Wrekin views

Wrekin view to Brown Clee
Originally uploaded by geoffspages

Friday morning, 27 November - a walk up the Wrekin for an aerial view of the floods in the Severn valley. Sadly, the clear blue sky didn't last - there's more rain to come...

Nantmawr

Much better weather today - for a ride on the country's newest steam railway, behind one of its oldest working locomotives. The Nantmawr quarry branch, originally contructed by "the Potts", is an amazing survivor. The track wasn't lifted after the last quarry train, nearly 40 years ago. All the preservationists had to do was clear a linear forest... The locomotive is Beyer Peacock 1827 of 1879 from Foxfield.

Visit "Nantmawr" on "Geoff's Rail Diaries" for photos and video.

Panniers in the dale

Panniers in the dale
Originally uploaded by geoffspages

This one had been in the diary for a little while - so had the awful weather... (the immediately following shot has a raindrop clearly visible on the filter). But it was well worth turning out for the spectacle of steam in Coalbrookdale - only the second time since the end of steam

Tornado hits the Severn Valley

Yes, that's right - newly-built Peppercorn A1 no. 60163 "Tornado" - seen here on today's 11.00am departure from Kidderminster, due in Bridgnorth 12.05. Unusually, the threatened showers cleared, the clouds parted - and there it was, on Eardington bank. Wonderful!

And now for the older stuff...

The relatively recent video wasn't too difficult - just plug the camera into the firewire socket and away we go. A fair proportion was even easier than that - the raw video was still on the hard disk, it just needed re-editing and re-exporting for YouTube.

But now we're into the older material, recorded on a Sony Video 8 "Handycam". In those days, I'd used an ATI "All in wonder" vga card with video capture and a TV built in. But those were the days of Windows 95 / 98 - the card has never worked under XP. The little Canon Mini-DV camera has an option to input analogue video and directly output it through the firewire cable to the PC. Spaghetti everywhere! So we're off, revisiting content which dates from, at earliest, 1994. It's a slow job though, and some of the tapes are starting to deteriorate...

Here's another taster - one of my favourite early video recordings, of Santa trains on the NYMR - Lambton 0-6-2T, Cl 25 pushing, plus both "Austerity" 2-10-0s in action - and some nice light too. As before here's a direct link to the geoffspages channel on Youtube - now up to 47 clips.

YouTube

I've made a start on uploading the Geoff's Pages rail video clips to YouTube, for a variety of reasons. It'll take a little while - the links will be updated as and when the clips are moved. In the meantime, here's a direct link to the geoffspages channel on Youtube - and a sample...

GNR on the GWR

Visitors on the Severn Valley - it's the Autumn Gala, and GNR N2 1744 is visiting - and looking great on the fine rake of teak coaches. Visit "Severn Valley Visitors" on "Geoff's Rail Diaries"

Keef and Perrygrove (again!) 26 September 2009

Once again, a trip to Keef's Open Day followed by the Perrygrove Enthusiasts' afternoon - featuring visitor "Justine" at Keef's and new build (by Keef's) "Lydia" at Perrygrove. Visit "Justine and Lydia" on "Geoff's Rail Diaries"