2011 reviewed very badly.

And so ends 2011. Another year of ups and downs for me, so let’s try and categorise things a little, and maybe get some perspective for myself…

Health. Bit of a shitter on this front if I’m honest. It started out all right until I got an infected blister on my foot in April, which lead to a continuous bout if cellulitis from which I’ve still not fully recovered. It’s landed me in hospital several times this year, so god bless socialized medicine… Also, my skin has gone batshit insane these last few months too, providing yet more fun and games. Hopefully on the mend now though… I’m undergoing UVB light therapy, along with some rigorous antibiotics and steroid treatments, which so far seem to be having a positive effect

Work. Started the year working for giant banking cunt Barclaycard, signed off sick with the nervous breakdown they drove me to. Luckily I managed to find another job with an infinitely better employer in the form of Glamorgan University in February, so my mental health has taken a solid upswing. The pay packet however, has plummeted badly, but more on that in a while… The digital colouring work has been thoroughly patchy, a mix of very small, sometimes unpaid gigs, and false starts. On the plus side, some projects have surfaced like Team MOBILE and The Pride, so I’m grateful they worked out. Hopefully I can get my arse in gear a bit more in 2012 and nail down some more consistent work.

Money. Changing jobs, losing colouring work, and trying to finance my wife’s university course has meant that money has been shockingly shit thus year. Living in overdrafts and credit cards, it’s only the generosity of parents and grandparents over the year that has staved off serious financial pickles. The hope is that once Ceri’s done with Uni in May, we can maybe start digging ourselves out of this hole. Time will tell on this front, eh!

Creativity. A good year, if only for the fact that me, Dan Harris and Jim Bampfield managed to get our collective arses in gear and finally self-publish our ‘Lou Scannon’ comic. Got two issues done in 2011, hoping to get three done in 2012 – if you’re reading this and you haven’t bought them yet, then why the hell not? They’re great! Get ‘em here – http://www.louscannon.co.uk. Off you go!

I had planned a longer post about this all, but it’s not flowing…. and hey, why look bad, there’s a new year, a fresh start, lets see where 2012 takes me. Off I fuck.

Pontypridd Tram Road Halt

Just another brief post about some old local railway architecture…

As mentioned in my previous posts, we know that the huge former-TVR station in Pontypridd has been the area’s primary station for ages, and that there used to be a secondary station a couple of hundred yards up the road, run by the rival Barry Railway, named Pontypridd Graig.

In researching that second station I was surprised to find out the existence of a third (albeit much smaller) railway station in Pontypridd! A few hundred yards down the track from the main station, just at the beginning of the Broadway in Treforest, used to stand Pontypridd Tram Road Halt. Part of yet another rival company, the line ran to Caerphilly and onto Newport. I was surprised to learn of this station, because the area where it once stood has been so extensively remodeled over the years that there is very, very little evidence remaining of it.

The railway line from Pontypridd used to cross over the Broadway via a bridge. The only evidence of the bridge now remaining is one of the abutments, everything else has been swept away to widen the roads and provide a link to the A470 through-road.

The bridge goes up around the start of the 1900's... the entrance to the station appeared to have been a walkway, unseen from here on the other side of the bridge.The view from the other side of the bridge, now happily in use for several yearsThe end, the bridge is finally demolished in the 60's, the station having been shut down some four decades earlier. The road and earthworks here were remodelled numerous times up to the start of the 21st century, but the abuttment wall remains.

The Graig Tunnel

Earlier this year, I began working for Glamorgan University in Treforrest, South Wales. While using the Stilts restaurant on campus, I saw what appeared to be a bricked up tunnel mouth in the car park, and my curiosity was piqued. Cue a camera click…

Bricked up tunnel-mouth, Treforrest Campus

This was one end of the Graig Tunnel, one of the few remainders of the long-defunct Barry Railway. This railway line began construction in 1885, and duplicated much of the routes used by its competitors. Eventually it was absorbed into the Great Western Railway in 1923.

