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This week's Saturday Timewatch features NS 248 "Sik" based at the Dutch heritage railway ZLSM. There seem to be quite a number of similar machines preserved around the Netherlands country but this one is a runner. Built in 1935 by Werkspoor, the class NS 200 diesel locomotive was mainly used for shunting duties.
What is most interesting - and can be seen in the photo - is that the locomotive was designed to be operated from a running board on the outside of the engine.
NOTE : VISITS MAY BE IRREGULAR FOR THE NEXT WEEK OR SO AS WE WILL BE ON TOUR. IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE AVAILABILITY OF WI-FI.
Taken from one of the public right-of-ways on the north side of Portland, this is looking north / northwest back towards the mainland of Dorset.
I tried putting marker location notes on the photo but flickr's system went doolally. Instead there are descriptions below.
The 18 mile / 29kms long pebble beach to the left is Chesil Beach.
The lagoon just behind the beach is The Fleet. During WW2 it was one of the sites used for testing the Bouncing Bomb.
The short runway and associated buildings, middle left, is now the home of HeliOperations. The company provides training and helicopter services. Until 1999, it was the home of RNAS Portland aka HMS Osprey.
In the centre of the photo is Portland Marina, home of the sailing events in 2012 Olympics.
In the foreground, the two large blocks of flats were built in Castletown for naval personnel. After the Royal Navy left Portland Harbour at the turn of the century, one has been converted into modern day flats.
To the right you can see Mulberry Harbour Phoenix Units. These are two reinforced concrete caissons, built as part of the artificial Mulberry harbours that were assembled as part of the follow-up to the Normandy landings during World War II.
Across the harbour is Wyke Regis, effectively a suburb of Weymouth.
The main Portland Harbour is off the photo to the right.
One of three Saturday Timewatch photos this week featuring rail transportation used in Mexico during a visit ten years ago. You can see the other two here :
In a major city of over 8 million people, public transport is essential to stop the city grinding to complete gridlock, let alone choking on its own fumes. By 2014, As of 2014, the system comprised 12 lines with a total track length of 226 kms (140 miles) and 195 stations.
In this photo taken in 2010, a service on Line 2 races into a city centre station with the destination Tasquena. Immediately after grabbing the photo, I hopped on board.
This week's Saturday Timewatch goes back almost a century to show what a Dutch steel hulled Gaff Cutter from the 1930s looks like under sail. This is the sailing vessel Moonfleet, currently based in Portland Harbour.
Compared to some similar ventures, Sherborne Steam and Waterwheel Centre is run by volunteers on something of a shoestring. It was one of their occasional open days this weekend and both their restored waterwheel and this Hindley engine were running, though I should point out they are not currently linked together.
The back story is that in the 19th century, waterborne diseases were rife in Sherborne, just like many towns and cities throughout Britain. For example, in 1829 a gentleman from Salisbury was not impressed when he visited the town. He wrote ‘The lower part of Sherborne is a most obnoxious place. The stench in Half Moon Street is such as to cause ordinary gentlemen to vomit and ordinary ladies to be overcome by attacks of the vapours. Those persons living in this part of the town have become so used to this awful stench that they go about their daily work as if living in the middle of a fragrant flower meadow’.
In the late 1860s a plan was developed and quickly implemented for a waterwheel connected to lift pumps to move clean water from two new boreholes up to a reservoir at the top of the town. A photo concerning this may follow on another occasion. In 1876, only 7 years later, demand for clean water was so great that a new steam engine was built by E S Hindley of Bourton, near Gillingham, Dorset to draw water from the boreholes and boost the waterwheel's output.
The photo above shows a very similar and now restored Hindley steam engine that originally ran at Gillingham brickworks. It is now in full working order but currently does nothing more than run the eleven foot flywheel that weighs about two tons. By the way, the volunteers managed to get hold of the coal-fired boiler, seen at the far end, when it became redundant from heating a greenhouse in Holland!
Wearing Great Western Railway colours, 4566 (built in 1924) crosses Victoria Bridge (1861) northbound near Arley on the Severn Valley Railway. Not only was it a wonderful sight, but the sounds of hissing as the locomotive approached unseen were superbly evocative of another age.
Flickr Explore #218, 2nd July 2012
There'll be a few regulars around this corner of flickr who will easily remember this scenario, especially from the various slam door DMUs or EMUs across the decades.
