The Watercress Line
30925 – SR Schools Class ‘Cheltenham’ waiting on the departure on down on the up Platform at Roply for the last train of the day.
The Watercress Line or The Mid Hants Railway as it is also know runs from Alton to Alresford along a stretch of the former Alton Winchester branch line.
As one of two local preseved railways I have spent many happy hours there both as a child and and Adult.
all of the images here are from varous visits. where I have information on the images it is captioned.
I’ve included this image as it shows an interesting aspect of the line.
Shot from the foot bridge of Alresford station looking down the line, this images shows the coach storage area of the Mid Hants railway.
Once the line towards Itchen Abbas and Winchester it now terminates 400m west of the station just out of shot.
30925 – SR Schools Class ‘Cheltenham’ pulling a rake of coaches from the yard at Alresford station
Celebrity visitors
Like most railways the Watercress line brings in visiting Locomotives for special events, in this case ‘Flying Scotsman’ visited the railway to celebrate the long over due reconection of the Alton section of the line after a bridge was replaced as part of a new housing scheme at Alton.
she broak the tape on the new bridge.
What non of us new at the time, is that the railway along will everything else would be shut down in less than a month later due to Covid. We visited the railway on the 23rd of February 2020
Locomotive 60103 ‘Flying Scotsman’ at Ropley yard on the Mid Hants railway Hampshire
it's all in the detail
This is is probably on of my favourite images from the MHR and it isn’t a full loco image, but a detail shot, from the album time line it is the head lamp on on loco 30925 Schools Class Cheltenham.
The reason I love this image so much is that it is the sort of thing that my Late grandfather was known for, the saying “the devil is in the detail” summed his style of photography up.
He was brilliant at capturing the landscape scale shots but also recoreded the detail of the scene things that most photographers miss, things like rail stamps and small signs that are now long lost.
Photographs like this are all about the atmosphere.
This image of the running gear of 30925 ‘Cheltenham’ with steam blurring the lines again is reminiscent of my late grandfather work.
As a photographer you have the ability to blur the lines in more ways than one.
This case this black and white image could have been taken any time between 1934 (loco build date) and the present day.
This shot from 2017 shows SR 925 (30925) ‘Cheltenham’ in her original Southern Railways livery awaiting the all clear at Alton station.
More from my FLickr Album