 

At the other end of the tunnel sat Barry Railway’s ‘Pontypridd’ station, a few hundred yards up the road from the more recognisable (and still in use today) Taff Vale Railway ‘Pontypridd’ station. Following the unification of the lines, on 1/7/1924 Barry’s station was renamed ‘Pontypridd Graig’, while it’s Taff Vale counterpart became ‘Pontypridd Central’. The Graig station eventually went the way of the dodo, and ‘Pontypridd Central’ lost the ‘Central’, and became the big daddy of railway stations within the Valleys.

 

 

Bricked up on campus, April 2011

 

So let’s have a bit of a wander back through the years. We’ll start where I did, at the bricked up tunnel mouth on Glamorgan’s campus… There’s not a great deal there now. A tarmac car park broadly follows the old trackbed for a while, but that’s about it. 

Still bricked up, mid 1950's

 

Stepping back a little further, you can see it’s in a better state now than it was in the mid-1950′s, but it’s still a shadow of its former self…

 

Tunnel mouth, Treforrest, 1922

 

 

But going back further still I found a photo from the Rhondda Cynon Taff archives from somewhere around 1922, which shows the tunnel as it was while it was still in use under the Barry Railway era. As you can see, it’s in much better nick here… this line ran on down the Valleys before veering off toward Barry (passing in parallel the Walnut Tree Viaduct, which I’ve detailed in a previous post). 

 

So onto (or rather, into) the tunnel itself. Yes, it’s still there. No, you can’t get into it. Well, not legally at least. It is still on recent Ordinance Survey maps of Pontypridd…

 

OS map of Pontypridd. Conviently, the tunnel is marked as 'disused tunnel'.

 

 On the map, you see the University in the bottom right corner, and there’s a small red arrow in the top right, noting the other end of the tunnel – right smack in the grounds of the present-day Dewi Sant Hospital car park. The small red dot nearby the arrow is the current-day Pontypridd station, so you can see how close the two rival stops were.

 

Inside the tunnel, June 2011

 

There’s little to see in the tunnel itself. This picture was taken from the hospital side, through the barrier, and as you can see it looks fairly okay structurally, but it’s very damp and not pretty. Some kids have lost a football in there, and I’m pretty sure that the light source at the back of the tunnel is NOT the other mouth (as it’s bricked up, natch). I think it’s probably a contractor’s vehicle, or crane or something, and the light is reflecting off the number plate. I could be wrong though.

 

Hospital side platform remains.

At the bottom corner of the tunnel mouth are the sole remains of the Graig station itself – the small receding slope of one of the platforms. The platforms and the tunnel weren’t built together – the tunnel was cut through in 1888 (a date it proudly bears over the hospital-side tunnel mouth), and the station itself was added later, in 1896. 

  

1888. A mere 123 years ago, at time of writing.

 

So let’s have a gander at the hospital-side tunnel mouth as it looks today. There’s absolutely nothing remaining of the Graig station at all, the platforms and trackbed are long gone… time and development has surely swept them away.

 

No station here....

 

The view away from the tunnel.

You can see from the view looking away from the tunnel exactly where the station used to run, but it’s all bricked up and a telephone exchange building now sits on the site where the bottom end of the station would have run, and it’s trackbed along with it. The grating over the tunnel mouth is a very recent addition – for the last few decades it’s been totally bricked up. At least it now affords us a view into the tunnel’s murky depths.

 

Going back a few years, we get to see the finishing of construction of the hospital car park around 2005. Going back to 1999, a neat view of the opposite wall not yet bricked up, and with the overgrown platforms now still visible underneath the grass…

 

August 2005

 

The view away, back in 1999.

At this point in time the old remains of the Graig station are looking quite shabby, having remained untouched since at least the early 1970′s. The next two pics are from May 1973, and it’s clear to see that the station has been neglected for quite some time… the bricked up tunnel-mouth here is a little different to the one from 2005, so that’s obviously been amended over the years, but little else has been tended too, with lots of debris and rubble littering the place (presumably as a result of the next picture…)

 

 

 

The old platforms are more visible in 1973.

 

 

Another view of the crumbling platforms from 1973.

 

 

Skipping back even further to 1965, we see the buildings unceremoniously dumped on the site to help with the building of the Dewi Sant hospital itself.

