Editorial: How Do They Fit It All In?

It was a Twitter post recently. It was doing the rounds and getting lots of engagement. And I had ten bob worth to put in.

Now. I’m not saying I get everything done and that I’m super organised, but I do know that I am wasting a lot of my free time in front of the TV that I could be spending productively. Most of the time I do what I feel like doing, unless there is something that needs be done, and then I’ll do that. And that was always the problem.

The question was basically, how do people do it all? The job, the exercise, the 10k steps. All the house work, the personal grooming, looking after kids etc. And still get 8 hours sleep. It feels like propaganda.

But this is the trick. Its the difference between doing what you want, and want you feel like doing. I want to get fit, for example, I might even go so far as to say that I don’t want to sit on the sofa all night drinking wine, infact, I want to not sit on the sofa drinking wine. But. When it comes down to it, and I feel like drinking wine on the sofa all night, I do, even though I don’t want to. Crazy right. Non wonder there’s no time.

I had an epiphany a little while ago. You know how we all feel like we ought to bake our own bread? Its nicer and healthier. There’s nothing better than the aroma of freshly cooked bread filling the home. Its even a cliche of vendors selling their homes. And the taste. The taste of hot fresh bread, dripping in butter. And yet most of us settle for Warburtons Toasty loaf, with all of the preservatives and emulsifiers and who knows what else.

Well. I never cook bread because I don’t have the space for it. Bread is quite intense on the space when it comes to the kneading of it. I have work surfaces in the kitchen, sure, but they’re always cluttered. I simply can’t bake bread because the work surfaces are cluttered.

That was my epiphany. I had it all backwards.

My kitchen work surfaces are cluttered because I don’t bake bread. They don’t need to be uncluttered because I’m not using them for anything else. This was quite the eye opener. And now, with uncluttered surfaces, the path is cleared to delicious home made bread whenever I fancy it.

But how?

How do they do it all, they ask? They do this. They prioritise outcomes and prepare. This is actually one of Jordan Peterson’s twelve rules, to do what is meaningful, not what is expedient. Keeping surfaces clutter free means that they can be used for delicious home baked bread. Those that fit it all in do this sort of thing automatically.

Its not propaganda. I don’t doubt that there are some fibbers out there, who like to boast and exaggerate, indeed, I know many of them. But the silent super achievers aren’t that, and they aren’t built differently. They simply prioritise and organise their goals.

How do they do that? Let us break it down.

The question was basically, how do people do it all?

The job. The job is mandatory if that is how you put food on your table and a roof over your head. Its a whole segment of the 8-8-8 Rule.

The 8-8-8 Rule splits the day in to three. With eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for leisure. Some will argue, rightly so, that the eight hours of work are sandwiched between an hour of commuting. And that the eight hours of work is actually ten, and this is fair. Not much you can do about that, but even if we’re driving, we can use some of that time, listening to an audio book maybe, or learning another language. Most of us have these on our list of things we’d do if we could only fit it in.

Next one. The exercise, the 10k steps. Ten thousand steps is less than five miles, or a hour and half of walking. Some of that we can fit in to the commute, some of it we can do in the job. The rest of it is a lunch time walk or an evening stroll. For a proper exercise regime, we’re looking at an hour session, with maybe fifteen minutes of travel, and we need to fit that in to 6-8 hours of leisure time. How we manage our other activities can help with that.

All the house work. Honestly, how long does it take to tidy a well organised home? We have a clean as you go policy in our household. If you make a mess, you tidy it up, as soon as possible. If you spot something out of place, you deal with it, you don’t leave it for others. Another household rule is that if you cook for yourself, you wash it up and put it away. If you cook for the house, someone else washes up, and someone else puts away. And we have a rota for that.

We have a rota for everything. We know who is cooking on what days, we know what they are cooking so that we can plan the shopping. We know who will wash up. We know what laundry is done on what day. We know what day we change the bedding. It takes away the drama and the stress. We all know where we are at. And we all know where everything is.

How long does it take to wipe down some surfaces, mop the floor, dust the paintings? With everyone pulling their weight it can all be done within an hour. And its only necessary once a week. This we leave for Saturday mornings. Along with the weekly shop.

I timed it once. The washing up, after a big Full English breakfast. There was the grill for the sausages and bacon and black pudding to wash up. There was a frying pan for the eggs. There was pan for the beans, the pan for the tomatoes. The pan for the garlic fried mushrooms There was the grill for the toast. There were serving bowls and utensils. There were plates and cutlery. There was the coffee pot. There were mugs. Washed and away in just over ten minutes. Who hasn’t got ten minutes?

The personal grooming. This varies from person to person. But I can be shaved, showered, dressed and ready to go within 15 minutes. Ironing is something you make time for, and it can be done while watching TV, listening to an audio book, or podcast, or even while completing the DuoLingo Daily Streak.

Looking after kids. This is a tricky one, but I’m a parent, I know what its like. But it falls within the pattern of organisation. Having kids doesn’t change the Rota. Whoever isn’t cooking watches the kids, whoever isn’t washing up watches the kids. And we tidy as we go. The toys spread across the house go back in the box. The soiled clothes go in the wash at the scheduled time. There are free slots in the laundry schedule for emergencies.

