CAPTURE NEW HORIZONS

The Flying Scotsman is probably the world's most famous steam locomotive and this morning it headed south through East Lothian.   Built in 1923 the Flying Scotsman became the first steam locomotive to reach the speed of 100mph in 1934.  The engine was retired from service in 1963 but was used to tour in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia setting a new long distance record for a steam locomotive, covering 423 miles between stops while 'Down Under'.   The Flying Scotsman recently underwent a £4.2million restoration and travelled up the East Coast Mainline at the weekend but as I was working in Italy I was unable to get out to take some pictures. However on my return to Scotland yesterday I found out that the Flying Scotsman was going south today, travelling through Dunbar at 9am.  So I grabbed the camera bag and headed south of Dunbar to capture some images of the mechanical icon. Using the Fujifilm X-Pro2 and XF50-140mm f2.8 I used the new camera's exce...

I  have been spending a lot of time travelling to Paris and Le Mans in the past few weeks and this has meant spending time in St Pancras train station in London. It is a beautiful building that was renovated in 2007 and featured several sculptures in and around the concourse.  I did a blog on the John Betjeman statue last year but the most striking and imposing sculpture is the 9m high artwork by British artist Paul Day entitled 'The Meeting Place'. In 2008 a high-relief frieze was been added to the base of the Meeting Place sculpture as part of refurbishments at St Pancras, featuring images from the history of the Tube and train: people queuing on platforms or travelling in carriages; soldiers departing for war and returning injured, and repair works following the 7 July 2005 London bombings. This morning I took some time to take some close up images of the different panels. All images taken on a Fujifilm Finepix X100 and 23mm f2 Fujinon...