This poster is on display at Corfe Castle station. It is a classic British Railways poster circa 1950s with artwork by Fyffe. In full it reads "PLEASE BE CAREFUL. Many avoidable accidents are due to careless opening of carriage doors before the train stops"
(The poster copyright lies with the National Rail Museum / Pictorial Collection / Science & Society Picture Library)
Although only a mile from Corfe Castle, we unexpectedly came across this bridge as we had no idea it was there.
It is known as Copper Bridge, currently a public bridleway and public footpath over Corfe River. The humpback bridge dates from the 1800s and used to be on the main route from Corfe Castle to Church Knowle. Pedestrians would go over the bridge whilst animals forded the river.
I can find no information as to why it was known as Copper Bridge. For example, as far as I know, copper extraction has never taken place in Dorset.
Another combined Saturday Timewatch and Sunday Landscape this weekend.
On both the modern Ordnance Survey map and that published between 1888 - 1892, the public right of way running down the hill is named "Sandy Drove". As can be seen it is a very wide route, with the name indicating that farm animals have been driven up and down the escarpment. These were probably sheep in this part of the world but could have been cattle and just possibly pigs.
Known as a "transhumance" this Dorset movement is likely to have been the reverse of what normally takes place. The animals will probably have spent the winter on this relatively high ground which would rarely be frozen or snowed in so close to the sea on the south coast of England. Once any winter flooding had receded, the animals would then have been taken down to the valley and lowland heaths for summer grazing. Most transhumance across the world goes in the opposite direction - low altitudes in winter with summer grazing on high mountain pastures.
I will readily admit another possibility is that Sandy Drove was an access track to the main west - east ridgeway from which this photo was taken. This right of way is known to be prehistoric and even up to the eighteenth century formed the main highway from Weymouth to Wool. It is entirely possible that animals were driven to market along this ridgeway track.
I couldn't let today pass without a bonus "Timewatch" photo from 2011 featuring a Virgin Pendolino slowing to a brief halt at Macclesfield Station after an approx 1 hour 45 trip en route from London Euston to Manchester. Yesterday (7th December 2019) saw Virgin's final service on Britain's WCML (West Coast Main Line) and as of today the new franchise commenced operated by Avanti West Coast.
Not everyone will agree but from my fairly extensive rail passenger travels, Virgin Trains were Britain's best Train Operating Company (TOC) for 22 years by a country mile. I'll concentrate on the Manchester - London service...
* Three services per hour for much of the day
* Fast services...around 2 hours.
* Reasonable comfort.
* Quirky and efficient staff.
* A decent reliability, sometimes thwarted by Network Rail workings rather than any failing of their own. You often arrived a few minutes early in London.
* Cheap tickets, so long as you could book in advance. I often got tickets in the £10 - £20 range.
* Their early introduction of automatic delay-repay.
* ....and who could forget the 'talking toilets' !
I'll even add that on several occasions their internet booking system even allowed my purchase of First Class tickets at a cheaper price than Standard Class, giving access to their terminus lounges, free newspaper, food and drinks on board. Result! I'll never forget a mid-evening trip back up north in First Class. The chap reminded me that he was only allowed to serve me seven free alcoholic beverages per trip. Did I want to be carried off the train my destination? No!
The new franchise have a hard act to follow.
This week's Saturday Timewatch features a roadside billboard photo taken in either July or August 1980, shortly before Hughes Airwest was purchased by Republic Airlines. The 35mm slide photo was taken out west in America and given the destinations mentioned (Houston Hobby and Denver) it was likely to have been in or around Las Vegas. For those who want more detail, here is the wiki about the airline whose slogan was "Top Banana in the West" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_Airwest
Boat lifts!
Edwin Clark figured out the principle of hydraulic balance for the first ever boat lift that, although modernised, still operates today at Anderton, Cheshire.
Exactly the same principle was applied to the Houdeng-Goegnies lift on Belgium's Canal du Centre, shown above. After delays, it finally opened in 1888 but only for experimental and tourist purposes. Reason? The Canal du Centre, connecting the rivers Meuse and Scheldt, was not actually completed for commercial traffic until 1917.
