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Oliver Wood Photography

Pictures & musings from Cheshire

Hale Station Cheshire

Hale Station
Hale Station

A few semi-experimental pictures from a night on Hale station. This is a very special location for me, and a place that featured prominently in my childhood. I spent many hours here watching trains, generally relaxing, or occasionally taking a ride to Chester or Llandudno and for many in Hale and Altrincham it was the holiday line. it was also a favourite retreat in my school lunchtimes.

The station is a listed building and quite deservedly so. The beautiful canopies date back to the era of the Cheshire Lines Committee, the organisation responsible for building and operating the Mid Cheshire line in its earliest days. Hale station building, or more specifically the canopies, and the now sadly out of use signal box, are very important townscape features and a focal point in the large suburban village of Hale, much of which was developed around the railway and rapidly became a well-healed retreat for commuting Manchester cotton tots. Though in my life-time the setting has changed a lot!

The route was always very busy with a variety of freight mostly heading to and from the industrial heartlands of west Cheshire, Liverpool and Warrington which included the iconic Tunstead to Northwich stone trains. The line is continuing to see a growth in both freight and passenger traffic today with a dramatic increase in night freight traffic due to a lack of day time capacity – some of this traffic is literally travelling from one end of the country to the other. The mid Cheshire is quite a well connected line and can be used as a relief route for anything heading for any part of the network in the south including London, Wales and the West country but is still designated as a secondary route – not a main line.

  • Aperture: ƒ/5.6
  • Taken: 10 October, 2018
  • Focal length: 19mm
  • ISO: 100
  • Shutter speed: 2s
Locomotive  Blur
Locomotive Blur
Hale Freight 2
Hale Freight 2
Chester Train Hale
Chester Train Hale

30th October 2018 Author
Oliver Wood
Categories
Local History, Machine World, Monochrome, Night
Tags
hale, monochrome, night, railways

Prestbury Pendolino

London train at Prestbury
London train at Prestbury

London bound ‘business is great’ pendolino speeding through Prestbury, Cheshire. These trains have been the mainstay of the Manchester to London, Euston service for more than ten years now. I wish I had the foresight to take pictures here when I first arrived in the area because the line was still being ‘worked’ by what is now considered to be classic or heritage traction including first generation diesel and electric locomotives and 125 HSTs.

  • Aperture: ƒ/8
  • Taken: 19 April, 2018
  • Focal length: 50mm
  • ISO: 100
  • Shutter speed: 1/500s
Pendolino
Pendolino
  • Aperture: ƒ/16
  • Taken: 19 April, 2018
  • Focal length: 50mm
  • ISO: 100
  • Shutter speed: 1/30s

25th October 2018 Author
Oliver Wood
Categories
Machine World, Monochrome
Tags
pendolino, prestbury, railways, trains

Clarence Mill Bollington

Clarence Mill & Boats
Clarence Mill & Boats

One of Bollington’s most notable landmarks, Clarence Mill, is now home to numerous businesses and residential accommodations. The large former steam powered cotton mill is a relic of the towns once prosperous silk and spinning industry and is now particularly notable for the retention of the steam engine room exhaust chimney. I like to imagine how exciting it would have been to manage the dramatic power system in a mill such as this, lots of noise and complex moving parts.

  • Aperture: ƒ/8
  • Taken: 27 September, 2018
  • Focal length: 50mm
  • ISO: 100
  • Shutter speed: 1/125s
Clarence Mill Windows
Clarence Mill Windows

The upper floors have been mostly converted to residential use with a variety of flats and apartments that take full advantage of this fabulous and atmospheric setting. Beautiful views are guaranteed from all of these windows.

