From Cornish News

 

Facebook has labelled me as a "Digital Creator". And I created content about that at https://grahamellis.uk/blog2063.html the other day.

I failed my English "O" levels - language and literature - at school on the first taking, and scraped through language at a resit at the following oportunity.  So it was then perverse that my career majored on learning highly techical subjects, and then explaining them to others.  I try to write or talk from a position of knoweldge, not only of a topic but also of why things are as they are, and I try to break up what I write into manageable chunks and with a view of the metrics of my target audience.  Those chunks often being best illustrated by pictures, which as the saying goes "paint 1000 words".

And so ... I have built a library of pictures, and continue to do so. The occasional one has artistic merit; the major uses, though, are to provide illustrationa and to remind me later.  On Saturday last (29th August 2026), I took the train from Melksham to Weymouth. Walked just shy of 15 kms. Interacted with passengers at the stations, platform staff at Weymouth, train manager and police on the train.  Stopped for drink / snacks at 4 places along the walk in Weymouth.  Observed, made notes in my personal memory, saw some new places (yes, even after all these trips to Weymouth) and watched how the social side of societyi, our behaviours and our towns have changed. Far more pictures taken than I can ever make use of, and many of them of things that perhaps others don't photograph, or of the same thing from multiple angles to fully capture the 3D.

The mapping facility in my iPhotos app allows me to home in on pictures by location which is ideal for geographically based writing - and somehow (even when something is not location specific) I'll remeber when I took a picture.



Some of the pictures are just "fun" - things that take my fancy

Some birds doing syncronised swimming

Some may be used to help market and promote things I am interested in

A nice walk in a lesser know part of Weymouth

Some are used to record history, or places that have a history

This bridge replaces the rail bridge that took the line to Portland

and some are reminder of food eaten

The Nautico lounge - a relaxed meal while waiting for the direct train back in the evening

or of amusing happenings

Feeding the gull on the train roof

or of mistakes not to be repeated where I have any influence

Nice to have a ramp up. Pity there's no space to turn into the cafe at the top

My study of the English Language, and perhaps a degree of ADHD, lead me to see a perverse side in signage and I often photograph that too

"Free George Davis" said graffiti in my youth on a wrongly convicted person. What has Drinking Water been convicted of?


I thought the days of chaining people up as slaves by the ankle had long passed. Shocked!

BUT - I am picture and writing rich, and at times I feel outlet and audience poor. I have a wide variety of friends, friendly contacts, and some followers - but I am loathe to flood the outlets I have either in overall volume, or on "hobby horse" topics that will get to bore a significnat proportion of the clsuter of people who read me.

No conclusions here / today - just a rambling.

 
C10 is that bird in Antwerpen Centraal again isn't it?

 
I fell ill in Greece about 20 years ago, and spent 4 days in hospital. €15000 bill settled within days by my £6 insurance. I’d never go without it out.

I regularly see crowdfunders on social media for people who didn’t bother.

I’ve an annual policy now that covers the entire family.

 
9. Milazzo Sicily... rebuilt station out of town replacing the old one in the centre ?

 
From Wikipedia

 
C3 London Bridge

 
C4 Beauly

 
C5 Corfe Castle

 

Presumably at Newbury Racecourse to take on water.

 
Encouraged by the very busy responses yesterday to quiz no. 2 in this series, here are the final 15 pictures in the group.  Yes, I have taken a lot of pictures of late, and tend to build a library of things that others don't photograph.

C0.


C1.


C2.


C3.


C4.


C5. 


C6.


C7.


C8.


C9.


C10.


C11.


C12.


C13.


C14.

 
Well - that's an incredibly rapid set of responses, and correct ones.

B0 Reading - ChrisB
B1 Arnhem - stuving
B2 Wuppertal - PrestburyRoad
B3 Cattewater (Plymouth) - Chris from Nailsea
B6 Taunton - Chris from Nailsea
B7 Inverness - eightonedee
B8 (London) St Pancras - TonyN
B11 Leven - brooklea
B12 Melksham - Phil

 

(Melk)sham - fond local name for the town.    Got me thinking - how common are nicknames like this?  In my youth we always used to say we were going to "into Town" for trips to London which was about half an hour by train.  Is that saying still commonly used?

 

Yes, I rather thought you would bag that one, stuving. 

Posting after midnight, so I'm now going to make a bid for B3. Cattewater, Plymouth, Devon, UK.

 
This class 180 video will probably be useful. Once you've attempted to restart engines locally on your way to the front, don't forget the WD40 for the cab door: https://youtu.be/86oqnk--X_A?t=244

 
You would be amazed at the number of pictures grahame takes, stuving. 

I was, when I met up with grahame at the Imberbus event a couple of weeks ago.  I took just a few pictures, for my personal interest - but grahame must have taken bluddy hundreds!    I kept an eye on him, while he did so, by the way, just in case he posted one of them here in a 'where was I?' quiz topic.

CfN. 

 
B1: Arnhem.

 
They've let some 'schoolchildren on work experience' loose without supervision in the control room for a few minutes, possibly? 

 

I suspect your trouble is you've been looking at the picture. Whereas the clue here -


- once again suggested an immediate possible answer. And that was Plymouth, though at a low confidence level.

So I tried to find an image on line to confirm it, with no success. Even Geograph, which has well over 100 images of Plymouth station, has only a handful of the subway and none of any stairs. There's a very distant background view of some stairs, but too indistinct to be of any evidential use.

So basically no-one, but no-one, apart from Graham takes (and posts on line) pictures of stars in railway station subways.

 
I rather think you are referring to image 12 in grahame's list - in which case, I could suggest that is the artwork at Amsterdam Zuid station.

Meanwhile, I'm just sitting here in the corner of the classroom with a 'dunce' hat on. 

 
B8 St Pancras

 
15th September a tfw class 197 will venture to Bristol TM overnight

 
B7 - Inverness

 
And from Scotrail:

 
B11. Leven

 
9 is bugging me! I can identify the bird (it's a Tree Sparrow!), and I am certain I have seen it, but I'm not sure if that's "in the flesh" or in one of Grahame's travelogue photos.

The yellowish timetable display looks like Germany. Is this Aachen (which would cover all of the above)?

 
A thread for funny, unintelligible or weird messages coming out of railway information systems.

To start off, here is one from Transpennine today:

 
Aaaaarrrrggghhh.

 
B6.  Taunton.

Thanks for the hint / prod, ChrisB. 

 
B2 is Wuppertaler Schwebebahn - very neatly built above the river