In this photo, the left caisson is down and the right caisson raised. A UNESCO World heritage Site, this and three other similar nearby boat lifts still function using the original machinery. Although no craft were seen going through the system during our visit (late in the season) there are other related photos that will follow in due course and one will show a lift in operation!
It was on this day 51 years ago, November 24 1973, that I was lucky to attend Mr. Bob's gig at Manchester Polytechnic. The next generation down has now somewhat unexpectedly become a real fan, witnessed here by her playing the Legend Vinyl Gold edition released in the US in 2018.
I readily admit that all these years later I have no detailed recollection of the gig.....can't think why! What I do know is that I was incredibly lucky to have been there on just his second tour of Britain for my one an only live show by the legend. I reckon I was one of about 200 people who were there. He had played Manchester University earlier in the year but I missed that. I suspect that it was during the summer of '73 that his music landed in my house. His first Island Records album, Catch a Fire, had been released in April of that year closely followed by Burnin' in mid-October. This tour of largely university venues was to promote the album.
This 11th Bob Marley track to make the jukeboxes was recorded just the night before at Leeds Polytechnic. Note the compare quite correctly, given the album title of that time, introduced the band as 'The Wailers' though the poster says 'Bob Marley and the Wailers'
bithbox # 246
Many stations have had and some still do have a "Railway Hotel" in close proximity. This example is from Wareham, Dorset. Fortunately the sign still exists because for many years now the establishment has traded as the Monsoon Indian restaurant.
I think the locomotive is a depiction of King Arthur, 453, that belonged to the London and South Western Railway. Any correction or further information on that is welcome.
As always, should there be any problem with copyright I will happily remove this photo.
The photo was taken by Stuart Morris in 1979, probably in February of that year. It shows yet another flood in the vicinity of Brandy Row, Chesil, pronounced like 'chisel' the woodworking tool. Floods have been a fact of life here for centuries and continue to be a threat despite modern sea defences. Indeed there are flood warning sirens nearby.
This photo was seen in b-side's "Weather or Not" series. It has particular interest because as we were studying the photo, we got talking, as you do, to the chap next to us. He proudly told us that the car in the foreground belonged to his father and that when he came to rescue the vehicle, it started first time!!
Built in the eighteen century, this barn stands close to the church where William Barnes preached in the hamlet of Whitcombe flic.kr/p/2p64hQP Thanks to the current owner, it is still in very good condition, including the thatched roof seen here from the inside.
There are more famous locations along Dorset's Jurassic Coast for fossils. However, after heavy rain and therefore minor landslips last week, there were some decent finds yesterday at Ringstead Bay.
The oyster (Deltoideum delta) is by far the most common at the site and you can find similar on any visit to Ringstead Bay. Looking clockwise, there is a segment from quite a large ammonite. Top left is the best find of the day. It is an echinoid (sea urchin) and is probably one of the micraster species. Next there is a bivalve of some sort. Finally a small piece of belemnite sits on top of some sort of what I think is a fossil tube worm. All of these are from approximately 150 million years ago.
Even experts cannot always be precise concerning fossil finds, so I should repeat what I wrote on my other fossil posts that I am very, very, very far from an expert so rely heavily on information posted by e.g. Southampton University. If any of the above is hopelessly incorrect, i apologise!
Created for dA Users Gallery Challenge 98 – Steampunk Fairy 2
Source images with thanks to:
♥ Model by Magikstock
♥ Bird Cage by Made to be Unique stock
♥ Clock by Frozen Stocks
♥ Hat by Richard Symon
♥ Textures by Valeriana Stock and Karen Brown
This image came in 2nd place in the challenge!!
Another week, another Saturday Timewatch. This features a classic example of the Isle of Portland's military / naval history, namely Verne High Angle Battery. Hopefully you can click the link below onto large size so you can read the interpretation board about the site.
This week's Sunday Landscape features some of the massive ramparts of Maiden Castle. It is an Iron Age hillfort dating from around 2,400 years ago. Located just outside of Dorchester it is one of the largest in Europe having an area roughly the size of some 50 football pitches.
Mrs. Kim gives scale to the size of the construction, all done without the aid of modern machinery.
BITHBOX # 048
CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL "PROUD MARY"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOfHOMpU4iE
One of the two big wheels of Waverley, the last seagoing passenger-carrying paddle steamer in the world.
