Today ought to be rather nice, like yesterday, The Met office think the sunshine will completely go away after 1pm, but the BBC say sunny spells should continue all afternoon. That would be a lot like yesterday, and so may well be right. Both forecasters agree that it will be quite warm this afternoon with the BBC saying 20° C, and the Met Office saying 21° C. Tomorrow may be very similar to today, but perhaps a degree cooler.

  Yesterday was probably one of the best days I've had for quite some time, although it did turn out to be very tiring. Sadly I seemed to get a second wind when going to bed, and suffered insomnia for an hour or so. More about that later, but back to the morning, and it all started with a positive looking weather forecast.

  My day was in some doubt in the morning because I thought my guts were going to play up. Fortunately, just before I was going to have my morning shower, I had an explosive clear out of my digestive tract. Before that it was just a couple of rather minor visits to the toilet. I was not absolutely sure I was empty, but considering what I remembered eating the previous day, I didn't think there could be much more to come.

  I didn't have a very early start, and it was about 11:45am when I grabbed my Canon EOS 600D camera, and started walking to Catford station. While my guts felt perfectly stable, I was not sure my legs were in good working order. Maybe it was, in part, just pessimism. I thought I felt exhausted, but while I didn't run up the stairs at the station, I did seem to ascend them without any trouble. Admittedly I did stop at the top to take just one deep breath for a few seconds.

  That was the start of a train spotting adventure that took me to Peckham Rye, Queens Road Peckham, Clapham High Road, Clapham Junction, Earlsfield, Waterloo, Waterloo East, and finally Catford Bridge station. I think I had only visited Queens Road Peckham station once before, and it was a bit of a dump. It has now been transformed, at least at platform level, since the inception of London Overground. It is quite a busy station with 4 trains per hour for London Overground services, and 4 trains per hour for Southern services - or counting both directions and both operators, that gives 16 trains per hour - enough for some useful train spotting !

  I only spent about 15 minutes at Queens Road Peckham before getting an Overground train back the way I had gone there towards Peckham Rye, and got off the train at Clapham High Street station. The only service there is 4 trains an hour in each direction from London Overground, but many other trains pass the station without stopping - including the occasional freight train.
 I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and was also tipped off by a platform announcement to say "stand clear of the edge of platform 2"  when this class 66 locomotive came into sight hauling quite a long load of freight wagons. It was just before this when I was approached by a member of staff who just wanted to confirm I was a train spotter, and not some sort of commercial photographer. With that confirmed she wished me luck, and left me to it.

  I was only there for 15 minutes before getting on the next train the two stops until it's final destination - Clapham Junction. One thing I noticed there was an absence of other train spotters (although I must admit I didn't check the end of the platforms used by Southern services. I think they had all been chased off by a little slimy toad. He was about 5ft 2in tall, and told me I couldn't take photographs on platform 11. He is of the new breed of railway employees, straight off the dole queue, and with no idea of railway heritage, and also no idea about English idioms. When I said "don't worry, I am getting on the approaching train, and will be soon out of your hair" he asked what I meant about his hair !

  At Earlsfield station there is very rarely any platform staff. I have no doubt I was seen on CCTV, but it was pretty obvious I was taking pictures of trains. It is quite a good place to take photos because there is a very frequent service there because trains to many final destinations call there.  It is also a good place to photograph class 455 trains. These old, but modernised rather well, and so not looking that old, trains are due to be scrapped in the not too distant future. Southern trains have scrapped all theirs, but South Western need to keep theirs running fo0r some time yet.

  For my purposes, keeping them running is good because I aim to get photos of as many as I can of them. On my class 455 spreadsheet sheet there are obviously holes in the section of trains run by Southern, but I can continue to slowly fill in some of the gaps in the section for South Western Railway. It all hangs on the introduction of their new class 701 trains.
  This is one of the new class 701 in the sidings by Clapham Junction station. The red lamp attached to the front is probably because it is not powered, but it could also mean "Do Not Move". This fleet of trains should have been in service as much as 2 years ago, but they have been plagued by troubles ranging from software problems, and driver opposition to the cab layout. There is more about this here > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_701 It mentions that the fleet may finally get in service by December this year. It seems a few have been cleared for running, but probably not in passenger service.

