runs as required

Loved the April Fool !

I suppose Antipodean foolery is all done and dusted long before we’ve even woken up to it being 1st April.

Might she have handled curves as a 4-4-0 ?

The times l have stopped while passing, i have always fantasised about the perfect holiday stoking a puffer.

An Australian who was doing just talked to me in detail on one occasion . He was most persuasive about life aboard when not simply sweating down below in that tiny engine room. I seem to remember a sort of open atrium in the hold with curtained bunks around the edge like a US Pullman, with a central mess table and chairs.

The prob that remained unresolvable was my dear wife - who didn’t even like overnighting in our bay window Dormobile!

Would you consider an alternative transparent sunbathing roof over the hold that visitors could peer through?

2 hours ago, Neil said:

Have you thought about opening up another model railway front on the change as a good as a rest principle? ... I'm ... hatching plans for something to give my small collection of Lisbon trams somewhere to run. This time of year I enjoy time spent in the garden too.

If you have a rockery it would be brilliant pretending steep windy bits of the rockery to be Lisbon route 25 - winding up hill and down around steep windy streets on a circular route!

Lisbon and Porto are my mostest favourite European cities.

dh

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I genuinely find him incredibly strange/bizarre. Leaving aside the content of what he says/tweets, it’s the fact that he says/tweets most of it at all that is so strange ........ it’s as if he genuinely has no filtering or post-processing capability between the early generation of thoughts, and their utterance.

 

Add to that a blindingly-obvious and unsophisticated self-centredness, and it is really disconcerting.

 

The post processing, the tidying-up into cogent statements, the filtering-out of randomly whimsical stuff, the cutting of the ‘me, me, me’ out of sentences, the calibration with facts, all has to be done after he has uttered, by others mostly. Normal adults do a lot of that inside their own heads.

Its clearly a weirdly effective strategy, a sort of spoilt-toddler-ocracy, because he gets things done (mostly not things I much like, but then I’m a namby-pamby euro-liberal), possibly because it is so weird actechnique that it ‘blindsides’ most normal people.

Over a nearly 40 + year career as an academic since I lost my practice job in Tanzania in 1970, I’ve found some of the most successful academics exhibit Trump-like characteristics: Ruthless cut throat Deal makers, refusing to take their share of teaching load or Univ/Departmental admin tasks like timetabling, placement supervision, Erasmus tasks, admissions.

For them it is solely Research avoiding teamwork, Moving on for Promotion, Conferences, going off to US prestigious ‘Centers”

When you trip over them again - they are just as boringly uncommunicative as ever they were.

Some of the most fun inter-disciplinary as well as international experiences I had were in small African Univs and Polytechnics.

dh

I'm currently drinking to the fact I've just been let off the hook by telephone by the Consultant Oncologist about my latest liver cancer  CT scans 

dh

Edit an hour or so on... 

Look, I honestly don't deserve all those hearts at the bottom    >>>>>>

Cos I've been celebrating !  Staying put, sitting and thinking I'm lucky  ( at other times I just sit & ... hic)

The funny part was the Oncologist Dr Nicola Crosti turned out not to be a woman despite earlier phone calls (obviously from a secretary).

My earlier face to face sessions had been with female  junior Doctors but this was the big Consultant himself so we spent most of the phone call chuckling over my mistake.

I looked him up after: from University of Pisa, I imagined his grandad inventing the Crosti boiler.

That is a stunning tunnel portal photo.

I so agree about the enchanting nature of 1990s Steam Age  China. I think I have posted before about being part of a British Council funded York Uni exchange project for 3 years about marketing historic aspects of China - featuring its historic places and museums - including railways (with an NRM academic connection).

They knew I was a railway nutter and we got preferential treatment on night sleeper trains (all East German with Chinese attendant tea-urn ladies trained in German).

