Graeme Pickering

Being accountable to an international court means our Government has to answer to them if it tries to undermine your human rights. Be very suspicious of any UK politician who wants to remove that check on their powers.

Share this and speak up for your freedoms.

A train, with tankers sandwiched between two diesel locos, crosses a railway junction, squirting water onto the rails to remove fallen leaves and stop trains slipping.

A train, with tankers sandwiched between two diesel locos, crosses a railway junction, squirting water onto the rails to remove fallen leaves and stop trains slipping.

The season of mists, mellow fruitfulness - and squirty sheds. 66701 and 66756 cross Whitlingham Junction, Norwich, on the first leaf-blasting railhead treatment train (RHTT) of autumn 2025. @gerbil1978.bsky.social @pickgs.bsky.social @rangercaps66.bsky.social @thattallbloke.bsky.social

Some sunny Saturday #ShedWatch from the #ECML at Marholm this lunchtime. GB Railfreight 66788 'Locomotion 15' heads under Hurn Road footbridge & south towards Peterborough with 4L13 Hams Hall to Felixstowe North #GBRF 27/9/25

A Sparrow hanging out and posing for me.
#sparrow
#birds
#nature
#photography
#birdphotograpy

The other reason to pop over to the #ECML at Marholm today was to see #Tug 60096 'Skiddaw' once again working the #DCRail #SaturdaySandTrain, 6M89 Middleton Towers to Ravenhead Sidings. Here she is passing Hurn Road footbridge in the beautiful autumn weather. #DCR 27/9/25

Great weather on the #ECML this lunchtime to catch new #LNER celeb livery 91105, AKA 91150 'National Railway Museum 50 Years 1975-2025' passing Hurn Road, Marholm whilst working back south with 1A26 11.15 Leeds to London King's Cross. @225group.org.uk #NRM 27/9/25

A Siamese cat walking through a yard, with his head turned over his shoulder towards the camera

On the prowl

Happy Caturday

Great shots.

A collage of rail pictures taken this year. From top left and then anti-clockwise: a HST on Hayle viaduct; a class 37 on a test train under a dawn sky at Lowestoft; a black five steam engine ona railtour at Bramfield; a class 755 unit beside Railway 200 bunting at Halesworth; two class 66-hauled container trains pass at Syston; and a man descends a footbridge down to the platform at Leeds, with the station roof above, and Azuma train to the left and a class 150 to the right.

Happy Railway 200 day. @railway200.bsky.social @eastsuffolklines.co.uk @pickgs.bsky.social

I really appreciate the interactions with my Stockton & Darlington posts and new follows. I haven't had a lot of time recently to post my own railway stuff so it's been a real boost to me to see that conversations of the kind we used to get more regularly on social media can still gain momentum.

I bet. Haha - now that would surely be a big challenge. Would probably need a wagon just to accommodate it.

As it trundled away towards Heighington, it felt surreal. Being too young to attend Rainhill and not even born the last time the replica steamed out of Shildon, so glad I got to see it.

The BR produced books Cavalcade Retrospect, Cavalcade Remembered 1925 and Cavalcade Reflections plus the S&D 150 Rail Anniversary programme

The 150th Stockton and Darlington Railway anniversary was exactly four months before I was born. If you or your family had an interest in the cavalcade and related events, there's a good chance these and other books produced before and after it would be part of their collection.

As we speed towards Paris at 300 kmh, here's a reminder of how it all began 200 years ago on the Stockton and Darlington railway. I love being part of an industry that really did change the world.
#Railway200

Seeing this was certainly a special moment, especially when you consider it was surrounded by examples of different stages of that evolution as it came up from the coal drops and the cavalcades that the replica and the original participated in for previous anniversaries. More history in the making.

4/ Setting off eastwards to Hopetown Darlington.

3/ Reversing from the museum headshunt ready to move onto the Bishop Auckland to Darlington line.

2/ Wheels in motion as it begins its journey back up to the main museum site.

1/ The 1975 replica of Locomotion No. 1 and its consist getting ready to leave the coal drops at Shildon late this morning. All📸©️: Graeme Pickering

Book cover, Ray Moore, Tomorrow is Too Late, an autobiography.

From a charity bookstall. A change from my usual reading. Growing up in a R2 household in the 80s (on all day in the kitchen), Ray Moore, Terry Wogan, Jimmy Young, Gloria Hunniford, John Dunn were among the radio voices I heard regularly. All different. All masters of the medium.

Another view of the passing Peds at Northampton & Lamport Railway on Sunday morning. 31289 waits in Boughton loop on the engineers hoppers while 31601 plus tipplers was routed through the platform into the head shunt to allow the following passenger service in behind it. #NLR 21/9/25

Winter in #Vienna 🇦🇹, on this picture taken in January 2015: a #ČD 🇨🇿 Class 380 electric is seen departing from Wien Westbahnhof with a consist in tow that seems to include #ÖBB 🇦🇹 and #PKP 🇵🇱 cars.

I wish politicians would realise it's pointless using a phrase like "we've been clear" if you're being interviewed and asked to explain a position on something and that "we are rightly" doesn't justify it, it only tells the reader/listener/viewer that you thought it was right.

Isle of Mull Railway, 1983. The last trains ran in 2011. Pic: Des Blenkinsopp.

100%. I recall a similar 'take' from LBC News when covering what it called Rishi Sunak's "flagship" Rwanda deportation plans. There's no barometer. And a lot of mainstream coverage is pitching it at the same level as things which are in a completely different category.

Ariel the cat lying with her head on the edge of a British Railways Freight Terminals book and some back issues of The Railway Magazine underneath, edges visible.

Cats enjoy making use of the least comfortable surroundings. Ariel looked at me as if she was very unimpressed when I moved this book and some back issues of The RailwayMagazine After I put them back, she went to sleep, using them as a head rest!

Grass, bracken with trees and patchwork fields of green and yellow fields in the middle distance and grey hills on the horizon with a cloudy sky, looking north across the moors towards Northumberland.

Brown moorland looking north west to ridge of green hills in distance.

Two sheep, one walking right to left in the middle of shot while a friend has its head down eating to the left. Patchwork fields on hills behind it.

Two sheep eating with patchwork fields in background.

Just south west of Hisehope Reservoir, part of Muggleswick Common, County Durham and some of its residents, just before the weather worsened early this afternoon.

Earlier this week, a short hop, with #Flixtrain, over to #Freiburg 🇩🇪 i.B., with its old town, the cathedral and … its tram.

Fife coast railway poster, c.1950

Waverley Bridge, Edinburgh. (1860s) Pic: James Valentine