Castle Aching

[Buhar]

14 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

G&SWR Manson 160 Class of 1897-9.

 

@NeilHB got there first!

The chimney is a replacement (ex LNER, I think), as is the tender cab.  It still retains the water bag stools at the rear of the tender.  There used to be tool-boxes in this position, but following an accident to a fireman, they were moved forward but their usefulness in helping to manage the heavy bag led to this modification that was continued (with some exceptions) right up to the grouping.  No 171 never carried its LMS number having been sold just after the grouping.  The Manson 0-6-0 design the MCR bought one of from North British (361 Class) was a later development of the 160 Class, NBL itself built the second batch some 7 years after the first batch was completed by Neilson, Reid, one of the amalgamating firms.  The MCR would have seen 361s from the first build at Carlisle for a few years and I doubt the G&SW would have been precious about such a locomotive.

 

Alan

 

Alan

[Regularity]

3 hours ago, Hroth said:

Wearing the shortened Daisy Dukes no doubt

 

3 hours ago, Schooner said:

Fully expected "haircuts"

Ah, very shortened Daisy Dukes.

[Regularity]

 

4 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Back in 1979, the most shocking thing about this programme was how short those shorts were ... 

 

No, the most shocking thing was how unaware we all were about the offensive meaning of that flag.

The fact that we weren’t shocked back then doesn’t alter the fact that it was actually shockingly crass to large parts of American society. 

 

BLM is a movement aimed at getting American Society to the point where all lives matter equally, and to address the systemic racism that the majority of us simply don’t understand - witness some of the discussion points on this thread.

I am 100% against people making everything they can into an issue, particularly when it leads to a whitewashing of history (I chose those words deliberately, as it is the whites who are washing racially-based slavery out of history), and all for recognising the simple truth that for most of human history slavery has been the norm, but that doesn’t mean we can simply dismiss it out of hand: we need equity, not equality.

 

For the record, my forebears are working/peasant class as far back as history records them. Almost certainly some were slaves, their descendants serfs, and later generations were hard working and poorly paid. Greater social mobility and educational equity meant my parents were the first in either of their families not to rent, I.e. to have a mortgage and eventually to own a house outright, and I was the very first to toddle off to higher education and get a degree. None of that is because I am white and (now) “middle class”, just the result of greater equity in our society. The same is also true for many of my BAME friends (most of whom shudder at being labelled that way) but they have had to overcome obstacles - including from amongst their peers at school - because of their skin colour.

 

That’s what BLM is trying to achieve: not the re-writing of history (Nelson Mandela said the statue of Rhodes should remain) but greater sensitivity and the opening of doors rather than the closing of them.

In the interests of equity, I got off the soapbox on the left and gave it to the short kid on the right.

Sadly, he fell off and now the HSE are after me...

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

2 hours ago, Regularity said:

 

For the record, my forebears are working/peasant class as far back as history records them. Almost certainly some were slaves, their descendants serfs, and later generations were hard working and poorly paid.

 

How interesting, so were mine. We must be related 

 

Apropos the BLM issue and the slavery issue. The Constitution of the Confederate States, accepted in 1861 was quite specific that it was a constitutional right to own slaves and was to be protected by the government and also that the owners had the absolute right to reclaim escaped slaves. The last condition takes us back to the Dred Scott case and Chief Justice Roger Taney's ruling in the US Supreme Court which helped set in motion the Civil War. Taney had ruled in 1857 basically that Blacks were "regarded as beings of an inferior order, altogether unfit to associate with the white race ... and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." I.e. an escaped slave could be seized and returned to their owner wherever they were apprehended.

 

Something which Article IV of their constitution confirms.

   

Article IV Section 3(3)

The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several states; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form states to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory, the institution of slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress, and by the territorial government: and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories, shall have the right to take to such territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the states or territories of the Confederate states.

 

Obviously the matter still run deeps in the psyche because no amount of pleading that the past should not be expunged from popular reference, can overcome such a flagrant legislative abnegation of human rights even by the standards of the mid 19th Century.

