Bon Accord

After the "Mallard" refurbishment circa 2004, Mk4 rakes had three FO's. The FO nearest the restaurant had about 50% of it's seating set aside for those taking meals, suitably adorned with tablecloths etc. In that sense it still operated as per the seating in the restaurant in that there were sittings and you left your normal seat and went to the dining area for a meal. Once National Express et al took over and the catering offering went from being a separate cost to being free, the quality and range of food on offer went sharply downhill and that's when they transitioned to at-seat catering - I won't call it at sea dining because it's anything but.

Regarding turning gear incidents, some years back there was quite an impressive one on a BP 'Border' tanker. At some point they'd started the engine (6 cylinder Doxford) with the turning gear in followed by a big bang; the crankshaft had split. Metalock was suggested as a solution but scoffed at by some, anyway they were invited down and those very nice people did an excellent repair to the crankshaft. Sea trials etc followed with no issues, well done all. About a year or two later the same ship was drifting awaiting orders. As is usually the case, every so often they had to flash up and reposition depending on the rate and direction of drift from the port, although whilst FWE was rung down after the completion of every repositioning the E/R was effectively on continuous standby - the turning gear was therefore not to be engaged on FWE. The 2/E was on watch with his Junior (as was usual then) and after the vessel had changed position FWE was rung down, the 2/E settled down to a peaceful spell pottering about pending another movement whilst his junior went off to do whatever they do, pumping bilges etc. Some time later the telegraph rings again - SBE. The second returns to the sticks, acknowledges stand by and shortly after slow ahead is rung down. The second does his thing and then BANG. After no doubt a change of trousers, much head scratching and some pointed questions, it transpires that after FWE had been rung the Junior went and dropped the turning gear in as was normal practice, even though he had not been told to do so and he knew what the plan had been e.g continuous standby - he'd simply done it autopilot. The C/E was summoned to the E/R as were the rest of the engineers via the calling bell, crankcase doors opened and they peered inside - yes, the crankshaft had split again. Except that this time it had fractured in a different place as the Metalock repair had held!

The seating area was 2+1 around tables which lined up with the windows. Two per row on the upper/galley side (as seen in your pic) and one on the other side. At that time there were "sittings" for meals and that was when tables were made up.

The train itself terminated at Waverley, but as I remember there were through carriages to Aberdeen in LNER days. KIngs Cross did indeed have lower quadrant signals, see here: https://tinyurl.com/2y8tyb7y

The practical formation efficiencies that could be made were already made in the mid 90s, e.g. there subsequently only being two main trains: Highland/Lowland sleeper. Prior to that Inverness/Aberdeen/Edinburgh/Glasgow were separate trains, admittedly with Motorail stock attached. The Glasgow sleeper also had a shunt at Carlisle where it used to drop off sleeping coaches, as the Night Riviera did/does(?) at Plymouth. As an example, until circa 1996 the "Royal Highlander" (the Inverness sleeper) was regularly 15 vehicles all on it's own: 11 passenger coaches and 4 GUV. Made a fine noise climbing to Culloden all the same. The Highland sleeper is already reasonably flexible with regards to demand with Fort William provision increased in the peak summer months at the expense of Aberdeen and Inverness.

After the train leaves Edinburgh and Hannay is walking along the corridor, he looks out the droplight and gazes forward. The film then cuts to the single track WHL with a K2 on the front! It later cuts back to the Forth Bridge of course.

Was very surprised to be sent this link earlier: https://ellermanlines.com/ JRE reborn it would seem? I believe the rights to what was left of the Ellerman trade/name etc went to Hamburg Sud nearly 20 years ago, so I'm curious as to how this fits in. It's notable that the logo is very similar to the final Ellerman lines logo. When with the Andrew Weir Empire I did sail in CITY OF MANCHESTER and CITY OF LONDON (box boats) which both had Ellerman funnels at least - the former also had a 3 cylinder Doxford!

That one is an ex Bank Line "Fish" class, not sure which though. One of this class - Global Mariner ex Ruddbank - was the nearest thing the UK ever came to a national training ship in a similar vein to the US marine schools. She was lost in 2000 on the Orinoco after a collision.

A pity the majority of the crowds seem more interested in capturing the procession on their mobile phones more than anything else.

