Chuff, Chuff

Unsurprisingly we both had a pretty dire night's sleep last night after yesterday's excitement and I had a lie in this morning but it was a lovely crisp, clear day (despite being very cold) so after an early lunch we went down to the level crossing to watch Battle of Britain class 34067 "Tangmere" pull the latest Cathedrals Express past Milton.

I think it's the first time it's been past and Beth took this photo which I think is superb.

Meanwhile I was standing further back taking video and got two clips which you can see together below¹:

We're due another pair of trains the Saturday before Christmas: A4 60007 "Sir Nigel Gresley" (which again I don't think we've seen before although we have had fellow A4s "Union of South Africa" and "Bittern" previously) and also a diesel hauled special by D1015 "Western Champion" but I doubt we'll be so lucky with the weather a second time.

1. It took me a while to get these right: the first pass I did to encode them from MPEG (off the camera) to Flash Video (FLV) format left lots of nasty artefacts, especially visible in the smoke once it was over the crossing but I tracked down a better way of encoding, using two passes, which produces slightly larger but far better results.