The Night Mail

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

"That Biriani must have been quite something!"

[AndyID]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

It was fine until he put the hammer drill into the wall!

 

That looks like Scotland. Clydebank?

 

[Tony_S]

Here it is “could you come here please?”  There is a certain tone that I know means something has failed/broken/stuck. 

[New Haven Neil]

Ah, it's 'could you just.....' for me.  Fatal.

[jamie92208]

Can you just have a look at this for me please....

 

Jamie

[Compound2632]

It's much more straightforward here: "I can't do X because the cat is sitting on my lap."

[Oldddudders]

2 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

It's much more straightforward here: "I can't do X because the cat is sitting on my lap."

That excuse has saved my bacon many times over the years. 

[Florence Locomotive Works]

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

 

That looks like Scotland. Clydebank?

 

I'd venture to say Edinburgh looking south.

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

 

That looks like Scotland. Clydebank?

 

 

"Damage to a tenement in the recent raid on Clydeside. 17 March 1941.": https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205398477

[AndyID]

16 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

"Damage to a tenement in the recent raid on Clydeside. 17 March 1941.": https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205398477

 

Clydebank was effectively flattened.

[Dave Hunt]

4 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

 

 

I think that the bloke in the flat cap is saying, "Ooh, dunno mate, could be a while before I can get the parts...."

 

Dave 

[simontaylor484]

Evening all

 

Just going through my emails tonight I got one from the auctioneers of that sale of the dublo collection there are still some lots unsold that they are inviting offers for 

[simontaylor484]

51 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

I think that the bloke in the flat cap is saying, "Ooh, dunno mate, could be a while before I can get the parts...."

 

Dave 

You can almost hear him sucking his teeth and saying it's going to cost missus

[PhilJ W]

31 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

Evening all

 

Just going through my emails tonight I got one from the auctioneers of that sale of the dublo collection there are still some lots unsold that they are inviting offers for 

Looking at some of the amounts their asking for offers I'd give it a miss. Their postal charges will put you off as well.

[J. S. Bach]

6 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Whatever you put in that chili last night, whew!

[BSW01]

9 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

Not knowing what the prototype is, I would say that the model is quite nice just as it is.

 

 

Thank you for your kind comments, I will be sure to pass them on to Ava when she comes round next Saturday. 

 

The engine shed model I’m making is based on the old LSWR glass house design. I’ve included a couple of photos, which I’ve taken from the book “Southern Sheds In Camera” by Roger Griffiths, showing examples of the real thing. It gives you bit of an idea of what I’m trying to portray, but in a much smaller size. 

 

Here’s my effort again, so a quick comparison can be made without going back a few pages. 

 

And here are the photos of the original buildings

Salisbury

 

Strawberry Hill

 

This afternoon, I took a break from the cellar renovation, I made a start on the rafters for the engine shed workshop. 

Edited October 4, 2021 by BSW01

[polybear]

14 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

 

 

Now THAT'S what I call a F@rt.....

[AndyID]

11 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Now THAT'S what I call a F@rt.....

 

Actually it's called a blitz or more correctly a blitzkrieg. It was no laughing matter for all the people who died in Clydebank. The town was virtually annihilated. My mother was just along the river in Renfrew when it happened.

 

 

[AndyID]

MrsID had a bit of surgery today to remove a breast tumor (the outlook seems good) but on the way into town we came upon a major incident. A logging truck and trailer had tipped over at a bend and gone off the side of the road, spilling all the logs in the process. (Some of the logging truck drivers here seem to think they are driving F1 racing cars but that might not have had anything to do with it.)

 

When we got to the hospital they warned us that MrsID's surgery would be delayed a bit because the surgeon had to attend to a trauma case which, it turned out, was due to a head injury to the poor guy driving the logging truck.

 

Incidentally, the doctor and all the staff at the local hospital were really excellent. We are very fortunate to have such good health-care here.

[SM42]

44 minutes ago, AndyID said:

MrsID had a bit of surgery today to remove a breast tumor (the outlook seems good) but on the way into town we came upon a major incident. A logging truck and trailer had tipped over at a bend and gone off the side of the road....

 

We happened upon a logging truck in trouble back in August in Poland  

Not as serious as the as the above incident fortunately.

The rear bogie had steered the opposite way to the tractor and it had all got a bit jammed up on the edge of town as the tractor was now trying to pull the rear bogie along at 90 degrees to the road.

 

The solution was to unload the logs onto the verge outside the church and fire station ( mind the lamppost!) and connect the errant bogie to the tractor. 

 

It was a very popular spectator sport. 

 

 

Andy

 

[Happy Hippo]

3 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

Actually it's called a blitz or more correctly a blitzkrieg. It was no laughing matter for all the people who died in Clydebank. The town was virtually annihilated. My mother was just along the river in Renfrew when it happened.

 

 

Both my parents were living in Cardiff during WWII, my father initially in Cathays, but then Rhiwbina, and my mother in Grangetown.

 

My father's move was brought about by his father being seconded from the GWR where he worked at Cathays shed, to the ROF factory in Birchgrove, becasue they needed experienced staff to get the 25pdr gun line (and others) up and running at full efficiency.  As an aside, he was awarded a £25.00 efficiency award for developing a series of fixtures that shortened the production time needed on the guns being manufactured. £25.00 in those far off days was a huge sum so it must have been deemed very important.

