41312 LMS Ivatt Class 21MT doing its thing on the Mid Hant Railway aka The Watercress Line snapped on a Sony A6700 with a Sony 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 OSS zoom.

No. 41312 was built by British Railways at Crewe Works in May 1952. From new until withdrawal it was allocated to the Southern Region of BR with its first shed allocation being at Faversham (73E) from May 1952. It was later allocated to: Ashford, Barnstaple Junction, Brighton and Bournemouth. In the last few months of steam operations on the Southern Region it was allocated to Nine Elms (70A) from 17 April 1967 and it was to remain there for the remainder of its working career.

This was a successful design and 130 were built (10 by the LMS and the remainder by British Railways post nationalisation). Four have survived into preservation all of which are currently operational I am given to understand including our friend above.

It was withdrawn from service by BR when steam operations ended on the Southern Region of British Railways in July 1967. After being sold to the legendary Woodham Brothers at the Barry Scrapyard thanks to whom it was saved to be eventually rescued, restored and given a new life on the Mid Hants where it lives to this day. The same can be said for Urie S15 30506, owned by the Urie Locomotive Society, which also runs on the Mid Hants.

As stated above all pictures were taken on a Sony A6700 with an 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 OSS lens. It is interesting to see how iQ compares to the images coming off my MFT kit. I suspect you will have to pixel peep to see the difference!

Just for comparison, here's our friend again this time taken on my OM-5 II with an M.Zuiko 14-150mm f4-5.6 II at 150mm, cropped to match the 3:2 format of the A6700. They are both very nice images given they come from a couple of super zooms, with the A6700 one rendering maybe a tiny bit extra fine detail than the OM-5 II one if you pixel peep really hard enough? It may also be down to the difference in optical quality of the two lenses?But a comparison sample of one is hardly representative and I am equally pleased with each of them anyway!