 

Some apologists for the CSA like to claim that the war was fought primarily on economic problems in regard to state rights, not over the freeing of slaves. And to be honest as far as the western and north western states of the USA who relied on the Mississippi drainage for their access to trade etc. were concerned, the economic impact of slavery on their burgeoning free economies and trade was a major concern far exceeding that of the issue of human rights per se. But however much that was a component of the causes Article IV clearly puts slavery forward as a main issue both to defend and to fight.  

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

25 minutes ago, Lantavian said:

Where did that information come from? 

 

Government sources. 

[brack]

6 hours ago, Buhar said:

The chimney is a replacement (ex LNER, I think), as is the tender cab. 

From a J21 pattern I seem to recall - I believe it had a good fixing up at one of the local lner works before delivery.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

20 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

"Most flattering. I don't think I've been called endearingly brisk before."

 

 

[Ben Brooksbank, SR Q1 0-6-0 at Feltham Locomotive Depot, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.]

 

It does have a rather austere appearance but nevertheless there is a sort of honest charm. And did not Bulleid take it one step further and create the Leader which was basically two 0-6-0s in unhappy partnership     

[Donw]

6 hours ago, Regularity said:

 

 

No, the most shocking thing was how unaware we all were about the offensive meaning of that flag.

The fact that we weren’t shocked back then doesn’t alter the fact that it was actually shockingly crass to large parts of American society. 

 

BLM is a movement aimed at getting American Society to the point where all lives matter equally, and to address the systemic racism that the majority of us simply don’t understand - witness some of the discussion points on this thread.

I am 100% against people making everything they can into an issue, particularly when it leads to a whitewashing of history (I chose those words deliberately, as it is the whites who are washing racially-based slavery out of history), and all for recognising the simple truth that for most of human history slavery has been the norm, but that doesn’t mean we can simply dismiss it out of hand: we need equity, not equality.

 

For the record, my forebears are working/peasant class as far back as history records them. Almost certainly some were slaves, their descendants serfs, and later generations were hard working and poorly paid. Greater social mobility and educational equity meant my parents were the first in either of their families not to rent, I.e. to have a mortgage and eventually to own a house outright, and I was the very first to toddle off to higher education and get a degree. None of that is because I am white and (now) “middle class”, just the result of greater equity in our society. The same is also true for many of my BAME friends (most of whom shudder at being labelled that way) but they have had to overcome obstacles - including from amongst their peers at school - because of their skin colour.

 

That’s what BLM is trying to achieve: not the re-writing of history (Nelson Mandela said the statue of Rhodes should remain) but greater sensitivity and the opening of doors rather than the closing of them.

In the interests of equity, I got off the soapbox on the left and gave it to the short kid on the right.

Sadly, he fell off and now the HSE are after me...

 

Two points

Firstly Edwadian is right your comment about the flag is shocking in today's enviroment not to us in 1979.

 

Equity can make a nonsense of much of life. Sport would be pointless  if it was regarded as unacceptable for anyone to be running faster than eveyone else, or the high jump bar lowered for shorter people. It depends how you define fair and impartial. Partiality is natural I prefer to listen to certain muscians as do others that partiality affects their earnings. One the the most unfair starts in life can be ignorant, uncaring parents no amount of help late can make up for a poor start. It could take away the incentive for anyone to strive to do better. I found maths and science easy it didn't take much effort on my behalf others find them difficult subjects. You could say it would be fairer for me to have harder questions in an exam. In truth that would probably just put me further ahead. Accepting the inherent unfairness of life is a necessary start ensuring that we dont increase the natural unfairness should be our aim and aleviaing severe problems our practice but ironing out all the unfairness wouldn't work as it would reduce incentive.

Don

[Tim Dubya]

33 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

basically two 0-6-0s in unhappy partnership     

 

We shall never know, because the project was deliberately stifled

 

 

[Nearholmer]

32 minutes ago, Donw said:

Accepting the inherent unfairness of life is a necessary start ensuring that we dont increase the natural unfairness

What is this “natural” or “inherent” unfairness?
 

Nothing is naturally or inherently unfair. It is just how it is. 

