And we’ll start 2023 with some more local pictures.  This time even closed to home.  I’ve attributed photos when I know the photographer – apologies when I’ve missed the credit.

We’ll start in Earlswood, just round the corner from home.  St John’s Road in 1905.  The horse and cart are crossing the Brighton line railway bridge.

Of course, there was once a Terrier called Earlswood that worked at Earlswood….

Whilst elegant expresses passed on the main line heading for Brighton….

Down the road in Redhill, the scale of change can be illustrated by this montage of the chapel in Station Road.  Once

A different view of Station Road (note the railway bridge at Redhill station in the background – one thing that hasn’t changed), and the cattle market (ex-car park, now building site) in 1904…

Redhill in 1949 and 1950….

And in the 1970’s….

And so to Redhill station.  In British Railways days, Redhill saw locomotives from all of the ‘Big Four’.  Here is an LMS Fairburn tank, borrowed till the BR standard 2-6-4T’s were available, and a GWR mogul from a Reading train (photo Ben Brooksbank.)

I wish that I had been old enough to have visited Redhill shed.  Though maybe not – I’m quite old enough these days.)  There always seemed to be something of interest on shed.  Here’s an ex-SR U class 2-6-0, again regulars on the Reading trains, and also across to Tonbridge.

And Ian Kruase has caught both the shed, and views of the town beyond.

Finally, from the air today, with the latest Thameslink stock leaving the station, probably for Bedford.  Redhill comes in for a lot of criticism, but it’s been a good home for us (down here in deepest Earlswood) for the past 36 years.