Et cetera. There were other things mentioned, like hobbies and pets. What does it take to feed and clean up after your pets? I suppose it depends on the pet. A gold fish will take less care than a hippopotamus. Hobbies though. What time do we have left on a weekday, after all the non negotiables are accounted for?

Work + Commute 10 hours
Sleep 8 hours
Hygiene 0.5 hours
Laundry 0.5 hours
Cook/Eat/Washup 1 hour
Exercise/Gym 1.5 hours

Thats 21.5 hours taken. That leaves 2.5 hours of free time, per day, for socialising, or hobbies. Thats twelve and a half hours a week, not including the weekend.

On Saturday, let’s say we allocate three hours to the scheduled weekly clean, the shopping, and ironing. Plus half hour for hygiene, and eight hours for sleep, there a still twelve and half hours free on the Saturday. And Sunday, we take eight hours sleep, half an hour for hygiene, and two hours for church. That leaves thirteen and a half waking hours on a Sunday to do whatever you want. Climb Helvellyn, visit the garden centre, write a book, visit family, bake bread, or even binge watch Netflix.

There is plenty of time to fit it all in. Its definitely not propaganda.

28/01/2026 0

Tubular Anecdotes

As a northerner, a resident of the sticks that are way out there, I grew up almost entirely reliant on scant service buses, and as such, only visited the places to which the buses went. Cities, like London, with their subway systems were a great source of envy for me. Trains, being not just cool, they can take you anywhere. Using these systems, like the London Underground, give you a different perspective of them.

My First Time

My first experience of the Tube must have been in the very early eighties, and I was very little, and don’t remember very much of it. A family trip to London on the brand new Intercity 125s, and that’s about as much I recall. So my first genuine exposure to the tube was around 1994 when I visited a friend in Watford.

Being a young adult of limited means, a student, I was using the National Express, like in the song, and the way from Watford to Barnsley was via Victoria Coach Station. And the best way to get to Victoria was an Intercity train from Watford Junction to London Euston, but that was something that only happened to people with money. The cheaper alternative was the semi fast commuter service in to Euston. Cheaper than that was the slower DC line to Euston. And even cheaper than that was the Metropolitan Line to Baker Street, and then the Circle to Victoria. An hour longer than the next best option, but it cost about £1.50 instead of a tenner.

I remember this journey particularly well because of much it contrasted with my expectation of London and the South of England. To make the coach from Victoria I had leave early, before seven am. And it was still dark, foggy, snow on the ground, and to get there I had to walk through a lonely municipal park, and for the entire twenty minute walk, I didn’t see another soul until I arrived at the tube station and purchased my ticket from a chap behind a little window. The train was waiting for me at the platform, and as far I could tell, the train too was empty. I had an entire London Underground train to myself. The first stop was a couple of minutes down the line, Croxley, and no one got on or off there either, and the snow was crisp, fresh, undisturbed.

It was the darndest thing, and I began to doubt the realness of my situation. Was I dead?

Obviously I wasn’t. The whole of the South East had just over slept or something. Having an entire train to myself wasn’t going to last though, and from then on it began to fill up and by the time the train arrived at Baker Street it was standing room only.

The thing I remember most about that train ride, aside from the emptiness at the start, was looking out of the window of a London Underground train and seeing open countryside and suburbs, and with a dusting of snow no less. The closer you get to London, the denser the housing gets. Victorian terraces that stretched as far as the eye could see, four of five, or even six stories tall, smoke bellowing from the chimneys. Very Mary Poppins.

Recalling this journey made me realise something about myself. This trip was the first and only time I ever used Baker Street station without a certain song getting stuck in my head.

The onward train from Baker Street wasn’t as pleasant as the first. The station wasn’t as empty, in fact it was positively heaving. And when I did manage to board a train, well, “like a tin of sardines” might be a well worn cliche by now, but its yet to be beat. It was packed. I was unable to raise my arms to hold a hand rail, but there was no danger of losing your balance as the train jolted about beneath the streets of London. I can’t even use the word jostle, for that would imply some degree of freedom of movement within the carriage. There was none.

Gone too was the scenery. We were now deep below ground. The delightful snow topped open countryside and suburbs was replaced with armpit. A lot of armpit. Armpit in ever direction, as far as the eye could see. I’d never held breath so long, and the diesel fumes and tabacco smoke of the open London air never tasted so sweet.

Credit: UK Photo & Social History Archive

Since then, I have used the tube many times and found it just as unbearable at rush hour, but quite pleasant at any other time.

Their First Time

A year or so ago I was working in London and thought it would be a good idea if the wife and kids traveled down to meet me for a weekend of sights and sounds, and travel down to meet me they did.

It was a weekend of firsts, for all of us. It was the boys’ first long distance train ride, first time in London, first Black Cab, first West End show. It was my first, and last, Uber. It was also, the first time on the London Underground for the kids, and it did not go well.

We were staying at the Kings Cross Plaza, quite a walk from any tube station but I was absolutely adamant that we should have the experience of the London Underground. It would be fun. It wasn’t.

