Spotting 2024 – Week’s 50 & 51

It’s that time of the year when I find myself having to wait in for deliveries, do my own deliveries for the Christmas event and fit in some football match photography. A good example of how deliveries can really mess up your week was some new cookware. Epi and I have been slowly moving away from PTFE non-stick cooking pans. I had been looking for a replacement Chef’s pan – you know, one of those large sauté / frying pans with a lid that you can cook almost anything in! Our old one is now approaching the end of its non-stick coating’s life. I liked the look of a new one from Our Place called the ‘Always Pan’ – They do a very interesting Titanium lined one which is designed to be non-stick without using a coating other than the cooking oil. When I floated the idea to Epi, it turns out she was looking at the same thing! Somehow through our different surfing patterns – and they are very different! – we’d found ourselves looking at the same range. Our Place were running a pre-Christmas sale and we opted to order the Pro-Always Pan along with their family size Perfect Pot, the latter being Ceramic lined. These are sold as a bundle bringing further savings. Of course, what did they do? Despatch the items separately! So that was two days I had to wait in. I haven’t tried the Always Pan yet but we’ve both used the Perfect Pot and it’s very impressive👍

On the 16th the annual SCS Software Christmas Event in the American and Euro Truck Simulator games got underway. I decided that I’d use a second-hand truck in Europe for my part in this event – didn’t want to wreck my new Scania doing this work. I picked up a Mercedes MP3 with an acceptable level of wear and went to work. We’re doing the Winterland map again this year which means short repetitive journeys – Not my favourite thing and another reason to use a non-fleet truck. So here’s my old Actros taking a load from Rudolph’s Crafts…

…The snow seems a little more slippery this year so I guess there may have been a bit more work done on the background physics in the game.

Week 50’s one trip out was to football on Saturday the 14th. Wingate & Finchley were away at Cray Valley Paper Mills that day. It’s an easy enough trip by train, down to London Bridge and then pick up a Southeastern service to either Eltham or Mottingham. Then there’s a 20 or so minute walk to the ground. During the course of the trip I only logged 22 and needed none of those although 376021 between London Bridge and Mottingham was new for haulage. The football was a bit of a seesaw game that in the end turned from a 3-2 lead with 5 minutes to go that became a 5-3 defeat by the end of injury time 🙄 We’re going through a bad patch at present and we need to regain our form and confidence going forward into the Christmas period and the New year. Here’s Ogo having a strike on goal…

I had planned on doing some night time train photography on my way home but was offered a lift by Bobby’s father in his Taxi along with Bobby and one of our youth team players which I accepted as it gave a good opportunity to chat football. It was interesting to hear Bobby say that he believes we’ll be in the play-off’s again at the end of the season – Nothing wrong with his confidence then! Most of the fans now think a mid-table finish is more likely.

More of the same for week 51 – bad weather, deliveries and some shopping for Alasdair’s Birthday conspired to keep me at home until Friday when I finally slipped the surly bonds and set out on an unplanned trip. I decided to head over to New Southgate but just missed a 232 bus so had to wait for the next one. As I wasn’t going to catch my intended train I opted to continue to Arnos grove and take the Piccadilly Line from there down to Finsbury Park. Saves standing around in the cold and I might’ve picked up one of the Piccadilly units I need – no such luck😅 The Piccadilly is currently struggling to run a good service with more trains requiring maintenance than usual. It looks like the new Siemens stock can’t come soon enough – the first unit was delivered to Ruislip depot in November.

I came up for air at Finsbury Park and caught Great Northern’s 717019 down to Moorgate. I still need one of these for haulage and one day it’ll show up but not today… By this time I’d decided to do a Docklands Light Railway bash so from Moorgate it was on to Liverpool Street and then a train out to Stratford. I spent the next hour or so bouncing around the DLR network logging 5 of the outstanding units I need – still 5 outstanding for the set of those that remain in service. I got lucky at Poplar. One of the DLR’s shunters was sitting out in the open so that was a nice pre-Christmas gift…

…Not one of my best shots – taken through the grubby window of a DLR unit. This is 994 ‘Kevin Keaney’, a General Electric 0-4-0 diesel hydraulic. I need to take a trip out to Beckton and hope I can catch up with their other shunter sometime.

I made my way down to Lewisham where I had a lunchtime snack and coffee from Costa’s, logging my last active Class 466 in the process, before returning home via the DLR to Stratford, back in to Liverpool Street and back up to Arnos Grove to get back on the 232 once more. It was a good day out; I logged 158 of which I needed 9 and I picked up 14 new for haulage!

Saturday’s football was a home game vs Lewes in which we contrived to turn a 2-0 need into a 2-2 draw and missed a last minute penalty that would have given us the win. Frustrating… I’ll be processing the photos on Monday. Last week of 2024 looms – Lets see what trips out I can fit in 👍