 

What might be natural or inherent is difference.

 

Unfairness is not what nature does, it’s what people do to one another. 
 

Unfairness is when a simple and irrelevant difference is picked-upon as a pretext for advantaging or disadvantaging a person or a group of people.
 

The only way in which unfairness is natural is that it is, unfortunately, natural for people to attempt to do one another down, to exploit one another, and that’s what civilisation is supposed to be about - attempting to raise ourselves above the bestial.

 

The term “natural unfairness” is, IMO, a close companion of phrases like “the poor are always with us”; a pair of dark glasses that the advantaged wear to help make the disadvantaged invisible.

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Donw said:

Edwadian is right your comment about the flag is shocking in today's enviroment not to us in 1979.

I’m not sure you read what I wrote.

What you are saying there is exactly my point: it was not shocking to us.

 

[Edwardian]

8 hours ago, Regularity said:

 

 

No, the most shocking thing was how unaware we all were about the offensive meaning of that flag.

The fact that we weren’t shocked back then doesn’t alter the fact that it was actually shockingly crass to large parts of American society. 

 

BLM is a movement aimed at getting American Society to the point where all lives matter equally, and to address the systemic racism that the majority of us simply don’t understand - witness some of the discussion points on this thread.

I am 100% against people making everything they can into an issue, particularly when it leads to a whitewashing of history (I chose those words deliberately, as it is the whites who are washing racially-based slavery out of history), and all for recognising the simple truth that for most of human history slavery has been the norm, but that doesn’t mean we can simply dismiss it out of hand: we need equity, not equality.

 

For the record, my forebears are working/peasant class as far back as history records them. Almost certainly some were slaves, their descendants serfs, and later generations were hard working and poorly paid. Greater social mobility and educational equity meant my parents were the first in either of their families not to rent, I.e. to have a mortgage and eventually to own a house outright, and I was the very first to toddle off to higher education and get a degree. None of that is because I am white and (now) “middle class”, just the result of greater equity in our society. The same is also true for many of my BAME friends (most of whom shudder at being labelled that way) but they have had to overcome obstacles - including from amongst their peers at school - because of their skin colour.

 

That’s what BLM is trying to achieve: not the re-writing of history (Nelson Mandela said the statue of Rhodes should remain) but greater sensitivity and the opening of doors rather than the closing of them.

In the interests of equity, I got off the soapbox on the left and gave it to the short kid on the right.

Sadly, he fell off and now the HSE are after me...

 

Then there's Fairness as in paying for a ticket to watch the rounders match like everyone else.

[Regularity]

Just now, Edwardian said:

Then there's Fairness as in paying for a ticket to watch the rounders match like everyone else.

But equity in giving people the opportunity to earn enough money to buy a ticket...

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Donw said:

Equity can make a nonsense of much of life. Sport would be pointless  if it was regarded as unacceptable for anyone to be running faster than eveyone else, or the high jump bar lowered for shorter people.

That’s equality, not equity.

Equity is about giving people the chance to find out what they are good at, and encouraging them if they are interested in developing those skills: maths, language, art, sport. It’s about removing artificial obstacles, such as “colour bars” and “glass ceilings”.

How many brilliant engineers, scientists - lawyers, even - has society missed out on due to economic hardship and prejudice getting in the way? What’s good for everyone is good for all.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Equity/Equality whatever - just ask someone who is a handicapper in horse racing. It's all about attracting the maximum money from punters.

 

If a champion horse was going to win every race it entered then that would kill any profitable betting/bookmaking on that race. 

 

Wheels within wheels ..............

 

My apologies for the coarse analogy but when it comes down to the basics people succeed because they persist and work hard, they don't achieve success as an expression of their true worth in society if all their challenges are removed for them. They only succeed if they overcome those.    

[Nearholmer]

Here’s some poetry: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard

[Edwardian]

7 minutes ago, Regularity said:

But equity in giving people the opportunity to earn enough money to buy a ticket...

