla must be a real adventure - the descriptions of Simla in the Kipling books always fascinated me as a child. Ah well - maybe some day when I'm rich and famous;-) Dyed in the wool railway freaks (aka "anoraks") can really be a PITA -I just take pictures of trains and have to look up what class they are;-) The preserved railway where I usually shoot has about 16 miles of track and generally runs three different steam locos every day in the spring-summer-autumn season. They have about a dozen of their own steam locomotives, quite a few diesels and often have guest engines (like the Great Marquess). The steam traction units are all in the sheds at the moment, undergoing winter servicing. As the line has no facilities for turning the engines around, they have to regular exchange the wheels from one side to the other to compensate for wear on the running surfaces caused by friction in curves. Two or three are in for boiler refits and one for a complete rebuild, so they are currently looking at bills amounting to about 1 million pounds. A large part of this came from donations last year, the rest of the sum donated - 850,000 GBP - went into replacing one of the bridges along the line. The bridge had served the line since 1865 without any problems but had begun to show weaknesses that threatened to close down services. Cheers Douglas On 26.01.2011 18:56, Jayanand Govindaraj wrote: > Douglas, > Nice shot. How many times a year can you take these out for a spin, anyway? > I once knew a guy working in a money management firm in Glasgow who part > owned a steam engine. He told me they were allowed to take it on public > tracks once a year. Whenever he visited India - this was in the mid to late > 1980s - he was a PITA because we had to get complex permissions to enable > him to photograph steam engines that were still functioning at that time in > the Mumbai Docks! Alternatively I had to send him off to the three narrow > gauge hill trains that even function to this day - from the plains to the > big colonial hill stations of Darjeeling, Simla and Ooty, all at various > other ends of India from Mumbai, thousands of kilometres away. New Delhi > has > a lovely and pretty comprehensive train museum, if anyone is headed that > way. > Cheers > Jayanand > > > On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 10:51 PM, Douglas Sharp<douglas.sharp at > gmx.de>wrote: > >> I sometimes think that bad weather IS good enough for photography - I >> think >> this shot captures the wetness of it all and the rather different >> saturation >> of the colours in wet weather. >> >> Hope you like it - the locomotive is an ex-LNER K4 class 2-6-0 built in >> 1937 for work on steep grades in Scotland and is seen here in British >> Railways livery at the station in Grosmont on the North Yorkshire Moors >> Railway, the most successful preserved railway in the UK. >> >> >> http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/DMS/Transport/Railways/NYMR/20080904-_MG_8776-Edit-1.jpg.html >> >> Cheers >> Douglas >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Leica Users Group. >> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >> > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information >