Bon Accord

Even in the 50s Mallaig was more or less devoid of any coal fired vessels as the Fishermen had gone over to diesel power as had the MacBrayne's "steamers" which had been diesel since the 30s, with perhaps the only exception to the rule being visits by the occasional puffer and the odd lingering steam drifter in the herring season. The puffers were generally used for all coal supplies on the west coast, both mainland and island with the bulk of it coming from Ayrshire. Quite a number of vessels did however still have coal fired galley ranges even into the 70s (prior to bottled gas becoming popular) so that is about the only maritime use I can envisage for the time and most likely any coal delivery would have therefore been for the locals. I think the pier sidings also doubled as the de facto Mallaig goods yard due to the somewhat constricted layout, the loco shed, turntable and associated sidings lying to the west of the station. Mallaig was a departure point for MacBrayne's services to the Small Isles, Skye (Armadale/Portree), Raasay and also to Stornoway (via Kyle) so onward traffic to those ports would have gone through Mallaig, Kyle being something of the long way round although it did in itself handle large amounts of traffic to Stornoway. The Lewis service was the main event and departed daily from Mallaig at approximately lunchtime and returned the following morning before breakfast before repeating the journey again. The volume of mail, goods and passengers using this service required MacBrayne's largest vessel of the time which was the LOCH SEAFORTH.

Many years ago when this series first appeared I was regularly in the docks in Grangemouth and at every transmission the rough and tough dockers used to down tools and watch it on the TV in their messroom, all captivated watching Bob Ross craft masterpieces on a whim and with a 4 inch brush. If you haven't seen it before it's certainly worth a watch, this was a man with real talent.

I believe the slam door sets finished operations as of the 1st of this month. Only refurbished sets from now on.

When this clapping thing started the other week the thing which immediately sprang to mind was the Kipling poem "Tommy". Despite 130 years having elapsed and it focussing on a different profession, it is particularly appropriate in this context and I'd make any wager that it still will be when this is all over.

Last time I did one of those first entry inspections I was in a 150k dwt tanker with a freefall lifeboat, lying in near ballast condition at anchor off LA having just arrived after a near 6 week voyage from the Perishin' Gulf followed by a solid few days of STS operations of the slow steaming variety. As well as the usual paperwork checks, LSA/FFE inspections etc USCG also insisted they witness us doing an actual freefall launch into what was a reasonable swell in the anchorage (causing some movement), cue what became a rather intense argument as to the risk of doing it in less than ideal conditions for a drill, specifically the problems we'd have getting the thing back onboard again. Those style of boats were quite new-hat to that company (even if many other outfits had been using them for some years) and one of our sister ships had severely damaged her boat during recovery previously, which had in turn caused a major sense of humour failure in HQ. In fairness to the USCG blokes doing the inspection they looked like they were fresh out of school and probably didn't have the experience to understand what a bunch of tired, grumpy and hard bitten old gits with weird accents were trying to tell them. Of course a few years later when in another company and visiting the US under the protection of diplomatic clearance we did take some delight in telling them to get lost on the odd occasion they turned up at the gangway, same for immigration, customs etc. What confused them was that we weren't painted naval grey with a number on the side, therefore they thought we were a normal merchant ship and therefore fair game. Although it wasn't all plain sailing as one trip our 3/E's home-made, compressed air powered "can cannon" did get us into some bother in Galveston as the USCG took a very dim view of empty beer cans being propelled at speed over the side to much baying from the boozed up audience. It didn't help that they were doing it in port...

Even with everything going on you still had a visit from Uncle Sam's Confused Group? Jeez. MCA have apparently abandoned all PSC visits for the duration, along with many other activities.

DJH is still operational. I ordered a Highland Castle Class kit with motor and wheels from them yesterday lunchtime and it's just arrived courtesy of DPD. For those who may be interested, they're currently doing another run of some older kits.

Regarding the response of certain companies, Stena Line announced last week that it was revoking contractual sick pay to some 950 UK seagoing and port staff. Therefore if unable to join ship due to self isolation or infection then Stena are contractually abandoning their staff and forcing them to rely on statutory sick pay of £94 a week. This in addition to already making over 1000 shore based staff redundant Europe wide last week. James Fishers have also today made a number of shore based staff redundant with immediate effect. I truly hope that when this is over that people remember quite how callous certain companies (respectable and otherwise) have been with their staff and act accordingly. There are plenty of other examples too, Wetherspoons being one.

An old adage that these days is more accurate than ever: "you'll never meet a poor shipowner".

Harburn Hobbies of Edinburgh published this on Facebook a few hours ago: "To mitigate possible spread of the Coronavirus and to protect the well being of our customers and staff, sadly Harburn Hobbies model shop will be temporarily closing from 4pm today, Monday 23rd March, until further notice. For the moment our webshop (harburns.co.uk) remains open. Also, we will be operating a restricted phone ordering service for mail orders: Monday 10.30 am to 12.00 noon; Wednesday 10.30 am to 12.00 noon and Friday 10.30 am to 12.00 noon. Our phone number is 0131-556 3233. This is a very fast moving situation so please check our website and Facebook page for further updates. We very much look forward to the time we can open the shop once again. In the meantime, please take care. Very best wishes, Bob, Gillian and all the team at Harburn Hobbies." I do hope they and the others can weather the storm.

