Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: london

St. Pancras station, and the Midland Hotel which is incorporated into the front of the building, was arguably the most beautiful, spectacular commercial failure in the history of London when it was constructed in 1867. Overwhelmingly the most grandiose and beautiful of London's stations, it was redundant when (over)built, and a product of the rivalry between the various private companies vying for the London market during the mid-19th Century. The Midland Railway, the original owners, spent 2,000,000 pounds on its construction, enough so that the company never recoupped the loss, especially since someone made the blunder of building the hotel without modern plumbing!!! Although the station was built as a combination passenger and freight station, with the underground freight handling facilities specialising in overnight beer shipments, little of the station has ever been put into full use. This may have a happy ending, though, as since I took these photos the building has been undergoing a massive renovation to serve as a successor to Waterloo International once the Channel Tunnel Rail Link is built, with the old beer cellars being reused for dedicated international platforms and a car park.

Here's the fatter of St. Pancras's two towers. I love the arches on it!! :-)

Designed by Sir Christopher Wren to replace the original St. Paul's Cathedral destroyed in the Great London Fire of 1666, although that earlier St. Paul's, built in 1087-1314, had actually been the fourth cathedral to sit on this site and some historians believe that the site has Roman Pagan origins. There was a church built here at least as early as 604 AD, supposedly on an ancient Roman See. In any case, as a photo, this is one of my all-time favorites, and I hope you like it too. This illustrates what a good camera and even better film can do, giving the lie to the claim that the quality of camera doesn't matter. Of course, I like to think there was some skill involved too.... :-) That fuzz in the background is because, regrettably, Ritz ripped me off on the scanning. They even damaged the slide.

I like this shot of St. Paul's, too, and it was shot on the same night as Picture 1, right after I more or less stumbled upon it while wandering London at night.

I took this the very first time I watched trains (trainspotted??) in Britain!! It was a very exciting day, as I had never seen so many trains running at once, and doing it so well!! :-) This was during the first year of privatisation, but you couldn't see the negative effects of it at all yet. Most of it was still public-sector, and very clean and well-maintaintained. Waterloo was so spotless that day that it was a little bit hard to believe, and this mind you was without the dreadful experience of privatisation to compare it to. Instead, I was comparing it to Amtrak, which is a way is an even starker contrast when you think about it. These trains are EMUs, although I don't have my books handy to found out exactly which classes. Most of the BR Southern Region EMUs were, of course, a bit hard to tell from one another. If someone with books handy could fill me in I would be very grateful. :-)

I took this, like my Networkers At London Waterloo shot, on my first trip to London. It was obligatory, of course, to take a bunch of photos of Tower Bridge, and indeed I have many of them from almost every year I was in Britain, but in actuality most of them are too common. This one is at least a little bit more artistic, giving me an excuse to scan it and upload it. :-)

Everybody who's been to London recently has their obligatory Tower, Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace (except for me), Westminster Abbey, and Houses of Parliament shots, but the coolest one to have, maybe, is one of Battersea Park. Here's mine. :-) The streaks in the sky to the upper left are reflections from the train lighting, as I was on a Gatwick Express unit when I took this, if I'm not mistaken.

Jumping way ahead in my trip, since I took few photographs during the night, this is after I arrived in London Paddington, after having arrived in Brussels, changed to the Eurostar, arrived at London Waterloo, and taken the Underground to Paddington. At this point, I finally had enough light, in other words, to shoot handheld. I've always loved the way the trains at Paddington, which are nearly always high performance in looks as well as reality, look so great when lined up and read to go! :-)

This is my first photo on Flickr taken from a train cab while the train was in motion, and my only shot ever taken from a moving train while I was in the driver's seat. The way I got away with this, as I don't have a license, was that I wasn't actually driving. Although all DLR trains can be driven manually, they rarely are, instead being run driverless using a version of Automatic Train Operation. Crews are then limited to a few ticket inspectors and station staff who catch fare dodgers and protect the public's safety. The driver's controls are locked up under a heavy cover while not in use, and the driver's seat is open to anyone...like me, which gives people like me a chance to get photos like this one.

Charles Babbage is ultimately responsible for Flickr, at least if you trace it back far enough. He didn't invent photography or the internet, but many historians of technology consider him to have invented the computer, at least in theory. He built several calculation devices, most notably this one, the Difference Engine, to be used in conjunction with one another to form the "Analytical Engine," considered by many historians to be the first computer in the modern sense, albeit entirely mechanical in nature. Among other innovations, it was not only the first modern computer, but the first one to use punch cards to store software, a storage technology that was only phased out in the 1980s. This version of the Difference Engine (he designed and built several variants) was the largest, and it is not believed to have ever been assembled until the Science Museum in London assembled some old parts and drawings, built everything missing with period tools, and finished the job, putting the finished product on display as seen here. Upon testing it, they found that it worked perfectly, and supposedly it's still operable. Several other, earlier difference engines are displayed nearby, although all of the machines date to the 1830s.

This is...yet another Battersea Park shot!! :-) This time, though, instead of viewing it from the LB&SCR mainline, we're seeing it from the old GWR. I think that this shot may in some ways be much better than the other one, though, in spite of the better detail on the other one. I like the color and contrast on this one better.

Here's an additional bonus shot of my departure from King's Cross, which I forgot in include earlier. I hope you like it. Notice that in addition to the Intercity 225s, there's also an older Intercity 125 peeking out. GNER use them to serve cities north of Edinburgh that don't have electrification.

Jumping way, way ahead in my story, this was after I arrived at King's Cross and got my camera out again. The Intercity 225 in the foreground would take me to Leeds.