21st July 2010

It's a late sunny and warm summer's afternoon and I find myself standing in a field of corn about one and half miles south of Micheldever station, just north of Northbrook. It's a beautiful place to be and incredibly peaceful. Just the gentle breeze causing the slender stalks of corn to sway back and forth, and the rich blue sky is peppered with fluffy white cumulus clouds. The scene is picture-perfect and the promise of a few trains encourages me to stay a while.

At 17.20, Freightliner Class 66 no. 66511 was the first freight on the scene, operating on the 6M42 15.00 Wool to Neasden sand empties, a service that ran on a mostly weekly cycle from the single siding just east of Wool station. The traffic has since finished and that siding rusts away quietly, waiting for the day when either some new traffic starts, or the track lifting gang takes it away!

Moments later, after the train had passed and the silence returned, the unmistakable tell-tale sounds of a twin rotor helicopter quickly grows and all of a sudden I find myself the unlikely target for not one, but two, Army "Chinooks" on exercise, seemingly strafing me as I stood in the middle of the field looking like the perfect target! I was the proverbial “sitting duck”! It was a surreal moment and I was almost tempted to duck too, such was the apparent intent on their manoeuvres. Goodness knows what was going through their minds when they saw me....