Welcome to the next post in my series about my holiday in Scotland. This post covers the hour and a half at Mallaig that The Jacobiteallows.
MALLAIG
Naturally, I commenced proceedings at Mallaig by taking the opportunity to get some photos of the train:
I had noticed the presence of a Heritage Centre close to the station. Unfortunately such is the extent to which Mallaig has embraced its status as a tourist trap that they were charging for admission, so I got nor further than the gift shop.
The rain eased sufficiently for me to explore a little further.
While on the train I had purchased a souvenir route map. In Mallaig I also bought a pictorial map of Skye and Wester Ross:
An account of the Glenfinnan-Mallaig section of The Jacobite journey.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to another post in my series about my holiday in Scotland. This post covers the second half of the outward journey on The Jacobite, ending with our arrival at Mallaig.
HEADING WEST
Although we did not stop between Glenfinnan and Mallaig, two stops before Mallaig on the regular route is Arisaig which has the distinction of being the westernmost mainline railway station on the British mainland.
ARISAIG – MALLAIG
The finish of the journey provided few photo opportunities, although travelling back the other way (a journey I had previously made on a regular train in 1993) made up for this.
Showcasing some railway themed postcards I have recently acquired and unveiling a personalised roundel.
INTRODUCTION
Hello and welcome to this post which focuses on some postcards I have recently acquired very cheaply at auction.
THE RAILWAY POSTCARDS
I won two lots of railway postcards at James and Sons’ last auction. The first of these lots to end up in my possession was…
LOT 1015: FOUR BLACK AND WHITE CARDS
Three of these cards were of London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) locomotives while the fourth was of a railway station, tentatively identified in the catalogue as Ardley. Further research on my part revealed that the station is in point of fact Ardlui, a tiny dot on the map near the northern end of Loch Lomond. Here are some pictures of the cards:
While I was pleased to acquire these cards, especially at that price, the lot that meant most to me was…
LOT 1017 – TEN COLOUR CARDS
OF THE FFESTINIOG RAILWAY
These cards had a particular resonance because I have travelled on this railway many years ago. It is a very narrow (1 ft 11in) gauge heritage railway which runs to about 40 miles.
Here is a promotional video from the official website of the Ffestiniog Railway:
Before I show the postcards, here is a link to the Wikipedia page for the Ffestiniog Railway.
Now for those postcards, starting with the official image that everyone saw:
Now here are the pictures of these cards taken in my own home:
THE AUTISM ROUNDEL
This is based on an autistic spectrum symbol that I found out about courtesy of Laina at thesilentwaveblog (seethis post for more details). I was thinking about coming up with a suitable logo for my London transport themed website, and considered the possibility of using the rainbow infinity as the disk part of the famous London Underground roundel. If I decide to go with it, this is what my personalised roundel looks like:
An account of James and Sons auction, which took place on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.
INTRODUCTION
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week James and Sons had its second ever three day auction. This one had the additional twist that two different venues were being used, our own premises in Fakenham on days 1 and 2 and the Maids Head Hotel, Norwich on day 3.
DAY 1: FAKENHAM
I caught the 7:30 bus from Lynn to Fakenham, thus arriving at James and Sons at just before 8:30AM (this bus doubles as a school bus, so follows a more circuitous route from Lynn to Fakenham than the usual X29 route and therefore takes 15 minutes longer to make the journey than a regular bus). Thus I was able to get the setup done in plenty of time, and the auction got underway at the appointed hour of 10AM. On this day stamps, postal history and first day covers were being sold. There were a couple of room bidders, and thankfully large numbers of online bidders (over 250 by the end of day 3). Although there were not many things going for big amounts of money a lot of stuff did sell, and the auction had started well. I have no pictures from day 1 of this auction, but here are some images of items that will be going under the hammer in our March auction, which will be on the 27th, 28th and 29th of that month.
