Johann Marsbar

KRT 920 is over on the left of this photo taken at the end of February....... Atlas also produced a model of our Dennis, PBJ 338, as I've got one of those on my layout!

Whilst the railrover ticket had completed its validity, I still had the best part of 3 days to go in Brno with the next day, a Saturday, being the Airshow. I can't remember whether it was a 2 day event or not, but I certainly picked the best day of the weekend weatherwise to go there. Obviously there wasn't a lot of railed transport on offer that day, though I did have a Brno day ticket - needed to get out on the bus to the airport - so I did some exploring before and after visiting the show...... Service to the show was given by duplicating the normal route 76 from the City Centre to the Airport, this lineup of waiting buses being seen outside the station...... The Airshow had a decent representation from a number of Air Forces - including the RAF who showed types now long gone in 2024. It wasn't all aircraft either as the Czech army had quite a display there...... Polish AF.... Czech AF.... Slovak AF.....(with the ubiqutous Lakenheath based F15 behind...) RAF..... French AF..... Some more from the show in the next post as well.....

The bridge and the branch actually feature in this months GCR posting on YT as well....

Having delivered some surplus 12":1 foot scale railway items to them today.......... ...this is the current state of the lift bridge project...... The aim is to have it completed by the Autumn with an Official launch after that at some point.

At Jesenik I caught a connecting onward service to Ostrava (or that was the theory...) formed of an 853 class railcar, the route actually passing through Poland for about 15 km - another one of those lines which have been affected by Country and Border changes over the past Century. At Mikulovice we passed this 751 on a freight....... ...and after traversing the section through Poland we passed through Tremeszna where there is an active CD 750mm gauge line...... The "through train" of course turned out to be anything but as there was yet another rail replacement bus for the section from Opava to Sitina. The only bonus was that the replacement train for the Sitina to Ostrava section was loco hauled behind a 754. This private owner 770 was at Ostrava... (the pantograph is on a train behind!) Unlike the "flying visit" on the first day of the rail ticket I had allowed some time to do a bit of travelling on the local transport (tram & trolleybus) so bought a day ticket and set out to cover a few of their routes.... ...though discovering this parked up next to a tram stop was a bit of a surprise..... No display boards or indications of what it was there for anywhere near it! I've had a search online and can't find any mention of it now or even find it on Google maps.

Once my income fell below the tax threshold - which was about 8 years ago now - I contacted the organisations I had Gift Aid covenants with so they could stop claiming for it. Will be about another 5 years before I can start offering Gift Aid again!

The last day of the rail ticket provided some more interesting travel opportunities as my first journey of the day, from Brno to Pardubice was undertaken on one of the new CD Pendolino units..... ...with one of them seen at Pardubice...... This 151 is also seen at the station there....... ...whilst a quick look outside at the bus stands produced these........ A little bit further down the road some work was underway on the overhead..... Continuing to Usti nad Orlici behind a 162, I was surprised to discover that my next train was actually hauled by one of the centre-cab 111 electrics......... ..which took me to Lethorad. It was there that I found my next service was actually hauled by one of the 749 diesels, a class that had avoided me all week, and this took me on to Jesenik. As we left Lethorad these were seen from the train........ ...and the journey to Jesenik passed through some nice scenery heading up towards the Polish border......

Certainly looked a lot better in 2000 when I saw it.....

I just had a quick look in the ITJ CD and couldn't see any obvious mention of the Bangladesh wagons though I do know it's in there somewhere! The Jordanian hoppers were actually built at Ashford as well and they did get exported via Felixstowe as I found a couple of reports about them, being sent in at least 3 batches in the August/September 1975 period.

I think so. There was a report about them in the local Transport Society magazine at the time, which will be somewhere on the GERS produced CD of the things which I have here at home. I believe they were built at Ashford and were sent north (Hull?) for shipping abroad on accommodation bogies. Think that was somewhere around the 1975-76 period without having a search though the CDs in question. Another wagon type for overseas use went the other way through Ipswich around the same time and I managed to get a (pocket instamatic) photo of those, which I think were destined for Jordan......

I just dug out my copy of Tourret and all he had to say about it was.... "WD 7195 left works in September 1943 experimentally fitted with armour plate over the top of the boiler, probably as a prototype in case it was found necessary for these engines to be armour-plated for the invasion of the Continent. In the event the Allied air superiority made such armour plating unnecessary and it was removed from this single locomotive before it was shipped to France"

For those who want to have something "different" on their layout, how about a rake of Bangladesh Railways bogie vans, as seen emerging from Ipswich tunnel sometime in the 1970's (?)....... Another gem from the camera of H.N.James, as found in the Ipswich Transport Museum archives this morning!

I think he may have spent some time on the Melbourne Military Railway as well in his WW2 service. I remember him recounting that he was on his way via Canada/USA to the Far East when they dropped the atomic bombs, so he decided to "get lost" in North America for a while, which enabled him to cover a number of eastern railroad operations in the US, some of which he photographed in colour. Unfortunately I'm not sure whether we actually got all of his photo collection, as some of the US colour images I remember from 1980's slide shows seem to be absent from our archive. His collection passed through a third party after his death and it took a lot of work getting them in our archive. The same happened with Dr I.C. Allens photo collection.....not that we have that though!

As we've drifted off topic for the S160's in recent posts - this might be a good place to post this image that I found in our Museum photo archive this morning, whilst actually looking for something else...... It is a 2-8-0, but one of the WD variety rather that a USA one and shows the sole example that was fitted with armour plating on the boiler and something I'd never seen a photo of before. It's not excactly a brilliant shot, but was taken by H.N.James, a resident of Ipswich since the early 1950's until his death in the 1990's and one of the photo collections we hold in our archive. He certainly took a number of photos at Longmoor during the war when he was based there, but where this image was taken I'm not sure. We may have details somewhere on our computer system, but he was someone who didn't make good records of where/when he took photos!

Next port of call was Olomouc, home of an interesting but compact tram system. A few views at the station first..... ...before venturing outside and buing a DPMO day ticket ..... Most of the fleet appeared to be Tatra T3's, but a few Skoda low floor cars had been purchased....... The tram depot was mainly an open-air parking area situated in the centre of Town...... More livery variety back at the station....... The plan was to return to Brno via various secondary lines, which started off well until I reached Prostejov, as shown below...... .....where what seemed to be the statutory bus replacement of the trip meant that I missed out on one section of line I wanted to do!