Delayed

Last Sunday I spent a very cold one hour forty minutes waiting for a tin bath to appear! The Tin Bath "Extra" steam service was due to pass through Penistone station at approximately 14:45. This is the same steam excursion that I missed seeing last year. So I was out on the side of the railway for about 14:30 waiting for it to pass. I had my little camera and the gorillapod set up on the fence to record video as it went by and me main camera at the ready.

The first sign of a problem was a guy passing on a bike who said that he had heard that it had been delayed by about 10 minutes. Then they let the normal service from Penistone to Sheffield leave at 14:50 blocking the single track section to Barnsley meaning the earliest it could arrive would be about 15:30. So I decided to wait.

It then became apparent from talking to other people that it had been seriously delayed in the morning due to the derailment of another train. And that it hadn't even left Sheffield yet. There was also a rumour that they may send it by a different line to try and make up time.

When they let the service train leave for Sheffield at 15:55 I decided to give it up as a bad job and go home. The only photo I'd taken was the test shot to check I could shoot over the fence.

By the time I'd walked back to the house I was frozen and the light was starting to go. It wasn't long before it got dark and I assumed that it must have gone a different way. Then at 16:50 I heard the unmistakable sound of a steam train. Of course all I could see was smoke rising up from behind the trees at the back of the garden -- exactly the same as last year. I'm assuming the people on the train were annoyed as well as they wouldn't have had much of a view in the dark.

Ah well maybe next year it will be third time lucky and I'll finally get to see more than just the smoke as a steam train passes through Penistone.