What we so enjoyed were the line side cameo details - such as the line-side physical exercises in the mornings -  and in up in a northern railway junction town (forgotten its name) a dingy line side circus -  transported around by the attendant circus train. The Clowns kidnapped our EH Listed Buildings timid boffin for an entire night's 3 performances. He was very terrified by the experience . We all cheered him on as the butt of all the tomfoolery, along with the  (fairly sparse) audience.

Just a suggestion for a bit more foreground cameo human-interest stuff - especially for kids.

dh

I have only just found Sedbergh as a preserved line and congratulate you on a great project. 

I have always loved that vertical strip of the 'serious' Pennines that runs north from Clapham with the Lune and 'the Little' North Western, the Craven district then around the Howgills up into Westmorland. 

When I was a kid I'd ride out with my dad (having to map read) in his 'firms' Hillman Minx into that far NE corner of his "sales area" from Manchester.  In my teens we went pot-holing around Ingleton, and |I subsequently married a girl claiming to have been conceived beside Sunbiggin Tarn.

These days I am always drawn down to Kirkby Stephen East as a preservation project. 

One thing I always look out for with regret for what could have been, when leaving the gorge on the M6, is the Low Gill curved viaduct.

Do you know about 10 years ago the Planners rejecting an application to have a Loco and a Sleeping Car/Dining car train stationed over the viaduct as a static Hotel train.  

I was enthusiastic about the idea but I think the opposition came from objections to the visual impact of road access and parking works and existing tourist accommodation local business. 

I mention it because, though you don't have garage room for the viaduct, parts of the train could be refurbed and back-up stock might be visible  in Sedbergh yard. (Also Lancaster had a long traditio,n beside the Lune, of Waring & Gillow fitting out luxury interiors for hotels and ocean liners.

Best Wishes

dh

Surely mainly remembered for Wilfred Hyde White firing a Gatling gun endlessly off the back verandah of the train.

edit

i think I mis-remembered - I now reckon it was out of the rear connecting door . So he was afforded protection by the partially closed door.

Which opens up an obscure further small volute of an OT query: anyone know leading names of the ‘Affordists’ in evolutionary thinking?

Briefly popular in Theory writing 20 odd years ago - as in Bear thinks  “Aha! this stick will afford me a chance to get at the honey” - or “this island affords us a chance to start a New Amsterdam.”

Love those swooping roofs on the Deeepot

Reminds me of the turn of the century Californian “Wood Butchers*”

2

The Art Deco station in Tulsa (always at 24 hours distance) has been converted to a museum of the Jazz age

dh

*also the US "Shingle Style" mansions

6 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

A shame it isn't a couple of years older - you could listen to the King's Speech instead.

I used to do that on a Gamages Crystal set. I never ever understood how they worked.

Was there a connection with stories of folk who heard the Light Programme coming out of their gas stove i.e. the crystal spark ignition device? 

apology

Oh dear, I've done it again, just joined the WNR mainline several block sections south of where its got to now!

A really lovely little (Stratford  Johnson?)  'T something' emerging

29 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Nudging even closer .......

 

 

 

Are you suggesting this is actually northwest Norfolk - identified by objects in the landscape rather than WNR personnel ?

It isn't green. Its effing chocolate & ...

45 minutes ago, newbryford said:

Then by definition it wouldn't belong here, as it would then be in the best looking loco thread.

Although having said that - some folks would probably put in both threads............................ (just because it's G*R)

Surely this long ago effort of mine disproves your definition 

I have a memory somewhere in a clogged up cell of my brain that Ian Dury had something to do very early on with T7 as an Art SchooL band.  Dury was a Hero of mine singing about the GER Jazz suburbs:

“Home Improvement Expert Harold Hill came home to find anuver fellas kippers in ‘is gwill”

i still wear his T shirt for best.

Another GER territory Hero was Hank Wangford the Norfolk GP eCountry & Western singer and his band who liked to “Patronise you like you patronise me” in a faux US air base accent.

dh

I’d be happier with this unimaginative thread if folks proposed better versions of items posted.