  • Aperture: ƒ/11
  • Taken: 27 September, 2018
  • Focal length: 50mm
  • ISO: 100
  • Shutter speed: 1/250s

16th October 2018 Author
Oliver Wood
Categories
Local History, Machine World, Monochrome
Tags
architecture, bollington, cheshire, mill, monochrome

New Mills Interconnector

New Mills Interconnector
New Mills Interconnector

I seem to find electrical and telecoms infrastructure to be quite a fascinating subject when combined with a landscape or environment context. This very scary apparatus in a remote corner of a New Mills field is part of an elaborate interconnection where a separate double circuit power line branches off at 90 degrees. This pylon takes the three phases from the near side and passes them under the main line then up to the line that branches off. These cables are carrying more than 100,000 volts and they were only about 15 feet above the ground!

The image has been treated with an orton effect and texture layers.

  • Aperture: ƒ/8
  • Taken: 11 May, 2017
  • Focal length: 10mm
  • ISO: 100
  • Shutter speed: 1/500s

14th September 2018 Author
Oliver Wood
Categories
Experimental, Machine World, Monochrome
Tags
derbyshire, newmills, powerlines, pylon

Stanlow Refinery

Stanlow Refinery
Stanlow Refinery

The refinery at Stanlow – I like the way this image creates an interesting rhythm in shapes and lines and also a pleasing colour harmony. It was taken from a moving vehicle, moving at speed and I also like the effects that have resulted from this.

Stanlow refinery is one of the longest running oil refineries in the UK and quite a striking sight at night as virtually everything has lights on it.

  • Aperture: ƒ/8
  • Taken: 25 October, 2014
  • Focal length: 50mm
  • ISO: 100
  • Shutter speed: 1/45s

8th August 2018 Author
Oliver Wood
Categories
Colour Work, Experimental, Machine World, Places
Tags
artistic, industrial, industry, stanlow

Ringway Dead Line ?

Ringway Pylon
Ringway Pylon

This apparently abandoned powerline runs through what is left of the countryside that I grew up in. It is a curiously enduring feature that I vividly remember, not least because of an early onset of a fascination for all things electrical. The ancient CEB era towers, now almost 100 years old, march benignly across what used to be a mixture of dairy and arable land and much of it our playground in the 60s and 70s. The nearby airport was always audible but still seemed many miles away, even from Davenport Green. That is not so today, and many of the old hay fields and even some small rural hamlets are now buried under Manchester Airport’s ever expanding suite of long-stay car parks, a variety of road improvements and hotels. The old pylons that were once considered an unwelcome encroachment themselves are now one of the few historic artificial features that remain in this tiny pocket of rurality.

Davenport Green
Davenport Green
Slim Tower
Slim Main Tower
Tower Base
Tower Base

Obviously, it is interesting to consider what this line was intended for and to where it may have supplied power. A 33KV line such as this would carry enough power for a small residential area. Today there is only a short run remaining and terminals connecting to underground cables at Clay Lane and the M56 are both cut off. The direction is determinedly toward the airport or Styal and I suspect that it was a feeder line from the big old substation near Heald Green. The line would have been overhead on steel towers for the entire run. It may have brought power to a ground transformer near the Wellgreen to supply the then new residential areas around Ash Farm, Ash Lane and the corner of Shay Lane in the late 20s. Strange to think that this may have brought electricity to the house I grew up in when the house was first completed in 1928?

Davenport Green 2
Davenport Green
Tower Symmetry
Tower Symmetry
Buttery House Lane
Buttery House Lane
Toward Clay Lane
Toward Clay Lane

The faded red and white vitreous enamel CEB danger sign on the Davenport Green tower. This pre-dates the nationalisation of the UK electricity supply system in 1948. It could even be an original plate dating right back to 1926! This alone helps to put some historical perspective on this pylon which is almost certainly a rare remaining example of infrastructure from the very earliest days of electrical power distribution on steel lattice towers. A very early implementation of the (now rare) medium voltage network of the UK national grid system.

CEB
CEB

21st June 2018 Author
Oliver Wood
Categories
Experimental, Local History, Machine World, Monochrome, Photo Stories
Tags
cheshire, powerline, pylon, ringway

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