Gazing out of my window at my severe, shivering, sleety surroundings here at T.P.A.S.’s Svalbard H.Q. I got to trying to remember what a blue sky looks like. Or the colour green. Then up pops*1 an email from friend of this very society, Adrian Trainsett Esq. – whose certificate bears the number 0484, adorning the wall of his drawing room as it does.
Contained within this popped-up email was this first photo, taken by his good-self, of an azure sky background to a new-ish telegraph pole on the railway line near Oakworth on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. A gorgeous, busy pole with a full complement of 8 dropwires. It could however have proven more gorgeous, scrumptious even, had it’s erectors deemed fit to equip it with some ceramic insulators. Yes, I know they don’t tie them off on insulators any more, but they wouldn’t half look the part and can be had for a handful of beans off eBay.
Mr Trainsett also clearly frequents various photograph repository websites such as Flickr and sent us a link to this next beauty. Another insulator-less blue sky pole. This disused pole on a disused railway bridge across the river Ythan. My research of Chinese water courses turned up a blank though. That’s because the Ythan is in Aberdeenshire not Zhejiang province. This photo is from the collection of one chairman_pete who describes himself as a flute-playing, photograph-taking engineer from Aberdeen. His is an eclectic photostream and this photo is now in my unofficial all-time top 5 telegraph poles.
*1 Yes, Adrian’s email really did pop up out of my computer like a piece of toast and even required the burnt bits to be scraped off before I could read it.