We start at Bilston, back in October. Here’s Heather Findlay and Chris Johnson playing as an acoustic support for Touchstone, at The Robin 2. Great to see Heather back on stage again after far too long an absence.

Touchstone just rock. Kim Elkie Seviour is a great frontwoman and visual focus.

Moo Bass and Henry Rogers make a powerful rhythm section, and put the “rock” into “prog-rock”!

Heather Findlay followed that successful support tour with a headline tour of her own, with a full band. This is from the opening date of the tour, at The Brook.

The unplugged segment was a highlight of the set.

Two days later, Heather’s old band Mostly Autumn played an absolute blinder at The Grand Opera House in York.

Olivia Sparnenn is far more confident fronting the band after eighteen months in the role. The huge smile said it all.

Anne-Marie Helder plays a big part in making Mostly Autumn a great live act in her role as multi-instrumentalist and backing singer. And playing completely different instruments (flute and keys) to what she plays in Panic Room.

In December, it was back to The Robin, with Morpheus Rising supporting Panic Room. This picture ought to sum up what they sound like.

Anne-Marie Helder and Paul Davies of Panic Room blowing the roof off The Robin at the start of the set. The pyro (yes, they used pyro) turned out to be unnecessary – There was more than enough fire in the music itself.

With today’s glorious summer weather I decided it was an ideal time to document the old GWR station at Reading before the whole lot gets bulldozed to make way for the shiny new station.

When I got there I was told to find the duty manager to seek permission. She then told me I could only photograph the station infrastructure, and could not photograph trains. Given that I’ve taken thousands of photographs at UK and overseas stations over 25 years, and never before have train companies ever tried to stop me taking photographs, I really don’t understand what First Great Western are playing at.

I know some large stations tried to prevent photographers a few years back through a combination post-9/11 paranoia and corporate backside-covering, but changed their tune after the resulting PR backlash.

Has anyone else had problems at Reading or any other FGW stations? Is this a new policy? What exactly is going on? It’s certainly at odds with the official photography policy of Network Rail, who own the station, or the guidelines given by The British Transport Police.

I sent this complaint to First Great Western customer services

I arrived at Reading this morning with the intention of taking photographs of the Reading station prior to redevelopment. On arrival I was advised by the barrier staff to speak to the duty manager.

The duty manager then told me that while I would be permitted to photograph the physical station infrastucture, I would not be permitted to photograph any trains.

I was extremely surprised and very disappointed on being told this, and decided to leave immediately without taking any photographs at all.

Is this a specific local rule affecting Reading, or is there a blanket ban on railway photography across all FGW stations? This is very much at odds with the widely-publicised photography policy of other TOCs such as Virgin Trains. I have certainly taken many photographs of trains at FGW stations (most recently at Bristol Temple Meads a few weeks ago) without being challenged or questioned by platform staff.

I must stress that all FGW staff I encountered were unfailingly polite.

So now, rather than spending this glorious weather outside with my camera, I’m reduced to sitting at home complaining on the Internet. I wonder what sort of response that complaint will get. Given the stories of low staff morale I’m hearing from inside FGW, they seem to be suffering from serious management problems, for which I strongly suspect my troubles are another symptom.

Update

I have now received a rather bland and somewhat patronising reply.

Dear Mr Hall

Thank you for your email of 29 September 2011. I am sorry you could not take the photographs you wished to at Reading station on the same day.

We expect everyone representing our company to be as helpful as possible at all times. We do welcome rail enthusiasts at our stations who want to take photographs for private purposes. There are various guidelines designed to ensure you have a safe and enjoyable experience in the pursuit of your interest. A key priority for us is to ensure the safety of our passengers and staff. However it is the discretion of the Station Manager to set the photography limits at a particular station.

Thank you again for bringing your experience to my attention. I do hope that future journeys with us will be trouble-free.

Yours sincerely
Siddhi Minawala
Customer Services Advisor

I do not really consider this a satisfactory answer, and I’m assuming that Reading station is off-limits for railway photography for the foreseeable future. And I very much doubt that we’ll ever be given a satisfactory reason.

Update No 2

Now get a second reply, which strongly implies that someone in First Great Western has been reading either this blog or the thread I started on RMWeb with well over a hundred replies.

Dear Mr Hall

I am writing to apologise for the problems you had recently at Reading station, when you were not permitted to take photographs of trains. I understand you were unhappy with the last response we sent you on this matter and I am sorry.

We do have to work within certain guidelines when allowing customers to photograph our trains, however this is something we will permit where we can. There is no reason why you were not allowed to do this, and I am really sorry that you were misadvised at the station about only being able to photograph buildings. I have passed this feedback on to my colleagues at Reading, who I am sure will take the necessary action to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

If you wish to take pictures of the trains at Reading, you do need to approach the Station Manager first, who will go over the guidelines with you. We don’t want to stop you from pursuing your hobby and I am sorry that our response has not been particularly helpful.