Eilean Donan Castle, nr Kyle of Lochalsh, is at the meeting point of three lochs - Loch Duish, Loch Long and Loch Alsh. Originally built in the 13th century, it was destroyed by the Royal Navy in 1719 after the local Mackenzies involvement in the Jacobite rebellions. The present building is a 20th century reconstruction of the castle with the addition of a footbridge to the mainland. To me is the very definition of 'dour'.
During the English Civil War, Corfe Castle was a Royalist stronghold. There are variations in the story. However, with her husband away, the gist is that with just a few soldiers, Lady Bankes defended her home from Parliamentary forces during a six week siege in 1643 until relief came due to the arrival of a Royalist force. Three years later, either due to treachery or trickery or both, the castle did fall. Soon afterwards the castle was partially destroyed by the Parliamentarians to look not dissimilar to how it looks today, centuries later.
Saturday Timewatch this week features an old milking parlour. It is not a museum but has simply been left in situ by the farmer from whenever it was last used, presumably after a dairy herd was abandoned.
I was pleased to come across this, possibly just in time. Already there is a small holiday let on the land. Now the rooms next door to this were being completely refurbished with new electrics, plumbing etc etc probably for a second holiday cottage. Maybe this area will be the next project and it will all be lost?
This Type 25 WW2 pillbox now leans at a precarious angle overlooking Ringstead beach in Dorset. It is one of several that have survived in various stages of disrepair along this stretch of coastline.
Going underground through the Wheal Mexico tin mine, part of the Geevor Mine Museum complex. It is thought this section dates from the 18th or early 19th century and as such was dug mostly by hand apart from one harder section of rock where explosives have been used. "Wheal" means "place of work" in Cornish but no-one knows why the word "Mexico" was used.
The tunnel is quite low. I gave my helmet a good whack at least four times!
These "Saturday Timewatch" photos might be considered unspectacular. However, the back story has thousands of years of history.
This is Ringmoor, north Dorset. If you look carefully you can see two slightly raised banks leading away towards the tallest tree in the distance. To take the photo, I am standing in the middle of an Iron Age trackway. Behind me it connects within a couple of hundred yards to what is now known as the Wessex Ridgeway, an ancient route that followed the highest ground over many, many miles to connect farmsteads and settlements long before we had 'roads'. This Ringmoor track is a bit like a sunken lane along which animals could be led.
Where it reaches the trees, there is a raised earth ring bank (see photo below). It is about 150' by 100' across. Within that existed an Iron Age farmstead. If you click on the photo below, I've added a note to show where the low raise embankment remains even after several thousand years.
Ordered and built for LNER, this ex-British Railways B1 4-6-0 carries the original "apple green" livery in which she was delivered to the newly-nationalised BR in 1948. Here she powers up the bank from Corfe Castle to Harmans Cross hauling a rare special from London to Swanage.
Wednesday's routing out of Heathrow Airport provided a good view of the royal residence, Windsor Castle. According to WikiWhoKnowsAlmostEverything, Queen Elizabeth has increasingly used the castle as a royal palace as well as her weekend home. It is now as often used for state banquets and official entertaining as Buckingham Palace. It is also a major tourist attraction.
The original castle was built in the 11th century after the Norman invasion of England by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I (1068 – 1135) it has been used by the reigning monarch of the day and is the longest-occupied palace in Europe. From left to right in the photo, you can see the Lower Ward; the Middle Ward and Round Tower; the Upper Ward and the Long Walk in the lower right hand corner. The River Thames is in the upper part of the photo.
Can you see the Roman road featured recently flic.kr/p/2s4xqkb ?
It is the straight line running from the bottom left towards the top right where it deviates from the straight line to avoid a natural feature that would have been very difficult to build over.
I can't get flickr's 'notes' to work today. So I'll try to explain.
As you look at the screen, the right half of the Roman road is highly visible to the naked eye as illustrated by the above link. However, in the the left half of the image, the Roman road is completely invisible to the naked eye as it has been ploughed out over decades and maybe even centuries. However, a geophysics survey (ground penetrating radar) reveals that the road did indeed continue.
Some of the other features are hedgerow lines and buildings. The line clipping the top left corner is a modern road.
