The Lakeside & Haverthwaite Railway is a small railway line running between Haverthwaite in Cumbria, a few miles up the line to Lakeside which is at the southern tip of Lake Windemere. They have Furness Railway Number 20, Britain’s oldest working standard gauge steam locomotive.

We took a trip on the railway during our summer hols. They run steam trains & diesels on the single track line. Our carriages were pulled by the Austerity 0-6-0ST “Cumbria”, a steam train.

The trip doesn’t take long and pulls into the only other station on the line at Lakeside. We took a cruise up Windermere to Ambleside & back again, in time to catch a train back to Haverthwaite.

Once the train pulls into Haverthwaite, they have to unhook it, drive it round to the front of the cariages & then hook it up again for the return journey. They unhooked the train & replensihed it with water. I took several shots during the process, then went up to the footbridge to take a pic of the engine going to the front. On this particular occasion, the engine went into the siding & was replaced by a diesel.

As it pulled its new group of passngers out of the station again I realised my rucksack containging my Canon 100-400mm L IS, my Sigma 10-20mm & my Canon 300D was still on the luggage rack in the last but one carriage!

We jumped in the car & drove the few miles up to Lakeside, beating the train by about 5 minutes. As it pulled in I jumped aboard but the rucksack was no longer in the carriage. Fortunately, the guard had rescued it intact with photography gear, lucky!

My father-in-law Tom Sharp died on 9th September aged 92. He was cremated yesterday in Leicester.

For the funeral reception we wanted to display some photographs of him from his earlier life. Using window light, I put the old photos on the living room floor and, using a tripod, took photos of them.

I imported the photographs into Lightroom, made some adjustments & saved them out into Photoshop. I then tidied them up, removed hundreds of dust particles & sorted out some scratches & tears, converted them info black & white (originals were B&W but photographed in colour).

I printed them out on my Epson R220 & then mounted them onto boards for display at his service.

Tom was born in 1916 during the Battle of Verdun. As a result, he was named ‘Thomas Verdun Sharp’. As he grew up, ‘Verdun’ developed into the nickname ‘Vod’.

He married Gladys during the War, managing to get leave for the wedding but having to go back to the Navy the very next day. He was married to Gladys until her death in 2002.

The original wedding photo was color retouched, as was the tradition in those days before colour photography was widely available for everyone.

He served on 4 ships during his time in the Navy from 1940 to 1946. In the crew shot below, Tom is 2nd from the left in the back row.

Although Tom was 92 years old when he died, his death came suddenly & unexpectedly.

He was a loving father, father-in-law & grandad to three. He was a truly lovely man & will be sadly missed.

Rest in peace, Dad.

I’ve been printing out photographs of my father-in-law for his funeral tomorrow. One my way across the garden I noticed a couple of spider webs spun out across our patio.

By way of a break, I grabbed the camera, stuck the Tamron 90mm Macro on & then added some extension tubes. All shots were taken with extension tubes fitted, manual focus & the Sigma Ring Flash.

These photos are of 3 different spiders. By the time I returned to the first one, he’d bagged an insect & was busy chomping away on it.

And here’s a couple of flowers I shot aswell. I have no idea what they are; I’m no gardener.

No, I’m not AWOL. After we got back from holiday - the wettest in 25 years, by the way, I wrote up a couple of entries to showcase some of the pics I took in the Lake District.

Before I could format the photos into the style I use on the blog, sadly my father-in-law died. All my time has been taken up helping my wife prepare for the funeral which will be on Monday. Part of this preparation has been copying some photos of him which we will display at his funeral reception.

Normal service will be resumed in due course.