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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'
The history of the Somerset & Dorset Railway towards the southern end of the line is very complicated. I apologise in advance if any details are incorrect.
This typical housing estate scene, with the lady in a purple jacket and a cyclist on the old S&D track bed shows where their own tracks from Bath ended on the curved approach to Broadstone Station. It is here that their services joined London and South Western Railway metals. That company's track bed came in where the modern housing development now exists. However, just a couple of hundred metres through that estate, their old track bed still exists as the Castleman Trailway all the way to Wimborne and Ringwood.
At this point it is easier to refer to the schematic map below.
(Note : Entries for yesterday's music game flic.kr/p/2niU3jH remain open for another 24 hours or so!)
Another old building in Trowbridge features as this week's Saturday Timewatch. It is so named because there are no windows.
Dating from circa 1758, it was used as a lock-up for almost a century until the town had an official police station. One use was for locking up drunks until they sobered up.
However, there was clearly more to it than that. During a riot in 1826, the roof was ripped off and the prisoners released. The date is significant as the year saw major labour unrest in many Lancashire mill towns known as The Weavers' Uprising. Remember that Trowbridge's economy of the time was based on wool and weaving. I suspect the two events were connected.
It should sharpen the garden spade and shears nicely.
Apparently the company still carries on under another name in what is now the Czech Republic. I can find little information about this particular product. However, on the internet I've seen a very similar item made in America dated to the 1930's.
It is 42 years since Star Wars first came out. Not being much of a film fan, I only ever saw the original of the whole saga in a cinema. However, I have never forgotten the event as it was the first and only time I've ever known applause to break out in a cinema at the end of the film.
Fast forward to 2019 and who would have expected such an interesting United special livery to promote the latest episode "Star Wars : The Rise of Skywalker" The United aircraft is a B737 (N36272) and is photographed here on departure from Houston to San Francisco. The details are more visible on large size.
I'm sure it must have happened before but the inside of the aircraft is also themed and can be seen in this link that also explains some of the details of the livery www.insider.com/photos-inside-united-airlines-star-wars-b...
Thanks to Kim for making the diptych!
A most unexpected item for this week's Saturday Timewatch. I came across this poster yesterday. It is displayed at Staverton Station on the South Devon Railway, a heritage railway that runs from Buckfastleigh to Totnes. Previously I had no idea GWR ever operated an airline!
For overseas readers, GWR stands for Great Western Railway, a name that is still in use today. Their own website has this to say about a short-lived foray into air transport.
"The GWR formed its own air service in 1933 but operated independently for only a year before the Railway Air Service was formed by the Big Four railway companies (including GWR) in collaboration with Imperial Airways to provide internal services to connect with Imperial’s international flights. One of the most important routes was Cardiff to Plymouth and Cardiff to Liverpool and Birmingham. The RAS was absorbed into the nationalised company British European Airways in 1947"
Southern Pacific Railroad advertising poster, circa 1950.
Interesting to note that some 67 years later, Amtrak's service on the same route takes 44 hours 35 minutes.
This week's Saturday Timewatch marks the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10th 1869. A final golden spike was driven into the rails to connect the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads. You may recall the photos of Big Boy steam locomotive? 4014 was out on the UP rails of America to celebrate the 150 anniversary of the event, visiting Ogden, Utah on the exact anniversary date. This poster, photographed from the Union Pacific exhibition as Big Boy went through Houston, TX, shows the initial sales pitch and advertising as the transcontinental railroad opened. The detail can be read on large size.
(Note : I am back in England but will continue with a few more American photos in the coming days)
....a red blood night.
Saturday Timewatch this week is inspired by recent posts from Rob and Ray that included a reference to either Transaero or Zenit FC (St. Petersburgh)
It was 2008 and the day of the EUFA Cup Final in Manchester. Here Transaero B747 VP-BQC touches down at Ringway, one of numerous Russian aircraft bringing Zenit fans into town for the match. The aircraft lasted another 3 years before going into storage and was eventually broken up at Rome Griffiss International (USA) in June 2015.
