Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

Won't go round to her's for tea than!

 

 

I think my invitation must be lost in the post ...

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

Before finding out that the "anti-biotic" properties of that particular mould results in a rapid, though halluciogenic, death for the appliee.

Well, yes. One wouldn’t apply it to oneself, and neither to one’s nearest or dearest.

No, we are in 1905 and simply need to find some undeserving undesirable poor person.

[Guy Rixon]

On 25/02/2019 at 12:45, Edwardian said:

Well, we're off the Page of Doom and, perhaps, it will be convenient to return to coal stacks.

 

Naturally to me they look rather like dry-stone walling.  They seem to have come about on the GE because the company, not the wealthiest, had a policy of buying in far more coal than it needed when the price was low, to use when the price was high. 

 

Manual labour was, on the other hand, relatively cheap, so the vast about of trouble and effort required to build these extremely temporary structures could be expended.  

 

They appear to have been particular features of the landscape at March and Ipswich.  

 

March makes sense, as most of the rail-borne coal on the GER went through there, off the joint line. No sure why Ipswich; was it sea-borne coal?

[Northroader]

The coal stacks were generally intended as a stock for locomotive use, placed close to a depot, and not for domestic distribution.

[Edwardian]

52 minutes ago, Guy Rixon said:

March makes sense, as most of the rail-borne coal on the GER went through there, off the joint line. No sure why Ipswich; was it sea-borne coal?

 

45 minutes ago, Northroader said:

The coal stacks were generally intended as a stock for locomotive use, placed close to a depot, and not for domestic distribution.

 

Indeed, while coal might well have come along the GN-GE Joint, I think the stacks reflect the concentration of motive power. 

Edited March 2, 2019 by Edwardian

[wagonman]

5 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

 

I forget where the fruit / jam industry lies in the economy of west Norfolk?

 

There was a lot of fruit traffic off the W&U in the season though the nearest large jam factory was at Histon, just outside Cambridge, though I don't know when it opened.

[Edwardian]

Work has begun on some WNR 4-plank wagons: 

[Martin S-C]

Which kit have you used for the underframe?

[Edwardian]

Cambrian Kits: C43 15' 0" Gloucester Wood Underframe (9' w/base - 36mm):  Link

[Caley Jim]

9 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

A large-scale copy of the track plan and lots of little bits of Post-It Note (other brands are available), ideally in different colours, will provide hours of fun.

Hardly worth building the layout in that case, is it?  

 

As to jam making, a large proportion of the raspberry crop from the Blairgowrie area was transported south by rail to jam factories.

 

Jim

[Andy Hayter]

Re Jam making:  It is worth remembering that current laws on trade descriptions did not exist at the turn of the last century.

 

I was visiting (some 40+ years ago) a customer's factory.  They disclosed that back in around the first world war the site was first developed as a jam factory.  Every time they did any excavation on site for extensions, pipe runs etc.  They hit a mother lode of wooden chips.  It turns out that the plum jam, which was the main product, was based on turnips and wood chips were distributed around the jam to give the impression of plum stones - a touch of authenticity!

 

I have a feeling I have also read that pineapple jam was also based on turnip into the 60s.  Perhaps more understandable given the problems of growing pineapples in quantity in Norfolk

 

So turnip based jams "converted" to other more interesting flavours could well be a business for CA.

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

Work has begun on some WNR 4-plank wagons: 

Looks slightly narrow, compared to the ends of the buffer beams. Also, the sides appear to butt against the solebar, rather than the side sill being spaced out a little more.

[Edwardian]

29 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Looks slightly narrow, compared to the ends of the buffer beams. Also, the sides appear to butt against the solebar, rather than the side sill being spaced out a little more.

 

In those regards it resembles the body of the kit from which it derives

[Regularity]

23 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

In those regards it resembles the body of the kit from which it derives

No problems: just that now is the time to check.

I say this with feeling. I built a couple of wagons which always looked a bit odd, body wider than the beams. 

