Quarry

This is a ‘virtual quarry’ created 15 years ago by Network Rail. All its other quarries – providing the ballast that is essential for stabilising sleepers and the rails fixed to them – are, as far as I know, real gravel pits at strategic places around the country but for a long time the rail system had no easy supply of ballast in the South Midlands. Soon after railway privatisation on All Fools Day 1994, Network Rail used its wide-ranging powers to over-ride massive objection from local people and council planners and converted these sidings. Now wagons bring ballast from real quarries and dump it (on the left of the picture) to be reloaded then hauled elsewhere when it’s needed. It’s a noisy, dusty business that often takes place when the rail network is less used by passenger trains, so at night under bright lights. But it also happens on hang-out-the-washing mornings or sunny play-in-the park afternoons. The concession to local distress was to build a wall to baffle the sound and hold out the dust. That’s what’s immediately underneath my camera.

It’s hard to make an impact on large organisations, whether they’re commercial or political, so I was taken by the idea of setting one of the former onto one of the latter – using Coca Cola’s sponsorship of the 2014 Winter Olympics to counter Russia’s vicious new anti-gay legislation.

Like a lot of others, I'm finding it hard to comment at the moment. Let's all abandon the guilt!