This week's "Saturday Timewatch" goes back to 1954. Apart from showing a classic page from an original "Ladybird Senior" book, the following is just so evocative of the time -
"(Blue Tits) are also very fond of pecking off the caps of milk-bottles when left on the doorstep in the morning"
The way around this was to have a box outside the front door. Having collected the empties for re-use, the milkman put the glass milk-bottles inside and put the lid back on!
This week's Saturday Timewatch goes back around 80 years to the 4-8-8-2 cab forward steam locomotives purchased by the Southern Pacific Railroad. 4151 is illustrated here as part of the Union Pacific Exhibition car. Similar earlier classes and a later version were also built, as well as the AC-7 illustrated above. However, all were designed with a cab forward configuration so that the engine crew were ahead of the steam exhaust through the miles of tunnels and snow sheds that were found across the steep mountain passes of the Sierra Nevada. It is over and through that terrain for which these hugely powerful locomotives were primarily designed.
The final survivor of the class, 4172, was scrapped in 1959.
Durdle Pier, on the Isle of Portland, dates back to the 17th century when stone quarries were in the immediate vicinity. According to The Encyclopaedia of Portland History it first appeared on a map dated 1745 as "Dirtle Key" and later as "New Key" or "Dirtle Pier" on a 1765 map. It was "Durtle Pier" on a map from 1800 and "Dirdale Pier" on a map of 1811. Finally it became known as "Durdle Pier" on the Ordnance Survey map of 1863. However, by then, the shipping of stone had already ended when the Merchant's Railway opened in 1826.
A second life commenced lifting fishing boats in and out of the water and this continued until relatively recently, towards the end of the 20th century, when the crane became beyond repair.
For reference, the Purbeck coast is shown in the distance, stretching out to St. Alban's Head.
I hope fluffy5518 won't take umbrage at me for linking a photo from 2009 showing what it was like. The big storms of early 2014 finally did for the structure. All that is left is the remains shown above, with assorted timbers and rusted winches scattered nearby.
I'm continuing to mix Texas trip photos with new ones taken locally in Dorset.
This is part of the long-distance Roman road between Londinium (London) and Isca Dumnoniorum (Exeter). The surface you see here is effectively the original as the ground conditions and total lack of motorised traffic means that it has survived very well. If you look carefully, you can see the raised 'agger' (road surface) with the drainage ditch especially noticeable on the left side as you look at your screen. Note that the width would have been sufficient for two carts / chariots to pass. As is often the case, the road ran along a ridgeway. That avoided the much wetter valleys to either side and also largely avoided any local agricultural activities that would have taken place in the valleys. It also provided the military advantage of holding the high ground in case of a skirmish.
This week's Saturday Timewatch features the first in an occasional series about aviation history in Dorset. They will all be taken from the excellent Rodney Legg book "Dorset Flight : The Complete History". I will of course be removing this and any other images should anyone moan about copyright. However, I think the photos deserve a wider showing.
Here is the moment when for the first time in Britain, in Portland Harbour, an aircraft takes off from a moving ship. Lieutenant Charles Rumney Samson was flying a Short Improved S.27 from a ramp fitted to the battleship HMS Hibernia. Four months earlier, using the same aircraft and ramp he had successfully taken off from HMS Africa, a battleship moored in the River Medway.
(Catching up this week on some road trip photos from the USA)
These two buildings are in a back road, one-horse settlement, name of Carter, Wyoming, population 10 in the 2010 census. However, just behind where I am standing, there is still a very active freight railroad (but with abandoned sidings), which gives the clue as to why Carter existed in the first place. The story goes that in approx 1868 one of the principal railroad locating engineers couldn't obtain a quart of whiskey over what was then the Utah state line on Sunday. So therefore he moved the rail route to pass nine miles to the north in Wyoming, resulting in the establishment of Carter Station at the junction of the east-west Union Pacific Railroad and the new road built from Fort Bridger to the north. A telegraph line was also built to connect the Fort with the Union Pacific Railroad, as it was that fort providing protection to the workers.
The timber building was the Carter Hotel. I don't know anything about the building with the false-frontage flag.
Today's Saturday Timewatch concludes "Steam Week" with a look back to the reddest of red-letter days in 2019 when witnessing UP's 4014 'Big Boy' highballing through TX after leaving Spring.
The photo is a reworking of one taken at the time. You can also see Mrs. Kim's video and just listen out for that horn at around 34 seconds before 4014 even comes into view.
