Friday 19 August 2011

Sentinel 8837

I paid a swift visit to the Middleton Railway in Hunslet, Leeds on 14th August 2011 hoping to see their Sentinel (8837) in action. I was given a very warm welcome and, after a ride up the 1 in 37, was provided with a guide to show me around the workshops and in particular to the Sentinel.

Sentinel 8837 is not the priority restoration project at the moment and is unlikely to see steam for perhaps four years. The body and chassis are currently in the workshop with the boiler and engine stored away elsewhere safely.

Rear view...
...front view (or is it the other way round?)
Apologies for the camera shake. (There are two possible reasons for this: (1) I'd been to a party the previous night and was in need of restoration (2) I'd recently been shown how to use the manual controls on the camera to get the very best pictures. I'll leave you to figure out which was the dominant cause. Needless to say, being shown how to and knowing how to use a camera's manual mode when in a hurry are two different things. I'll stick to automatic in future!).

Many thanks to the Middleton Railway for their warm welcome and I look forward to seeing 8837 in action in the future.

4 comments:

  1. So that's what you were up to!

    There's a third (more likely) possible reason and applies to both manual and automatic modes: slow shutter speed due to low light levels. If you were taking pictures quickly (as you said you were) you might not have taken sufficient time to steady the camera before taking the picture.

    Next time check what the shutter speed is showing in your view finder. I'm OK down to 1/30 sec (or 1/20 on a good day), below that I need to use a tripod. You might be able to do better (or worse) than that.

    You can alter the exposure like David showed us: this will alter the exposure time accordingly, but may or may not give you a good picture re showing what it really looked like at the time.

    As you were indoors, I suspect even playing around with Manual mode as you were doing, the light levels were such that whatever you did, whether you were in Manual or Auto mode probably would have made v little difference to your pictures sharpness.

    Next time I'll talk to you rather than writing an essay, but you were out at the time!

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  2. I know next to nothing about the technical side of railways but my little boy loves them. We've had great fun travelling round the railways in Wales - his favourite is the Teifi Valley Railway

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  3. I have yet to visit the Teifi Valley Railway but need to as they have a particular Sentinel loco that we want to copy some parts from. Have a look at "Remaining Double-engined Sentinel locos" from the link below "Start here" for details.

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