After rain... midges

It finally rained the other night so I decided that I'd go and get some footage of FR trains and their waterfalls. The most notable one being at Tanygrisiau where the line crosses over the Afon Cwmorthin. Unfortunately the tree growth over the last few years has meant that the falls and the train are virtually invisible from the road where you can get to video it. However I got a few shots around the area and a reasonable crack at the shot I went for... sort of. After the train passed I walked up above the line to get some shots of the falls from above.

 

What waterfall?

How do the car drivers know when to come past to knacker my shot?

I must come back on a sunny day and get this shot with a train in it

 

After that I drove down to TYB to one of my favourite locations on the FR, Creau bank. Because it is surrounded by trees it gets overlooked but it is pretty much as tall as Cae Mawr. The stream which passes under it has a wooden bridge over a waterfall and it is all in a very pretty little valley which leads down to Llyn Mair below.

 

It was a while before a train was due so I contented myself getting some pretty shots of the water and so on. I thought that there would be more water than there was but this area is always damp being in the temperate rainforest which the side valley with TYB in it creates.

 

 

 

This is a bit of a new thing, shot on my phone so you can see the camera set up

 

Anyway once the down and up trains has passed by, I went back to Port to pop an antihistamine pill and then edit and upload the following little package. I set the pictures to a tune called After Rain as this seemed appropriate. Some people have commented positively on this and others moan; it is impossible to please everyone all the time but most of these shots have very little natural soundtrack and it also allows me to use the shot at TYG which has the car passing in front of the camera which you see in the still picture.

 

Here is the video, I rather like it.

 



 

Quarry Hunslets are like busses.

Well, OK they aren't very like busses except that they seem to come along in groups in my life.

 

In this instance its King of the Scarlets, or is it? It seems that like most of the preserved locos in this and its related classes, all is not what it seems. Because of the way in which they were used and maintained in the quarries, boilers, frames and tanks all got swapped around to keep the fleet running. This one has Maid Marians frames I believe and the tank from a different one... any way we call it King of the Scarlets and now it has taken the space which Princess formerly occupied in Spooner's.

 



The process of getting her inside was pretty much the same, but in reverse of how we got Princess out.

The grubby state of the loco is explained by the fact that when she was sold in 1965 she went to Canada, was put into storage and stayed there until repatriated earlier this year. The paintwork had been slapped on before the sale in 1965 but otherwise she is in ex quarry condition. The dirt is what 50 years in a barn can do for you..

A bit of fresh timber wouldn't go amiss

 

Next year she will leave the bar and go to Stafold Barn for a careful restoration which will get her running but keep the work worn look of her.

 

You can see the video of the process here. It looks quick in the video but took all day.



Apart from that I've been out and about with the camera capturing the railways in the sunshine, just in case it doesn't last.

 

 

Today I popped out onto The Cob work site and got some up to date shots of the work, over the last week they have laid some track past the signal box which now has windows with glass in and everything. Plenty to do still.

 

How time flies when you're having fun

I can't believe that it is so long since I last posted on here. Needless to say I haven't been doing nothing, far from it. The Easter rush which is supposed to die down hasn't and so the shops like the trains have been mad busy. Nothing to complain about but 'spare time' has been in short supply.

The Driver's Eye View disk is getting nearer completion, in fact disk one is ready to go in the boxes, the covers are printed, so are the disks. I'm just waiting on getting a final correction of the route names for the down trip and then it can hit the shops.

With the weather continuing to be fabulous I'm hoping to get the second section of the WHR in the camera this week. Fingers crossed. We've got a different microphone to mount on the camera which should help get a good sound track without the use of a separate sound recorder. Watch this space.

The year in the life 2013 is getting bigger by the minute and may end up as a three disk epic as the work on the cob widening is threatening to consume a hefty chunk of disk real estate.

Since following Griff Rhys Jones and his film crew about I've been out on several projects worthy of note. The first will add a few minutes to the Cob Widening chapter which was when The Cob was closed one evening so that a concrete pump and mixer lorry could pump the concrete into the shuttering to form the bases for the new signalling. Not glamorous and it was cold, too.

 

The second was a chase the train in the rain job when Bagnall, Isaac which Boston Lodge have been restoring for use on the L&B went for a run up the WHR with sister WHHR loco Gelert. Gelert's boiler ticket ran out at the end of June so the trip took place not a minute too soon. Unfortunately the weather was foul which limited the run. I got soaked to the skin and despite the camera's rain coat it got pretty wet too. Both of us have come through unscathed.

 

 

Isaac on the train and Gelert waiting to join it

 

You can see the video for this here...

 



 

The railway played host to some youngsters who play in a school Steel Band so not being one to miss out on a dance I popped over to Pen Cei to video them play.

The sun carried on shining and this made my next task a pleasure. Lilla and Hugh Napier with a selection of FR slate wagons spent the weekend in Llanberis on the Llanberis Lake Railway. Both these locos were Penrhyn quarry machines. Penrhyn and Dinorwig quarries were huge rivals so to see PQR black in the very heart of Dinorwig at Gilfach Ddu was quite something.

 

And here is the video. There will be a longer version on the Year in the Life 2013.