27/5/2012 A sunny summer morning... (nothing to do with music)

Subject	A sunny summer morning... (nothing to do with music)
DateCreated	6/11/2012 2:49:00 PM
PostedDate	6/16/2012 9:09:00 PM
	Summer has arrived! But how long for? I went out for a walk in the morning and ended up getting sunburnt! Something out of the ordinary happened locally - in the distance can be spotted a broken down steam train....  It sat there for about half an hour before limping into the station assisted by a diesel locomotive on the front. Looks like a nice sunny day out in the country doesn't it? Actually, this is North London. Fortunately I happened to have my camera on me to record this event - probably the first time in nearly half a century that a steam train has stopped at this station, although it wasn't supposed to. It's not often anything interesting happens round these parts. The funny thing was, there was hardly anyone around to see this. It's not like it was early in the morning or anything - this was around 11.30, but nobody seemed to notice! The loco appeared to have had some sort of mishap down the line and a couple of the footplate crew had fresh bandages on their arms, so I'm guessing a pipe might have burst in the cab or something and they got scalded by escaping steam. Some paramedics arrived and one of the crew left with them, presumably taken to hospital. Hopefully he'll be OK - I didn't get the impression it was anything too serious, although probably very unpleasant for him. It was quite an experience seeing something like this on my doorstep - sights, sounds, and smells taking me back to a bygone age - this powerful and charismatic beast not just flying past in the distance, but right before my eyes and close enough to touch. After another half an hour or so soaking up this experience I assume a spare slot in the timetable was found and this impressive machine limped off into the distance to continue it's journey - I have no idea how far it got... I felt like I just witnessed a little piece of history.