Category: Crank

Eastern Bloc cranking exploits

For those who are partial to this kind of thing. My crankhandle smugmug site (in all its much better new version glory) is now home to some new photostories on the heavy duty cranking thrills that can be had behind the former Iron Curtain. First up is a trip along the Baltic coast from Hel […]

Read More Eastern Bloc cranking exploits

Ten days in Ukraine

  Photo story of ten days in Ukraine featuring pickpockets in Odesa, the hypnotic escalators of the Kiev Metro, the lost cosmopolitanism of Chernivitsi, and the bleak backstory of Uman. And overall – way too much Soviet Realism

Read More Ten days in Ukraine

Viva Hunslet!

Enjoyed a tribute the Leeds locomotive building industry (RIP) that was D2578’s Homecoming Weekend at the Middleton Railway. In my related internet explorations I came across the Leeds Historical Exploration Society’s site – which is a site of record of their various expeditions. Among their explorations is one of the last surviving of evidence of […]

Read More Viva Hunslet!

Dayrover days in the early Eighties

Before the de-industrialisation of the North, and the unit-isation of the railways, the youth cult of bashing was in full swing. Bashing being the art of accumulating haulage behind railway locomotives – either by type, or by distance, or by both. At that time the railways were still stocked with rolling stock from the ‘modernisation’ […]

Read More Dayrover days in the early Eighties

Transylvania to London by Train

1,800 kilometres of rail travel from Transylvania to London by train. Enter a trance state – addicitve – as Europe roles by. From crumbling platforms and clapped out second hand trains in Romania the trains progressively speed up and the economy solidifies into prosperity. The edge disappears. The golden fields unspool into the mountains and […]

Read More Transylvania to London by Train

Cool bus station cafes of Central and Eastern Europe: an occasional monograph

Bus station cafes are not renowned for their imagination or attention to detail – and they don’t usually make many design concessions to the mode of transport their customers departed and arrived on (unless its some faux references to Greyhound buses). However in Szekelyudvarhely (Ordorheiu Secuiesc) which is in Szekely Land in Translyvania in Northern […]

Read More Cool bus station cafes of Central and Eastern Europe: an occasional monograph

I want to go Jowetting…!

Bradford once had its own car industry…not only that but its products were Class winners at Le Mans and featured in Raymond Chandler. And only in Yorkshire would vehicles be be named a Curlew or a Weasel (pictured below outside Bradford Town Hall)! The company was established in 1902 in Bradford before moving to the […]

Read More I want to go Jowetting…!