To this day, I'm delighted to report that Zenit won 2-0 against Glasgow Rangers. Why? Over 100,000 Glasgow Rangers fans, many would say "scum", descended on Manchester, most without tickets. They absolutely trashed the city centre. Police officers fought running battles with the thugs throughout the night and there were many injuries. Cars were vandalised and shop windows smashed in. As the following day dawned, the city was strewn with broken glass and the detritus of many hours of rioting. A dozen people were eventually sentenced with this quote from the judge "By 8.45pm that evening Piccadilly Gardens had become a battleground. Riot police were deployed and struggled to contain the trouble and restore order. What followed was the worst night of violence and destruction suffered by Manchester city centre since the blitz"
Conversely : Sharon Gibson, the Rangers fan who saved a police officer from serious injury, was awarded £200 from the public purse for what the judge called her ‘enormous courage’
Zenit fans were largely well behaved. Fortunately they were also largely out of the way of the mayhem as the vast majority had tickets for the match so were isolated from being attacked when things really kicked off.
(Note : I'll add that being a football fan I've seen plenty of incidents over the years but nothing remotely on the scale of what happened that night)
I'd put money on that most of my UK contacts will have owned at least one Observer's Book in their childhood, often given to them as a Xmas or birthday present. First published in 1937, the last, numbered 100 in the series, came out in 2003 entitled "Wayside and woodland".
I don't know if there were similar publications in other countries?
BITHBOX # 078
Midnight, August 14th 2017, is the 50th anniversary of the UK Marine Broadcasting (Offences) Act 1967 becoming law. Whilst other offshore stations succumbed, Caroline famously continued broadcasting...
...and still broadcasts today, a remarkable achievement! You can listen to their live anniversary programming via this link. Some, if not all, is coming from their final vessel, MV Ross Revenge, currently moored along the River Blackwater.
www.radiocaroline.co.uk/#home.html
Jimmy McGriff's evocative track has been chosen partly for its title; partly because other tracks intimately associated with Caroline have already featured on this flickr stream and partly because I remember it from Radio Caroline North anchored off Ramsey, Isle of Man. For a time, Caroline North used to close down during the evening hours, but re-open broadcasting from midnight until 2 a.m. then closing down again with 'Round Midnight.
The photo above features the MV Caroline, Radio Caroline North's ship. It is on the front cover of my Radio Caroline Club booklet, sent to you along with other goodies when you joined.
Note : The photo of the booklet was taken today. However, for old times' sake, I've put the geotag at the approximate location from where Caroline North broadcast during the mid-sixties.
The fully loaded steam powered coal barge “Minx” broke her moorings one night during November 1927. She drifted unnoticed without her crew through Portland Harbour and across Weymouth Bay, finally coming to rest on Frenchman’s Ledge where she was wrecked. The following morning apparently produced frantic activity from the locals, as the Minx’s cargo of coal started to wash ashore.
Taken during a very low spring tide, this photo shows her remains towards the bottom left corner of the photo. The Isle of Portland is in the distance.
Having recently converted two WW2 bunkers into holiday homes, the landowner at Ringstead now milks tourists rather than cows.
One of the homes used to be the Standby Generator Bunker. It was part of RAF Ringstead, a component of the Chain Home radar, a coastal early warning system that stretched from Cornwall in the west to Norfolk in the east. In 1941, the station was put into service, finally shutting down in 1956. The Bunker's Grade-II listing was taken into consideration during the renovation, and the original concrete walls and other elements have been kept. If you look carefully you can see the grass covered 'crescent' shape of the bunker to both the left and right of the concrete structure. Look inside here!
www.sykescottages.co.uk/cottage/DorsetSomerset-Spring-Bot...
At the height of the summer holiday season, this photo from 1959 seems appropriate for this week's Saturday Timewatch.