 

Given that the economic reality of the world is that it is one giant pyramid scheme, it depends on a broad base of people with very little in order to support the diminishing numbers of people with increasing wealth. Twas ever thus. So, absent universal basic income, what you are actually arguing for is some 'caring capitalism' tweak of the American Dream with the potential to alter the composition, if not the shape, of the pyramid.

 

The most significant thing about the American Dream is the necessarily implied part in parenthesis that no one says out loud "If you work hard, there is no limit to what you can achieve (but this can only happen in a few cases at the cost of most of us staying where we are or doing worse)"

 

Equality of opportunity is merely fiddling to skew the odds to influence who ends up where in the pyramid.  Point is, it's still the same bloody pyramid. That is not to say there isn't a case for opening up opportunities to move within the structure, but it won't change the structure itself and, so, a bit more honesty about the exercise wouldn't go amiss.

 

True Socialism is the only answer, but that is a dangerous delusion, attempts to realise which inevitably end in a totalitarian nightmare replete with the same inequalities.  The only difference is you have lost the illusion of having some influence over the system but at least if you complain, you won't be ignored.  They'll listen to you, and then come for you in the night. 

 

So, life is inherently unfair and most often sh1t, and no amount of p1ssing into the wind (by means of didactic poster campaigns or otherwise) will make the slightest difference, save for releasing a few endorphins to reward all that virtue-signalling and wringing of hands.

 

Ain't I cheerful this morning?

[Nearholmer]

7 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

but when it comes down to the basics people succeed because they persist and work hard,

Except that the vast majority of people persist and work hard and don’t have the slightest opportunity to realise their potential because, to use your racing analogy, they’ve been heavily handicapped by circumstance.

 

It’s too easy to say that because a few people succeed by persistence and hard work those who don’t succeed are deficient in one or the other or both; it’s another set of dark glasses to obscure a difficult truth.

 

[Hroth]

Total leap sideways, I see that Hornby have just announced a L&M 2nd (they call it a 3rd) carriage to go with Rocket....

[Edwardian]

I should add that, my above analysis of the way the world works remains pretty constant. Songs of Experience, rather than of Innocence, if we're talking poetry. 

 

What changes is that, catch me on a good day, and I will insist that would should. nevertheless, never stop trying to make life better for as many people as possible.

 

Today, on the other hand. Well, going back to bed with a bottle of whiskey is looking like a great idea.  I won't, of course, but you have to be in a certain place for that to be how ideally you'd like to spend your day! 

[Nearholmer]

That’s the trouble when either the scales fall from your eyes or you cease to be so busy whirling the hamster-wheel of life that you get a moment to pause and really look: what you see is so bl00dy unpleasant that the choices become few:

 

- intoxication;

 

- insanity;

 

- selfish cynicism;

 

- bashing away at it in full knowledge that, without a miracle, it will make no difference  except to how you feel;

 

- jumping back in the hamster wheel to take your mind off it (a hobby is often a faux hamster wheel);

 

- deliberately blinding oneself with comforting delusions.

 

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

5 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Except that the vast majority of people persist and work hard and don’t have the slightest opportunity to realise their potential because, to use your racing analogy, they’ve been heavily handicapped by circumstance.

 

It’s too easy to say that because a few people succeed by persistence and hard work those who don’t succeed are deficient in one or the other or both; it’s another set of dark glasses to obscure a difficult truth.

 

 

I have to disagree. Certainly there is an inbuilt systemic handicapping however that exists in our society, but this is not because of an overall desire to keep people down. In a capitalist system you require workers yes, but also you require that those same people spend money so that the system itself prospers. The more they succeed the more they spend, to encourage the opposite is economic suicide. Even the Chinese Communist Party has worked that out - in China, ostensibly a communist socialist state the government found that pure socialism was a non-earner. Now in China you can be as rich as you like, but the one rule is you don't question the party. To most people seeking prosperity and the life of Riley that price is absolutely worthwhile. Why rock the boat when it's so lovely and comfy on board.   

