guillemot

Sometime around 1979/80ish a class 25 turned up at Ashford on a train of Notts Forest football supporters heading for the European Cup Final. I no longer have my notes from the time but if I recall correctly it was 25071. Earlier in the day three 47s had also worked down to Dover with similar trains. The 25 came off at Ashford and headed back north light engine. One of the 47s which had returned light engine from Dover took over. Sometime around about 1991/2 there was a shortage of DEMUs for use on the Ashford - Hastings line and a number of services were formed of a dead electric unit with a class 33. Usually, though not always a 33/1 working in push/pull mode. I think the units were usually 4CEPs. On at least one occasion the loco was a 73. Another interesting working on the line, probably in the early 80s I think, was the summer Saturdays only Newcastle - Eastbourne SAGA excursion which ran via Ashford and Hastings in both directions. I often watched the northbound working at Ore. It always had a class 33 on it which would be working pretty hard at that point. (Edited - actually my memory may be slightly faulty there - the northbound SAGA working certainly ran via Hastings and Ashford but not so certain about the southbound.)

1950s again, somewhere in North Cornwall.......or maybe 2015 in North Yorkshire.

West Highland Line 1955....................OK, actually NYMR 2015. Original tender looked better. This one makes the back end look too boxy and spoils the elegant lines a little.

From Tony Attwood, "The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome" (Tony Attwood is a clinical psychologist and something of a world authority on AS). "An evaluation of the children seen by Hans Asperger at his clinic in Austria from 1950 - 1980"........showed the most common interests of children with Asperger's syndrome to be animals and nature, followed by technical and scientific subjects, followed by public transport systems (not necessarily railways). However since Hans Asperger's time, other interests such as computer games, Japanese anime, science fiction films and TV series have also become very popular. Girls sometimes have interests more typical of girls in general and since girls were somewhat late to the AS party as far as diagnosis is concerned, the list of most common interests may change as clinicians become better at diagnosing girls. Since my interests are the seabirds of the north Atlantic and the railways of the Scottish Highlands I fit Hans Asperger's original research quite nicely but things have obviously changed a bit since then. (Incidentally re the brief discussion above, I love gulls. They are such beautiful and interesting birds, a view which makes me somewhat unpopular with many people). Based on my own, admittedly unscientific, observations of people I have spoken to in real life and on the internet, I suspect that railways are more interesting to people on the spectrum compared to the population in general; but the majority of people on the spectrum are not interested in railways and the majority of people who are interested in railways are not on the spectrum.

I stopped by the DCC concepts shop to pick up a couple of items recently and asked them about the points. They hope to have a prototype ready to show at the Alexandra Palace show in March. The flexible track looks very nice.

This is beautiful, particularly the water. Your ducks will be fine on the sea. Most species are equally happy on salt or fresh water, even mallards. They won't be upset by a few waves. Some ducks are almost exclusively marine and have no difficulty riding out very rough seas.

Autistic people are all individuals as much as any group of people are. Many of us (Asperger's in my case) spend an awful lot of time analysing why we seem to experience the world in a rather different way to everyone else, which gives us an interesting perspective on many things. Analysing things tends to be something we like doing. It took me a long time to learn that it is not a good idea to believe everything you are told, but we are very good at learning, and now I subject absolutely everything I am told to intense scrutiny, especially as it turns out that so many people are in fact dishonest about so many things. Now I default to assuming that people are being dishonest until proven otherwise. Taking things literally has positives and negatives. Negotiating small talk and social chit-chat is a nightmare for me, but I work in the rail industry and interpreting rules and procedures literally is a good thing. That is how they are meant to be interpreted. It can be very frustrating when some people seem to think that 'rules' are optional or flexible. As for dishonesty, I cannot see why anyone would want to be dishonest. Out of curiosity I have on occasions tried to wind people up at work (not literally of course!) by making things up, but they always see through my rather pitiful attempts. Most Aspies have an obsessive interest in something, but the stereotype that we are all obsessed with trains is not really accurate. Animals, nature and science are the commonest interests, with transport systems being a bit further down the list. Birds are my real interest. Trains are secondary to that. Actually they are even further down my personal list than secondary. Anyway, this isn't intended as a criticism of the post I have quoted but I just wanted to add a few comments to the points raised based on my own experience. I am sure I am not the only Aspie on this forum and others will no doubt have very different perspectives to mine. As I said we are all individuals.