The First Longships Lighthouse at Land’s End, Cornwall

A lovely shot of the first Longships Lighthouse taken in the 1860s by William May. The long exposure fuzz on the ocean is an artefact of the then-available photography process rather than an artistic choice.

A Viaduct for Staithes

A little more from my trawl through “The North Eastern Railway – Its Rise and Development“ – this time it’s a nice (and, as far as I can tell, unique) shot of the Whitby, Redcar and Middlesbrough Union Railway’s viaduct over Staithes Beck, just south of the village itself.

Described as a ‘light iron viaduct of novel construction’, it has an almost American feel to it and looks very out of place look to the modern eye. Given the failure of that particular line – even before the car and the van out competed it – It’s certainly not something we’ll ever see rebuilt again.

Prints of York’s Old Station

Not quite a Tour of Old York but, whilst scrabbling around in the Internet Archives library, I came across two rather wonderful illustrations of the first York station and the sidings that used to extend towards Lendal Bridge.

Map extract from ‘Ordnance Survey Maps Six-inch England and Wales Yorkshire Sheet 174 (circa 1853)‘. CC-BY-NC-SA by the The National Library of Scotland. Download here.
Continue reading “Prints of York’s Old Station”

York Central works on Google Earth

It looks like Google Earth’s satellite view has updated to show some of the new work around the York Central development. The latest imagery is, as of writing, still about six months out of date – but you can really see how the area is starting to change in comparison to 2023 and 2022.

September 28th, 2024

Google Earth link.

June 16th, 2023

Google Earth link.

September 13th, 2022

Google Earth link.

Using Machine Learning for Geoglyph Detection

PNAS has an interesting paper on using AI and Machine Learning to try and identify new Nazca Pampa geoglyphs in the Peruvian Nazca Desert. It’s a fun little lunchtime skim with a few nice images of some of the newly found geoglyphs.

PNAS: AI-accelerated Nazca survey nearly doubles the number of known figurative geoglyphs and sheds light on their purpose