For example: why can’t someone offer a streamlined King that would have really pleased Sir James Milne ?

2

About the Wine Label: I too thought it Astro-Hungarian (I photographed a station pilot like it once at

Pitthion in Macedonia). It was the Red Star erratically dropped onto the smoke box door that suggested Political intent.

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

ENSA: Every Night Something Awful

I suppose the troupes did their best in often trying circumstances!

This is how my dad got through WW II

At RAF Mountbatten in Plymouth as an Airman he met an extrovert Sergeant from Barnstaple (who postwar became an innovative Head of Barnstaple school) and they did an act together. Dad got made up and I recall helping him sewing a stripe on his serge tunic in the boarding house we stayed in just before the blitz which destroyed the seaplane base. 

They were re-posted to E.Grinstead and spent the rest of the war (as Penguins) assisting in the reconstruction of burnt RAF aircrew and the development of plastic surgery. The crucial part was early on trying to keep morale up between long-drawn out procedures, with beer and singalongs. These ditties always seemed to me to be “blue” in the xtreme.

His much younger brother lied about his personal details and became a fighter pilot (Hornchurch and North Weald - and also my hero). He must have lost control in the monsoons in Burma after VE Day from what i have researched and was posted missing. Dad always felt guilty about persuading my gran he’d  make it through.

dh

On 27/03/2020 at 13:27, Signaller69 said:

Some more detail added:

The original funnel was 15mm diameter, the replacement is 10mm diameter tube which looks about right from photos, so as Lez said it was probably about 50% oversized.

Bravo!

Love the stays

dh

I apologise about posting trivial cr@p above before reading through the serious preceding posts.

My wife has just been obliged (through old age) to retire from supporting the longest lasting of her psychotherapy clients for some 30 years.
The client long ago said she would have ended her life, save for the support she received fom her counselling (which included a highly experienced supervisor of my wife’s client  sessions)

Without giving confidences away, this seems to be a most unjust outcome of a rape alleged to have taken place at a place of work. It had been the employer who labelled the incident a rape and initiated the whole legal process, including paying for my wife’s initial counselling support.

The Judge in a Crown Court pre-hearing of the Libel case brought by the alleged rapist, ruled as ‘inadmissible evidence’ the entire case prepared by the lawyers acting for the raped woman – in which my wife and two others had been called as ‘expert witnesses’. 
In consequence the defence barrister withdrew a couple of weeks before the trial, whereupon the employer too withdrew from acting as key witness. 

The local (employment specialist) solicitors, unable to find a replacement barrister, finding they were up against a top London Libel specialist, were left totally exposed in endeavouring to defend their client. 

Wife’s client was found guilty and also denied a chance to appeal by the judge. The Jury's decision against wife’s client received prominent National coverage in the Daily and Sunday red top newspapers; she was labelled a Liar and many facial images were published. She was quickly recognised locally as a Pariah and lost her job 

After a year she found a similar job, then - after a long series of take-overs -  once again, about 10 years ago. found herself again with the original employer. By now Management had changed and no corporate memory remained.  Ironically surviving some old colleagues confided how embarrassed they’d been by the case - feeling the incident had been as originally identified by the employer !

My son a young undergrad at the time of the trial; became a solicitor and subsequently was bizarrely in partnership with one of the survivors of that leading London Libel practice. 
Son simply says the woman (now on the point of retirement) had been badly advised from the outset. She ought to have slapped down a counter Libel claim and gone on the offensive. 

The only one still remaining outraged apparently about all this is RaR  

dh

And now for something comple ...

Any other parishioner know of, or watch a film called " The Lost City of Z" on BBC2 last night around midnight?

I was about to go to bed but gave it a chance. I stayed watching for about an hour before falling asleep and waking up with   the testcard  it long over.

The question is: Do you recommend watching the whole thing ?

