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And here is another mode of local transport... Still got my eye out for a few motorbikes when they get produced.

Gresley's grimy goods tank enters Boleyn Road. J50 68791 was a Hornsey loco for most of its BR life so, in my mind, it is visiting Boleyn Road as it’s been drafted in to work in Goodmayes Yard.

Good moaning from the Charente. I got our taxes done yesterday. About 2 hours work. Most of that time was spent going through bank statements and setting up my spreadsheet that will work out the figures in 2025. For various arcane reasons French tax is on the previous calendar year.. However because most of our income and rises are aligned with the British fiscal year they allow me to use that. Thus the figures that went in yesterday are for April 22 to April 23. I have most of my figures for next year's submission ready. The actual online tax form only took about 20 minutes. The main complication is that Virgin Money, actually Clydesdale bank, now pay a modest interest rate on our UK accounts. A total of £39.98 but that had to be worked in. Anyway it's done. Today is more getting ready for visitors day. Wine boxes to be refilled,shopping to be shopped then grass to be cut. Ttfn Jamie

never went in the loop, nor rowley Regis so got back to bescot 3 hours early! Worcester tunnel jn bescot loop changing ends to head back into the yard into the yard, Shunters taking it away for me Back home and in bed at the time I should have been sat in rowley Regis loop!

During the nineteenth century, the expanding railway network helped create a boom in the fishing industry. With fast, reliable services fresh fish was able to be transported by rail across the length and breadth of the UK. As early as the mid-1840s special fish trains were operated by several railway companies using specially built rolling stock. As technology developed faster services were offered with trains operating on the East Coast mainline all the way from Scotland to London. Fish vans on the LNER originally featured a short wheelbase but later developments settled on a larger 15ft wheelbase on the Diagram 214 12t Insul-Fish vans designed by the LNER but built under BR from 1949. These vehicles were designed to operate in passenger trains and featured LNER 8-shoe brake gear and steam heat pipes. British Railways continued to build a variation of these vans – Diagram 800. These were built with standard oil axleboxes but some were later upgraded to roller bearings in later life. The final diagram of fish van built by British Railways was the 1/801 diagram. Like the 1/800 this featured a 15ft wheelbase and 21’8” body. Roller bearings were used from new and allowed the wagons to travel at speeds of 60mph. As they were roller-bearing fitted, they gained the ‘Blue Spot’ designation on the bodysides. This design however featured several differences on the body, most notably the diagonal end bracing and around the side doors along with the adoption of the BR clasp brake system. Three batches of vans were built between 1960 and 1961 with a total of 558 vans being produced. With the decline in fish traffic services ceased in 1968. Many vans were transferred to Parcels Traffic (coded NRV and later SPV) and sported BR rail blue livery with ‘double arrow’ logo. Other vans found use in Engineers use, barrier vehicle use and even as support vehicles for breakdown cranes carrying a number of different liveries. This resulted in vans being seen all across the network. A small number of Diagram 1/801 vans have survived into preservation at locations such as the Swanage, Great Central and Bluebell railways. This model will be the first Diagram 1/801 van ever produced in OO gauge ready-to-run. The model features the usual wealth of detail alongside many separately fitted parts including steps on the engineers versions, and two different types of buffers as seen on the prototypes. Separate label boards will also be provided for modellers to fit as required. Metal bearings will aid super smooth running enabling prototypically long trains to run with ease. Browse the full range on our website

I did most of the computer work for our income tax today. I'll have to sort out the e-filing tomorrow or next week. Last year the tax department first obsoleted all our passwords after a ??? and then went on strike for a few weeks each side of the deadline. So I sent it in on paper. My program offers "pension splitting" for couples to try to reduce the tax. If I give $.06 to my wife, the tax will come down by $.02. Any larger amount and it will come up again.