This week's Saturday Timewatch features a locomotive with quite a varied life. The photo above shows TKh 5387 going across an unmanned crossing at Vierves-sur-Viroi, Belgium, hauling the afternoon passenger service from Mariembourg to Treignes on the heritage Chemin de fer a vapeur des 3 vavallees (Three Valleys Steam Railway).
There are many details of her life that I cannot answer. However, the 0-6-0T locomotive was built in Poland in 1959, destined for work at the Cementownia Saturn (Saturn Cement Plant) Wojkowice, Poland. I do not know when that work came to an end. At some stage she then found herself in England, being a resident at the Northampton and Lamport Railway, though whether this was directly from Poland or via a stint in Belgium again I do not know. What is clear is that in more recent years she has been based at Maldegem Stoomcentrum, Belgium, but is now to loan to Three Valleys Steam Railway.
Two asides :
# 1 The volunteer on the footplate had just got back on board having used a 'flag' to ensure a safe crossing of the road.
#2 A close relative TKh 2944 (built earlier in 1952) currently runs at Churnet Valley Railway, Staffordshire.
This week's Saturday Timewatch goes back more than 1000 years. This footpath public right of way is just a tiny section of a lengthy "shire rack" that originally divided two grand estates but now, along more or less the exact same line, divides the counties of Wiltshire and Dorset. I've chosen this particular photo because if I've understood the rather complicated history and literature correctly, this coppiced tree coincides with one of the "charter markers" of 956 AD when the boundaries were set.
Dorset is this side of the tree whilst Wiltshire is on the far side. The tree is on the line of a slightly raised 'rack' bank.
This week's Saturday Timewatch continues our musical pilgrimage through Texas. So far this trip there have been ZZ Top in La Grange; Gruene Hall (the oldest dancehall in TX); Bob Wills in Turkey and Hayden Pedigo in Amarillo. Next up is Waylon Jennings who many see as the pioneer of the Outlaw Country musical genre.
Thanks to Kim for her collage showing him as the most famous son of Littlefield, Texas, pop 5871. His younger brother, James, owns and operates Waymore's Liquor Store. After Waylon's death, he converted a small back room of this ex-garage into a tiny museum honouring his elder brother's life and times. Whilst small there is still plenty of memorabilia from clothing to guitars to records, posters and newspaper cuttings etc. James had just left for the day but the lady tending the bar was happy to tell us and another couple who happened to also be making a pilgrimage stop about the various displays.
Luckenbach, Texas, pop 13, is hundreds of miles away so here is one of Waylon's classic tunes
bithbox # 209
Waylon Jennings "Luckenbach Texas"
I should add that despite only having 13 residents, Luckenbach, town motto "Everybody's Somebody in Luckenbach" still has a dancehall. Pretty much everyone who is anyone in country music has played there. Apparently, the 13 residents can be joined by as many as a 1000 music lovers at the weekend.
Part of the wider Merchant's Railway on the Isle of Portland, the diagonal track plunging down the hill is the Freeman's incline, aka Merchant's incline. Opened in 1826, the purpose was to transport Portland stone from various quarries to what is now known as Portland Harbour.
The system was apparently rather more complicated than the following single sentence suggests. However, the gist of how the incline operated was based on the concept of counterbalance, in which a heavily loaded wagon of stone, once descending, would be counterbalanced by a sufficient number of empty wagons ascending.
The railway finally closed in October 1939.
From this vantage point, it is just possible to make out a little of Weymouth to the top right of the photo. A section of Portland Harbour can be seen. The buildings on the hill on the far side of the harbour are in Wyke Regis. The shingle bank, with a lagoon on the landward side is Chesil Beach, 18 miles / 29 kilometres long, leading towards West Bay, Charmouth and Lyme Regis.
Place names throughout England often have very ancient origins. This signpost on a right-of-way in Dorset gives three examples.
Throop : This comes from the Old English 'throp' meaning an outlying farm or settlement.
Brockhill : Again from Old English, in this case 'brocc-hol' meaning badger holes.
Turners Puddle : Going back more than a thousand years to the Domesday Book, this refers to 'the estate on the River Piddle held by the Toner family'.