The nearest tube stop was Russel Square, so we walked there. I was particularly looking forward to showing the kids the steep long escalators that go so far down that you cannot see the bottom. Russel Square is not the station for that sort of thing. The platforms being accessed by lift. A very busy crowded lift as it happened. It took us a while to figure out how to buy tickets too. The whole system is geared up for using contactless tickets. You just present your oyster card, phone, or bank card to the gate and it opens for you. There was very little provision for passengers traveling with children that did not have oyster cards, mobile phones, or bank cards.

When we did finally make it down to the platform, it was quite exciting. You could hear, even feel, the rumble of the trains, the whoosh of air as trains whizzed through the tunnels, and that musty old ozone smell that is unique to the London Underground. This was what we’d come for.

The first train burst out from the tunnel and slowed to a screeching halt. The doors slid open for us to board, but we couldn’t, beyond the door was a wall of people, several layers deep. There was no boarding that train. We let it go and waited for the next one. It was the same. We observed the locals forcing their way in to the carriages and after watching the third train leave without us we resolved to give it a try.

We (wife and I) each took a firm hand of a child, straightened our backs, and took a deep breath as yet another train drew in to the station. I had the hand of the eldest, and as the doors opened, he stepped aboard along side his mother, who held tightly the hand of our youngest. Without warning. The doors slid shut, separating me from my assigned child, and my youngest from his mother. I pulled him away from the platform edge.

“I’ve got him” I shouted to my horrified wife, “Meet at next stop!”

And then they were gone. The train whizzed out of view and we had no option but to wait for the next one. I shudder to think what might have happened had the kids boarded the train together first, or been left on the station without us.

Onboard the train, our separated family unit was the talk of the carriage. All were disgusted that this could have happened. Where was the warning that the door was closing? Where was the guard? I don’t know why I didn’t make a complaint, this was a serious breach of railway safety rules. This one event would have been enough to put the kids off London, but that was only the outbound trip, later, we had to return to the hotel.

It wasn’t until much later that we returned to the Plaza, by then it was late, after eleven, and the platforms and trains were all much quieter. I think we used Leicester Square, and there was a relaxed friendly atmosphere as most passengers were wined and dined and returning from a pleasant night out. The train came in and we boarded without incident.

Just up from us was a young man sat hunched, his head in his hands. I only really registered that he was there at because it was just as I was looking in that direction that he suddenly belched the content of his stomach on to the carriage floor. It stank. We got off of that train and waited for the next one.

Larping a Commute

The thing that inspired this post to begin with was a recent trip to London for a few days, and my usual hotel haunts were unavailable so I ended up staying further out. Baker Street is well within walking distance of Bloomsbury but I rather liked the idea of pretending to be a beleaguered weary tube commuter for a few days. Larping, for the unitiated is Live Action Role Play-ing. I doubt that I will do it again.

Its nice for cities that have metros, they are fast and efficient, but in rush hour, they really aren’t fun. They are hot and sweaty, the London Underground has a constant temperature of 50 degrees Celsius, or there abouts, which is why it always feel so warm, even in winter. Even before I arrived at the station, there were crowds of people overtaking me on the pavement, a stream of people, a river, nay, a raging torrent of commuters.

Through the station gate and you have to make a payment to gain access to the trains. Everyone knows where they are going and work on autopilot. You hear the sighs from behind as you fail to complete the card payment at the gate in one fluid motion, adding crucial seconds to their journey. Baker Street station is on the junction of 5 lines, interconnected by tunnels and bridges and subways and walkways. Its easy to get turned around and find one’s self about to board a train in the wrong direction. Luckily, during rush hour, there are plenty of trains, but they’re all full, and it takes a few trains before one appears with a gap in the door way to accommodate you.

The ride itself is bouncy and awkward. You don’t want to catch anyone’s eye in case it got weird. I don’t know what would happen if that did occur, but I feel like it would be bad.

Baker Street to King’s Cross is three stops. More than enough to get the taste of a central London commute, and when you get there, you follow the swarm up the escalators and along the wide subterranean avenues. On the first day of my larping, there was some sort of delay, and crowds were gathering, hundreds of people penned in line like sheep. Its always a relief to break out in to the open air again, and promise ourselves, never again.

Please Can You Help Me

On the last day of this trip, after checking out, I made my way to the office for the last time. I had planned to take a photo of the commuters penned in like sheep to illustrate this blog post, but it was clear so didn’t bother. I took a wrong turn however and found myself walking beneath and along the undercroft beneath the magnificent train shed roof.

As I wandered past the shops and outlets beneath the railways of the international rail services, marveling at the Victorian opulence, my eye met that of another. To be fair, it was the pie that I noticed first. A disheveled young lady with a thick blue coat and backpack was eating a pie. She changed her course to intercept me. I had every intention of walking away but she said something and I had to stop.

“Please can you help me” She said.

Something about big cities and crowded spaces with strangers sort of shuts down your responsiveness to others I find. Like not wanting to make eye contact with others on the train. Whats the worst that can happen? Well, they might want something for a start. I was more than prepared to mind my own business and go about my day. For a moment, I was reminded of the movie Liar Liar, when Jim Carey’s lawyer that cannot lie character was asked on the street “can you spare any change”.