It's time for some more photos taken in Switzerland. So here is another batch at Kleine Scheidegg where trains leave for the Jungfrau. To get to Kleine Scheidegg you travel from Grindlewald or Lauterbrunnen on the train. Kleine Scheidegg Jungfrau Bahn BDeh2/4 12th Aug 91 C16322 Kleine Scheidegg WAB BDeh4/4 12th Aug 91 C16329 Kleine Scheidegg WAB BDeh4/4 Kleine Scheidegg to Grindelwald 12th Aug 91 C16335 Kleine Scheidegg Jungfrau Bahn BDhe2/4 202 12th Aug 91 C16338 Kleine Scheidegg WAB BDhe4/4 118 12th Aug 91 C16344 Kleine Scheidegg WAB BDhe4/4 12th Aug 91 C16345 David

Ey up! Attended an umpires meeting last night. All was going well then I had to explain the concussion protocol. It's been in place for 2 years but few bothered about it. Now it has been restated.. the message is.."do exactly what the protocol says". Very easy you would think... nope any excuse not to do it was trotted out.. answer was the same "for legal reasons JDI" Eventually it was accepted.. boy didn't realise how stupid people can be. Off to Headingley to umpire two T20s shortly. The weather may reduce this to 1 T20 and a T10. Me? I'll umpire whatever the coaches ask me to do. Have as good a day as you can! Baz

Bear here.... Well I climbed the little wooden hill at 9pm last night, with the full intention of going for a piddle in the pool today (requiring an 04-30am roll call). But then at 02-something that bluddy Wee Wee Fairy paid Bear a visit - after which I couldn't get back to zeddyland. Poo. I did eventually manage it, only to wake again at 04-something with an achy back and an uncommon headache. Double Poo. Well they were the only excuses I needed so when Alexa did sound the Gong I cancelled it quickly and carried on fighting to get back to zeddyland ...... I guess it was 6am when I finally gave up - I'm now all Wallowed (though swimming a Km was kinda tricky in the Bear Castle Muddy Hollow) and I guess I'd better get dressed and make the Beary Pit soon; I've got numerous deliveries scheduled for today (mainly parts for Harry the Honda, as well as couple of new pairs of Strides from The Big River) so the chances of going for a Hilly Wander are looking kinda shaky at present. Right, time to get a wriggle on - I think this morning's activities will focus on searching Bear Towers for various bits that belong to Harry the Honda - so that'll be Beamland, numerous Bedrooms, the Muddlin' room, the Front room (or Lounge if you're posh...). I may be some time.... Bear gone.......

Yet it is common to hear an announcement on BBC4Extra before an older radio show (e.g. The Goons, Hancock's Half Hour, Steptoe and Son, etc.) to the effect that it includes "language and attitudes of the time", as these are socially unacceptable today. You don't hear the same warning ahead of todays TV comedy shows such as Live at the Apollo, where using the "F" word continually seems obligatory for some "comedians".

Morning All Day off today. Yaaaaaaay. Might do some muddling. Suspect that I’ll end up doing some more mundane chores before that, although my mind is not on it really. It was wonderful to see friends who came over last Saturday night . We all laughed so hard about our yoof, with so many shared memories, both good and bad. They departed in the early hours and we finally stumbled up to bed. 36 hours later one of our friends was on a ventilator being treated for an extremely aggressive bacterial pneumonia. She may have to put into a coma to help her recover. We are now three days further down the line and she is still very seriously ill and has sepsis. To say that we are stunned is a fracking massive understatement. How the frack does that happen so quickly. She was fine on Saturday, absolutely no outward signs of illness, in fact she said how good she felt. Time for a cuppa…laters all ATB Grizz

The UK is notorious for being a low wage/salary*, high tax environment, Even in my humble profession this has been true. One of the reasons we could not attract staff at Clapham was the rate of pay offered. Never mind the conditions which of necessity required us to work outdoors in a customer-facing and often quite hostile environment at any hour of any day. There was a pay freeze imposed by the Government post-Covid but ironically the same Government mandated minimum wage levels which enforced pay rises! We were below the "London Living Wage" and pennies above the statutory minimum hourly rate. For a safety-critical job which demanded all sorts of skills and knowledge, impinged on our private lives because of the shifts and zero-alcohol / illicit drugs requirements and we no longer had the one-time UK-wide free travel entitlement. Though we did retain the right to privilege fares an all but the "Open Access" operators meaning the most we would pay was a quarter of the Anytime (walk-up) fare and usually a quarter of the Off-Peak fares. Quite frankly the only staff we could usually recruit were those even the supermarkets had rejected. Because you could get at least £1 / hour more for filling shelves and you worked indoors. OK you didn't get privilege travel but not everyone uses that anyway. And so the railways have become the bucket employer; the carp which falls to the bottom and takes the job not because it's what they want but because it is the only job they can get. That might be worth remembering the next time you encounter surly staff who hide when things go wrong and seem to know nothing and care even less. That does not excuse poor performance but it does help to explain it. Honestly how many folk in the job market today would do that sort of work - and be asked to manage any and every situation including the traumatic ones - for just a few pence above the National Minimum Wage? There used to be pride in working for the railways and it was a career sought by many but to which only the lucky few were recruited. You can always tell a career "Railwayman" from the pack, and there are still some around, by their attitude, approach and often their appearance. No mobiles in hand, half-mast ties and trainers. Always well-dressed and eyes-on-the-job. The railway has never been a well-paid career (driving grades excepted) but it was better-paid in Australia than it is in the UK. Put bluntly I was expected to work half as hard for twice the money out there. Had life not brought me back to home shores I would happily have continued there until retirement.

