Aston On Clun. A forgotten Great Western outpost.

[figworthy]

3 hours ago, MrWolf said:

That said, the memsahib is working on her masters, as having done a little teaching, (she wsa kind of mythered into doing it.) realised that she can't abide children.

 

 

It's 40+ years since I escaped from skool, but my recollection is that we had some teachers who couldn't abide children.  Quite what made them think that teaching was the career for them remains a mystery.

 

Adrian

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Alister_G said:

Over the last ten or twenty years there seems to have been a concerted push to introduce university degrees for all sorts of careers which were once the realm of vocational training. A case in point is the NHS, where to be a Nurse or Ambulance Paramedic, you now have to attain a degree.

 

29 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Agreed. It's also a measure of how a degree has been devalued that supposedly graduate level jobs don't command graduate level money.

Or, in the case of jobs like a paramedic, how they are underpaid.

 

Ah, the classic consequence of lazy thinking by politicians and sociologists.

 

It used to be that those with an academic inclination went to grammar schools, and went through the route of O levels, A levels and a degree. At 21, they had acquired some qualifications which essentially said that they had completed their academic apprenticeship and had learned to make more disciplined use of their minds. (Not everyone went that far in the system, for example my father left after O levels because his parents wanted him to be brining money into the household budget, but that still put him in the "top" (from an academic point of view) 20% or so: in fact, given his results, probably a lot higher. My mother left school at 16 with O levels, despite recommendations from her school to carry on and become a teacher.)

Similarly, someone with good manual dexterity might serve an engineering apprenticeship, and at a similar age of 21, have completed his articled training and now be suitably qualified to to make disciplined use of his hands as well as his mind.

Unfortunately, the person with the academic apprenticeship was deemed more valuable that the technician with the same amount (in years) of training, nd this was reflected in their pay and conditions.

 

There were genuine routes at the time to further things: my father studied accountancy articles and eventually became a fully qualified accountant with the equivalent of a degree. My mother actually gained a post-graduate diploma (a step or two up from a bachelors degree, step below a masters) during her career. But as time went on, to gain entry onto the accountancy training my father followed, you needed A levels, and then a degree. Why? More people were getting O levels, and then more people were getting A levels, and so on. My mother was denied the final step in her career because the college she worked for was becoming a university, and they decided that they needed an academic with a PhD in overall charge and actually created an extra tier of management to do this! (At first, mum was miffed, but when she saw the level of backstabbing and internal politicking going on, was quite relaxed about it!) Mt ex-father in law left school, became a butcher's lad, then retrained as a civil engineer, gaining on the job training and "day release" from his employer, until he became a resident site engineer for Yorkshire Water, and able to run rings round newly-qualified graduates by using his natural intelligence, intellectual training and practical experience.

 

Soooo. Sociologists noticed that you could correlate how long someone had spent in formal education with both their salary and their social and economic status (aka, "class"). 

So, the way to make everyone better off is obvious: educate them more! Policitions, having found out that the surest way out of poverty historically was through education, promote it for everyone, not realising that they are undervaluing it.

 

A better way might have been to give greater recognition (socially and by pay) to the training that skilled workmen acquired... 

 

Quote

It annoys me that a surgeon might earn £100,000 a year to save several lives a day, yet a mouth breathing idiot "earns" £100,000 a week to kick a ball around.

A top surgeon will earn a lot more than that, but also save several lives in a year, but not in a single day.

 

As for the footballer, if his presence means that his club gets sponsorship revenue and more money at the gate, then as long as it is affordable to the club (which isn't being overburdened by the debt of the acquisition, e.g. Man United, Liverpool, etc) I say fair dos to him (or her): a share of the fruits of their labour seems appropriate, and if they have brought entertainment if not pride and happiness to the club's supporters, then I have no problem with that as their careers can be short-lived - just like the Beatles were awarded MBEs for services to entertainment, rather than killing people, etc.

 

The point is, technical training rather than academic education was undervalued, and the solution was not to turn the former into degree courses, but to recognise the achievement as equivalent.

