Deja Vu

After I shot the Duchess at Abergele:



I made my way to Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales. Bangor calls itself a city, and has a cathedral to prove it. Despite this however, the station is eleventy million miles from anywhere remotely interesting/useful related to the city itself, half the high street is empty shop units and the other half appears to be charity shops and chapels and a small shopping centre, and none, I repeat, none, of the pubs open at lunchtime, or any time before 5pm, serve anything like cask conditioned ale or proper pub food. I'm in no rush to go back again myself.

However the real reason behind my visit was the station. It's nothing special, a very small service for a mainline route, 2 platforms and 2 through lines, the latter of which look very underused. But it was the fact the Duchess was passing through the station which brought me here, due to the fact my calendar in my kitchen portrays the Duchess passing through the station heading in the same direction as here, except using the through line and shot further forward than this point. And the engine was maroon when the image was shot in 2009. But apart from that it is the same. LMS Princess Coronation Class 8P 4.6.2 number 46233 passing through Bangor with the return working of the Welsh Dragon from Holyhead to Crewe on 19th May 2012.