If I replied with anything other than yes, it would have been not only a lie, but it would have been a heartless lie. So I stopped and turned to face her. “What help do you need” I said.

She was very softly spoken and seemed to choose her words cautiously and deliberately. I do not know if she was recalling a well practiced script or thinking on her feet.

“Thank you for stopping and talking to me” She said. “I am homeless and destitute and I need to get money for a ticket”.

I am accustomed to this play. We have it up north, but its not usually a disheveled young lady asking politely. More often then not its a coarse “Scuse me pal you haven’t got twenty pence for the bus home have ya?” spoken in an accent not unfamiliar in one of the larger cities to the western edge of Lancashire.

“How much do you need?” I asked her, and she told me. It wasn’t a trivial amount, nor was it excessive, so I gave her what little cash I had on me. She thanked me, and said bless you. And its difficult to fathom because her expression was unchanged throughout the entire encounter, until I said “Bless You” in return.

Its almost better to believe that I had been scammed out of a small amount of money, than to think that there really are destitute and homeless people dependent on the generosity of commuters on the London Underground.

We don’t see that up north, not in the rural communities. There is no one around to ask for money for a start, and its difficult to imagine being asked for help every day without having to harden the heart a little. As useful as the underground is, I am glad I use it rarely.

21/10/2025 0

Mk3 Impulse Purchase

Is it really an impulse purchase if it takes three years to act upon that impulse?

For three years now I have been attending the annual Steam Gala at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, and at Picking station there is a stall selling new and used model trains, and in the box of unboxed odds and ends, the bargain bin, there was a distinctive orange mk3 carriage. It was there in 2023, and I thought about buying it, it was there again in 2024, and I thought about buying it.

It did not occur to me to take a picture of the carriage in the bargin bin, but I did get a picture from the opposite platform

This year, 2025, it was there again, and I thought about buying it. And again, I put it back and walked away.

But, over a plate of scampi and chips at a nearby chippy, I gave the matter some more thought, and there and then I resolved to buy the carriage, if it was still there.

Proof of scampi and chips, should it be necessary.

So after lunch I returned to the stall, and there it was, the Northern Irish Railways Intercity Mk 3 carriage.

This is my first Lima carriage, and it immediately reminds me of how poor my Hornby carriages are. This is not only sturdy, and nicely detailed, it is weighty, and the correct length.

I feel compelled to compare and contrast it with a Hornby variant, but I’m writing this from the Youth Hostel. Something for another time perhaps.

I did wonder why no one had wanted to buy this over the past, at least, three years. But now that I have it, I don’t really have any use for it. It doesn’t match any of my existing mark three coaches, being a different manufacturer, to a higher standard than my hornby set, a different length, different livery, different railway.

There is no prototypical scenario in which a NIR carriage would run on BR rails. They’re not electrically compatible with the British variant, and they’re not even the same track gauge.

Purely academic anyway, as I don’t even have a railway to run it on. Not yet anyway.

Edible Coal

There is a curious confectionery to be found at Railway Museums and similar. Blocks of coal that you can eat.

I’ve had it before, at the Yorkshire Coal Mining Museum. It’s a sort of cinder toffee, coated in chocolate, and coated in a blackened sugar compound concoction that turns your mouth, lips, teeth, and tongue, black. One piece is plenty.

30/09/2025 0

I Know That Place!

Its hardly surprising that in a movie like V for Vendetta I would recognise some of the filming locations. It begins with an establishing shot of London using the BT Tower, anyone that ever arrived in to London from the north recognises the BT Tower. Parliament Square, Trafalgar Square too, stand out.

But it’s when I notice details on less prominent streets that I get a little bit excited. Excited enough to stop the movie and examine the scene. This happened last night when I noticed a street that I am quite familiar with.

The police car raced along the streets to the crime scene, taking a corner hard on to a wide affluent looking crescent.

That was Cartwright Gardens! I was absolutely certain of it. A crescent shaped street near King’s Cross, I know it well. But I had to double check on street view.

Its close, but on near inspection, no cigar. The actual filming location was Thornhill Crescent. Very similar though, and not that far away.

So I was wrong. But I’m not always wrong about filming locations. Adjoining the aforementioned Cartwright Gardens is Leigh Street, the filming location for the exterior of Black Books.

Its an actual Book Shop. I bought a book about paper making in Bolton.

And not far from there, less than ten minutes walk, is North Gower Street, the filming location for Sherlock. A sandwich shop stands in for 221b Baker Street.

And I’ve seen film crews completely take over the streets here.

No idea what they were filming, but I saw these camped out in May 2024.

25/09/2025 0

Hickleton Plank Wagon

“Dad bought a random cart from the train stall!”

No. Dad bought a 1:76 scale model of a seven plank coal wagon, with which he has a deep and personal connection.