Morning, from a sunny rock that lies, it feels pretty chilly out there despite showing 10c. @monkeysarefun there's no chance of anything being in Annette's luggage without getting severely flattened, beaten and destroyed, non-Australian or not! Think 'The fat broad' from the BC cartoons. Lethal. She also delivered a packet of Tim Tams, they just look like UK Penguin biscuits, but I haven't had a nibble of one yet. Not sure what the day will bring, I'm a bit under the weather so won't be riding out to the Old Farts breakfast, but may go in the car. It's still too cold when you're not quite well.

An extra odd man out now. Somehow yesterday I missed this photo taken at Grantham. It is the same train as one of yesterday's, I wanted to include it as once again it shows the unreliability of colour images in terms of shades of colour as a result of the film ageing and scanning and the software used. Grantham Class 55 08.10 Newcastle to Kings X Sept 71 C726 David

Good morning everyone The weather has changed considerably, it’s now wet and grey, although the rain has stopped falling at the moment. It’s the usual Friday activities for me today, a walk to the butchers will take place shortly followed by a quick visit to the Trafford Centre for a few items that I can’t get locally. As for the afternoon, probably spent reading or something similar. At my consultation yesterday, we discussed my latest PSA result (up to 17.i from 14.76) and I was informed that no action will be taken at the moment. Once it hits 20 or more, then I’ll be put on extra medication which they hope will bring my PSA back down. My next appointment is booked for the 10 July. That’ll some come round! Back later. Brian

Along with the children that spun it in Blake's dark Satanic Mills.

I find this quite sad. Singapore is infamous for having a fiercely competitive view of the world and wanting to be first in stuff. I think a deep seated envy of Australia's global leadership in the field of dangerous wildlife with all those venomous spiders, boxing kangaroos, wild hogs etc has made Singapore try to join in. A sad sign of insecurity, surely the crocodiles or marauding gangs of homicidal macaques would be a better effort to try and look impressive.

Morning all, In what appears to be our last ( but by no means least) layout featurette we come to Ruyton Road, now in the care of Paul Bannerman who has sympathetically recommissioned and refurbished this seminal cameo layout. It was built by the late John Spencer to EM gauge and appeared at a number of shows in the 1990’s and the early years of the new century. This layout also featured in MRJ, issues 75 ( 1994 ) and 170 ( 2006 ). Once in Paul's care, Ruyton was converted to P4 but the layout maintains the original premise, that of the terminus of an imaginary branch from the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Railway between Kinnerley Junction and Ruyton Town with a stub serving a nearby quarry. Always difficult to upgrade an old layout, Ruyton being some 30yrs old, but fair to say Paul has managed this quite successfully and at the same time, preserved John's original aim of giving exhibition visitors not only a flavour of a Colonel Stephens light railway line in the 1920’s but that of one of the first finescale Cameo layouts. Rob.

This is very common in the US and Australia. "Corning" in this case refers to 'corns' of salt used. Tinned products do not approximate it at all. It is often associated with Irish heritage, and inevitably appears on St. Patrick's day with cabbage, but various brisket preparations are also associated with Ashkenazi Jewish cooking traditions in the US - where the corned beef on rye is a classic Jewish deli staple, along with the Ruben sandwich (corned beef on toasted rye with sauerkraut, swiss cheese and Russian dressing). Peppered brisket, cold smoked and then steamed is Pastrami. Also delicious and a little more intense. Hot pastrami on rye is wonderful. Corned beef hash is a diner breakfast staple and is found everywhere in 'traditional' diners.

Make sure you check his luggage , hate for any of these to sneak in!

She doesn't know my wife does she....... does she? Dave

Mrs Grizz was glancing over my shoulder as you typed this…. in a low ish flat tone she uttered these words….. “Mmmmm courageous….. …… ..Don’t get ANY ideas”…..…… ……

For some reason Aditi says she really enjoys ironing. I don’t and I have tried to tell her that for most of my clothes the wrinkles will disappear with wear but she insists.