 

(I was married to a medic, and used to joke with her that her degree was two years of degree-level study on anatomy, physiology, biology, pharmacology, etc) and then three years of apprenticeship training. She didn't always disagree, and I was in fact valuing it as much as any "pure" academic degree to masters level, and that's not why we divorced....)

 

 

 

[57xx]

9 hours ago, chuffinghell said:

 

First thing I was taught in Art was to stick to technical drawing instead 

 

Wish I had your teacher. I dropped tech drawing for German and carried on with Art. Then after making those 3rd year O level choices that go on to affect your future life, I got the end of year exam results - 98% in TD! Too late. Still, I got a B in art at O level, though I did 3d/clay rather than painting. Had great ideas for pictures but could never transfer them to paper. Oh and I got... U in German.

[chuffinghell]

35 minutes ago, 57xx said:

 

Wish I had your teacher. I dropped tech drawing for German and carried on with Art. Then after making those 3rd year O level choices that go on to affect your future life, I got the end of year exam results - 98% in TD! Too late. Still, I got a B in art at O level, though I did 3d/clay rather than painting. Had great ideas for pictures but could never transfer them to paper. Oh and I got... U in German.

I ignored her and ended up with a B in Art and a B in technical drawing, GCSE though so not as impressive as O or A levels

 

I didn’t go to university because I is fick I did an engineering apprenticeship instead and did HNC and HND on a day release basis

 

Mind you I’ve know people with a degree in engineering that didn’t know how to convert imperial to metric or how to read a vernier or micrometer so theres a lot to be said for a practical education

 

Edited May 19, 2021 by chuffinghell

[57xx]

I made it up to myself and did a "filler" O level during first year of A levels. I can't remember the exact name, it was something like Graphical Design and was a hybrid of TD and Art. Got a B in that.

[MrWolf]

The problem I found with degree level art is that they don't teach painting and drawing, merely  encourage people to turn out politicised garbage in the name of conceptual and contemporary art.

 

I got involved with a local artists collective a while back and couldn't believe how those amongst them with university educations (age range 20-70) were still doing the same thing as thirty and probably fifty years ago.

The keen amateurs amongst them naturally following suit. Of course, if you can draw and paint... Far from being the non conformists they claim to be, they simply conform to a very narrow stereotype.

[MrWolf]

6 minutes ago, 57xx said:

I made it up to myself and did a "filler" O level during first year of A levels. I can't remember the exact name, it was something like Graphical Design and was a hybrid of TD and Art. Got a B in that.

 

I was told, right through school that I would make a brilliant technical illustrator or graphic artist...

By the time I started working, every employer wanted someone who had "experience with a MAC" (But obviously didn't want to train anyone) 

To paraphrase Die Hard, we artists were a Timex watch in a digital age.

 

My great uncle had a Velocette MAC, which I knew quite a bit about, but apparently that was different entirely.

[MrWolf]

Back to things model railway related. I had a little time earlier and started putting together some legs for the water tank.

Firstly I needed to put a 52mm X 52mm base into the tank. Cut from an abutment top that came from the bow girder section of the river bridge. Why use plasticard when I have that lying around?

 

 

The base then was reinforced with 9"X 6" girders and 9" angle iron legs  triangulated with 4" angle.

 

 

Legs fitted to the tank and braced.

 

Of course, I don't have enough small angle to finish tying everything together...

 

 

 

[Mick Bonwick]

That's a shame. I was just going to tell my life story and now we're modelling again. Some other time, maybe.

 

I'm rather taken by that water tower thingy. Should look the business very soon. Without, I hope, being too nosy about it, can I ask if you have a prototype that you're working from? I'm often intrigued by the way that these things are constructed because they look very sort of wobbly and unstable to my eye. Probably because I saw one pulled over by a 3-tonner in Aden. Oh, sorry, that's part of my life story . . . . . . . .

[MrWolf]

Life stories are interesting, it shapes a lot of what (and why) we do things like building model railways, or random old WD water towers. My father had left the army by the time Aden kicked off and hasn't South Yemen done well for itself now it's rid itself of British rule? 

 

Oh, that's right, it hasn't.