When ‘Dad’ was a nipper, there was a decommissioned coal mine where he would explore the derelict buildings, play in the abandoned marshalling yards, and stomp recklessly across the death trap slagheap. Would splash around with mates in the heavy metal stained orange waters that flowed from the mine nearby, and climb the felled floodlight towers for a laugh.

Family worked that mine, uncles, grandparents, his mother was born in its shadow. The lifeblood of our community in its day.

That coal mine was Hickleton Main Colliery. I had no choice but to buy it.

24/09/2025 0

The Follow Me Bridge

They call it the Follow Me Bridge because of the sound it makes when you cross it alone. Each step makes a sort of reverberating echo sound that for all the world sounds like someone is following you.

When you’re walking home from the pub late at night, or you’ve just got off the last train of the day on some dark damp wintery evening, and the town is all silent except for the low hum of the motorway in the distance. You’re alone, everyone else is home where they belong, tucked in beneath their cozy blanky, binge watching Netflix. Your own footsteps on the tarmac are the only sound to break the ambience until you reach the bridge.

It takes six or seven steps on the old steel framed bridge before you register it. The sound of another’s feet. You can’t help but look over your shoulder. No one is there.

You press on. The second set of feet follows on. You stop. Check again. You are definitely alone. Onward to home and safety, you pick up the pace. The followers feet match yours still. You halt again, ears pricked. Now there’s only one set of feet to be heard on the bridge, and they can’t be yours, your feet are planted firm.

A warm breath on the back of your neck, a long sigh in your ear. You don’t look back, but you know you’re still alone

Everyone knows the sound of the Follow Me Bridge, when they think they’re crossing it alone.

14/09/2025 0

Unit 1000

I chose Saturday 13th September as the day to visit the Manchester Museum of Transport for two reasons. Firstly, it had only recently become a place of interest when I learned that it houses the prototype Metrolink unit and I wanted to cross it off before I forgot about it. And secondly, we were visiting family in South Yorkshire that day, and living as we do in North Lancashire, the museum is a mere ten minutes out of our way. Roughly half the population of Manchester however, chose Saturday 13th September to visit the Manchester Museum of Transport because it was free entry. We are not the same.

The plan was to get up early, have Breakfast at Truck Haven and get to the museum in time for the doors opening at 10am. We achieved this, more or less, arriving only thirty minutes late [Insert Avanti West Coast joke here].

Not gonna lie. Parking was a problem. There is no visitor parking. And as mentioned above, it was free entry, so that may have attracted a lot of extra visitors. There is however a retail park just around the corner so it all worked out in the end.

None of that has anything to do with the main event. The Metrolink unit that I wanted to see.

When it opened, the Metrolink network was the first new tram system since the Dearne District in 1933, and it was very exciting at the time. A revolution.

Unfortunately, Manchester Museum of Transport suffers the same space issue as Crich and many others. They don’t have the space to show off all of their excellent exhibits to the full, and the presentation of the Metrolink unit suffers because of it.

The Metrolink unit was set up parked in a mock tram stop and you could board it, explore, sit in the seats etc.

There is only half a unit though, these are two car units. A large mirror inside cleverly provided the illusion of the second half.

The cab is accessible, but it’s stripped of all equipment.

And that’s pretty much that. Space limitations prevent getting a good look at it. Being situated next to a wall, the undercarriage is concealed by the platform, and access to the other side is prevented by barriers and other exhibits.

It would have been nice to have a proper look at the thing. Had it been a whole unit, with a proper cab, and to walk round it, inspect the bogies and under floor equipment. But it is what it is.

The rest of the museum is worth the visit, and they operate vintage buses to connect with other museums in the area. There is also a proper tea room where they serve proper tea in a proper mug.

14/09/2025 0

The Greatest Gathering

When I was a lad, I had a dream. The thing I wanted most. Not for fame or fortune, or even for world peace or anything like that. Not even for a kind word from that girl in class that I seem to remember that I quite liked at the time, and whose name would probably come back to me if I gave it a minute. No. What I wanted most was the ultimate railway exhibition experience.

I think I’d been to Crewe Open Day. It must have been about 1990. And my mind was blown by the number of trains that were concentrated in one location. But it wasn’t everything, my mind wasn’t quite blown enough, and I imagined how it would have been better had I curated the event myself.

What I wanted, was everything, in one place. More trains that you could ever possibly hope to ever see and appreciate in one day. Trains from across time and space. Trains from history, and trains from the other side of country. This weekend (1st August to 3rd August) that dream came true.

No. I didn’t curate my own rail event. Someone else curated the ultimate rail exhibition for me. That event, was called the Greatest Gathering, and I took a lot of pictures. Some of which I will share below.

Getting There

We drove to the event the night before and stayed at the Holiday Inn. I’ll have a bit of moan about that at the end – I have notes. The event was already sold out for the Friday and Saturday by the time I’d heard tickets were on sale, so I could only get tickets for the Sunday, so I thought we could make a weekend break of it in sunny Derby.

Transport was organized from the train station using vintage buses. Our Vehicle was a Volvo Plaxton B10m. Its always sobering when a particular make and model of a vehicle becomes considered to be vintage, or a museum piece. These buses were the buses I would catch to work not a quarter of a century ago. Ouch. Still, it was good to relive them.