Inspired by Chris Firth's recent mention of Barmouth swing bridge, a delve into the vaults found this photo taken on my first ever digital camera. It has been somewhat reworked from a previous post. As can be seen from the photo below it features 76079 running one of the regular Cambrian Coast summer steam specials that the West Coast Railway Company operated between 2006-2009. The photos were taken on a foul morning from Tonfanau Station, part way up the bank from Tywyn towards Friog cliffs from where the line then drops down to the Mawddach Estuary and the Barmouth swing bridge.
Built in 1957, this 2-6-0 mostly worked freight duties, including some North Wales coal trains along the Chester to Holyhead line. However, as far as I know it was never seen on the Cambrian Coast line. The locomotive remains operational at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway where she is certified for mainline working to Whitby.
The S&D exploration (Somerset and & Dorset Railway) continues. This is a set of level crossing gates at Corfe Mullen. You can also just make out remnants of track.
Now, where were we with fossil hunting.....
These items are what we found at Charmouth last week.
Top left : Three broken pieces of belemnite. They are extinct marine creatures closely related to modern day squids and octopuses. What you see here are examples of their guard, their hard internal skeleton.
Top right : Fossilised shell, probably a bivalve shell.
Around the edge : Three complete and three broken pieces of ammonite, all in rather poor condition. They are extinct marine molluscs, again related to squids and octopuses.
Centre : Either the most or the least interesting item is in the centre. We think there are three possibilities i.e. fossil wood; fossil bone or rock without any fossil interest. We gave AI a go and it came up with the same three possibilities. Unfortunately, the local Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre was closed on the day of our visit so we weren't able to ask a volunteer expert for their opinion. We hope to get an opinion later in the year on another visit.
Escapades and photos posted by flickr friends often contain a back story. So it is here. A winter ticket to Texas was purchased way back around Easter before we even knew that Union Pacific No. 4104 was finally making a return to operations in May. We agreed then that if 'Big Boy' ever came south from home base in Cheyenne, Wyoming, we'd be travelling to see it.
Then came news of a nationwide tour on UP rails! However, the schedule was only published as far as September out west and the south west. Would 4014 then head east and more importantly, make sufficiently slow progress so that we too would be in Texas?
To cut a long story sideways, it was only weeks before that it became clear we would arrive in Houston on the very same day, November 6th! The schedule showed a one-day static display on the 7th at Houston's Amtrak station, with departure the following morning to start heading back north towards Cheyenne.
So on the very first morning back in the Lone Star State, it was straight down to H-Town's station for the time-limited open day. Predictably the conditions were nothing short of monsoon like. Nevertheless thousands turned out, photography was nigh on impossible and where the locomotive was parked meant you could not get any full side-on view.
Nevertheless, returning home like drowned rats, knickers soaking wet; shoes sodden; everything wet, wet, wet, we agreed it was still wonderful.
The photo above gives a hint of the deluge, outlined against the darkness of the cab. The photo below show the sheer size of the wheels. The second subsidiary photo, taken leaning over the fence, catches the fire and something of the length of the train.
Tomorrow, there'll be information about the locomotive and photos giving much better views of 4014 out on the tracks as we chased the train!
Bithbox # 153
"Hans Zimmer & Alan Walker "Time" (official remix)
Have current generations ever been more aware of 'time' during this last year? This is my contribution to the (approximately) one year anniversary of the C-19 pandemic. Below are a selection of personal timeline dates from February and March 2020.
February 15th 2020 : eBay order placed for face masks.
March 2rd 2020 : Haircut,
March 5th 2020 : Decision taken not to attend the indoor annual Butterfly Conservation meeting as first Dorset cases have already been confirmed.
March 6th 2020 : Doctor's appointment.
March 11th 2020 : "Global pandemic" officially announced.
March 13th 2020 : Throw tickets in the bin for Phil Beer concert at Bridport.
March 14th 2020 : America closes the border to UK (and other) citizens : UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office issues travel notice effectively stopping UK citizen travel to the USA.
March 15th 2020 : Houston flights scheduled for 18th March are cancelled.
March 22nd 2020 : Last day trip visit to north Dorset countryside before Lockdown 1.0.
March 23rd 2020 : Prime Minister Boris Johnson announces full lockdown.
March 30th 2020 : First supermarket Home Delivery order arrives.
...and the rest, as they say, becomes 'history'