Welcome to the Rudloe and environs website.
Here you will find news, articles and photos of an area that straddles the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in north-west Wiltshire.
Contributions in the form of articles or photos are welcome. Even those with completely contrary views to mine!
Thanks to the website builder 1&1 and Rob Brown for the original idea.
Rudloescene now, in January 2014, has a sister, academic rather than anarchic, website about Box history here: http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/
It contains thoroughly professional, well-researched articles about Box and its people.
Contact rudloescene through the 'Contact' page.
Midsummer's Eve (20th June 2019) at Bathampton level crossing sees just yours truly awaiting the passing of Black 5 no. 44871 with the return leg of a Steam Dreams, London to Bristol, special. Modernization of the signalling last year did not include utilization of the conduits under the track. (Just a note on the camera/pictures ... my usual camera is in the repair shop at present and I have used an 'old' Nikon D90 here. A friend also has a D90 and, like me, he has noticed that the pictures it takes, particularly the landscapes, have become 'washed out' with lack of colour and definition).
The 'Wessex Mail Line' at Bathampton level crossing curves into the Limpley Stoke Valley. Across the valley, Warleigh nestles beneath Bathford Hill and Farleigh Down with Browne's Folly visible at top-left.
A Class 165 Turbo 3-car set at the rear end of another 3-car set with, most unusually, a 6-car train (!) on the Wessex Main Line heading into Bath
A largely empty (there were two or three containers) Freightliner 'intermodal' train heads south on the Wessex Main Line behind a Class 66 diesel. Freightliner is, of course, foreign-owned (American company Genesee & Wyoming).
Another Type 166 heading south with, perhaps, a Cardiff-Portsmouth train. The Type 165s and 166s were built in the early 90s by British Rail Engineering. These types, along with the HSTs, made British Rail a prime target for City (Tory!) vultures.
At last, the main event. The Black 5 with the Steam Dreams special had just stopped to take on water in the loop at Bathampton Junction. I should have recorded it as its take-off and crossing of the main line to the Wessex line sounded marvellous.
The Black 5 and its special head off down the Limpley Stoke Valley. The Bathampton Crossing warning and Browne's Folly complete the scene.
This is Bathampton Crossing. There is an alternative 'crossing', under a railway bridge, about 250 yards to the south so, in some respects, this crossing is a tad redundant (but convenient). But tis strange the things that happen when you are stood waiting for a train. A couple of girls cycled around the loop under the bridge and appeared on the other side. One opened the far gate and crossed, pushing her bike. The other remounted her bike and came cycling, hell for leather, across the railway, crashing at some speed into the near gate. Both girl and bike ended in a tangled heap on the ground. The tangled girl said "That was fun"; the other girl said nothing; I said "Are you alright" to which there was no response.
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