The Event

There was quite literally too much to see. So I will just dump some of my better photos below and add a bit of commentary here and there.

Class 26 – Never once saw one of these out in the wild.

I feel like I should know what this is, but I don’t. Its a shunter, in intercity colours, but not something I would expect to see in on a real railway. Very cool though. The cab reminded me of an old derelict NCB shunter that was stationed at Hickleton Main Colliery when I was very little.

The inside of a Pendolino. I’m a regular traveller in to Euston on these, but it was interesting to see what they looked like without people standing in the vestibules.

It was interesting to see a class 23 here, what with all them being scrapped 40 years ago. This one is a rebuild. The 37 was open to the public to enter the cab apply power, pull the horn, that sort of thing. Wonderfully noisy.

A few specimens of hybrid power. Electro Diesel locomotives. They run either diesel, or external supply.

There was a ride on a steam train. Always good fun. Unless you get ash or grit in your eyes.

There was a ferris wheel. They say that your tolerance for height diminishes with age. I believe them. I can honestly say I will be very happy if I never go on another ferris wheel. Kids loved it.

Electric Multiple Units

Food was a disappointment. There were loads of food stalls to choose from, but the queues were long too, so we settled for a burger. There was a also a mobile bar, with a healthy queue as you might imagine, but when I was finally served I was told it was zero alcohol drinks only. Turn the other cheek and all that.

The toilet facilities were quite excellent though.

There was a selection of High Speed Trains. With the HST power car (Intercity 125), class 91 from the Intercity 225, a Pendolino class 390, A TMST Class 373 Power Car from the Channel Tunnel services, and a green Deltic for good measure.

The place was full of Class 66s. I see about a thousand of those any time I go near a railway so I wasn’t paying that much attention to them. But I did leave the event somewhat disappointed that I hadn’t seen a class 59. I’d really hoped that I would see a class 59 up close but I left empty handed. I only realised later that there was one there and that I taken a photo of it.

One of the highlights for me was the freight diesel section, mostly in BR blue. This took me right back to my spotting days.

There was plenty of steam to be seen. It was particularly odd to see Fly Scotsman getting so little attention. Here is a locomotive that we drove across dark country lanes to see stop and take water in the Yorkshire dales when she first returned to the mainline. We followed her to York for her first exhibition. We queued for an hour in County Durham to get a tour of the cab and walk through the tender. Yet here she was, alone, visitors walking by like she was a regular dumpster.

Another one of the highlights. Brand New class 99.

The Pacer and Sprinter drew more attention than you might have expected. A blast of pure nostalgia.

Abrupt Closure

With so much left to see, the big hand tolled 4 o’clock and the public address system blarted out that the “even”Greatest Gathering was now closed. Sod off!”

It was a bit of a ‘Release the hounds’ moment. There was so much I hadn’t seen. We didn’t see the model railway or the main stalls. I had managed to pick up a small item but I wanted to see the traders. I wanted to see the model railways. There were exhibits that I knew were in attendance but hadn’t seen. The class 398 Tram-Tram for example. And so many others.

So. Sensing that the security team was about to turn nasty. We obediently made our way to the exit. We did, in the end, find the model railways, but they were packing up and we were rushed through.

Milton Keynes – I know it well from all the times I’ve whizzed through it

Would have been nice to spend a bit of time in this exhibit, looking at the layouts. I’m planning a model railway of my own. I need inspiration.

On the Way Out

Finally, as we were being herded toward the exit, I found one of the sections I knew I’d missed. The electric locomotives. In particular, the unique class 89. I have a couple of stories about the class 89.

On the way out we crossed an imaginary line, a point of no return where, once crossed, there was no re-entry. It was here that we saw an elderly gentleman pleading with security personnel, begging them to let him find the group from which he’d become separated. There is a fine line between crowd control and being a dick. This maybe the umbridge at the lack of a bar speaking, but I saw crowds of football hooligans in the eighties being corralled on to the specials by mounted police treated with more civility than the frail and inoffensive railway enthusiasts at the end of this event.

The Hotel

I’m not one to moan relentlessly, but as we were leaving the hotel on the Monday morning, we were asked about our stay by the receptionist. We said everything was great. She said “Really?” Like she didn’t believe us.

Ok. So the hotel was busy. It was full of mostly trainspotters. I’ve never seen that before. But it was fine. The food was nice enough. I’d had a curry, and though I’ve been spoiled by the curry experiences on offer down on Drummond Street next to Euston Station, it was still an alright curry.

A Chicken Makhani for £16.50 – Marinated chicken breast in a rich curry sauce, served with basmati rice and sourdough Naan. 1080 kcal. I am tempted to look up the recipe for this one. The other food was alright. The kids had pizzas. Cheese Toastie and chips, also not bad.

Woodfire wings for £7.95 – BBQ mesquite-flavoured chicken wings served with a garlic mayo dip. 586 kcal. I’d heard of mesquite from The Simpsons, so was pleased to try these. Its maybe time to investigate buying a smoker.

