On Saturday 21st March 2020, I self isolated at Rowsley. Well very nearly as there was only Shaun and myself there, both I quickly add drove our own cars, preferring this to the "Russian Roulette" scenario of going by public transport, and being fair getting to Rowsley by service bus from Sheffield, is becoming increasingly difficult as the local bus companies juggle with their routes and timings. You could be almost be forgiven for thinking that they don't want to all work together, when a bus is timed to arrive in Bakewell, and a rival bus companies bus, is timed to depart for the onward second leg of the journey some two or three minutes later, but that might just be cynicism on my part. This is most probably an "Old Man Moan", BUT did you know that; GDPR was introduced, quite rightly to protect our privacy, and hopefully reduce the rain forests cut down every week in the interest of sending endless quantities of junk mail, e.g. No I don't want to buy a lawnmower with a lifetime guarantee ,that ensures my lawn looks like a grass court at Wimbledon and has a wireless connection, so I can operate it from my smart phone, trouble free, from the comfort of my lounge! (You get the idea), being serious I can understand the need for protecting people's privacy but did you also know that attached to this is now another "bureau", set up by the government, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which you now have to now register with if you hold personal details of people, pertinent of course if you have a membership base. Unsurprisingly this comes at a cost,,,,,,,,,,, of only £35 if you pay by Direct Debit, for our category, or £40 normally (Every Year by the way).. I may be tempting fate here, but fresh air to breath is still free, but for how much longer??

Getting back to the serious stuff, now's the time to catch up (electronically or phone ), to that mate, you saw two years ago and you had promised him that photo that no-one else had got, and you would supply him with a copy?                                                                                                                                                                                         I have still got to find an efficient way of cataloging and being able to retrieve any given slide when required, and before someone says "save them electronically", this opens up a whole new debate about the longevity of using this medium. After saying that I find colour slides far harder to manipulate, and colour negs even harder than these  so for the time being they will all stay in little plastic boxes ,away from direct light.The worrying part being this has been the case for the last forty to fifty years. Finally isn't it just sods law that when the proper stuff was there to photograph, we were limited to the amount of film we could afford, using light meters either built into cameras or as an independent item. Cameras were relatively heavy compared to the DSLRs (digital cameras), of today that you can switch on put into auto mode and virtually guarantee a decent shot,or delete and repeat ,if of course the object of your attention is still in sight. I well remember gravitating to a Pentax 6x7 which is basically like an old 35mm SLR camera on steroids,but that large it had its own case as big as a small hat box and weighs an estimated 4 kilos! They take 120 roll film and boy are those cameras heavy. Memories of the slaughter of locos at Swindon works spring to mind, so the compulsion of visiting regularly, walking from the Station to the Works a guided tour of the Works and back to the station all on foot, a round trip of probably four miles, and boy did that camera weigh heavy!, I was nearly on my knees by the time I was travelling back on the train to Sheffield. Happy Days!!

Its very sad to me that for all intents and purposes, the Dartmoor Railway may disappear without trace. I don't like anywhere closing, and for me the site of the quarry where it was based conjures up special memories of years ago. Our old spotting Club, would always visit this on an overnight Plymouth trip, by motor coach which was our usual mode of transport. Due to the intense itineraries we followed this meant leaving Manchester at around 20.00 hrs Saturday evening to return to Manchester for around 19.30 hrs on a Sunday evening. Most of our usual overnight tours worked to this format, but I suppose because of the distances involved on this particular trip you could "Cat Nap" more than say an over night midlands trip. However, and its a large one, Meldon Quarry situated on Dartmoor, had to be visited while we were travelling down rather than back up, for the purpose of continuity. On this particular trip that was run probably annually through the seventies/early eighties. This meant arriving on the main road, (around 2.00-3.00am?), approximately half a mile from the very small, open ended  shed based in the quarry. As memory serves there were no gates to encounter or for that matter fences. They didn't really need them as standing between the main road and the shed was very uneven terrain with a very liberal sprinkling of clumps of saplings and soon to be mature trees. There was a very narrowish track that went from the road to the quarry, but this wound around various obstacles, with no lighting on it so for the purpose of a speedy visit remained largely for us unused. The other aspect to consider was, hardly anyone thought to bring a torch, the efficient ones were then, heavy and cumbersome and not as user friendly as torches of today. Its was dark, no black! with no distant lights nothing. With the lights from the interior of the coach quickly getting swallowed up in the night. We disembarked as a semblance of a group, heading off in the general direction of the usual location to see D3509. Oh. I forgot to say!, it was always, or should I say a given this was the loco to be seen or griced depending on your preference. Almost as soon as the main party had left the coach ,screams could be heard emanating from the darkness, lads falling over saplings, up and down banks, tripping up in rabbit holes etc,etc. Its fair to say ,(and some did give up enroute ,and turn back), that the party that departed from the coach wasn't the same party that returned to it, some thirty minutes later! Muddied, scratched by brambles, (that incidentally you don't want to get tangled up in the pitch black of Dartmoor!), nettled, leaves and twigs in their hair, you get the general idea! I have to say the brainier, more accomplished members who had been before and already seen D3509, would sometimes "wimp out", and not bother getting off the coach. I loved going there, as the masochist in me loved the challenge and hearing comrades literally fall by the wayside, or in reality into bushes etc. I did manage on at least one occasion to visit in daylight as you can seen from the photo below. However I am now mortified, as I never got a shot, showing its number as D3509 or 08394 as it went to the great loco shed in the sky from Vic Berry's at Leicester in 1989, or did I? I will have to double check all my slides again as I did a lot of photoing there just before its demise? oh for a decent slide filing system!