Bon Accord

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.

Not a lot it would seem considering the rail transport successes elsewhere thanks to devolution.

Another article full of utter nonsense, the drivel from some of the so-called experts is something else. The comments from Alf Baird are nothing short of laughable - whether the ship is certified for 1000 pax or 500 pax makes cock-all difference to the overall cost as it's the difference between carrying six 150 man liferafts and eight - a cost differential of approximately £60K. As has been previously mentioned, a 500 pax capacity is no use to man nor beast on the Arran run. The media is obviously out for blood, regardless of what they must contrive to attempt to get it.

I hope yours is going better than mine. Joined Wednesday at the start of a scheduled 2 week docking with a budget of 700k. We've now found so many holes in the wrong places after much blasting that it's now looking like a 4-5 week docking and the bill has already gone north of £1.5million.... 25 year old ship so what do they really expect.

Quite simply she wasn't a Clyde Puffer. The basic design (or at least the concept) was adapted into the VIC format for wartime use in exactly the same way as the Stanier 8F morphed into the WD classes - a cheaper and slightly less complex copy of an original proven design which was produced en masse and used all over the British Isles accordingly.

Lots of people at this inquiry with an agenda. The passenger side of these ships is far from over specified. The expectations of the travelling public increase year on year, so sticking with a 1960s travel experience is not what is wanted. Just look at the pasting the likes of the IEP gets on here and elsewhere for being a perceived backwards step in passenger comfort/experience to the likes of HST/225. The passenger capacity of the ships are also justified - the current Arran vessel is certificated for 1000 passengers and that is utilised in the summer months, with people often having to be turned away from sailings on Summer weekends - when she's full it is not a pleasant travelling experience, although the crossing is only 50 minutes. The new vessel is therefore a like for like replacement. The vessel destined for the triangle does not require such a large passenger certificate, however to use an RN associated phrase it would be "fitted for, but not with", and the passenger spaces are more appropriate to a slightly longer and more inclement route. It is after all utilising a standardised design which provides a lot of flexibility in the future as inevitably in 20 years or so the vessels will likely be cascaded to other routes or would possibly end up working "back to back" together - what might seem flash and over specified now is considerably not 20 years hence, so the long view must be taken. These ships will likely have a service life with Calmac of 35-40 years, far longer than would ever be expected in the commercial world. As for Roy Pedersen - if that bloke said the sky was blue I'd struggle to believe him. He's a mouthpiece rolled out from time to time to comment on Scottish Ferry matters because he's classed as a so-called expert, despite having no background to justify that premise - he has never worked in the maritime industry/ferry industry/public transport and aside from that lack of experience has no professional qualifications in that area either. Some of the stuff he produces in written form aptly demonstrates that - he lacks a basic understanding of the practicalities of how ships and shipping companies must be run, be they Calmac or otherwise.