The breakfast though. An all you can eat buffet, included in the price of the hotel. There was no egg, no sausage, no hash brown. There was one slice of bacon left, which I had with a slice of bread. Bread that, and I hadn’t noticed at the time and only noticed in my photo, had the impression of finger marks. Grim.

All you can eat breakfast – That was all there was to eat, so not technically a lie.

There was me thinking the grimmest part was the finger nail clippings on the hotel room carpet. Best not dwell on things of that nature.

All in all. a great time was had by all.

09/08/2025 0

Trains in the Attic

I was probably about ten years of age when my mate’s dad proudly showed off his model railway collection. Both my mate and me were seriously fascinated by trains at the time and on this one occasion while we were playing trains at his house, my mate’s dad asked if we wanted to see his own trains. Naturally we said yes.

It was very much a look don’t touch sort of thing. I was known to be clumsy and my grubby hands spoke for themselves. But anyway. Box after box emerged from attic, and each box contained one locomotive or another in pristine condition. And not just trains, but wagons and carriages too. Station buildings and unbuilt kits of village churches and corner shops. He even had a large collection of minitrix, the road system that went alongside the trains. I was super impressed, and I decided there and then that when I grew up, I too would have an attic full of model trains and railway kits packed away never to be enjoyed.

Well. I am all growed up now, and with very little effort on my part, I achieved the dream. I too have model trains boxed away in the attic. But now that I have this, I’m not sure that its really what I want. Model trains are supposed to be enjoyed, not stored away until some distant descendant sends them to the landfill or job lots it all on Ebay once we’ve left the mortal coil. No. Its high time I had a model railway of my own.

Six years on from that epiphany and I’m still no closer to enjoying my collection of trains. Simple truth is, I don’t know what I’m doing. These things take a lot of planning. You need baseboards and electricals and plans and ideas. I’ve got none of that. All I have is boxes of trains, some of them are mint condition, still in the box. Some of them are massively in need of repair, having belonged to my own father when he was about the age that my youngest son is now. And that’s when it struck me. Before I begin my railway, I will need a fleet of working trains, and a lot of my trains need restoring.

This one for example. It used to sit in the siding on my old teenage model railway. Its one of two carriages that I never saw running properly. Having belonged to my dad, and being heavily played with by the looks of it, it was already in a poor condition when it was passed along to me. But I find the above image mesmerising, there is a sense of scale here that I scarcely believe I took the image myself with an inexpensive smart phone. I could almost step in to it, and climb aboard. It deserves to run again. It demands a restoration.

But what would it take to get something like this running again? The front coupler is knackered and will need replacing with something more modern. There are details broken off from bogies that will need restoring, its supposed to have a third rail contact shoe for picking up electricity from the power rail, I don’t know if the model even had one of those to begin with, but it should have one nonetheless. The buffers are missing. The whole thing is filthy, there is chipped and worn paintwork. By the yellow splashes on the window, I’m guessing that this has been touched up at some point before it came in to my possession, which would explain why it looks nothing like the other examples that I have found of it online.

And this is just the dummy car, the unpowered trailer.

The motorised car is in an even sorrier state. Its missing the motor bogie, and its missing huge chunks of the body. Part of the undercarriage has a hole burned through it, possibly as some sort of repair in the distant past. The roof is distorted, either by age or heat, and its no less filthy than the trailer car. Plus we’re also missing the glazing, and probably the interior detail, if this model ever had that to begin with.

This is going to be quite a project, and have some research to do.

09/08/2025 0

Ghost or Guardian?

At the end of a long hot exhausting day, what better way to wind down than to sit outside with a glass of wine and exchange ghost stories with an audience of young children? One year ago, almost to the day, we took our first ever family vacation in Bude, Cornwall, but not everything was listed in the tour guides, and to this day, we don’t know what the children saw that night.

Its a ten hour drive from Heysham to Bude, though much of that travel time involves very little movement. Birmingham is particularly gnarly. We arrived at the holiday park after 6pm, checked in to our chalet, unloaded the car, and then went to the restaurant for something eat. I had steak, with chips, it was very nice, and a few beers. After a long drive, its good to just chill out with a cold beer, but that can be quite boring for young children, especially when the only thing we can give them to drink contains sugar. We wanted them to sleep at some point, so we went back to the chalet to enjoy the first night of our holiday.

Cornwall is the nearest thing we’ve got on the UK mainland to a warm temperate climate, and our stay was no exception. The weather was glorious, and while mum ensured that the clean underpants found their way in to the correct drawers and stuff like that, I sat outside with the boys and a bottle of beer, and as we watched the sun sink toward the sea, I asked them. ‘Boy’s, what know you of the green flash at sunset?’

‘The what?’ They said.

The story I planned to tell would have been far more interesting to them if they’d paid more attention while they watched Pirates. But I explained the legend anyway, of how the setting sun sometimes emits a green flash in to the sky as it dips below the horizon. Its a real thing, not just Disney, and if you believe such things, it signifies the return of a soul from the afterlife.

That got their attention, and we all watched the sun sink lower and lower.

There was no flash, maybe the hill got in the way, maybe no souls got lucky that day. Either way, their imaginations were piqued and they wanted to know more. Is it real? Have you seen a ghost? Do you know any ghost stories?

