Today's shot is another from my trip to Grosmont in the North York Moors near Whitby. It was taken as you can see on the platform of the station. It was almost midday and a steam locomotive was due shortly so behind me were scores of people waiting for the spectacle.
With the historic trains and the old station this place feels stuck in time.
To get this shot I had walked along a narrow pathway alongside a workshop. Getting up close to this big locomotive, the noise and the smell was amazing. I am not at all mechanically minded but there is and always has been a fascination for me about stuff like this.
I love wildlife and nature photography and to be a wildlife photographer would have been my dream job but big industrial settings and machines also make great images . I remember one of my first outings with my first SLR camera over 35 years ago was with my best friend in Boston and we took pictures of the railway tracks and bridges around the town and the fishing boats along the river, I'm sure I will have a stack of negatives from that day in a box somewhere.
Anyway, back to today's post I really do like this image and I think it works equally well in either colour or black and white. Sometimes if I do a picture in colour or black and white like this I will have a clear favourite but with this one I'm not sure, I really like them both. The black and white might just come out on top but its a close run thing.
One of the things I like about this image is the fact that it feels alive. It isn't just an inanimate lump of machinery, the people in the shot, preparing the engine for its days work give the shot a vibrancy that would be missing if it was just the locomotive on its own and there is movement from the driver as he is preparing to climb the ladder into the cab.
Last summer I had a lovely couple of days on a trip to the Whitby area in North Yorkshire and I spent a couple of hours visiting the North York Moors Railway at Grosmont.
It was a hot and sunny day and the good weather and the lure of steam had brought a lot of people to this otherwise sleepy village. I was like a kid when the steam engines came through but I wasn't the only one and it was so nice to see the excitement on the faces of other people who were there. In this shot the platform looks deserted but not long after this the place was heaving.
I was really pleased to be able to get up close to this locomotive as it was building up a head of steam. There were lots of engines to see, in various states of decay and at different stages of repair and I think it must be very rewarding for the engineers to see the fruits of their labour when these marvelous engines are fully restored and running again. It was exciting for me and the other people who with me were enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of years gone by.
The first of today's pictures looks along the tracks towards a diesel locomotive which was also being prepared for the day's work, seen through the steam I think this makes a great image.
The second shot is a close up of the driving wheels and pistons that would soon be taking this engine down the tracks and give a good impression of power and precision.
The title of today's post refers to the steam bursting out and is taken from a Jethro Tull song from the 1971 album Aqualung (coincidentally Bursting Out is also the title of a Tull album) I have included a link to a 1982 performance of the song as that was the year I saw Jethro Tull at Nostell Priory with my dad. It was the first gig I ever attended and I bought my dad his ticket. So not only has this post been nostalgia for the era of the steam engine but also for my introduction to live music and a passion which is as strong today as it ever was.
I am not an engineer by any means but for me there is something magical about a workshop, the grease, the sounds and smells and the cheerful banter of the mechanics/engineers and hopefully today and over the coming days I will be able to convey some of these sensations in the pictures that I share.
After my day in Whitby I went next to Grosmont in the North York Moors, specifically the engine sheds and home of the North York Moors Railway. Here there were numerous engines in different states of repair and people hard at work on what seems to me to be as much a labour of love restoring giant locomotives from times past and preparing them for use on the railway between Whitby and Pickering.
I like the first picture of the engineer concentrating on his work, completely focused and seemingly oblivious to the noise all around him.
In the second picture an engine is being prepared for the day's running and before long it was building up a head of steam.
