WELCOME TO MY PHOTO GALLERY
I hope you enjoy looking round and would welcome any comments and further information you have. This blog is to help you find your way around the gallery by telling you what's new and giving you tips on using the gallery. I will continue to expand it and if there's any topic you think needs clarifying, please let me know.
Gallery restructuring
I have made several references on the home page about gallery restructuring. I have now completed the task for the present, but now that is done I will be able to concentrate on the Oldham update which will see some changes just regarding photographs that come under that heading.
To understand the restructuring I need to explain the basic structures of Zenfolio galleries. There are two types of gallery, although to the visitor there isn't really a visible difference between them. What Zenfolio call galleries are groups of individual image files, whereas a collection is a set of links to images that are held in a gallery somewhere else. Collections allow the same photograph to be used in several different places reflecting the different contexts in which it can be seen. One use of collections is when I show latest additions to a subject theme, as updates will usually be located in multiple places and it is an easy way to bring together the new images.
It is of course possible to not use collections at all but instead to upload the photograph multiple times. However, this is a very inefficient way of using storage and also means that if there is a need to amend the caption, or there is a better scan now available, you have to do it multiple times and there can be a risk of contradiction if the job isn't done thoroughly. There are occasions when I have done this, when the captions required for different contexts need to be completely different, but this can usually avoided.
When I first started with the Zenfolio gallery in 2011 the initial project was to rebuild the galleries I had previously shown on Fotopic (remember them?). These were really the Saddleworth galleries which were based on the operations rather than the vehicles. I therefore created galleries for each route and this worked fine for Saddleworth as it wasn't a fleet gallery. However, as I created the Pontypridd/Taff-Ely gallery and even more so with the Rhondda one it became apparent that a much better approach was to put the photograph in a gallery related to the vehicle and then in a collection for the route. Hence the restructuring to convert operations galleries to collections and putting the original photograph in a fleet gallery. I also quickly realised the best way to do this was to put it in a gallery representing its original owner with any subsequent owners being shown by collections. Occasionally I have deviated from this rule when the original operator was so obscure (from my point of view) that I considered it most unlikely there would be any more photographs to add to that gallery.
As a consequence I have created a lot more fleet galleries than was the case before and just today have revised the menu bar settings to reflect better the new structure, which does mean that most photographs can be seen in more than one place. Some galleries have themes applied which reflect the liveries of the vehicles. This is a time-consuming process and I have limited it to fleets where I envisage there will be a significant amount of new additions and most of the Greater Manchester municipalities, plus PTE and successors, are therefore already done. Some more will be created in the future when I start adding to the galleries.
One end-result of putting photographs in a gallery representing the original owner is that in fleets with a mixture of vehices purchased new and secondhand, it is necessary to split the fleet into galleries for new vehicles and collections for secondhand ones. This is a little clunky for small fleets but not really an issue for larger fleet when they are split up into batches anyway. Unfortunately it isn't possible to have gallery that is also partly a collection.
You will note that for a lot of the new galleries the descriptions are just generic - as time goes by I will gradually work on that as I add something more. Also, captions for earlier photographs such as those in the Saddleworth Buses section would often make reference to the previous or next photograph. This would work well in its original route context but not when grouped by vehicle. Please excuse anomalies like this which I will try to correct, along with some captions which have become very much out-of-date in the time since they were written. With over 11,000 photos now on site I hope you will appreciate this requires something of a balancing act - if I spend too much time correcting anomalies then I will never have time to add photos. There is also potential to significantly improve the images for some photos that have been on the site for a while and again this is something I am working on, on an ad hoc basis.
I hope this rather technical blog entry makes sense and explains the way things work. If I haven't made things clear then please contact me and I'll try to clarify.
Buses in the Rhondda
There had been a very long gap with hardly any updates but as can now be seen, this doesn't mean nothing was happening. The gallery on Rhondda's buses became a massive project and I would like to have done it in smaller chunks, but there wasn't a clear way of doing that and the final structure didn't become clear immediately. The update has comprised (currently) 1,960 photos plus a lot of text and as always I wish to thank the many people who have generously made their photos available for the galleries.
The gallery covers all bus services operating in the Rhondda valleys until the Stagecoach takeover of Rhondda Buses in 1997, a date that is already much longer ago than it feels to be. Rhondda Transport had a virtual monopoly of bus operation in the valleys and that tends to make determining the scope of the galleries a bit simpler. Only one major service in the valleys remains to be fully covered, which is the 172 Aberdare to Porthcawl which was operated from the Red & White depot in Aberdare until 1992 - this will get covered before too long and the period from 1992 to 1997 is already covered.
