A big picture dump today. All taken while I wandered around the railway station in Bury which is now part of the East Lancashire Railway heritage line.
I visit Bury each year to meet up with a bunch of middle-aged video game fans to spend the day in the marvelous, four-story Arcade Club, where we relive out youth playing free-to-play arcade games all day. I usually have time for a wander around before it opens though, and there’s often something interesting to see at the railway station – usually a steam train or two.
This is the Castle Armoury in Bury, Lancashire, a Grade II listed building dating to 1907 and so named because it was built on the site of the former Bury Castle. Originally built to house the 8th Lancashire Rifle Volunteer Corps, which eventually evolved into the Lancashire Fusileers. They remained there until disbandment in 1967. Various other battalions and detachments were then housed in the building, including cadets and air training corps until the building was finally closed in 2022 on safety grounds due to lack of funding for repairs.
It’s quite a commanding structure, and all that stonework really pops with contrast in the right light.
I thought I’d just throw out the remaining pictures from my trip to Bury for today’s post. It’s the last day of a bank holiday weekend here in the UK, and it’s been quite a busy one. It feels like it’s still Sunday, but I’m back at work tomorrow (I could do with another bank holiday to recover from this one!).
Saturday started with me developing a roll of film first thing in the morning. Normally I would do this later in the day, but we had plans to visit our eldest and I wanted to get the roll sorted out and hung to dry before we set off. We got back in the afternoon, so I had time to cut and sleeve the negatives before going back out to visit my dad.
Sunday was my day out with a camera (actually three cameras, more fool me) on a trip to Spurn Head on the east coast. I’ll post more about the trip when I have some photos to share, but suffice to say that the lighthouse at the end of the head is a lot further than it looks!
More developing today, and I managed to get through three rolls. Two rolls of Acros developed together in the same tank while, at the same time, I used semi-stand development on a roll of Fomapan 400. The Across looks good, but there are problems with the Fomapan. Some of it might be down to my development (I can see bromide drag – the first time this has happened when I’ve used semi-stand), but it’s also beset by the tiny white specks issue that I’ve had in the past with Foma stocks, plus some other weird artefacts that I think are also film related. I’ll do what I can to rescue the shots, but it’s disappointing, especially given some of the shots are from my lengthy walk yesterday and look nice otherwise. I’ll say more about this when I post the shots.
I did shoot more (non-Foma) film on the trip too, so hopefully those will work out better.
The Kay monument commemorates several members of the Kay family, notably John Kay, a prolific inventor most famous for the ‘flying shuttle’ a simple device which dramatically increased the output of hand loom weaving.
Apologies for a concise post today. I’ve been out for a hike and am exhausted!
I visited Bury in Lancashire a couple of months ago for my, now regular, visit to Bury Arcade Club where myself and a large group of other middle-aged blokes meet up for a curry, and then a full day playing arcade games.
Before I was able to check into my hotel on the first day, I decided to wander around Bury town centre and take a few pictures. I might share some of the others, but I’ve grouped the ones below as they were all taken at Bolton Street Railway Station, which forms part of the East Lancashire Railway heritage line upon which all manner of vintage locomotives and trains operate.
There were no locomotives present when I visited, just a few carriages, but the station itself still offers plenty of nice photographic opportunities. I was stuck with quite harsh light, but things haven’t turned out too badly.
I don’t tend to crop my photos all that often. I’ll occasionally trim a little from the edge if something distracting has crept into the scene or, on occasion, reduce a 6×6 square image to a 6×4.5 (3:2) ratio if there’s a lot of empty space, but it’s quite rare that I perform more significant crops, especially on a 35mm image.
This shot is one of those unusual occasions where I did. I cropped it to a 16:9 ratio, keeping the upper part of the picture while removing a chunk of bland and empty foreground. The photo looked unbalanced without the crop, but I think it works much better in this “widescreen” version. The Reflecta ProScan scanner I used has got enough resolving power to mean there’s still plenty of detail in the reduced frame.
Not being a close follower of heritage railways, I wasn’t aware that one passes through Bury. My last visit in 2023 didn’t bring me especially close to the route, but this year I had only been in the town a short while when I heard the distinct sound of a steam locomotive and spotted pillars of smoke puffing into the air not far from my hotel.
It was later in the evening when we all met up at a pub called the Trackside Bar that the railway became properly apparent. There were a lot of people there all dressed up to the nines; tuxedos, ballgowns, tiaras, the works. And outside the bar, which is an old railway station building, was the platform where a large steam locomotive stood, attached to a train of vintage carriages. After a while the poshly-dressed people boarded the train and it exited the station.
The following morning after breakfast, I decided to re-visit the station – a stop on the East Lancashire Railway heritage line – and was able to take the following pictures. I was with someone else from the group visiting Arcade Club, so didn’t take as many pictures as I might have had I been there alone, but the one’s I got are quite nice.
Last month I visited Bury in Lancashire. The trip was to meet up with a bunch of folks I know from online interactions and visit Arcade Club, a videogame arcade with hundreds of games, all free to play once you pay the entrance fee. It’s the second time we’ve done this – the first being so much fun that it’s probably going to become an annual event from now on. Most of the people in our group were middle aged blokes who’ve grown up with a love of videogames dating back, in some cases, to the 1970s.
Last year I just traveled there for the day, but on hearing of the pub and curry evening that some of the others had enjoyed, this year I traveled across the day before the Arcade Club meet so I could get in on the curry this time. Next year I think I’ll stay the following evening too as Arcade Club is open until 11pm and I was told by those who stayed that it became much less crowded in the evening (there were lots of kids having parties and stuff earlier in the day) and it became a lot easier to get on all the machines, especially the linked up racing games and similar competitive machines.
Despite being at Arcade Club all day, I took no photos other than a few snaps on my phone, but I did take a few pictures, including the couple of rather random shots made while walking through Bury town centre, and a bunch of pictures of a steam locomotive that I made the following morning after breakfast (I’ll post those tomorrow).
Anyway, if you live in the UK and enjoy arcades and videogames, Arcade Club is a great place to visit.
Steel City Snapper photography 