166208 Hinksey 30 December 2008

The gulls on the fence and yard lights at Hinksey take no notice of 166208 as it passes by with the 12:37 Oxford to Paddington First Great Western service on 30 December 2008. The high fence in the foreground was built to act as a noise barrier following complaints from residents after Network Rail started to use Hinksey Yard for ballast operations, after several decades of virtual disuse. Obviously the local populace is less tolerant of noise nowadays, as up until the 1950s this yard was used extensively for shunting loose coupled freight trains!