 

Dewi Sant hospital under construction... 1965

 And prior to that, I could find very little else in terms of imagery of the old station… until I stumbled across this… This view of the station seems to be taken from the site of the telephone exchange, but it gives you an idea of the size of it, and of how sadly neglected it eventually became. Operating from 16/3/1896 until 7/7/1930, passenger traffic was finally re-routed through Pontypridd Central from 10/7/1930, and it runs as such to this day. The line here and toward Tonteg was briefly re-used just before D-Day in the Second World War to store railway engines bound for Europe, as the deep valleys that the line ran through provided good bomb cover, but following the end of the war the true decline of the Valley’s railway network began, leaving Pontypridd Graig station nothing but a footnote in Valley’s transport history, and a disused railway tunnel in a hospital and university car park.

Happier days for the station during its Barry Railways days, as 'Pontypridd'. 1922

 

Photography credit to Ceri Jones, Nick Catford, Chris Howells, Courtney Haydon & Cyril Crawley and Rhondda Cynon Taff county council.

Further reading: www.trackbed.com, www.disused-stations.org.uk/p/pontypridd_graig/index.shtml, www.ratsandwich.co.uk, www.rcts.org.uk/features/mysteryphotos/show.htm?img=B-65-13, http://archive.rhondda-cynon-taf.gov.uk, www.flickr.com/photos/cerij4242/

And lo, he treats his blog like his old paper diary… and forgets about it.

Yeah… my updating got a bit better for a while there didn’t it? And then it tapered off. Well, I’ve been busy. And lazy. Hard to do, but I’ve managed to combine these two concepts fairly effectively. So let’s take a trip back through the weeks, and see just what the hell I’ve been up to that has prevented me from updating this fine corner of t’Internet.

Colouring & Comic Work

Well, as the name of the blog implies really.

I finished colouring issue 1 of The Pride for Joe Glass and Dead Star Publishing – check it out….. HERE!!

I’ve almost finished colouring MISFITS from M.O.B.I.L.E for ROK Global – check it out…. HERE!!

I’m still beavering away on Crucible for PrintMedia Publishing – check it out… HERE!!

I’m also colouring a graphic novel that I can’t really tell you about yet, but I will in time. Promise.

I’m also trying to get colouring work on IDW’s Transformers #81 (Marvel continuity continuation). We’ll see how this pans out…

Lou Scannon, my self-published co-creative project (with the delectable Dan Harris) continues apace. Issue 1 has almost completely sold out, and we’re looking to launch issue 2 at the ThoughtBubble convention in Leeds in November. Dan and I are beavering away at the art right now, while co-writer Jim Bampfield is working through some additional content for it. Should be an absolute stormer!

Holidays

Well, of a sort. A plan to go down a caravan for two weeks in Dawlish Warren on the English south coast when… well, south, when the caravan got vandalised. So instead I had two weeks off, in which I planned to focus on colouring, and on decorating my spare room into a studio space for me. Predictably, none of this happened due to real life being an uncompromising bastard, with towing of cars, delivery of IKEA catalogues, and other such distractions.

Still, the hols weren’t all bad. Ceri’s dad visited from Australia, so a catch up was had by all, and we got to spend a few days in Portsmouth with Ceri’s family, soaking up the sights, the sea air, and massively gusty winds. Took in the Royal Armouries Museum which was frankly brilliant, and full of more military hardware than Steven Segal’s garage. Stonehenge was a bit pricey for what it offered though. Never mind.

Auto Assembly 2011

My big event of the year! Another cracking weekend. Caught up with my fellow Transformers creatives, chewed the fat with like-minded fans, was appalled by the bar prices/service like everyone else, and basically had a whale of a time while trying not to worry about rioters kicking off and torching the city centre! Can’t wait till next years. Mine and Liam Shalloo’s colouring workshop lacked, well… any kind of structure this time around, but oh well. Hopefully we’ll improve it next year, try and get it organised somewhat sooner!

So that’s what I’ve been up to. That and being lazy.

Auto Assembly 2011

I’m a bit excited about this weekend. Why? Well, because I’ll be a guest at Auto Assembly 2011, the UK’s biggest and greatest Transformers convention! Wahay! You can get more info on the event here – www.autoassembly.org.uk. Special mention must go to Simon Plumbe and his family for organising this frankly mammoth and unforgiving task. The dude is a total and utter legend.