I'd never heard of it before but it seems to push all the dialectic opposites at the core of this thread:

The Heyday of Empire/ Militarism/Class/ Ireland/Coloniaism/Savages /Steam (punk) 

It looked to be an expensively made serious 'Ripping Yarn'. 

The highpoint for me was up an Amazonian tributary, a day or so after leaving 'Cosi fan Tutte' being sung in Manaos, an ambush with poisoned arrows zapping in. The hero saves the expedition by jumping overboard behind his punt and singing "Soldiers of the Queen Are We" while holding his prayer book up to protect his eye.  It receives an arrow deeply embedded in it.

dh

14 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 ...  [Coalite] was popular for 'closed' fires such as some types of stoves and 'back boilers', which I vaguely remember were used in some houses to provide hot water until gas became standard.

Gosh, our 1951 Aga (converted to gas 25 years ago) still does heat all our hot water via its back-boiler 

2

"Wen ah wer'a kid"  my folks bought a gaunt Edwardian house with a monkey puzzle in the front garden high above the canal reservoir threatening to destroy Whaley Bridge last summer - before this year's plague. (reminds me of the old Testament)

The 'villa'  had been 'pre-owned' by a family that ran a repertory theatre who'd installed all sorts of extraordinary kit (ex theatrical scenic props most notably calico printing panels set in 3 x ! softwood battens, all 'dark oak' stained, lining the 'lounge' as it was termed and dining room) .

The  kitchen had a fearsome cream coloured boiler with sliding doors that they'd scrounged from a Manchester manufacturer of the post war asbestos/cement prefabs.

I seem to remember it to be coke fired, lit with an above-mentioned gas poker with which I could terrify the poor old family 'rescue' dog.

dh

PS

I really must shut the computer and go off to do some real work! It is a beautiful day.

CA is currently some ultra complex 'polyphony' with more than half a dozen themes all running at the same time!

Just now, Tom Burnham said:

We used Coalite at home c 1960 when smokeless zone regulations were starting to come in.  It looked rather like coke, and was difficult to get started in my experience.  In the 1970s, my parents changed to Homefire which was in larger, hexagonal shapes.

We moved into our great semi derelict pile in late 1976, started with a big hopper fed anthracite boiler,

Then we were introduced to 'Durham Ovoids' smokeless fuel (which sound like an insult thrown  thrown by Vicar - but were more generally ordered by folk as "Cream Eggs").

dh

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Which is precisely why it is an evil; innocent until proven guilty is the more just proposition, IMHO. 

Can't recall whether the C.S. Parnell Affair got as far as the Courts.

But besides being of the period of CA, it seems relevant to this particular case. 

It put paid to Parnell's legislative answer to the Irish Problem - and led to the best part of a century of Troubles, Partition (and the loss of wonderful Irish railways)

dh

Having looked at your model, I'd better say my post had assumed you had just collected an A4 sheet out of a dot-matrix printer to coat and fix with a cheap hairspray can before spray mounting (expensive) on a card of desired thickness to cut on a cutting matt.

I tried these techniques on pre prepared CAD/Photoshop sheets on a cutting machine before I began losing my skills then  rather lost my way . 

dh

it has been quite an eye opener for me Annie, to see that big US Bible Belt man's stuff linked to on your earlier page. 

I was very attracted to the older locos: Webb, Aberdares, the Raven A2 (about as uncomfortably stretched compared to a Z as Great Bear seems to a Star) and his Caleys.

ButI found the stock completely anachronistic being showcased against 21st Century pvc double glazed windowed and brick Art Deco buildings.

It made me realise how wonderfully melancholy many of your coastal settings are - as well as your sparkly snow landscapes.. Then again, Sem's fiery black and red pics have a Wright of Derby attraction in exploiting a central light source.

In summary well beyond what I could achieve in the time left - better to watch the master at work !

Thank you.

dh