Backstreet Boys ..

There are signs that the low pay/low tax mantra is beginning to unravel. To work it depended on a pool of unemployed but a combination of Brexit and covid* has made that disappear. The government has no control over what the private sector pays its staff but tries to put the squeeze on the public sector and those parts of the private sector over which it exercises some financial control such as the railways. So we now have the situation where supermarkets, who were once paying the lowest rates have been forced to raise wages whereas the railways cannot as they are being told by the government (who hold the purse strings) not to give and other staff drivers a raise. The drivers being a highly skilled sector gives them some leverage. *Brexit has removed a lot of people from the workforce (mostly from Eastern Europe) who were willing to work for the minimum wage and covid has and still is having a debilitating effect on those particularly at the bottom of the workforce who were more likely to be unemployed.

The UK is notorious for being a low wage/salary*, high tax environment, Many years ago I applied for a position - senior to my then current position - at a biotech startup in London. I had thought that it would be a good career move and - in the days pre-dog - I would have had a pied-à-terre in London and then commuted back to Switzerland every other weekend. The necessary experience and qualifications fitted, as did the interpersonal stuff, then they talked about salary: they were offering 80% of my then existing salary for a much more senior role. I asked if they were having a larf (actually I phrased it as "would this be the starting point for salary and bonus discussions?") and they said No, that was the maximum they were prepared to pay. I politely declined to go further (later I learned that the company went nowhere, fast. So I might have dodged a bullet there). I am still occasionally contacted by UK headhunters - often for short term work - and always they offer insultingly low rates**. Usually when I get to "my minimum fee, as paid by my other clients, is CHF XXXXX" they find an excuse to hang up pretty toot sweet. * outside of certain individuals of the media, banking, sport and law. ** I think that the rates that the customer they are working for is willing to pay would be in line with the "standard" fee structures for what I do - but it seems that they want to trouser at least half of those fees...

Absolutely. Dr. SWMBO had been in an AI workshop yesterday and demonstrated some of the capabilities to me last night. She could not get the Pi app to recognise her voice nor to speak to her but it did respond to text and produced some credible output in response to her input. Then there was another which "writes" music; she asked it for a "1980s power ballad theme song" including several key words. Almost instantly out came something which sounded a lot like a Starship track and included not only the key words she asked for but key phrases she uses at work that were not included in the request. OK - there's some very clever programming behind all of this. But ultimately it still takes a human or several to write all of that and to get these systems up and running. Which, to my mind, means that those who are at the back-end sit in positions of potentially abusable power and can exert control over the rest of us passively or openly. The specific phrases in the song generated would have been those somehow profiled from Dr. SWMBO's professional work; on the balance of probability they were not randomly generated and coincidental. So who is spying on whom and why? "They" already know a great deal about us but that does not mean they have our consent to hold nor to use that information. In the UK GDPR provisions apply. You can bet these apps are not UK-based though they can in some circumstances be governed by UK law. Dr. SWMBO was fretting that she and her team have effectively been made redundant. My response was that they are far from redundant because they still have to use the app and input their requests. The machine cannot think for itself and say "Ah yes - I'll come up with a 1980s power ballad using text I know XXXX XXXX uses in her professional life and randomly spit it out to her". It has to be asked first. And it can only react, no pro-act. It can churn out any amount of data and material randomly but it still requires a human to ask it first for the train timetable to Little Nuttingford or a novel featuring naked whales and a teaspoon. Humans are not being made redundant by AI. I am very wary of it. I haven't knowingly given any information away specifically to any AI platform. I feel AI sits firmly in the camp of "Just because we can doesn't always make it right". Happy Friday. The weekend is upon us. And it's POETS Day too.

Rumour has it that certain models can be (a) very expensive, (b) temperamental, (c) liable to play up at a moment's notice - or indeed any combination of the above. Sounds tricky to this Bear.

Finally arrives at a slightly smoky Dewchurch

A thread about kettle names made me kind of nostalgic about ye olde British foods much loved by P&O cooks I have never had anywhere else. One was Cumberland sauce, named after the Duke, not the county. Ham with Cumberland sauce was a regular on P&O menu cards. Another was brown Windsor soup. Corned beef is another, not bully beef but beef brisket cooked in brine, never had that since leaving P&O.

It's probably a sign of anno Domini, but "I should give that ten minutes if I were you" is the working rule around here, these days...

