Stile in View Wood

 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5720774


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  Kings Cross



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Martin,

Please cease and desist. Your photos are giving me a severe case of homesickness.

Dave
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Sorry Dave.

So that's one post asking me to keep them coming, and one saying cease and desist. Nothing new there then.

Here's a couple closer to home, which I have probably posted before:




     BR(W) through-bolted




     Gauntletted track on the Boyne Viaduct, Drogheda    (now removed)

Martin.

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Martin,

Keep them coming That makes it 2 votes to 1 in favour...........even if two of the votes are mine.

Happy Easter Everybody

Rob


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I vote to keep them coming also...

But I do have a question on the bridge photo. Can someone explain the gauntletted track arrangement? I have not seen that before and was interested on what did what...

John

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John Durbetaki wrote: Can someone explain the gauntletted track arrangement?
Me, for ten!

It's so that the double track line can cross the single track bridge without the need for turnouts at both ends of the bridge. Hopefully there are signals to prevent two trains passing on the bridge

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Looking South to the Idaho Palouse from the Southern end of the Selkirk Range.

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Thanks Andrew, now that I look closely, I can see the double tracks at the end of the bridge. This looks like a really interesting modelling opportunity...

Andrew Barrowman wrote: John Durbetaki wrote: Can someone explain the gauntletted track arrangement?
Me, for ten!

It's so that the double track line can cross the single track bridge without the need for turnouts at both ends of the bridge. Hopefully there are signals to prevent two trains passing on the bridge


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John Durbetaki wrote: Can someone explain the gauntletted track arrangement? I have not seen that before and was interested on what did what...Hi John,

This historic viaduct is on the former GNR(I) north-south main-line in Ireland, linking Dublin and Belfast. 

When the viaduct was rebuilt in the 1930s the new narrower steelwork did not leave space for two tracks on the bridge. The up and down lines were gauntletted to avoid the need for points at each end for a conventional single track line. Which would have required the additional cost of building and staffing a signal cabin (not "box" in Ireland) at the north end of the bridge. Drogheda station is at the south end.

Building the new steelwork inside the old ironwork allowed the line to remain open during the reconstruction. More info:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyne_Viaduct

Here are a couple more views showing the gaunt turnouts at each end, looking north. All these photos are from 1986. The track was remodelled in the 1990s as a conventional single line with power-operated points at each end.





The lookout man is for the P.W. gang just visible in the distance. I hope they were intending to come and fix that wing rail joint.

The flat plates between the rails are guard rails, so that in the event that a vehicle becomes derailed on the bridge it is kept in a straight line and prevented from hitting the steelwork. Such guard rails are often provided on bridges and viaducts, although their design varies a lot.

The track gauge in Ireland is 5ft-3in, which explains the wide look of the tracks.

To create a gaunt turnout in Templot, click template > gaunt options > gaunt turnout menu option. To create gauntletted track, extend some approach track on a gaunt turnout (and if necessary shorten the overall length to exclude the turnout part).

Here is another famous bridge on the line, the Egyptian Arch at Newry (in 2004):



 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacNeill%27s_Egyptian_Arch

cheers,

Martin.

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   Summer evening on the Droitwich Barge Canal

This canal had not been used since 1916 and was finally abandoned in 1939. It then lay derelict for over 70 years until restored and finally reopened in 2010.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droitwich_Canal

Martin.

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     Power to the people


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Thanks Martin!

How little I know and what interesting things I have learned!

John

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   Making tracks to a trig pillar


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In the yard at Parkend on 3rd August 1968:



Not much point in going back with 24 megapixels -- this is the view today:

 https://goo.gl/maps/DMHhPHE7hbE2

Martin.

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I've been scanning some old negs.

August 1969 in Wales:



It's somewhere along the mountain road from Bala to Lake Vyrnwy, but that covers a dozen Geograph squares. Despite spending an hour on maps and Google Streetview I'm none the wiser. It can't have changed that much in 50 years, surely?

Martin.

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Martin

There are two mountain roads. This one is the one from Llanuwchllyn via the Bwlch y Groes. Taken from the bend at SH91142505 looking up the road with the crags of Craig yr Ogof ahead. Compare with
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2107116
taken just after the bend.

Nigel
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Nigel Brown wrote: There are two mountain roads. This one is the one from Llanuwchllyn via the Bwlch y Groes. Taken from the bend at SH91142505 looking up the road with the crags of Craig yr Ogof ahead.Hi Nigel,

Many thanks for that. You obviously know the area well.

Here's the 2009 Google Streetview:

 https://goo.gl/maps/dHjCpU8EyaK2

It's amazing that after 40 years that bit of sheep-track across the centre is unchanged (public ROW on the OS map).