Assuming that Birmingham hasn’t been reduced to a fine dust due to England’s new-found affection for lawless rioting, I’ll be showing up on Friday afternoon, and buggering off the following Monday afternoon.

So, what am I doing there? Well, I’ll be catching up with fellow TF fans and friends I’ve not seen since last year, and trying to find cheap booze and a Masterpiece Rodimus Prime that won’t destroy my August mortgage payment. I’ll also be signing any comics attendees want to throw my way – just accost me, and I’ll dole out my signature like jelly babies. I’ll be offering my sketching services (black & white sketches, or glorious full colour sketches for a little more - on account of me being, y’know… a colourist!)  – again, just accost me and I’ll scribble away…

I’ll also be selling a few Transformers related full-colour A4 prints – here’s some cropped previews… 

Hardhead (IDW style)

And I may have a few other bits and bobs on the go as well. I still have a few IDW Movie-verse comics to sell – I did try giving them away for free last year, but alas, no-takers. Bugger.

 

 

Kup (from his Nick Roche 'insane' era)

On the Saturday afternoon at 2pm, fellow colourist Liam Shalloo and I will be presenting a comic colouring workshop, showing a captive audience how we ruin otherwise brilliant artwork! The workshop was good fun last year, and it’s always a challenge to stop Liam swearing like a bloody sailor in front of the kiddies. In the past we’ve showcased the colours using simple presentations – this year, I’m going to try to see if we can maybe colour a panel live, and show people the process ‘as it happens’ so to speak. Either way, should be good. And people will get to have a look at my laughably wrecked old graphic tablet. But I love it, so there. 

 

T-Rex Face Off!

Finally, I’ll be selling copies of my own co-created Lou Scannon comic, ‘The Wolfman Of Astrotraz’. With half the original print run sold, I’m hoping to put a dent in the remainder, and drum up interest in the upcoming issue 2! 

 

I’ll be plonking a decent fun-filled and anecdote-fuelled Auto Assembly update up on here later on next week. But in the meantime – roll on AA2011! Whoop whoop!

Passion – Or Lack Thereof

What do you do when you don’t have a cause, or a passion, or a devotion? I see people get worked up all the time over any number of things – politics, sports, film-making, disaster relief, human rights etc etc…

I see them and I admire the passion these individuals have because I’m not particularly passionate about anything. I guess the best I can muster is some slightly over-zealous fanboy-ism over Red Dwarf and Transformers, and let’s be honest – both of those little obsessions have waned deeply over the years.

I see my wife get worked up over the latest developments in rugby, and it’s great that she’s so passionate about it… I just don’t seem to be able to muster that fire about anything at all.

Guess there is such a thing as being too laid back.

 

The July Creative Update

Okay, let’s recap my projects for a mo -

• Crucible – a comic that’ll be appearing (eventually) in the upcoming Strip Magazine, written by John Freeman with artwork by Smuzz. I’m currently about halfway through colouring part two of this project, and it’s big on detail!
• The Pride – indie comic from Joe Glass, with artwork by Gavin Mitchell. I’ve two pages left to colour for issue 1, so that should be finito before the end of July.
• Misfits – a web-comic from ROK Publishing, again written by John Freeman with art by Andrew Chiu. I’ve literally just started on this bad boy, but it’s looking cool.

That’s all the pro-work for now. As for other stuff…

• Jump-Leads – waiting on the next pages for this brilliant web-comic from Ben Paddon and JjAR. It’s been a while, unfortunately!
• Lou Scannon – Dan Harris is currently beavering away at issue 2′s pencils, while we await Johnny Luu’s inks. In the meantime, Dan, myself and Jim Bampfield are continuing to write up issues 3 onwards. Issue 1′s stock is now half sold out, and remaining copies can still be purchased from http://www.louscannon.co.uk – get ‘em while they’re hot!
• Auto Assembly 2011 – working up some cool prints for this.

And that’s about it for the creative stuff at the mo!

 

 

A Week To Myself

So, Ceri and her motley crew of fellow history students buggered off to Berlin for a week to soak up some Germany history (and no doubt, more German alcohol). This left me on my own for seven whole days (my first time proper by myself in about four or five years), and it was alright.

