at Shrewsbury and Crewe
A rainy night
26 March 2024
Once again, I’m boarding the sleeper to Inverness at
Crewe - it leaves at a quarter to midnight. If I miss it,
I’m in real trouble, so I’m playing doubly safe by arriving
at Shrewsbury well before my train is due, a train which
isn’t the last that will connect (comfortably!), but its
predecessor (which should have been a loco-hauled non-
stop service, but was in fact a cl. 197 DMU).
The outcome of all this caution is a 40-minute wait at
Shrewsbury, and nearly two hours at Crewe. I’d better get my
camera out. It’s pouring with rain, but if I stay under the
platform canopies...
Geoff’s Rail Diaries
What follows wouldn’t have been possible in the days of film.
I’ll hand-hold (1/60 at f:3.5), and let my little Lumix set
whatever ISO setting it needs (between ISO 2,500 and 25,600
in the photos below). I’ll deal with the inevitable noise in
Photoshop Camera Raw. The AI noise reduction takes a while,
but the results seem unbelievably good to one brought up on
35mm slide film...