The original photo is in the Dorset History Centre. It shows holiday makers at the Allandale Guest House, Weymouth in 1959. The town's esplanade remains lined with hotels, bed and breakfast establishments and guest houses. In fact, Allandale Guest House is still a going concern.
EDIT : Oops. Different guest house. The one on the seafront is the ALENDALE. I hadn't noticed the difference in spelling. The one above has either been rebuilt or refurbished and looks like apartments.
This weekend's gala at Swanage Railway features no less than FIVE Bulleid locomotives to mark 2017 as the 50th Anniversary of the final operation of steam hauled services on the Southern Region of British Railways.
In the above photo, Battle of Britain Class 34081 92 Squadron is about to depart Swanage Station with another nearly full load of passengers. She is named after the famous Spitfire squadron based at various airfields but most revered for their operations from Biggin Hill during the Battle of Britain in 1940. Entering service from Brighton works in 1948, her mainline career ended when she was withdrawn from Eastleigh shed in 1964. Finally restored, she spent 10 years on the heritage circuit from 1998-2008. After major work she has just re-entered service for a third time earlier this year, now wearing the British Railways malachite-and-sunshine livery.
In the background, Battle of Britain Class 34053 Sir Keith Park awaits her turn.
Why "Bullied"?? Southern Railway's Chief Mechanical Engineer Oliver Bulleid designed SR's West Country and Battle of Britain classes, collectively known as 4-6-2 Light Pacifics or informally as Spam Cans.
John Constable is best known for his landscape paintings around Dedham Vale, Suffolk. Less well known are a series of paintings from October and November 1816 when he and his bride took a 6 week honeymoon in Osmington, Dorset. Several of those paintings are featuring here during November, with comparison photos taken 200 years later.
This is the third of the series to be posted and the most recognisable location today. His painting shows the tiny 'harbour' at Osmington Mills with a protective outcrop of cliff and a natural barrier of rocks out to sea. The Isle of Portland is in the distance. You can see the modern view below.
Continuing the Isle of Portland then and now series, this really is the same place as in the modern scene shown below. To confirm that, look at the hill top in both photos.
Taken by an unknown photographer late in the 19th century, this shows quarried stone blocks being loaded onto carts for onward transfer down to the port in Castletown. Note the supervisor's cottage behind the cart!
The Moody Blues played Houston last week as part of their 50th Anniversary Tour celebrating the release of their second album "Days of Future Passed" In fact they played the album in its entirety. I must be getting passed it as well, failing to get the camera through security. So this is the best that could be done with a phone shot from up in the gods.
You'll already know that most audience-based footage of concerts is rubbish. Poor sound, but worst of all people seem incapable of holding their phones steady and can't resist constant panning and zooming in and out. The video below is a very honourable exception and shows the band line-up pretty much as it was in Houston.
Bithbox # 085
A midweek "Timewatch"!
This is one of c60 pages in a school exercise book entitled "North and Mid Wales" dating from around 1960. It is my hand drawn map of parts of Caernarfonshire and Snowdonia, North Wales.
The circumstances of such a big school project have frankly been lost in the mists of time. However, during most school and bank holidays, my parents would take me to this area where they owned a small caravan. Therefore, even at a tender age I knew the area quite well. I also loved maps!
My best guesses are that it was either a summer holiday assignment or one that was set for me to do at home after coming out of hospital. I'll never know. By the way, whoever marked the assignment clearly didn't give it that much attention. There are quite a few pencil ticks but no comments until on the last and 59th page there is a single '70 Good' !
This week's Saturday Timewatch features Amersfoort, Holland. It was not a city that I knew much about. What a revelation! It surely has to be one of the best preserved medieval 'old towns' in northern Europe. In fact you could easily take a photo of the above 1580 plan and use it as a modern-day map to get around. Lots of the old buildings also still survive.
Highly recommended should you get the chance to visit.