I hope this now clears things up and that you will accept my apologies for the way this matter has been handled.

Please do feel free to get in touch if I can help with anything else in the future.

Yours sincerely

Jo Coverley
Customer Relations Senior Officer

Stolen Earth’s official launch gig took place on September 17th, in the Post Office Social club in York, the same venue as the launch gig for Breathing Space’s album “Coming Up For Air”, which seems half a lifetime away now. As a showcase gig, it attracted a sizeable audience, with a lot of dedicated fans travelling far and wide. Nice to see Bryan and Livvy from Mostly Autumn in the crowd.

While the band had formed from the ashes of Breathing Space, almost all the material was new. Much of the set had been premièred at the Cambridge Rock Festival back in August, and I certainly remembered songs such as “Mirror Mirror” and the anthemic “Perfect Wave” from that performance. To fill out a headline-length show they included a couple of covers, an excellent take of The Eagles’ “Hotel California” which got some of the audience up an dancing, and Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” with Paul Teasdale on 12-string. They encored with Paul’s “Clear”, the only song recorded by Breathing Space to remain in the set.

Unfortunately the sound mix left a bit to be desired, with John Sykes’ keys too low in the mix and some of the Adam’s vocals a bit muffled. That combined with monitor problems meant the set didn’t quite have the power and energy of their triumphal Cambridge set. Not that it was a bad gig by any means, and I’ve heard far, far worse mixes at Breathing Space gigs over the years, but it does show that for their sort of atmospheric multi-layered rock the soundman is just as important as anyone on stage.

But despite those sound problems, Stolen Earth do seem have got off to a good start. They’ve got a powerful set of songs, and while there are strong echoes of Breathing Space in their sound, Heidi’s soulful voice and Adam’s very Floydy guitar gives them a distinctive musical identity of their own. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how their music develops, and hope they record an album sooner rather than later.

Still working on migrating photos from my defunct Fotopic website to my new photo gallery. These are from 2005 visit to Switzerland, not all of which I’d actually uploaded the first time round.

I’d previously associated Lydney with Panic Room’s first ever gig, more than three years ago. The Forest of Dean Railway wasn’t running that day, but after seeing Mostly Autumn pay their annual visit to Gloucester on the Saturday night, I decided to make a weekend of it and visit the railway on the Sunday. I it was that I ended up travelling behind a GWR pannier on the line as winds its way through the forest from Lydney to Parkend.

The Dean Forest Railway isn’t just kettles, and like many preserved lines has a significant diesel fleet. As well as quite a number of main-line locos, including a couple of diesel-electrics, they’ve got some nicely-restored shunters, including this beast.

While their service trains consisted of repainted BR Mk1s, with interiors unchanged since the days of Network South-East, they did have this beautifully-restored Hawksworth auto-trailer in BR maroon.

A lack of coordinated timetabling meant a two-hour wait for a connection at Lydney. There’s pretty much nothing near Lydney station, so photographing passing trains is pretty much all you can do. This is an example of the mundane which railway photographers all-too frequently ignore, a class 143 railbus on a Cardiff-bound local.

More interesting from an enthusiast point of view is this Freightliner 66 on a ballast train, possibly connected with the same Sunday engineering work that saw many diverted trains passing through Lydney, making it far busier than on a normal weekday.

50035 “Ark Royal” leaving Highley on the Severn Valley Railway. I’m not totally convinced that the orange and back Loadhaul livery really suits the class 50, especially when pulling a rake of GWR coaches. Best to invoke the “It’s my train set” rule, I think.

I suppose much the same goes for a GWR “Manor” with a full rake of LNER varnished teak coaches. One thing I like about the Severn Valley Railway is the way they take coach restoration seriously.

And the other great thing about the SVR is that there’s a good real ale pub by every station! No better way of chilling out than sitting by the river Severn with beer.

Mostly Autumn’s annual visit to Bury Met last month was the first time I’ve ever travelled to a gig by kettle. Bury Met used to be a local gig for me, but now I’ve moved down south. Because all the affordable hotels in Bury were full, I ended up staying in the delightfully-named town of Ramsbottom, reached by means of the East Lancashire Railway. May well be the first time I’ve used a preserved railway as a means of getting from A to B rather than just for the ride.

It does feel like I’ve I’m living the blog tagline here – especially when The Trackside Inn at Bury serves an excellent selection of real ales, including one brewed by The Phoenix Brewery.

I won’t write an in-depth review since I wrote one for Salisbury in April.  But I will say the gig itself was another superb performance. The band are really on form on this tour, and Bury Met always has a great audience. Not for nothing did the band record this gig for a planned live album.  Olivia Sparnenn is now far more confident as the band’s frontwoman, and everyone else was on great form too, aided by a really good mix.

