2002 was the year of moving house, hence the sometimes large gaps between picture sets. Much of the winter and spring was spent house hunting which was both time consuming, expensive and, ultimately fruitless. It wasn't until the autumn that our luck changed and we eventually completed on December 18th, having started some 10 months earlier. Why do we do it?

Much of the late summer and early autumn was spent chronicling the final days of First Great Western's locomotive hauled services, which, with the exception of the Night Riviera, ceased at the end of September with the belated introduction of FGW's new high speed class 180 Adelante fleet. August and September were blessed, so it seems with plenty of warm, dry and, for the most part, sunny weekends. Summer also saw the end of Virgin Cross Country's loco hauled services too, which garnered much more attention than the final FGW trains. I rather preferred the latter, mainly because I liked the grey/green livery with the gold FGW band but I guess because the VXC trains could be seen almost anywhere in the country they were going to appeal to more railfans than those connecting London with Devon and Cornwall.

To provide a bit of variety I've also included in this collection some pictures from three overseas holidays, to Canada in February, New York and New Mexico at Easter and Japan in October