The answer to all three questions of course is yes. The green flash is real, its an atmospheric optical effect and I found pictures online to prove it. Yes I have seen a ghost, I have a couple of tales to tell from my own experience, but in my favourite story I like to recall I can’t remember seeing the ghost, but everyone else did and I was at the center of it all.

Many years ago, on the night before I was born, my mother caught a bus to the hospital for a check up. When she walked toward the reception desk to check in, she was intercepted by a passing midwife who grabbed her firmly by the shoulders and said ‘Come with me love, your baby’s in distress’. My mother was then ushered in to one of the delivery rooms, and a few hours later I was born, blue, and the with the umbilical cord wrapped twice tightly round my neck. My mother never got the chance to thank the midwife, without whose intervention, I might have not survived, or to ask how she knew I was in trouble. Whoever she was, she didn’t stay for the birth and none of the staff recognised her from the description my mother gave.

I was always intrigued as to how that midwife knew that I was in difficulty so when my own children came along, I took the opportunity to tell this story to the midwives, and to ask them how that midwife could have known, from a distance, that I was in distress. They couldn’t explain it, and they hadn’t heard of it happening elsewhere. It remains a mystery.

My dad is a down to earth pragmatic realist. ‘No such thing as ghosts’ he’d say, but even for my dad, sometimes seeing is believing.

When I was taken home, I was given the smallest room and slept in a crib. The larger two rooms were taken by my sisters and my parents, and my arrival changed things in unexpected ways. My sisters, aged 7 and 5 at the time became unsettled, reluctant to go to bed, and when they did, they were anxious and sleepless, and were bothered by the old woman that stood out on the landing at night. There was no woman on the landing, my mam was the only woman in the house, but they had both seen it, and they both described the visitor with earnest sincerity.

My Dad laughed it off of course when he heard. ‘Children, tsk’, and he remained opposed to the existence of the nightly visitor even when my mother saw it herself, standing in the doorway to my room. This figure didn’t talk, didn’t wear a sheet, she wasn’t transparent; she stood there is silence, occasionally parting an assuring smile The visitor would appear most nights, but only when she wasn’t expected, and my dad laughed off every new silly sighting.

One night however, the visitor stopped being silly, a hysterical figment of the imagination, and instead became very real. That was the night that my dad needed to take a midnight trip to the bathroom. I don’t know if he’d made there or not, but the clatter of the bedroom door, and the thud of objects in the dark being clumsily displaced by a hasty return to bed woke up my mother, who slept lightly anyway. My Dad jumped back in to the bed and pulled the covers over his head.

‘You’ve seen her, haven’t you?’ she said.

‘Yes, stood in Michael’s door, she looked at me’

‘Did she do anything?’

‘No, just looked at me. She was old looking’

‘I think its my Grandma’ my mother said, ‘that’s how I remember seeing her when I was little’

‘What do you think she wants?’

‘Nothing bad’ my mother reasoned, I think she’s watching over Michael’

After that, the sighting got less and less, until no one saw my guardian angel at all. After my traumatic birth, I had started to thrive as a big bouncing baby boy, but I have no recollection of that time, how could I? But I do have some strange memories from my early days, and very weird and symbolic dreams, and I can’t help but wonder about the other things in life that go on beneath our noses, before our eyes, but forever unnoticed, except in times of need. Did I really have a guardian angel to watch over me? Is she still watching over me? Perhaps I’ll never know, but its a nice thought.

My story though, unfortunately, had the opposite effect on the kids to what I’d intended. The plan was that they would listen to some spooky stories, and then go quietly to sleep, and I would drink wine on the veranda with my wife. Now, however, they were more energised than ever, and they bounced around the chalet front like zombies on a sugar rush, and there was no silencing them. They were overstimulated and I had only myself to blame.

But all of a sudden, the oldest stopped the hyperactive silliness and came over to stand next to me. He tugged on my arm and pointed over to horizon where the sun had set. ‘What’s that?’ He said.

I couldn’t see anything, except the dying light of the dusk. ‘Whats what?’ I said, there was nothing out of the usual.

‘Its there!’ He said again, pointing, and this time more urgent, he took a step backwards to stand behind me. ‘Its getting closer…’

And then he ran in doors, and the yongest followed him quickly inside, he shut the door behind him, leaving me outside on my own.

I scanned the horizon again, looking for anything alarming, but there was nothing, and no motion to be seen, just the beautiful evening sky.

I went inside to join the children and ask them what they saw. ‘Doesn’t matter’ the oldest said.

‘Do you want to go outside again?’ I asked them both.

‘No!’ They replied in unison.

‘Why not?’ I asked again, but the reply was always the same, It doesn’t matter.

It wasn’t mentioned again, but for the whole of the stay, they wouldn’t stay out to watch the sun or play outside after dark, and at night time, the curtains were to be firmly closed.

23/07/2025 3

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My First Time

Their First Time

Larping a Commute

Please Can You Help Me

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Edible Coal

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Getting There

The Event

Abrupt Closure

On the Way Out

The Hotel

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