 

The tower is based on many and none, it's proportioned so that it won't dominate it's surroundings too much, although I did consider buying another kit to make the tank twice the height.

On the model, as with the real thing, the X bracing stops the legs bowing and twisting. The weight of the tank and the water at approx 10lb/gallon is directed into the foundations which are four large concrete blocks in the same way high voltage pylons or the old CHL radar masts are.

One of the strangest looking (and I've stood underneath it, it's strangely unnerving.) is the brick based tank that the army built at Kinnerley on the Shropshire & Montgomery.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 19, 2021 by MrWolf

[Alister_G]

For my Cawdor Quarry layout I built this:

 

 

Which was based on the structure on the right here:

 

 

Very similar to what Rob has produced, which is excellent, by the way.

 

Al.

[MrWolf]

 

Then there's the monsters like this at RAF North Witham. Each Braithwaite panel that makes up the tank is about four feet square.

It's impressive that the airfield was abandoned in 1945, yet this is still standing. I suspect that the cost of demolition in line with current safety regulations would far outweigh the scrap value.

[Graham T]

Nice work with the styrene there Rob.

 

Not a water tower, but I've always been quite taken by these beasties...

 

[GWR57xx]

1 hour ago, Graham T said:

Nice work with the styrene there Rob.

 

Not a water tower, but I've always been quite taken by these beasties...

 

Great photo. Lovely brooding sky.

Bathing huts for the hydrophobic?

The set for Mad Max 27?

[Graham T]

Actually the Maunsell sea forts in the Thames Estuary.  A particularly barking idea, I think...

[MrWolf]

Those things always bring to mind the words "sitting" and "duck".

[Graham T]

Cue the Stukas ... 

[MrWolf]

Despite being slow and vulnerable without fighter support, they would have knocked out those forts in minutes. Luckily for those manning the Maunsell sea forts, it was simpler just to fly around them.

[Graham T]

Our very own Maginot Line

[Nick C]

8 hours ago, MrWolf said:

 

Then there's the monsters like this at RAF North Witham. Each Braithwaite panel that makes up the tank is about four feet square.

It's impressive that the airfield was abandoned in 1945, yet this is still standing. I suspect that the cost of demolition in line with current safety regulations would far outweigh the scrap value.

By my reckoning, that, if it's square, is 96,000 gallons - or somewhere in the region of 430 imperial tons / 440 metric tonnes, without the weight of the Ironwork. Those legs really don't look strong enough!

[MrWolf]

5 minutes ago, Nick C said:

By my reckoning, that, if it's square, is 96,000 gallons - or somewhere in the region of 430 imperial tons / 440 metric tonnes, without the weight of the Ironwork. Those legs really don't look strong enough!

 

True, but it is directing the forces into the ground and back then, the stresses were calculated by hand plus a margin for error.  A modern one would be built to a price and use the absolute minimum of materials.

[Limpley Stoker]

4 hours ago, Graham T said:

Nice work with the styrene there Rob.

 

Not a water tower, but I've always been quite taken by these beasties...

 

Ah! the home of Pirate radio stations- 

[M.I.B]

4 hours ago, Limpley Stoker said:

Ah! the home of Pirate radio stations- 

Shivering Sands (this one above) was home to the very famous and quite good Radio City - and previously home of Screaming Lord Sutch when he DJ'd, and a famous shoot out involving a retired Major and a disgruntled alleged owner of a transmitter.....this is believed to have been the last straw and the Marine Offenses Act was brought in and pirate radio (by then based on ships) became illegal.

 

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by M.I.B

[Stubby47]

4 hours ago, Limpley Stoker said:

Ah! the home of Pirate radio stations- 

 

Not this one...

 

https://planetradio.co.uk/pirate-fm/

[MrWolf]

I like to think that we have a broad and eclectic taste in music here in the spooky ol' woods and it's quicker to say what we don't like. 

That's what radio stations play 90% of the time in between double glazing adverts and inane chatter. 

 

Despite its lack of purpose, the missing struts on the water tank bothered me enough to go and buy some more angle. This little project has used around 1200mm of assorted angle and 450mm of assorted I beam.

 

Yet it's only a scale 26' tall or so!