 

My father in the meantime had lied about his age and was a member of the Civil Defence.  It gave him great pleasure to turn up at school with a 'proper' respirator, rather than the 'Mickey Mouse' style given to the other children, but working with the CD meant that he was out and about during air raids and not ensconced in a shelter.  His first encounter with a corpse was during a raid:  The CD post was in Cathays Cemetery, and  a stick of bombs hitting the area disturbed a lot of graves.  Initially some of remains were thought to be casualties, until daylight revealed the macabre truth.  He used to joke about feeling a little stiff after that night in the cemetery

 

As soon as he was 'old enough', my father (now really aged 14) became a motor cycle messenger and became a lot more mobile.  He soon realised that the bike being a much better method of getting from Pen Y Dre in Rhiwbina, where they now lived in an ROF house, to school at Cathays Grammer, than walking or going by bus.

 

But it was my mother who lived in Grangetown who ended up closer to the war.

 

Cardiff had become a target in early August 1940, even before the Battle of Britain had properly started.  She claims that she was on the beach at Penarth with her mother when a low flying German aircraft machine gunned the beach.  My grandmother also backed this up, but I have never found any record of it in official documents.  It may very well have happened, but German aircraft steered clear of Penarth head, as although it was a navigational point, it was also an anti aircraft concentration point.

 

The family did not initially have an Anderson shelter, so took to hiding under the stairs.  they were there when an incendiary hit the house and ended up on the half landing of the house. directly above the well in which they were hiding.  Fortunately my grandfather was a firewatcher and was 'off duty' so was in the house.  He got burned picking the incendiary up and putting it into a bucket of sand, then removing it from the house.  Many years later, builders who were renovating the house uncovered burn marks on the rafters and walls where the incendiary had landed and ignited.

 

Others were not so lucky, Hollymans Bakery, a few hundred yards away, took a direct hit and the 32 people hiding in the cellar were killed.  The building was flattened and it was always reputed that some of the victims are still there.

 

At some point, a decision was made to deliberately set fire to Leckwith Moors slightly to the west of Cardiff.  The decision was a sound one as such a conflagration was a magnet for the attacking bomber force and diverted quite a few attacks.  Post mission recce flights by the Germans would have revealed this ruse, but for some reason the crews were not informed of their lack of success and the need to shift their aiming points.  Perhaps they did and they adopted a 'that will do' policy rather than pressing on.

 

Like RAF Bomber Command, the early years of the war saw the Luftwaffe plagued by lack of navigational aids for accurately bombing targets at night.  They had developed the Lorenz, blind landing system back in the mid 30s, and this was adapted into Knickebein and then X Gerat.  Knowing about these systems then initiated  what we now know as Electronic Counter Measures (ECM), and Electronic Counter Counter Measures (ECCM).  This particular aspect of war has been going on in the magnetic spectrum ever since.

 

Knickebein was quite easy to jam, and distort,  being a simple single beam that was intersected by another beam over the target.  X Gerat, although similar was not as easy to disrupt. Once the lead bombers reached the intersection point, they released their incendiarys.

 

The British equivalent to this was a system called Oboe which was the primary and most effective of the allied blind bombing aids.  I believe Oboe was only carried on Mosquito aircraft, as Oboe ground stations relied on being able to see the target aircraft, and the Mosquito was the only aircraft capable of gaining sufficient altitude over Germany for this to occur. However, this system really ran out of range for targets east of the Ruhr industrial area, so later systems such as H2S and Gee H were used, but they never had the consistency in accuracy that Oboe achieved.

 

Funnily enough, Dave and I were discussing an Elint issue at the Telford show last Saturday.

 

It's amazing how such similarities in discussions can crop up at such close intervals having never been discussed before

 

(Those who've been following TNM, will recall the veiled reference to Monica, again part of the electronics war.)

 

 

 

Edited October 5, 2021 by Happy Hippo

[New Haven Neil]

R V Jones book 'Most Secret War' and another whose author I don't recall 'Instrument of Darkness' tell the stories of these devices, they make incredibly interesting reading.  Jones's book does involve some shouting at the politicians involved at the time though.....Churchill saved the day by letting Jones speak at a meeting when really quite junior.

[PhilJ W]

During the war my mum lived in Hornchurch but some two miles from RAF Hornchurch. Even then they were not that far from Gidea Park on the Liverpool Street line. A few stray bombs landed in the streets nearby when my dad was home on leave. Being in uniform he was expected to help with the rescue (he would have anyway). In one of the wrecked houses they found a badly injured man trapped but still conscious but before the could get him out he died. When the did get the body out they found that he had been completely cut in two at the waist. Mention of Knickebein reminded me of reading  that by bending the beam in some instances they were able to direct the German bombers towards high ground. This was said to have accounted for as many as a dozen aircraft, mostly in South Wales.

[Winslow Boy]

I seem to recall seeing a programme on the telly about how German aircraft were fooled by having false targets. These were areas where lights,fires etc were set up away from the target in order to represent the target. It was quite risky as they could also be bombed.

[MR Chuffer]

17 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

German aircraft were fooled by having false targets

True, these were set up east of Accrington, Lancashire scattered around the moors to protect the Howard & Bullough Globe Works, a large engineering establishment that became a major armaments manufacture during WW2.