A Southern Pacific Lines train leaves Houston Union Station circa 1950. The number '2' on the front of the locomotive denotes that it is a Sunset Limited service eastbound to New Orleans.
If I've understood the literature correctly, Alco built the 2,000 horsepower diesel PA-1 locomotive # 205 sometime between September 1946 and June 1950. The carriages, built by a different company were also state of the art at that time. Part of a much longer Pacific to Gulf Coast timetable, the journey time in 1950 between Houston and New Orleans was 7 hours. The same route in 2017 takes 9 hours 30 minutes!
This weekend's Saturday Timewatch features the American Airlines' livery that pays homage to Reno Air.
Reno Air was a short-lived but reasonably successful low-cost start-up that operated its first flight in 1992. Using new aircraft and quickly establishing a reputation for reliability, its selling point was to be a cut above the competition whilst still offering low fares. The company was acquired by American in 1999.
The B737-800 above (N916NN) was delivered to AA in 2013 and given the "Reno Air Heritage" special paint scheme in 2015. On this flight the aircraft is seen arriving at Houston George Bush Intercontinental from Chicago.
This week's Saturday Timewatch visits the cockpit of a Lockheed C-60A delivered to the USAAF Dec 22 1942. As N31G is still airworthy I tried to persuade the powers-that-be to let me take her up. They didn't seem too keen............
Sometimes it takes an expert's eye to highlight what is around you. That was the case here.
We had walked along this length of pedestrian pavement on several occasions but had never noticed the unusual make-up of the stone wall. Whilst on a Portland archaeological walk with Andrea Frankham-Hughes, she pointed out the huge boulders in the wall of which there were more than just these two. Rather than being left over from quarry workings, they are believed to have come from a nearby, no longer existing, stone circle on a site destined for development.
We could certainly see that they could easily have been standing stones in the distant past.
I'm back on board after being awol from flickr for a couple of days.
Both items in the photo, each with two parts, are the same. But what are they and what are they used for? Note that the small pieces of plastic are irrelevant being used merely for display purposes.
Your best guesses and answers on a postcard please!
This week's Saturday Timewatch features a slogan synonymous with Texas. Now commonly used by Texans as an an identity statement, a declaration of Texas independence and pride in the state, the phrase started out over 35 years ago as an anti-litter slogan www.dontmesswithtexas.org/about/history/
Hugely successful, it is still used as that to this day. All sorts of well-known Texans have been involved in promoting the campaign over the decades including musicians Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lyle Lovatt, George Strait, LeAnn Rimes, Joe Ely and of course Willie and his son Lukas Nelson.
Here is one of Willie's campaign adverts www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6aAX1X8ho0
Now renamed the Commemorative Air Force, here is an older one featuring a CAF B-17.
This week's Saturday Timewatch features the Showboat Pavilion, Texas City, another in my Last Picture Show series. It opened in 2002 on the site of the original Showboat Theater that was finally demolished in 2000 after years of neglect. Several features of the original building were recreated, retained or re-used including. The facade is similar to the the original and the tower is a replica. A large part of the original terrazzo floor, featuring a steamboat, was salvaged and now forms the centrepiece of the lobby floor. Architect Joe Hoover said "I tried to preserve the integrity of an historical icon"
You can see more of The Last Picture Show here
A bit of a theme has developed this trip with Texas 'institutions' such as bbq, Buc-ee's and Shiner already featuring. Next up for this week's Saturday Timewatch is Blue Bell ice cream.
Painted by TX artist Benjamin Knox, the painting displayed at Blue Bell's museum celebrated the company's centenary in 2007.
Ahem : Yes, I did get my $1 tub of triple chocolate ice cream.
This photo shows the station staff who worked at Sturminster Newton station on the old Somerset & Dorset line. The original image features on an interpretation board where the station used to be. I don't know the name of the photographer or the exact date. However, from the board I do know that the gentleman in the middle of the front row (with the dog) was William Henry Owen, Station Master there for 41 years until his retirement in 1921.