  I took the picture of 701044 from platform 7 - a much quieter platform, and one where the little toad probably didn't venture. I deliberately went there after spending about 20 minutes at Earlsfield. Not only does platform 7 give the best view of Clapham Junction sidings, but it is also where all the fast trains from the distant parts of the South Western Railway make one stop before going fast(ish) to Waterloo.
  By shear luck it was only a brief wait for a class 158 train to arrive. These diesel multiple units are kept going because there are a few places on the ends of the network that are not electrified. I sometimes used to change trains on my way home from work at Earlsfield for what could be called a novelty ride on trains only used on long distance services. I was more than happy to get on this class 158 train to go to Waterloo....or maybe I didn't ! The class 158 is only a two car train, but it was coupled to maybe two class 159 trains to form a much longer train. There may have been enough units couple together to make a 10 car train.
  I know the rear unit was 159020. You sometimes get a killjoy looking out for train spotter at Waterloo, and to save waving my big Canon camera around I took this picture using my mobile phone. No one really pays any attention to mobile phone photographers because everyone does it.  The train was held outside Waterloo for about 5 minutes, and so it couldn't really be called fast, but it was nice to hear the growl of the diesel engines instead of the whine of electric motors.

  I didn't hang around at Waterloo. This was partly because I didn't want to run into another jobsworth, but mostly because I wanted to have a pee. I made the stupid assumption that the toilets on Waterloo East would be open as they were 90% of the time when I was commuting from work through there. This time they weren't, so I distracted myself by taking a few more photos. I initially started by using my mobile phone, but as confirmed later, it is not so good on moving trains unless I set it to pro mode and used a fast shutter speed - which I didn't. After a short while I got the big Canon camera out again.

  Apart from the toad at Clapham Junction I had quite a good three hours out on the railway. My luck even lasted to the end when I only had an 8 minute wait for the next train from Waterloo East to Catford Bridge. Some of the notable things included the "stairs of death" at Earlsfield station. They are a pretty high set of stairs, and in the days when I was suffering angina they literally could have killed me. I was very happy when they installed lifts there.  Eventually, after my quad heart bypass operation, and once I got a bit fitter, I would deliberately shun the lift in favour of the stairs. With practice I could keep up a reasonable pace up those stairs, and with some effort of will, able to step onto the platform and keep on walking without stopping to draw breath. Yesterday I did stop for one deep breath, but it was more a breath of triumph that even during a time when I consider myself quite unfit, going up those stairs didn't frazzle me.

  I felt quite tired when I got home. I finally had my pee, and then I made 4 rice cakes with salami on them (plus a squirt of low sugar brown sauce). After eating I really wanted to have a snooze, but I decided to make a start at looking at some of the photos I had taken. I copied them all onto my PC, and started to select and edit the best of them. What I was really looking for were pictures of trains I had never recorded in my big train spreadsheet before. It turned out that I had take 21 new photos to record on the spreadsheet.

  Although I was feeling really tired, I continued the selecting, editing, and recording, until I had gone through the lot. I can't be exact because I only thought of it later, but basically from the time I left home, until the time I had edited and recorded the very last picture, had taken about 8 hours - it was like a working day ! I will admit that I did some of the last pictures while watching the usual three Star Treks around dinner time - initially during the first commercial break, but then I carried on mostly just listening to Star Trek.

  All that hard work interfered with preparing dinner, and I ended up doing something more simple, and from previous experiment known to be safe. My dinner was just a tub of low calorie and low sugar ice cream, although I will confess to gnawing on a chunk of cheese a bit later. I didn't even have a lie down, as intended once the picture editing and TV was finished. I stayed at my computer desk and did all but one clue of The Metro quick crossword (I had picked up a copy on my way home at Catford Bridge station). I did look at the cryptic crossword but while I had a few thoughts about some clues, I didn't solve a single clue before I put the paper aside to watch more TV.

  I am not sure why I pushed myself to watch Have I Got News For You at 9pm. I thought I felt tired enough to go to bed. It seems that while watching I got my second wind or something. I went to bed straight after the programme had finished at 10pm, but it was gone 11pm before I fell asleep. I didn't seem to sleep very well last night. I think at first I was waking up about once an hour. I thought it was to pee, but when I did go to the toilet I realised I was far from bursting. Some of the reason was the old too hot and too cold problem. Like the last few nights, I put the heater on low at about 3am, and slept mostly uncovered. By 5am I had the heater on full.

  Well despite have a bad night, my day out, and ice cream dinner, turned out OK. It wasn't as low as hoped, but 8.3mmol/l was a good blood glucose reading. I guess I don't feel too bad this morning. It helps that I have a good thing to look forward to. The main event today should be a lunchtime drink with Angela. The hoped for bright and warm weather forecast has drawn her out !