What was confusing me was the need to find some high ground on the right of the road from which the picture could have been taken. But if you swing the Google camera round and go back a bit, you can see where I must have climbed up on the other side of the road.

Less foliage obstructing the view then of course. That seems to be the case in lots of my old pictures. Is this the conclusive evidence for global warming?

Thanks again. I can now put it on Geograph:

 http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5734923

cheers,

Martin.


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Bucknell, Shropshire, on the Central Wales line. September 1975:









And the Google views in 2009:

  https://goo.gl/maps/F13XazL8Ro62

  https://goo.gl/maps/DGKAMfZhdhn

Should I be posting this stuff here? If not I don't really know what to do with them (lots more like this).

This is the first time I have seen these photos. Having developed the films, I never quite got round to the time-consuming process of printing them. You know how it is.

Actually, scanning them now isn't much faster.

cheers,

Martin.

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Martin,

Scanning the old negs may not be much faster but it is a bit more pleasant than sqinting over dishes of developer and fixer for hours on end. I took loads of photos back in my early days that never got printed due to lack of time. Day trip out on Saturday, films developed on Sunday, back to work Monday and a rush to get home and brew up a few prints. Trouble is all these years later I don't even have the negs anymore. Shame.

Yes, you should be posting them on here. I am never going to tire of b&w shots of railways, just keep a fair number of interesting building features in them. If you have film, camera and processing data available that is even more interesting although rather academic to most people.

Rob


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Thanks Rob.

Here are a couple at Clee Hill Top in August 1969. I wandered around a lot of places like this at that time, always feeling that I had arrived about 5 years too late.

But they make atmospheric photos:





Camera was a Konica Auto S2, my first proper camera. I loved that camera, and I'm not the only one:

 https://www.lomography.com/magazine/68841-the-konica-auto-s2-top-notch-rangefinder

Film was Ilford FP4 developed in Paterson Acutol. Sorry I don't have any exposure details.

Here's the map of what I missed:



I have ringed that row of cottages, camera at X.

Here is Google's 2009 view. The camera car is on the location of the bridge over the incline:

 https://goo.gl/maps/wMGnLFrHkP12

cheers,

Martin.

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Martin,
Thanks for the pics. The shot looking across to the row of cottages my not be a work of art but boy does it tell a story about the place, from the cars to the washing on the line.

Acutol was great on slow/medium speed films. Enhanced sharpness and a slightly gritty clumping of the grain structure suits asmospheric and industrial subjects beautifully. I used to rate FP4 at 250ASA and give an extra 4-5 minutes dev time. The secret was to keep the agitation down to 2 inversions at the end of each 2 minute period and allow the shadow detail to build up ( the developer exhausts on the highlights and stops the contrast getting out of hand ). Mind you I had a diffuser enlarger at the time so a bit of extra contrast was often useful.

My proper camera of the late seventies was an Olympus 35SP.....Review here and boy was that lens sharp. There were quite a few rangefinders around at that time and most had good lenses not being compromised on design by an SLR mirror.

I often got drawn into other cameras. One of the best if you didn't mind the bulk was these Mamiya Press Cameras The lenses wouldn't resolve as well as the 35mm cameras and were fairly basic designs but when you have a 6x9 rollfilm back mounted it doesn't really matter I used to shoot some of the eastern european 'cheapo' brands of B&W through it and the results were brilliant.

Must have a look and see if I have any of the old negs.

Rob


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Thanks Rob. That Olympus looks very desirable. A friend at the time was very keen on all things Olympus. Not sure I'm ready to go back to developing tanks and mixing chemicals in the kitchen sink though. Not to mention the costs.

This is Buxton on 27th September 1973:











cheers,

Martin.

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Martin,
Thanks for the Buxton pics. I know the place well. Your pics show the LNWR station. The Midland station that was alongside was closed in the 1960's and Station road was later built on the site as a mini bypass to the town centre. The NLS map makes it clearer for readers not familiar. Shame that I can't pop down to Matlock and see Bill Hudson behind his bookshop counter anymore. Modellers who have used a Slater's PO wagon kit on their layouts owe a debt to Bill.



June 1963. This is me checking out the camping coaches at Robin Hood's Bay, North Yorkshire. Must have been a cold week - long trousers were not usual back in those days. I can't believe I just posted a pic of myself on the internet Hope nobody can see a likeness anymore....

Rob


 

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Hi Rob,

That's a great photo of you as a toddler. But unless you post a more recent photo of yourself, the likeness or otherwise will remain a mystery to us.

That photo has a lovely fine grain. Scanning my negs at 3200dpi I've become aware of just how grainy they are. Much more so than I remember when printing them. Perhaps I had a soft enlarger lens, or is it possible for the graininess to increase with age? It's only gelatin holding the grains of silver apart, they've had plenty of time to clump together. 

