From the guard's van

 The Cross City Line... from Lichfield Trent Valley to Longridge... was a major commuter route through Birmingham. Work began to electrify the route in 1990 and a full service of electric trains was introduced in July 1993. These pictures of Lichfield Town station were taken between those two dates. Some evidence of the coming electrification are obvious but the scene was mostly as it had been for some years.... DMUs and semaphore signalling.

Those who know me will know that I am not a fan of the GWR even in its later manifestation as the Western Region of BR. However as I can't get to see any trains at present I have been looking back through my archive and came across these images. They were originally colour transparencies and were taken on a day out in London. My father and I took in a number of the London termini and these were taken during our time at Paddington.  This is the Western painted in golden ochre... a golden yellow colour.

The class 139 single car rail buses which now operate on the Stourbridge - Stourbridge Junction line in the West Midlands were, many years ago, demonstrated on the Wensleydale Railway in North Yorkshire and ran a service between Leeming Bar and Northallerton for a short time.  These pictures were taken at Leeming Bar station during the time of those demonstration runs.  Here the "train" sets off for Northallerton. Running into Leeming Bar station on the return trip. Seen here crossing the old Great North Road.  The units operate from bottled gas. Here the replacement cylinder is being installed in the unit.

More for the narrow gauge fans... this time from France. Taken at Noyelles-sur-Mer where the CFBS meets the Calais to Amiens mainline.  A bit of interesting trackwork which would look good on a model... N gauge perhaps? The train arrives from le Crotoy. Uncoupling. Watering.  Running round the train.  Some beautiful coachwork. Coupled to the brake van and ready to return to le Crotoy.

Chevalier is an ex-Admiralty 0-6-2T locomotive which has been used on the Whipsnade Zoo railway.  It visited the W&LLR in 1991 and the pictures where are taken at the Gala that year.  It has recently been on the railway for a extended period of storage and testing but is deemed not suitable for the railway to use regularly.

91001 in original Swallow Inter City livery standing at Newcastle with a down train in the early 1990s. 91003 arrives in Newcastle station from the south with a down train. 91112 at York with a down train on 20th February 2020.