Halloween cosplay as some of my ancestors - "Bound for Botany Bay".

Saying you are gasping for a fag is somewhat eyebrow raising, and never ever say you are going out to smoke a fag.

Just sat by the lineside waiting for a train to go by...

And they support vast piles of stone architecture with apparently few problems to do with settlement - although the campanile of St Mark's did collapse in 1902. For that sort of money, you could employ a cook.

The Australian Dept Of Defence and BAE here have both swapped over from Skype to Teams on their unclass system just this month. The Classified network will probably stick with Skype for years yet given the time it takes to get software security-accredited on that.

If mine ever saw it I'd be singing falsetto. Dave

A lot depends on for what the purpose of the kitchen is: many of the kitchen designs that I have seen (here, in the US, in the UK, and in Germany) are definitely first for impressing friends, relatives, and the neighbours, and second (and sometimes a very distant second) for cooking in. I recall one episode of the Grand Designs TV programme, where the people building this rather hideous looking, designed-to-win-architectural-awards new build home installed a £100,000 kitchen. Yes, you read it right: a £100,000 kitchen. For that sort of money, I could install a state of the art professional kitchen of a standard necessary in a Michelin starred kitchen and still have a big wodge of dosh left over (probably half, if not more). The latest wheeze is to have a video camera inside your “high tech“, all-singing, all-dancing oven which can send pictures of the oven contents to an app on your smart phone. Now, unless you are a witch with a regular habit of sticking small children into the oven (as in Hansel and Gretel), I see no point in such an undoubtably expensive bit of useless frippery. I might have mentioned that Mrs iD has finally persuaded me to move into a flat and we are currently looking at two possibilities: one, a garden apartment in a brand new building that will be built beginning of the summer (and ready for habitation early in 2025) and the other an existing penthouse apartment which is a few years old and needs refurbishment of the kitchen. Unfortunately, in both cases whilst Mrs iD is perfectly happy for me to install professional equipment where possible and feasible, she is dead set against having stainless steel drawers, cupboards and work surfaces. Why we “need“/“must have” veneered, painted or enamelled fronts in the kitchen is beyond me… Must be an XX chromosome thing…

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to visit the real Dunkirk. At low tide, seeing the wrecks of the vessels still there in the sand all these years later and knowing we were standing in the place where so many died was very moving. It is such a serene, peaceful place now and there are a few good places to visit, which have been made into museums. Well worth a visit if anybody is interested in such things.

The pay on offer for many UK based positions wouldn't be bad if tax was less and cost of living lower. And pay has been distorted by government benefits to subsidize industry by trying to top up people's income to something which is liveable. That doesn't just affect low pay, low skilled jobs, an awful lot of skilled and professional staff qualify for various benefits. The canard about people asking for lower annual pay rises to avoid crossing thresholds whereby they'd lose benefits isn't an urban myth, I had a few people quietly request it when I had people managing responsibilities. Which is properly messed up in my view, not the individuals who were acting in a rational way but a screwed up system.

Silver Link has not stopped, but is rolling slowly past the spotters, who are our early this morning. It is still only 9.15am. and here she is again, just a little way further on. That will be our last look at her though, at least until she comes through on her return journey to KX.

The issue is really about avoiding unconscious bias (or indeed, conscious bias) in interviews. Ideally an interview should be conducted in such a way that the interviewers are unaware of the candidate's identity in terms of protected characteristics such as gender, age, race, etc.

Blakes "Dark Satanic Mills" were the Cathedrals and Parish Churches of the Established Church of England, echoing the mills of the Industrial Revolution. He was a theist, hostile to the CofE... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

TV and film makers do make a lot of effort to get things "right" with things like period clothing, so it's odd that a generic steam train often seems sufficient. I suspect it is often driven by what location is available. If you want to film a Southern station for four days in summer, Horsted Keynes might not be available because it's operating! I can even live with incorrect trains but what often jumps out at me is 21st Century language used by WW2-1960s era characters. There are a lot of terms common speech that have evolved only since availability of the Internet became commonplace within the last 20-25 years. More sensitively, TV dramas show a level of widespread liberal tolerance that I suspect wouldn't have been common in the era represented.

I am led to believe that the greatest threat to the stability of Venice's buildings is the wake from cruise ships. Dave

I replied “No dear… i am just off to bed”…..

More trains run, more images obtained, but not yet photoshopped. We do still have more of Silver Link though.