For these I've tried the softer Bell algorithm for resampling down to web size, instead of Lanczos:

This sad scene of desolation is Ludlow on the same day in 1969 as the Clee Hill pics:



And getting back to the scenics, Dinham Bridge and weir in Ludlow:



It is little changed today. Google's view from the bridge:

 https://goo.gl/maps/PnYYXLJZpGp

cheers,

Martin.

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Hi Martin

In relation to your mountain road photo, I looked along a few roads in the area yesterday including this one but I couldn't see anywhere with enough crags on a steep slope to match the photo. It seems the OS were running short of black bits when they did that bit of the map. Anyway I have used my mapping software that gives a 3D view and I reckon that your photo was taken from the road end at 910250 or very close by. I hope that may stir some recollection in the grey cells even after all that time.

Cheers

Fraser

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FraserSmith wrote: I have used my mapping software that gives a 3D view and I reckon that your photo was taken from the road end at 910250 or very close by. I hope that may stir some recollection in the grey cells even after all that time.Hi Fraser,

Thanks for that.

On Geograph:  http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5734923

I put the camera position at SH 9115 2507 after Nigel steered me to the right area, so we are very close:



(Unfortunately that makes it a "cross-grid" in their terms, so it doesn't count. )

It's fairly clear from the photo that I must have climbed up above the road, but it's not stirring any memories unfortunately. I have several memories of travelling the other mountain road from Bala in those days, but not this one.

Your 3D mapping software looks very interesting, what is it? I have software which can do that with aerial views and Google maps, but I haven't seen it on the OS leisure maps before.

cheers,

Martin.

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How did I miss this thread ? All this talk of talk of FP4 etc. takes me back to Grammar School when I first became interested in photography. Ox Bow Sunrise  Ox Bow Bend, Snake River, Moran, Wyoming. 41 51 59N 110 33 03W
Nikon D3, Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 G AF-S ED lens.

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Maroon Bells 
Maroon-Snowmass Trail, Pitkin County, Colorado. 39 05 53N 106 56 35W
MPP Micro Technical MkVII, Schneider-Kreuznach lens, Fuji Velvia 5" x 4" film

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Stob Dearg, Buachaille Etiv Mor,Glen Coe, Argyll, Scotland. 56 39 52N 4 54 18W
http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NN22065629
Nikon D3, Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 G AF-S ED lens

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As a complement to Ian's photo of the Buachaille Etive Mor here's a view looking down. The cottage at Lagangarbh in Ian's photo is around to the left. This is not a place for those with vertigo!

Fraser


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Fraser,

I imagine some tired thighs at the end of that climb !

Ian
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Hi Martin

The software is Mapyx Quo. It's free but you have to pay for the maps. The whole of the UK at 1:50000 comes in at £96 incl VAT or alternatively 40x40km tiles can be bought at 96p each. 10x10km tiles for 1:25000 are the same price with the whole of UK at 208.33 + VAT and all UK 1:50000 and 1:25000 together for £300 incl VAT (yes I chickened out at adding the VAT for the 1:25000 set). 1:250000 is free as are OSM (I think).

I have found it quite useful when planning long bike rides as having the whole of the UK available was great. They also have an Android app that can load the same maps to your phone or tablet so I have all the UK on my phone.

Fraser

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As we were on the Buachaille Etive Mor, here's a fairly recent one:


First climbed it via that east face in April 1961, in my rock-climbing days with the Gloucestershire Mountaineering Club. Unfortunately no pics from it, but I did take a couple the following day when we traversed the Aonach Eagach ("notched ridge") which forms the north side of Glencoe:




The camera was horrible battered pre-war cheapo folding medium format thing, hence the dismal quality.

Re 3D OS maps, Anquet has had this facility for some time; can be very useful in working out where you are. I've both the 1:50000 and 1:25000 maps for GB, which get used on a lot for my Geograph contributions.

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Ian Allen wrote: Ox Bow Sunrise  Ox Bow Bend, Snake River, Moran, Wyoming. 41 51 59N 110 33 03W
Nikon D3, Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 G AF-S ED lens.
There's another view of the Snake at message 41 in this thread. Not so impressive though

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Rob Manchester wrote: Martin,
Thanks for the Buxton pics. I know the place well. Your pics show the LNWR station. The Midland station that was alongside was closed in the 1960's and Station road was later built on the site as a mini bypass to the town centre. The NLS map makes it clearer for readers not familiar. Shame that I can't pop down to Matlock and see Bill Hudson behind his bookshop counter anymore. Modellers who have used a Slater's PO wagon kit on their layouts owe a debt to Bill.



June 1963. This is me checking out the camping coaches at Robin Hood's Bay, North Yorkshire. Must have been a cold week - long trousers were not usual back in those days. I can't believe I just posted a pic of myself on the internet Hope nobody can see a likeness anymore....