See attached screenshot. I find it bizarre that eBay has decided to take a stand against these armbands when it otherwise permits all manner of supposedly commemorative drivel/tat/rubbish to be advertised on the website. There are many hundreds if not thousands of mugs, plates, towels etc and all manner of other nonsense being advertised that supposedly "commemorate" her death and which are blatant profiteering, yet seemingly that is somehow more acceptable. Perhaps because the aforementioned tat hasn't had a social media reaction it's therefore ok?

Perhaps not unexpected, but the price is mind boggling. 5 grand?! https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/185585721166?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=JAjqdRfNQri&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=l3BdnK2wShC&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

I don't recall seeing any in the catalogue, only the four wheel version. Hatton's are however going to produce such vehicles.

Considering the amounts being quoted it'll be our children and grandchildren that will be paying it off.

Possibly St Eustatius or Curacao? Those were the regular bunkering haunts in those parts.

As I remember once bunkered we would then be down to our loaded draft of 22 metres. There then followed a leisurely 6 week steam to California via Bali and Guam - so crossing the equator and the dateline on the same trip - and normally a few weeks alongside in Long Beach. They didn't have the ullage ashore to take the full cargo in one go, so it would be a routine of discharge for a day, stop for a few days, discharge again, stop for a few days and so on. Much shore leave in Long Beach, jollies into LA, upto Malibu, San Francisco and all the tourist stuff including an interesting afternoon taking a behind the scenes tour on the Queen Mary followed by a very boozy meal and cocktails onboard which our local agent had organised for us. Then another 6 week steam back to the Gulf via SIngapore and so on. As tankers go it was a rather pleasant way to spend 5 months, helped of course by having a really good crowd onboard from old man to deck boy. All the same, I only did two more and that was me finished with tankers forever.

The last VLCC I was in was on a regular run and always took bunkers in Fujairah when outbound from the Gulf, this happening once every 3 months or so. We used to take 7000t of HFO in one go, usually from a bunker barge that itself must have been 20000dwt.

Scottish postboxes do not have the EIIR cypher for the reasons you state, they simply have the Scottish crown on them usually with the words Royal Mail underneath. Even back in the wholly different world that was 1952 Elizabeth being proclaimed "the second" caused disquiet in Scotland such that it required intervention from Churchill (PM at the time) to compromise a solution. One of the olive branches given was the establishment of a protocol with regard to future monarchs; that being that if a future monarch was of a different number on both sides of the border then the Scottish number would always be used if it was higher, e.g. a future King James would be proclaimed King James VIII as the previous version was James II of England/James VII of Scotland. Royal Mail did cock up a few years ago and installed an English postbox (with EIIR cypher) in I think Dumbarton, however it was swiftly removed when the error was pointed out. Those 'boxes from previous monarchs do however still have the appropriate royal cypher, e.g. the postbox down the road from me bears "GR V".

Thankfully it would seem Admiralty paper charts shall still be available from third party suppliers which have their own printing presses, which to be fair has been the case for quite a few years now anyway. It's all done under license. I've still never sailed with a proper ECDIS; all these years on and the primary medium for my current ship is still the (rather thinner than they used to be) paper charts. We moved to electronic books, e.g. pilot books, mariners handbook etc the other year and the PC version is actually harder to use and much less convenient than the paper version in my opinion. Of course to many, the likes of me are no more than dinosaurs!

You're actually correct with regards to the common modern attitude to both such systems. Heads buried in screens rather than looking out the window, usually in a fully enclosed wheelhouse, all very quiet beyond the noise of various PC fans and other computer sounds. Then everyone's shocked when a "real world intrusion" occurs...

I wouldn't be enormously surprised if it didn't earn it's keep, nowhere near in fact. A few steaming days at Didcot and the odd jolly to a preserved line for a gala and that's it, in much the same vein as the King, the Saint and likely 4079. If memory serves all three of them were also originally intended to go main line.

You mean in much the same way that many will view a quasi-replica 47XX as "just another Western 2-8-0"?

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This is the one at Bo'ness, as seen this afternoon.

Just received my BR late crest version. Is it just me or have they tweaked the BR green slightly? Compared to that used on the Clan and A2 releases it looks a bit more "right".

I once watched Borgnine being interviewed on "This Morning" and when asked as to his favourite films he mentioned Emperor of the North Pole (the original title on release). Of course the rest of them had never heard of it.