The ‘Mayflower’ steam locomotive changing direction on the turn table at York Station.
I like Steam – the sound, the smell, the sheer force of presence that comes from a visible engine pulling up to the platform you are on – far more than the modern trains I’ve taken for work and for leisure. I do under stand the practical reasons that they needed to be retired, but it still seems something of a loss. Perhaps when autonomous vehicles have destroyed mass transit, the remaining national railways can be converted to heritage lines and Steam can rise again…
I had a good but long weekend. Saturday was, of course, filled with watching England’s hard-fought victory against New Zealand in the Rugby World Cup. Beer was drunk (to excess!) and a good time was has by all.
Sunday was a little more highbrow; I popped up to York and spent a very enjoyable 30 minutes watching two showings of Northern Lights at York Minster – a fantastic laser, lights, and audio installation in York Minster’s Nave. I thoroughly recommend it and would suggest that you either see one of the few remaining shows of this season or jump in early when it (hopefully!) returns next year.
Here’s a short documentary I found about it:
A pleasant little video of the sun rising over York railway station. Towards the rear left you can see the permanently-lit York Minster towering over the rest of the city. The large yellow crane in the centre of the image is part of the building site on the former Hudson House plot and sits just in side the city walls. And, of course, prior to that this plot of land had been the original York station.
