There’s one thing that’s been troubling me for days now. You see, for my (many) sins, I am an avid subscriber to www.railcam.uk, which is basically a site which enables the train anorak to look at railways around the UK and around some of the world and I take up far more time than is good for me waiting for trains to go past cameras. The reason I do is because I love it. And the thing that has been troubling me is the railway gradient at Garsdale. Yes, really.
My favourite railway line of them all is the one that runs between Settle and Carlisle, known to railway buffs as – wait for it – the Settle and Carlisle line. It’s a wonder of engineering and, joy upon joy, there are three webcams on the line, one at the Batty Moss viaduct at Ribblehead and two at Garsdale. And it appears that there is quite a steep gradient there. So, what do I do? I reach for my Gradient Profile book:
And there, on map M7 I find it. The climb is 1 in 280 which in terms of gradients is absolutely nothing. Yet there was me imagining it to be the railway equivalent of Mount Everest because that’s what the webcam appears to show. My troubles turns to rapid disappointment.
It’s still a lovely stretch of line to watch, I still check regularly. The site even lets me know when certain trains are due. Yesterday, I was thrilled to witness a Class 66 locomotive dragging a freight train of logs from somewhere to somewhere else (I am not one for detail). It was a relative high point of the day. But nothing comes close to what awaits me later on: the nuclear flask train to Sellafield. I shall be able to watch actual nuclear waste being towed to Europe’s largest nuclear dumping ground by actual diesel locomotives from the camera at St Bees. Trust me, for me this is way more exciting than Porn Hub (whatever that is).
This is the modern day version of what I used to do as a child. With no internet nor mobile phones – we didn’t even have a house phone until the 1970s – I would travel to the bottom of Sandy Park Road in Briz (that’s Brislington, an easterly suburb of Bristol for those of you who don’t know Bristol) and stand for hours waiting for a train that never came. Tiring of watching no trains at all, I then went to St Annes Station (RIP) and watch the trains thunder through on their way to and from London. And then, just like now, my interest was in watching the trains and not in taking numbers. The sights and the sounds were enough for me. With most of the webcams I watch today have no sounds so I have to make to with sights. Don’t cry for me: I can make my own train noises if I want to.
Is this normal or is it just me? Am I the only sad bastard who still obsesses about the same little things I used to obsess about before there were girls and football? Christ, even though St Annes station disappeared many decades ago, I now go to Pilning where there are two trains a week that stop there. Now I can see the Hitachi electrics, plenty of ‘rattlers’ and, if I am especially lucky, an asthma attack of clag from an elderly smoking diesel train.
Tiny things and tiny minds, eh?
Anyway, please excuse me because I have a date at Arnside Pier where the nukes train will soon be arriving. I’d love to tell you more but needs must. You can wake up now.