DAY 2: FAKENHAM
The routine was the same as on day 1, but the items under the hammer were different. This day featured photographs, postcards, a few books, records, ephemera, Liebig cards, cigarette cards, cheques and coin first day covers. For most of the day there was no one present at the venue who was not a James and Sons employee, but the internet was very lively for much of the time. I had two moments of good fortune. The first featured…
LOT 864
Here are the official images of this lot:
My opening bid of £10 was unopposed, and here are the photographs I took this morning showing the entire booklet in all its glory:
About 10 minutes later we got to…
LOT 891
Here is the image gallery for this lot:
My opening bid of £8 again went uncontested, and here is a much more comprehensive set of pictures of this lot…
Overall this was a better day than we had expected – there were only a few quiet spots.
DAY 3: NORWICH
The fact that we were in Norwich for the final day of this auction meant that the stuff had to be loaded up to be transported over there, which was done at the end of day 2. It also meant that since I was going to have be in Norwich earlier than I could get there using the X29 that I claimed £5.50 in excess travel expenses as the cost of travelling there on the First Eastern Counties X1 is £11 as opposed to £5.50 if I can use the Stagecoach X29 route.
As intended I left my flat at 5:15AM and was on the 5:30 bus from King’s Lynn to Norwich, arriving at the venue at 7:30. I had my laptop with me because James and Sons were one laptop short (two working machines when we needed three). The setup was just about completed before the first viewers started turning up, and there were no issues of any sort.
Here are some photos from that early period:
THE FIRST PART OF THE SALE – COINS & BANKNOTES
There were no headline making prices, but most of these lots sold, some doing very well. We had decided to have a 15 minute break after lot 1,300 (we started the day at lot 1,000). Just before the end of the session we came to some commemorative medallions from the Gigantic Wheel, which was a feature of Earls Court between 1897 and 1906. The first was lot 1,286, which I ignored as being beyond my means. Lot 1287 however, which was only a little inferior in quality was cheaper, and my bid of £10 duly secured it. Here for comparative purposes are first the official images, scanned at 600 dpi and brightened up a bit, and then the two photographs I took today:
THE SECOND PART: MILITARIA AND STAMPS
The Militaria sold well. A chess set with German markings achieved barely credible £170. Here is the official image gallery:
Plenty of other things did well as well. The stamps predictably enough did not fare very well, but everything else had done enough that the auction was an unequivocal success.
AFTER THE SALE
I had considered staying on in Norwich to attend a Green Party public meeting at which Richard Murphy would be speaking, but in the end after three demanding days I was too tired to even contemplate not being home until 11PM which is what that would have meant, and so after a visit to Norwich Millennium Library I took the bus home, arriving back in my flat just after 6PM.
Yesterday, because I was staying over with my parents rather than trying to travel back to Lynn on Easter Sunday, we were able to have our main meal in the evening, which in turn meant that we could do a proper walk in the day. The Times had a feature advertising a number of good walks, one of which happens to be in Norfolk…
I will be doing a post about the whole walk with a link back to this post later, but for the moment I will focus on the star attraction of the walk, a chance to look at the North Norfolk Railway in full flow. Our first glimpses of what was in store were these…
We arrived in the vicinity of Weybourne Station at about 1PM and discovered that two trains (one in each direction) were expected within the next ten minutes. Naturally therefore we waited, and in preparation for the main event I gathered some photographs at the station…
The trains themselves did not disappoint. As a fan of Edward Marston I could picture Colbeck and Leeming emerging from one of the carriages to investigate one of their cases! Having got some excellent shots from platform level, we watched the second train leave from the bridge across the line…
At this point we left the station to continue our walk, but there were a couple more blasts from the past to come. First, one hour after leaving the station we witnessed this…
Finally, because my mother had bought a heavy book, we called back at Weybourne on our way home to pick it up, and I got some pictures from the car park…
I will conclude by thanking the volunteers who run this wonderful glimpse back into our past and reminding you that in due course I shall be blogging about the walk as a whole.