General photos

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.

Image alteration at Mornington Crescent

[PHOTO: Yerkes-station frontage: 49kB] [PHOTO: nobbled Yerkes-station frontage: 48kB]

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!

Postscript, December 2002

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!

Demu the kitten

[PHOTO: tiny kitten: 25kB]

This incredibly small kitten is seen when only a small number of weeks old, and about the size of a large gerbil. His name is Demu (pronounced Dee-mew). This is because he was found beneath one!

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!

Abroad

[PHOTO: Eiffel tower, Paris: 47kB]

Above: August 1992.

[PHOTO: superb landscape on a tiny island in the Atlantic: 40kB]

Above: This is a view of Flores, one of the Açores islands in the mid-atlantic. We’ve walked to a local summit and are looking down on the village of Fajaziña, with the church of Ponta seen on the slopes beyond (evidently just missed by a large landslip). The nine volcanic islands belong to Portugal and include that country’s highest point — the majestic mountain of Pico (2,351m); I haven’t got its picture here at the moment.

[PHOTO: view up a Swiss Alp towards reservoir dam: 46kB]

Above: Spectacular Alpine scenery from central Switzerland: this is a view up the Goëscheneralp valley (just above Goëschenen, at the north end of the St. Gotthard tunnel and by the Fürke Oberalp rack railway to Andermatt), towards a sizeable dam and reservoir forming part of a Hydro-Electric Power installation. The dam is the artificially-flat green spot in the centre; glacial boulders the size of houses sit all around the valley floor. (June 1990)

[PHOTO: daytime view down glaciated valley in SE Switzerland: 42kB]

Above: More spectacular Alpine scenery: looking down the Poschiavo valley at the south-eastern tip of Switzerland.

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.

[PHOTO: night-time view down glaciated valley in SE Switzerland: 28kB]

Above: The same view, but at night; a time-exposure of about half a minute, taken by me (wanting to get back into my sleeping-bag!) with the camera propped against a tree-stump. We got up early the next morning to catch the first train down into Tirano, on the way to a conference in Trieste. (April 1993)

Closer to home…

[PHOTO: Time-exposure of nighttime at Stonebridge Park: 50kB]

Above: Closer to home: Stonebridge Park station in north-west London, seen here in the evening of 22 November 1998, is the setting as a southbound Bakerloo Line train pulls in with a service to Elephant & Castle.