As well as the sound, I’ve got to compliment the lighting engineer too. Often when photographing gigs I find some band members, especially Iain Jennings, get hidden in shadows at the side of the stage. This time it was possible to get good photos of everyone. even the drummer. I’ve put a lot more photos on my post-Fotopic photo site – http://kalyr.smugmug.com

The site has been a bit flaky for a while, and compared with newer sites it’s functionality has been looking increasingly dated and creaky.  But a week ago, it just disappeared, with no explanation. There have been rumours that they’ve gone into receivership, but nothing’s been confirmed.  From the owners of the site, nothing but silence.

While nobody knows for sure that it’s gone for good, every passing day it’s looking more and more likely that the site’s not coming back.

Unlike some people, I haven’t lost any photos; everything is backed-up. But the sorting, uploading and captioning still represents a lot of time and effort into something that’s probably gone to the great server in the sky.

Just after I arrived at Dawlish on Sunday afternoon, what should I see but a kettle! King Edward I on a return excursion from Paignton, with a full rake of chocolate and cream coaches, only slightly spoiled by one of them being an anachronistic Mk2

The following morning saw another “real train”, top-and-tailed 67s on the daily Cardiff to Paignton, locomotive hauled because of a shortage of DMUs. I wasn’t 100% certain that it had survived the May timetable change, but the appearance of noted railway photographer Colin Marsden just before it was due was a sure sign it was still running. The rear loco is newly repainted in DB “Traffic Red”.

This winch has seen better days, but makes a good still life.

The Globe Inn in Lostwithiel, looking across the 700-year old bridge across the river Fowey. Lostwithiel has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons, but last spring the weather was glorious.

Your choice of entertainment in Lostwithiel on a Wednesday night: Karaoke night at The Globe, or go to the station to watch the Night Riviera pass through at 11pm. For anyone who might be interested, I took this at 125th of a second at f1.4, and at 3200ASA. The train was doing something like 50mph.

The very lovely Olivia Sparnenn of Mostly Autumn at The Acorn Theatre in Penzance. A clue as to why I holidayed in Devon and Cornwall rather than Benedorm or Barnetby!

Saturday was the Exeter model railway exhibition. This layout, Bridport Town, was built and operated by a Mostly Autumn fan who’d been at the gig in Penzance two days earlier. One thing I like about this layout is it gives me an excuse to use the word “verisimilitude”.

Late afternoon in Exmouth, and what should I see but another kettle!.

There were a lot of great layouts in all sorts of scales, eras and nationalities. I know some people are only interested in layouts in their own gauge, or aren’t interested in anything outside of a certain region or era, but that way you can miss out on some great modelling.

“Aberdare” was one such example. This was a pre-grouping Taff Vale in finescale 4mm, with a very interesting track plan, and the strange loco depot design with two separate engine sheds because of the narrow site in the Welsh valleys. Another one I liked was the compact HO Danish layout “Havnegade”, set in the late 1960s, reminding me of a family holiday in Denmark around that time, with GM Nohabs in the original maroon livery and those distinctive 5-axle diesel railcars. Closer to my own modelling interests was “Loch Lochy”, making it’s exhibition debut, Scottish blue diesel N, very nicely modelled. And in 7mm scale, a massive “parade of trains” style layout of Barmouth Bridge. Somewhat truncated of course; the real bridge is nearly a mile long!

I also loved the TT3 layout – This was very much not a detailed finescale model, but very typical of the sorts of layouts people built in the 60s and 70s. Indeed, it reminded me very much of a layout I built around that time! My TT3 stock is still in my parents’ loft somewhere!

One of the big hits of the show was “Blackmill”, a large contemporary layout based on Blackburn in Lancashire, so popular you couldn’t get near it all day. Even at 4:30 in the afternoon, at a time when the crowd starts to thin out, it three deep in front of this layout. Ditto the Model Railway Club’s massive “Copenhagen Fields”, 20 years in the building and still far from finished.

While I’m not really into narrow-gauge steam layouts, Bridport Town is one I’ll make an exception for. While fictitious, it has a verisimilitude that all too many narrow gauge layout lack. I think one element, apart from the superb level of modelling, is that all the locomotive fleet doesn’t include anything that’s uniquely associated with a specific British line. For example, the 4-4-0T is (I think) a proposed but unbuilt design by Hunslet for the Lynton and Barnstable. And those ex-War Department Baldwin 4-6-0Ts ran on a great many lines.

Sadly my bank balance too a bit of a hammering; Messrs Dapol and Bachmann had too many shiny things on sale, including the new Mk1 coaches and some weathered Silver Bullets.