Despite me being over thirty years old, my grandparents were convinced I’d starve to death over the week, so cue lots of homemade stew and a visit to a local carvery, which was nice of them! Not so fun was the drive to the carvery… it’s only a mile down the road, yet halfway my granddad had to pull over, to let the queue of traffic he’d caused go by us. He used to be an emergency ambulance driver for smeg’s sake! He should be powering through traffic! Gaaargh. Still, I’ve been well fed, and managed to polish off the remainder of Ceri’s homemade pie that she left for me. Nom nom nom!

The week was mostly rainy, which was ace as it meant I didn’t have to go out the garden to water Ceri’s garden… I did keep the few plants indoors well watered though, and the sunny weekend meant I did venture out into the garden twice. I am a but concerned that one of Ceri’s tomato plants looks a bit… well… dead, but all things considered…

I kept on top of the washing and ironing (my grandparents were visibly annoyed that I’d not asked them to do it), and the cats haven’t starved to death either, which can only be a plus.

I managed to get a teeny bit of DIY done as well – replaced the knackered old toilet seat, failed to fix the broken flush, and started applying the second coat of paint to the landing and passage. And now the house reeks of paint. Niiiice.

And I’ve managed to crack on with my colouring work. Just two pages away from finishing issue 1 of “The Pride”, and halfway into the second part of “Crucible”. I also managed to get some early rumblings of another project started, and also managed to finish up the shading and lettering of two pages my own collaborative comic (with Dan, Jim and Johnny), Lou Scannon issue 2. Coincidentally, we’ve still got copies of issue 1 available to buy for the very reasonable price of £3 – you can grab copies from http://www.louscannon.co.uk of course… I also got paid for some prior freelance work, which was nice and not a moment too soon either.

I also went for a brief run in the car on Sunday, as it was a very nice day indeed, so I ended up taking in the heady, polluted air of industrial Welsh hub, Port Talbot. No idea how I ended up there, I was just driving, but it goes to show how rubbish I am at navigation and at picking good scenery.

And so tonight (or rather, in the wee hours of tomorrow morning) I go to pick up the missus from her week away, which’ll be good. A week’s nice, two would have been alright I suppose, but I really probably would have been found starved to death in unclean clothes, surrounded by foraging cats and dead plants if she’d been gone much longer…

Lou Scannon is here at last!

After literally years of total procrastination, my first self-published comic is now available to buy!

Based on characters and worlds created by Dan Harris, the two of us have worked together to bring you a quality sci-fi comedy combining the humour of Red Dwarf and Hitchhiker’s Guide with the gloss and drama of the best US sci-fi such as Firefly! It’s action-packed, funny, and is going ot just keep getting better and better!

So, I hear you ask, what will you get for your hard-earned? Well, you’ll get…

• A full 22 page story, written by me and drawn by Dan Harris and I (with some amended dialogue and improved art over the online version).
• Full colour cover
• 8 pages of exclusive print-only material, including :
• Dan’s original character design sketches
• Fact Files on the Lou Scannon Universe
• Deleted pages and Behind The Scene’s info
• Two full pages of real reader’s letters answered by Lou Scannon himself
• Alternative cover, and additional bonus artwork by me!

Lou Scannon #1 – ‘The Wolfman Of Astrotraz’ can be picked up for the thoroughly reasonable price of £3.00 (plus postage), and you can order it  from the website http://www.louscannon.co.uk , or by contacting me directly through this blog. I’ll also be flogging this bad boy at various cons, the first of which will be at Auto Assembly in Birmingham this coming August.

Want to have a look at what you’ll be getting? Click on the preview goodness below!

     

I really hope you check this comic out ladies and gents – we had a hoot working on it, we’ve more planned, and we want YOU to enjoy it as much as we do! So get in touch, either via here or http://www.louscannon.co.uk , and pick up a copy!

Also, via the website, you can also submit a letter to the letter’s page for the upcoming issue #2, so if you fancy getting a pithy answer for your query from Lou Scannon himself, then submit away! We’ll even allow you to swear if y’like. Cos that’s how we roll.

Thanks for reading!