When cutting out, I had forgotten to reduce the ends and the floors by the thickness of the sides...

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

Re Jam making:  It is worth remembering that current laws on trade descriptions did not exist at the turn of the last century.

 

I was visiting (some 40+ years ago) a customer's factory.  They disclosed that back in around the first world war the site was first developed as a jam factory.  Every time they did any excavation on site for extensions, pipe runs etc.  They hit a mother lode of wooden chips.  It turns out that the plum jam, which was the main product, was based on turnips and wood chips were distributed around the jam to give the impression of plum stones - a touch of authenticity!

 

I have a feeling I have also read that pineapple jam was also based on turnip into the 60s.  Perhaps more understandable given the problems of growing pineapples in quantity in Norfolk

 

So turnip based jams "converted" to other more interesting flavours could well be a business for CA.

 

I've a Victorian edition of "Enquire Within Upon Everything", containing lots of hints and tips about Household Management, amongst other things.  One section deals with food adulteration and the means of detecting various common ones, like alum in bread and brick dust in tea.  It also mentions that cheap preserves were a veritable minefield of dodgy practices, eg the inclusion of wooden pips in "raspberry" jam....

 

As for turnip jam, its evidently still a popular treat in Scotland.  Just google it!

 

https://larderlove.com/turnip-jam-for-halloween/

 

I think I'll give it a miss...

 

[Nearholmer]

Given that turnips are justifiably unpopular as a table vegetable, perhaps stewing them up with spice and sugar, and calling the result jam, is the best thing for 'em.

 

Tomorrow, I'll see if I can get hold of some blackcurrants and gooseberries to go in a casserole.

[rockershovel]

..... my late grandfather was given to dark speculations about the actual content of the “plum and Apple jam” which formed a major component of military rations during WW1. 

 

My late mother would, on occasions when money was a bit short, produce recipes remembered from “rationing times” and often including turnips and swedes. The trick was to spot the signs in advance and be somewhere else that day - tea at a friends, scout camp, anything! 

 

 

 

[rockershovel]

23 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Well, indeed, and did those tracks in ancient times run along the folds in Norfolk's map?

 

... probably the most conspicuous topographical feature on the whole page! 

 

A German professor (complete with bow tie and hair like a burst sofa) explaining that “trees help one another” sounds like classic tea-time tv; The Great Egg Race, anyone? 

 

 

[drmditch]

18 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Nowadays, the anti-sucrose lobby is forcing the sugar content of commercial jams downwards, resulting in the use of various E chemicals to prevent the jam becoming mouldy, which obviously fails sometimes. The requirement to refrigerate opened jams is another by-product of this insanity.

It's not the sugar in jam that worries me. There is supposed to be sugar in jam, it is as you say a major part of the preservative for the fruit.

What worries me is the sugar added to products that one would not expect, like fishcakes and soups. (I do buy fishcakes but make my own soup).

 

As far as I can see the exploitation of the human taste for sugar/fat/salt by the commercial food industry can only be countered by legislation.

 

There used to be other additives. Is chalk still added to white bread?

(I wouldn't know since I never eat white bread!)

 

However, in the days of steam-hauled railways, I wonder how much mineral content was being added to all kinds of goods?

Not to mention washing on the line and the insides of lungs.

 

Memo to self, check whether coal is a 'mineral', or just a highly processed 'vegetable'.

[Guy Rixon]

15 hours ago, wagonman said:

 

There was a lot of fruit traffic off the W&U in the season though the nearest large jam factory was at Histon, just outside Cambridge, though I don't know when it opened.

c.1875, according to the local historians.

[Guy Rixon]

13 hours ago, Regularity said:

Looks slightly narrow, compared to the ends of the buffer beams. Also, the sides appear to butt against the solebar, rather than the side sill being spaced out a little more.

Sides butting to solebars is a common problem in wagon kits, due partly to the solebars being moulded over scale thickness and partly to the brass axleguards being spaced a little too wide. If I had back the time I've spent thinning solebars from ~2mm to ~1.5mm .. then I'd have built a couple more wagons, I guess.

