These are general-topic photographs that I’ve taken; there is nothing particularly special that I am attempting to get across by posting these, they happen to be pictures that I like and that evoke memories for me. Your viewing of them is on this basis!
Last modified on 2 May 2007.
I hope you enjoy looking at the photographs I’ve placed throughout this website: if you do, why not make my day and drop me an email to let me know! :-)
Details of how the photos on this website were taken have been provided.
As you can see, I have taken a copy of this photo of Mornington Crescent tube station from my Railway Pages, and made an adjustment to it (using XV) to remove the unsightly lamp-post. This was really in response to a request from a friend to “paint it out”: there, I’ve done that!
I happened to be messing around with a brand-new digital camera (which, together with its successor, has really blown my socks off with the quality that it can produce!) and was revisiting Mornington Crescent station. I found that I would have to do much more “painting” work in XV now in order to produce an un-cluttered view of the station frontage: the zebra crossings have been replaced with a whole set of traffic lights, railings and islands, and a semi-permanent news-stand is situated on the pavement where the cluster of people are seen standing. A case of Caught Just In Time!
The Hastings Demu was stabled at Norwich, being maintained by staff from St. Leonards who heard a faint mewing from deep inside the underneath of the Demu. The sounds led them up to an almost-inaccessible location by a bogie, to where “Demu the kitten” was. From the feline mess there, it seems that he’d been there for some time, possibly with his mother and siblings; we can only guess as to how many journeys to Lowestoft and Yarmouth he made, the whereabouts of the train when his mother put him there, and what became of her and the rest of her litter.
Demu was only about a week old when discovered (his eyes had not opened); he has been taken in by one of the team and is progressing well. I saw him in January 2000 and he was looking strong and healthy — a magnificent cat! (Sunday 13 September 1998)
Update, May 2007: Demu the cat is doing just fine!
The town of Poschiavo is in the foreground, followed by the eponymous lake, and in the distance beyond that is the Italian border at Tirano: the snow-capped mountains beyond are well into Italy. Part of the Rhaetian Railway (Rhatische Bahn, RhB), a one-metre gauge, non-rack operated mountain railway runs from Tirano, up through Poschiavo, zigzags round to pass directly beneath where I am standing, and loops the loop inside the mountain many times to accomplish an elevation increase of about 1.8 kilometres; it crosses the Bernina Pass (much higher than my vantage point) and can still operate when all the roads have been closed for weeks.
A Rhatische-Bahn train features on my Miscellaneous Railway Photos page.