 

To Be Continued…

I loves me a good cliffhanger. Those moments out of the blue at the end of a show where the story leaves you at a fork in the road, holding a sign that reads “What The Fuck?!”. It’s sad that in today’s TV and film, the very existence of the internet makes keeping these cliffhangers a secret very hard indeed. Well, hard but not impossible. But still… I thought I’d take a few minutes and look back over some of the cliffhangers that rocked my world (for good or bad reasons) over the last few decades. Let’s see if you agree, and by all means, add your own faves in the comments section.

Predictably, this blog post is going to be ABSOLUTELY FUCKING LITTERED WITH SPOILERS. So read on at your peril. Ahem.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

The Best of Both Worlds, part one - One of the big daddy cliffhangers off all time in my opinion. The story had the show’s second appearance of the Borg, so they were still a pant-wettingly terrifying threat at this time before being slowly neutered over the next 10 years. Patrick Stewart’s contract with the show was up, and he was in negotiations about returning but nothing was set in stone. So when Captain Picard was abducted by the Borg and made into one of them, it was amazing! The show had cannily set up Riker as the de-facto captain in his absence, and given him a feisty first officer… so when the show ended with Riker commanding his crew to fire upon and destroy the now-Borgged up Picard… well, you could hear the entire Trek fandom gasp. It was a truly epic ending to a series. Was Picard really going to be killed off? Was Riker going to take over as Captain? The summer-long wait for the next season was harsh.

The X Files

Anasazi – This corker of a cliffhanger cropped up at the end of the show’s second season, and was one of the first big ‘mythology’ episodes dealing with Mulder’s sisters abduction and the other myriad strands of insanity Chris Carter had cooked up. Ending with Mulder being trapped inside a boxcar full of dead alien bodies buried under the ground in New Mexico, we watched in horror as the Cigarette Smoking Man and his cronies torched the boxcar with Mulder inside. How was he going to get out?! The wait was spoiled slightly by a conclusion that can only be described as ‘weak-ass’. But still, an awesome cliffhanger.

Casualty

Yeah, yeah, I know, Casualty… It’s a wicked cliffhanger okay! I don’t when it was, it was in the first 4 or 5 years of this slow-paced medi-soap, but a gunman had taken hold of Holby A&E, leaving staff nurse Charlies Fairhead to talk him down. It didn’t work, and the gunman shot Charlie in the chest. As the police then charge down the gunman, Charlie’s colleagues drag the shocked nurse onto a bed, and start to frantically operate to save his life. Would Charlie survive to the next series?! We all bloody well hoped so – he was the only likeable character in it until Josh the Paramedic showed up! Well, apart from Nurse Megan maybe.

Red Dwarf VI

Out Of Time - The crew of Red Dwarf have all been killed by their future selves, apart from Rimmer. With his ship disintegrating around, he aims to destroy the time machine that’s allowed all this to happen, when suddenly – Starbug explodes… An unusually action-packed ending for a Dwarf ep, it was pretty obvious how things would be resolved… that didn’t make the three-year wait any quicker mind you.

The Italian Job

Literally, your classic cliffhanger ending! And what’s not more, it never has been (and never should be) resolved! Utterly utterly brilliant!

Back To The Future 1 & 2

Part one’s ending was great, as they totally tease the audience with a glimpse of the future – even though the filmmakers acknowledge they were never going to resolve this cliffhanger, and if they’d known that the film was going to be a hit they’d have written a different ending! See through ties, food waste for fuel, flying cars… super fun! The cliffhanger for the second part is also brilliant, as it builds you up for the climax of the first film, but shows you what happened next in a moment of pure comedy!

Doctor Who

New Doctor Who has pulled off some classy cliffhangers of late – the wonderful moment at the end of The Almost People where Amy’s true nature is revealed is a cracker, as was the ending to the previous years The Time Of Angels, with the Doctor giving his great speech about the one thing you don’t put in a trap… “me…” and then shooting off-screen. The best one though was the Tenth Doctor, getting shot by a Dalek at the end of The Stolen Earth, and begins to regenerate – and it ends! Gaaagh! Kept under wraps, totally secret and spiffingly good! Cracking ending.

And don’t forget, possibly the best cliffhanger ever committed to media of any kind has got to be…