As the old saying goes: "you'll find sympathy in the dictionary between s**t and syphillis".

Salvaging red deer "road kill" after an altercation with a BRCW Type 2 wasn't too unusual on the Wick and Kyle lines. Since linespeed was low anyway there would be a quick stop and then the aforementioned carcass heaved through the double doors into the guards van for onward distribution...

I had booked on this tour for the sole purpose of travelling behind 6233 to Aberdeen, a real shame that it won't be happening now and rather annoying that RTC have made no attempt to contact those who have already made a booking.

Is that a Clear View screen I see? Never realised one of them was fitted to a locomotive, presumably as some kind of trial before they decided windscreen wipers were a more sensible solution?

Portugal, Spain and Sweden were all neutral during the war and lines of communication were maintained to/from them by both the allies and axis powers.

The overall cost is not the indicator many think it to be in such cases. Selection of a winning bidder in this kind of public process involves various criteria of which a pretty hefty percentage is derived value from the bid, in some cases it makes up 25% of the scoring with most of the rest relating to the actual price quoted. The value factor in Ferguson's case would have included things like preservation of a strategic industry, local jobs being maintained/workers not unemployed or on the dole, apprentices trained up, local supply chain benefits, revenue returned to the exchequer via workers tax/NI etc. A foreign yard would of course score negatively on those points. As an example, the scoring system used in the recent procurement process for the Northlink ferry contract was weighted 75% cost/25% value. It's also worth bearing in mind the procurement history here; Fergusons lost out on a few ScotGov contracts from the early 2000s onwards for Calmac, NLB and SFPA vessels due to the government of the day focussing only on the actual price of the bid rather than any intrinsic value. This inevitably led to Ferguson's intial demise and there were large brickbats being thrown around at the time and afterwards,

The heritage steam sector (rail and road) rely on the existing domestic coal supply network as that type of coal is the closest to what is required for heritage steam generation - that used by steel and cement works is a different grade of coal/coke and of no use to the heritage sector. Coal fired power stations are irrelevant as all remaining UK coal fired power stations will be switched off in 2025 and in any event they also use the wrong kind of coal. The heritage railway sector consumes approximately 40,000 tonnes of coal per annum most of which is still mined in the UK as that is the type/grade most suitable, e.g. size, sulphur content, calorific value etc. Eliminating the UK supplier/distrbution network aslo eliminates these last sources of British coal which would otherwise still be economically viable. Substituting these UK sources with imports so as to get around these new environmental regs is problematic due to the low tonnage required together with the difficulty in sourcing the right grades, both of which would make supply potentially prohibitively expensive. Unlike what others have suggested the heritage rail industry has not had a decade to prepare for this outcome, it was only seriously put forward as a consultation exercise (which turned out to be anything but) last year. As for the ban on wet wood, I rather suspect that will have a negligible effect on the existence of these stoves or wet wood being burnt - I can't think of anyone I know who has a stove (and there are a lot of them) who actually pay for wood from a proper supplier. In any event, even if it was unavailable we'd just use the traditional reserve fuel of which we have a near inexhaustible supply and which is of course free - peat!

As the Ffestiniog also proved, it's uneconomic for heritage rail operation. Any workaround will inevitably be more expensive than the status quo. Make no mistake, this change is going to simply kill a large amount of heritage steam operation in this country, whether that be road, rail or waterborne. Yet at the same time millions of tonnes of coal shall still be mined and distributed in Europe (and beyond) every year, with huge volumes of coal still used in UK steel/iron and cement plants causing pollution far in excess of anything used in domestic dwellings or heritage operations. Not fogetting the hypocrisy in saying it's still OK to import coal from Russia or South Africa - ah but those emissions are caused elsewhere so that's OK then....

There is a pedestrian tunnel under the river at the SECC, it's near the two rotundas.

The quality isn't great, but this is worth a look as to how things used to be. The ship in question is the old Dwarka - aka the "Queen of the Gulf" - her withdrawal from service and consequent scrapping truly was the end of an era in British Shipping and the Merchant Navy in general.

Looks like an ex GER D16/3.

Most of the traditional excursion steamers had massive passenger certificates which defy belief these days, however to literally fit them on and meet the regulations most of the passenger certificate was based on open deck space. If the decks were full then that meant it was rammed below - below decks usually being where the bar and restaurant were, and of course the boilers and machinery would take up about half the available space. Waverley had a passenger certificate for nearly 1500 back in the day, but you'd be lucky if you could fit 400 under cover.

The phrase "I'm just off to see the engines..." is still in use on the Clyde, at least in summer!

With a passenger certificate for nearly 2000 as I remember. Where on earth did they all go?!

I think one of the greater problems the likes of Josh's generation shall face is that it's very possible they'll never be able to afford such models to the degree that previous generations can, whether they be aged 18 or 68, in work or retired - the latter probably being somewhere in the early 70s age range by the time he gets there and likely still saddled with debt.