The coverage also extends south to Cardiff, dealing with the joint Rhondda and Western Welsh services between Cardiff and Pontypridd. To complete the geographical coverage this has also included the Cardiff to Creigiau/Church Village service of Western Welsh, but in any case this route became worked by Porth depot and Rhondda Buses in later years. When the next major South Wales gallery is completed, which will cover Red & White services from Cardiff and Pontypridd to Aberdare, the gallery will achieve almost complete coverage of bus services in Pontypridd, at least in the twentieth century.
Rhondda Transport was very strongly associated with the AEC Regent and here is a typical example, although not quite so typical as it was one of five RT-type chassis which were never common new to operators other than London:
After being absorbed by Western Welsh the operations at Porth then became National Welsh and following the Market Analysis Project there were extensive service revisions in 1981 which led to the New Rhondda local identity on the standard NBC poppy red livery:
Then in 1992 after National Welsh collapsed Rhondda Buses Limited was established and the valleys had their own local operator again. A new image, based on the final National Welsh livery, was adopted and the quality of presentation improved markedly. A lot of new buses arrived, mainly Dennis Darts, and they could look very smart in the sun:
The coverage also extends to routes jointly operated by Rhondda Transport. The service from Cardiff to Merthyr Tydfil was joint with the municipal operators of the two towns (or city as Cardiff later became) but latterly was worked exclusively by Merthyr Tydfil. As a result their fleet is quite well covered as most of the vehicles found in the fleet worked the service at one time or another. The Leyland Leopard was a favoured chassis in Merthyr Tydfil for some years and is probably the most typical vehicle:
The most unusual joint operation covered the brief participation by Rhondda Buses in the TrawsCambria service and as a consequence I have covered the earlier history of that service which brings some unexpected vehicles and locations such as this Crosville Cymru Leyland Leopard leaving Caernarfon:
I hope you like this taster of the latest additions and go on to explore them in detail. I always welcome any contributions, both photographs and also historical information, you can either comment directly on the photo or get in touch using the contact page.
A long journey
I have just added a small gallery covering the marathon journey made by the New South Wales Government Railways Class 46 electric locomotives, all of which were built in Stockton-on-Tees, taken by road over the Pennines to Liverpool and shipped from there to Sydney. The story covers the first locomotive 4601 and has been done to support those looking after the locomotive today in preservation. This journey took the locomotive through Saddleworth and Oldham and a few photographs have already appeared in the gallery as a consequence. This one has not, though:
Whilst it may not appear that there is much progress on the gallery, in fact there is a lot of work taking place on a major new gallery of well over 1000 photos. I am expecting this will become live in the next couple of months. It will be followed by updates to some of the existing galleries.
Austrian trams galore!
Today sees the completion of both updates and additions to the tram galleries, all of Austrian systems. Whilst mainly my own material I must thank Phil Sposito and an old university friend Keith Halton for contributing some excellent vintage photos.
The Vienna gallery sees a significant update which has covered many parts of the system but particularly more recent extensions such as the new line to Hausfeldstraße on the north side of the Danube. It will also probably be my last chance to add photos of the venerable c3 trailers, there are just four survivors built in 1960/1 and they are unlikely to be there when I next return, in fact it transpires they were making their last run almost as I wrote the blog, on commemorative trips relating to major service changes on 2nd September 2017.
One of the added photos is this unusual view of the very busy terminus at Schottentor which has two services terminating on the upper level and no less than five below:
I have also added coverage of the very special system at Gmunden. Up to now the shortest tram system in the world (I believe) with a fleet of three service vehicles (the newest dating from 1961) plus a couple of vintage trams, the staff of six provide an excellent service. It is also notable for having a significant length of track with a 10% gradient. It is owned by the famous Austrian operator Stern und Hafferl and current plans will see it linked to the line to Vorchdorf and operated by modern Vossloh articulated trams. However, in the gallery at the moment the old order reigns supreme:
Finally, the trams of the city of Innsbruck get a gallery. This is a modern and expanding system but one with a lot of history. It also features a couple of spectacular routes in the line to Igls and the Stubaitalbahn to Fulpmes. Hopefully the photo below says it all:
Pontypridd major update
Although it might have appeared that little was going on in the gallery for some time, in fact a major update has been in progress on the Pontypridd gallery. Whilst things like this are never complete, there are no further planned updates to this gallery although if suitable new material becomes available it will be added.
This new update comprises approximately 450 new images covering all aspects of Pontypridd UDC and Taff-Ely BC operation. The trolleybus fleet is now included and the coverage of the route network has been improved, both in geographical coverage and in outlining the evolution of the network.
I should like to thank again the many photographers who have supported the gallery with some truly excellent images, it has been a delight to work with much of the material made available.
After many months of working on this I have lost the ability to read through the captions critically and so there are bound to be errors and omissions. Please feel free to point them out as I want the gallery to be as accurate as possible.
Work will now proceed on updating several other galleries and moving on to other aspects of bus operation in South Wales, with the emphasis being on operation in the Valleys. The next new gallery will be on Rhondda Transport but I'm not making any promises when!
