I DON’T KNOW WHO WAS PUFFING MOST: Ol’ Smoky Joe or his big ol’ steam train.
You head back in time when you head down to the end of Windermere to take the Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway.
I’ll be posting plenty of pics from here, as I’ve done two trips in the last little while, not to mention the Ravenglass & Eskdale narrow gauge steam railway, also in the Lake District. So, I’ll limit my pithy prose to this chap!
I was leaning out of the window to get a tunnel shot, blatantly ignoring the “Don’t stick your head out of the window, you might get it knocked off, you idiot!” signs. Then, just as I was lining up my shot, this guy – not the driver, some sort of conductor or something – stuck his head out too.
The only shot he was chasing was a toke on his electronic ciggy, I guess, and my split-second reaction was, “Oh, damn it, get out the way, you’re ruining my picture!” (snarled under my breath, not shouted; he was way gnarlier than I’ll ever be)!
Then I smiled, as I so often have in the past, as I realised that he was the shot, like it or not.
This is one of the things that separates boring bland snaps from truly interesting images. It’s not that luck isn’t important. I was very lucky here that he stuck his head out when he did. It’s that I didn’t falter and was ready to grab the unexpected moment when it happened.
‘Luck’ is everywhere, in fact, like the sun setting, for example. And every now and then, one of those sunsets will be a stunner. The question is, will you be around to immortalise it?
Trains have long held a great fascination for me, and those who work on them have a special place in my imagination.
I can’t help wondering what it must be like to concentrate hard on getting somewhere precise to the best of our ability, only to turn around and come back again, then turn around and go back again, ad insaniam.
But heck, it’s probably quite a rewarding job, with responsibility too, and you get a big engine to play with, and everything. Another example of me thinking far too much and I could easily ask that question about why climb up mountains just to come back down again. Oh, I think I did, about three Chronicles ago, so there you go!
P.S. What was Smoky’s Joe’s Revenge? Oh, darn it, I forgot to ask!
The Laggard of Lakeland 
(Lakeland Chronicles No.13)
Visit my fun Lakeland Chronicles Facebook group to comment on THIS POST, take part in the regular tricky quizzes and share your own shots ‘n’ stories – see you there!
Wainwright Log: 2 of 214 Fells Felled / 0 Books Bashed / Visit Log