Rob


 
At or around that time I was on holiday at the Raven Hall, Ravenscar. The trains were still running too

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Ian

I don't remember sore thighs but then I was still cycling 24km and about 300m+ of climbing a day on my all year round commute.

Nigel

That's a cracking picture of the big Buchaille and great weather for that part of the world. You do seem to have had some interesting excursions in your younger days.


For those who like studying maps, you might be quite fascinated by the route of the River Coupall and its continuation in the River Etive that almost surrounds Buachaille Etive Mor (Big Shepherd of Etive). Also quite fascinating is to follow the burn that rises at NN 226 476 and see where it goes considering it's only 11.5km to the nearest tidal water at the head of Loch Etive.

Fraser

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Hi Fraser, Nigel,

Thanks for the 3D map info.

Decisions, decisions. I installed both Quo and Anquet to try them.

Anquet installed flawlessly and works fine (Windows 10). Quo was a battle of wits to install, and keeps saying that it is sending an error report to Microsoft. It is also very slow and clunky in loading tiles and drawing the maps.

But ... Anquet costs £40 for the 3D Viewer unless you buy full GB mapping. The 3D Viewer in Quo is free and works fine (on the demo maps). Unlike Anquet, Quo also has OpenStreetMap, to which I'm a frequent contributor (it's addictive, don't go near it if you like maps), and it would be great to have that on my tablet with the addition of GPS.

Against that Anquet has the latest OS 10K street mapping replacing the old free 10K OpenData map. It's very useful to have street names available that way when there is no online access.

I already have full GB 50K and 25K (and old 10K, and London A-Z) on my Satmap GPS device, so I don't want to go to that expense again. But as a pocket device the screen is quite small -- zooming out to get an overview leaves the detail too small to read. So for my tablet I also have OS's own app:

 https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/shop/os-maps-online.html

which provides full GB 50K and 25K, aerial and 3D aerial (and a strangely unsatisfactory map called "Standard" which has masses of detail but is very lacking in place names and text), and night vision maps, for an annual sub of £20 but is bundled free with some magazine subscriptions:

 https://www.livefortheoutdoors.com/getstarted/

But if you can be sure of a signal, full GB 50K and 25K are available free on Bing maps if you don't mind them being georeferenced (making them very slightly fuzzy and skewing the grid lines a fraction):

 https://www.bing.com/maps

or free with normal grid lines on Streetmap if you don't mind having them surrounded by flashing ads:

 http://streetmap.co.uk

But none of those options provide the 3D OS maps, so I think I will try the Quo version and buy just a few tiles. The OS maps app frequently announces new features, so I wouldn't be surprised to find them offering 3D on the maps soon. They already have 3D on the aerial, and a "fly-over" function which flies along your route at whatever speed you choose. Which is great when planning a trip.

Thanks again for the info.

cheers,

Martin.

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Some great mountain photos there. They make my walks across the fields look like a vicarage tea party. But I want you to know that one day I trapped my thumb in a field gate and it was very sore. And not long ago I slipped right over in the mud.

The standard gallery image insertion resizes the photos to a maximum of 932 x 700 pixels. For the Templot topics that ensures that they can be seen on almost all devices.

But for this topic I think it's ok to post them larger. But not more than 1600 wide (any height) otherwise the browser will resize them anyway, and the download would be unfair on those with slow connections.

So if you have resized them to 1600 max, after uploading them to the gallery, display them in the gallery lightbox and click the click to view at original size button below the image. Then right-click on the image to get and copy the image URL. Then use this button:

 

to paste in the URL instead of the usual gallery buttons. Or type BBcode img tags if you prefer.

Before doing that, make at least 3 blank lines and then go back up to the 2nd one, so that you can scroll back down below the inserted image and won't get in a muddle in the editor.

cheers,

Martin.

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Fraser

That Autumn 2016 trip up north had superb weather; think I've already posted a pic of Slioch on this thread. Generally I manage a couple of 3 week camping trips up north a year, using 4 or 5 sites; Invercoe is always one, and Sands out on the coast from Gairloch is another.

Yep it's interesting how much of Scotland drains into the North Sea!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Martin

I've been committed to Anquet for a long time, and I need stuff which I can load onto the PC permanently rather than download each time. Currently I use the old Version 6 for which I bought the GB maps some time ago, in one of their sales.

Anquet is now subscription based; I've recently bought their Premium Plus subscription, £32 per year with auto-renewal, which gives me all the latest 1:50K and 1:25K GB mapping plus 1:10K open map local, and can download it all onto any device. The software is included free. I've yet to get around to using it, but in time it'll all go on my PC and also onto my Macbook, which I take on Scottish trips. I have a strong preference for devices with good screens!

Nigel

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