 

IIRC, in a low-capacity wagon such as this, the crib rail is butted against the solebar. If the wagon sheeting is 3" thick and the crib rail is 4" thick, then the sheeting is only spaced out from the solebar by 0.33mm in 1:76.2 scale. It's the 8'-wide wagons where there's a big gap between sheeting and solebars.

[Nearholmer]

Food adulteration, poor food hygiene, and other forms of ‘diddling’, like short weights, had to be dealt with by legislation and robust enforcement ‘first time round’, and i’m with DrD that the modern equivalents (cr*p added to make it cheaper, have unnaturally long shelf life, and have addictive taste characteristics) will have to be dealt with the same way.

 

The words of comfort from the US Ambassador yesterday really didn’t comfort me at all!

 

Railway-wise, part of the appeal of industrial, mass-produced, branded goods, jams, biscuits, sausages, beer, cheeses etc etc, was that they came with some meaningful guarantee of quality and hygiene, at a price that was reasonably affordable for many. They killed-off local diversity in rural areas, but they killed-off adulteration and good-poisoning in urban areas ..... where they net positive or net negative?

[Hroth]

53 minutes ago, drmditch said:

It's not the sugar in jam that worries me. There is supposed to be sugar in jam, it is as you say a major part of the preservative for the fruit.

What worries me is the sugar added to products that one would not expect, like fishcakes and soups. (I do buy fishcakes but make my own soup).

 

As far as I can see the exploitation of the human taste for sugar/fat/salt by the commercial food industry can only be countered by legislation.

 

There used to be other additives. Is chalk still added to white bread?

(I wouldn't know since I never eat white bread!)

 

However, in the days of steam-hauled railways, I wonder how much mineral content was being added to all kinds of goods?

Not to mention washing on the line and the insides of lungs.

 

Memo to self, check whether coal is a 'mineral', or just a highly processed 'vegetable'.

 

Don't know about chalk, though I suppose powdered chalk would possibly help buffer the stomach against all the other additives.  Other things that worried "Enquire Within" where bread additives were concerned was alum and bean flour.  I don't know what the alum was for, but the bean flour was a cheaper additive to bulk out the wheat flour.  Alum was detected by plunging a hot knife into the loaf, alum crystals would form on the blade.  Bean flour was detected by taking some of the centre of the loaf in hand and moistening it with water, a farinaceous odour would ensue...

 

Commercial bakers still put bean flour in the wheat, in the form of soya flour.  It seems to be acceptable nowadays.

 

Next, chlorinated chicken wash and hormone/antibiotic laced beef.  Good old Victorian values, eh?

 

[Guy Rixon]

11 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Railway-wise, part of the appeal of industrial, mass-produced, branded goods, jams, biscuits, sausages, beer, cheeses etc etc, was that they came with some meaningful guarantee of quality and hygiene, at a price that was reasonably affordable for many. They killed-off local diversity in rural areas, but they killed-off adulteration and good-poisoning in urban areas ..... where they net positive or net negative?

Massively net-positive. I've seen, in Mumbai, meat handling in a traditional, local and unregulated market and it nearly made me a vegetarian.

[corneliuslundie]

A major problem is that Americans believe firmly that food should be cheap, and are therefore willing to eat low quality food to achieve that end. I remember asking some American friends why they used so much processed cheese and was told firmly that real cheese was far too expensive to contemplate.

And they add sweeteners to just about everything, including has has been mentioned soup.

Have you tasted Cadbury's chocolate since it has been American owned. It is awful, and it was not as good as most continental chocolate even before that. Interesting that Cadbury is trialing a "dark" milk chocolate which seems more like what British chocolate used to be.

And back on jam, it does sound as though there is scope for traffic in punnets of fruit from CA to Tiptree  - needing suitable vans - and other local jam factories - possibly also wagon loads of turnips, either sheeted opens or possibly cattle wagons.

Jonathan