Graeme Pickering

158853 seen at a very wet #Doncaster on the 18.00 to #Scarborough #class158 23/11/25

#Zurich🇨🇭Altstetten one day at dawn, in February 2006: this is the short “Chur portion” of a multi-destination #DB 🇩🇪 #UrlaubsExpress night train, shuttling holidaymakers from northern Germany to various Swiss ski resorts. I was the only one getting off at this suburban station early in the morning.

Photo 194 is an unusual angle of this beautiful steam engine preparing to leave the station in much the same way we are all preparing to leave the weekend and begin a new week… smooth huh? 😇

Look who showed up for morning coffee and peanuts 🥜

#SignalBoxSunday Featured a few weeks back, another of Bangor with 37421 passing.

Last pit ponies at Wheldale colliery, Castleford, Yorkshire, 1972, photo by Don McPhee.

Sensationalising Aldi Christmas opening, 2nd year in a row. This and 'exact time bad weather will hit', 'experts say do x', 'city restaurant does y' recurring daily in feeds will surely start to kill what's left of local audiences for Reach, Newsquest etc.

Since you all loved Kitty Omega, here’s Mercury! He’s the baby of the house.

Deansgate, Manchester, 2021, painting by Cathy Read. #WomensArt #NorthernArt

White snowdrops.

👀 Coffee time ☕️☕️🌺 -
The Garden House #Dartmoor #Devon

Snowdrops - 📷 22.11.2025
Galanthus elwesii -“Hogget's Round”

(#elevensestime)

Beautiful area.

Was last weekend, but I'd happily move there, if only I could afford it!

A few more views of Grange-over-Sands. The ornamental gardens (and a resident) and two pics from the promenade, of the bay and the latter with the signal box and mountains in the distance.

A robin on the branch of a tree at Grange-over-Sands station last weekend. The fence between the trees and the platform and the vague outline of the bay and the the hills on the opposite side of it can be seen in the background.📸:©️ Graeme Pickering

Night night sweet dreamies

So many of the world’s greatest achievements were made by people who refused to give up, even when it looked like all hope had vanished

Keep going

Farage can now be easily boxed in to a corner where his only ‘defence’ becomes: “Yes I spouted Kremlin propaganda & Putin worship but, unlike Nathan Gill, I didn’t need bribes to do it.”
It is, once again, a question of whether interviewers have the temerity to shut down his whining obfuscations.

Queue for bread in Wigan as bakeries and supermarkets rationed loaves during the bakers' strikes of 1974 (Wigan Today).

They say trouble comes in threes 🤔 photo 193 for you this rainy evening

555023 and 555026 at St Margrethen awaiting passage to the UK.

Ariel the Greek calico car lying on a striped pillow in a bed with her nose buried in her tail!

Kept an eye on me all night last night while her 'Mum' was away, lying on what are generally Mrs P's pillows!

The Great Railway Cavalcade: Rocket 150 at Rainhill First transmitted in 1980, Brian Redhead reports from the 'Rocket 150' event held at Rainhill, Lancashire to mark the 150th anniversary of the world's first inter-city railway.

As the year of Railway 200 events nears its conclusion, if you're looking for something marking one of the big previous railway anniversary celebrations, the BBC's coverage of Rocket 150 at Rainhill is still on iPlayer, including the cavalcade.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

And some people still think of these grifters as 'patriots'.

Semaphore signal HY3 at danger at the end of the Chester-bound platform at Helsby.

Semaphore at Helsby. 24 May 2020. #railway #photography

There’s definitely a nip in the air! 43153 Idles away to itself on the turntable at Neville Hill, awaiting a space in the shed for a bit of TLC. Those days of the Valenta engine were definitely the best!
#HST #PowerCar #InterCity #NevilleHill #Class43

An unidentified Class 385 awaiting finishing touches at Hitachi's Newton Aycliffe plant. Front end shot alongside steps and boxes of components

Humza Yousaf pushes door button on Class 385 while standing alongside unit with then Hitachi UK managing director Karen Boswell and Transport Scotland/Hitachi representatives

Front end shot of 385103 alongside an unliveried IET unit

Karen Boswell (left) and Humza Yousaf (middle) as part of Hitachi/Scottish Govt delegation in front of 385103

Eight years since I went to cover the then Scottish Transport Minister Humza Yousaf and Transport Scotland and Hitachi representatives reviewing progress with the ScotRail Class 385 EMU order at Newton Aycliffe. We also got a test track trip aboard one. 📸: ©️ Graeme Pickering

Haha. I can imagine!

Winter sun

#Darlington

A fine station, although as a Darlingtonian I may be biased. Newcastle's now my local big station and I was reminded yesterday (sadly without camera) of how amazing a train shed roof can look with autumn light filtering through it. As here, it really highlights the architectural details.

Our #ThrowbackThursday pic from like a whole 2 months ago😸 Outdoor neighbor catto Cookie checking out the flowers. Today, tomorrow, the weekend. Love you all. Family sends hugs 🍂🧡🍂