 

What actually causes the handicapping drag is the reluctance of people to chance their arm at bettering themselves. To a great many people finding a secure niche is more important than chancing their arm. To them the rewards of the former are preferable to the greater rewards of the latter. I'm not condemning those people for their lack of initiative. What I am saying that if the game is to be worth the price of the candle then the candle can only be paid for with money earned from real effort - not from a government dole. A real effort to better oneself is a risky game.

 

Socialism, while a worthy concept, has a nasty habit of collapsing into totalitarianism because it is easier to be an apparatchik than an innovator. Old style Stalinist/Maoist Communism didn't thrive on workers sticking together it thrived on workers who formed committees to establish what was political acceptable, and who then decided to equalise outcomes by stifling personal drive to do better. The famous Russian joke about their communist economy "They pretend to pay us to work while we pretend to work", so In the end what you get is what we have seen which is workers' paradises led by dictators because the only means of success is to dominate the committee system. It was a form of personal success but not one that is a product of the egalitarianism it claimed because the only thing that prospered was the production of committees. 

 

In the end the only means of beating this economic entropy is to admit that there are some people who have the drive to succeed and many who don't. A wealthy productive society that is led by innovators can afford social justice for the people who cannot for various reasons fit in, but on the other hand a society that doesn't allow those innovators to thrive will collapse and the disadvantaged are the first casualties.         

[St Enodoc]

My dear old Dad used to say that the best form of government was a benevolent dictatorship, as long as you agreed with the fellow.

Edited July 1, 2020 by St Enodoc

[webbcompound]

41 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

In the end the only means of beating this economic entropy is to admit that there are some people who have the drive to succeed and many who don't. A wealthy productive society that is led by innovators can afford social justice for the people who cannot for various reasons fit in, but on the other hand a society that doesn't allow those innovators to thrive will collapse and the disadvantaged are the first casualties.         

depends on your idea of success, and  what the "drive to succeed" entails. For me the idea of success is sufficient to be comfortable and enjoy the things I like.  Most people are in this category I suspect. If the drive to succede is envisaged as succesfully devising or creating, or maintaining something useful to everyone then this is good, though mostly the people who succede at this fail at the other definition of success, which is the one used by the media and some politicians, that is the ability to amass far more wealth than you can possibly use for your own benefit in your own lifetime. In most, probably all, cases this wealth is amassed at the expense of the comfort and enjoyment of others for whom being comfortable and enjoying life is success.

 

Railways are a good example of all this. Engineers don't tend to get to be very wealthy; railways running for the comfort and enjoyment of the population, and the health and wellbeing of their employees, don't make lots of money for shareholders; and railways that are manipulated to make someone lots of money don't operate very well for the comfort and enjoyment of the population. 

 

Politic hue is irrelevant in most of these cases. The only issue is the pathological greed and lack of empathy that characterises those who amass their heaps of wealth.  As for the huge charitable foundations they set up in claimed mitigation, this is just putting the comfort and enjoyment of the population in the hands of proven pathological non-empaths. Limiting the ability of the pathologically greedy to amass obscene levels of wealth increases the happiness and comfort of everyone except the psychopaths, and allows the innovators to carry on inventing and running beneficial inventions. Permitting the pathologically greedy to amass obscene levels of wealth decreases the happiness and comfort of everyone except the psycopaths, and constrains beneficial innovation. This applies whether we are talking about dictatorial politicians in socialist systems, or oligarchs in capitalist systems. Good governance lies in restricting the activities of  these individuals for the benefit of the others. Unfortunately we haven't got that in the UK at the moment.

 

Which, to bring things back on track, is why our railways are in a mess.

Edited July 1, 2020 by webbcompound

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

16 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

Which, to bring things back on track, is why our railways are in a mess.

 

Well played - however you will note that I didn't actually say that empathy and understanding isn't needed, what I said was that without the financial capacity to do so then it is only wishful thinking. A bit like the idea that committees actually meet to decide issues when the reality is that they meet just so everyone has a good excuse why the day's targets weren't met but the lunch provided was great. 

 

The irony is that the societies which claim to be the most empathetic are in fact totalitarian because to be truly united and happy a nation needs to have rigorous enforcement of happiness. The beatings will continue until morale improves.