I am not a Liverpool supporter. However, this weekend is the 25th Anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster when 96 Liverpool football fans died due to the total incompetence and prejudice of Yorkshire's police. All matches in the top five levels of English football kick off 7 minutes late, 6 minutes representing the time that passed before the game was stopped with people already dead on the terraces and the seventh minute being that of silence. All of football will join together in memory of those who died (and the hundreds who were injured) in Britain's worst stadium disaster. For those abroad who may not know, the music below is Liverpool's anthem, sung by the crowd before every home game.
BITHBOX#033
GERRY AND THE PACEMAKERS "YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE"
This week's "Saturday Timewatch" goes way back to long before homo sapiens ever walked the Earth. The overall alligator family goes back some 37 million years. More recently, this American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) shown above is well represented in the Pleistocene fossil record going back 2.5 million years. However, in 2016, a nearly identical fossil skull to the above animal was discovered in Florida. That 'sister' species discovery, means that the American Alligator can now be traced back 8 million years to a near-identical but as far as i know 'unnamed' species.
By comparison, humans evolved comparatively recently from earlier hominids, around 200,000 - 300,000 years ago.
Today, Sunday 24th March 2024, is just 4 years and two days after the day before Britain's full lockdown in 2020. That also was a Sunday. In fact it was also Mother's Day.
Everyone knew at least the gist if not the detail of what was coming on Monday 23rd March 2020 when the Prime Minister was scheduled to broadcast to the nation. So it is no surprise that we, like so many others, took our last chance to get out and about. In beautiful spring weather, we chose a walk in deepest Dorset. It was a bittersweet day for obvious reasons.
Next day, Boris Johnson announced "From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction - you must stay at home"
Four years later, with the benefit of hindsight, reading his full speech is very interesting. You can do so here www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-o...
This qualifies as a 'Saturday Timewatch' because Ray Benson's Asleep at the Wheel have now been rollin' along the musical highway venues for 55 years. They are yet another hard working band who pretty much single-handedly have kept western swing alive. A couple of nights ago, we were delighted to see them perform live for the second time in a small theatre at Brenham, TX.
Below is the title track off their new and 63rd album (including compilations). Whilst Ray still leads on many tracks, fiddler Ian Stewart takes the strain off Ray for vocals on this one.
jukebox # 521
From an unknown date and an unknown photographer, this is a photo of Jesty's at 1, Straits, Easton, Isle of Portland. Compare and contrast to the photo of the same address today and you can see that the only external feature that survives is the first floor window.
At some point, a building extension has been added filling in the gap where the gate behind the cart used to be. This must have happened in relatively recent times as the gates were still there when "Portland Spice", a business previous to todays' Chinese takeaway occupied the site.
EDIT : Note that things have moved on and my comparison building immediately below is incorrect. It is across the street from "Flavour of Asia" correctly identified by David!
www.starnow.co.uk/christopherw33618
2020 Reel youtu.be/fXhm5se6H3c
2017 Reel www.starnow.com/media/778224
2016 Reel www.starnow.co.uk/media/623368
2015 Reel www.starnow.co.uk/media/500618
Crew CV crew.mandy.com/uk/crew/profile/chris-christopher-wilson
wartimeproductions.co.uk/index.html
In Film and Television
Bletchley Park and its tremendous story have featured regularly in film and television over the past few years. From the BBC’s Antiques’ Roadshow to Operation Mincemeat, the Timewatch Special, Codebreakers: Bletchley Park’s Lost Heroes and the blockbuster film The Imitation Game, all filmed on location at Bletchley Park.
The Imitation Game
The Oscar-nominated movie, The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley, was screened in cinemas around the world in 2014 and 2015. Filmed partly on location at Bletchley Park, the behind-the-scenes video can be viewed here.
Bletchley Park: Code-Breaking’s Forgotten Genius
In September 2015, BBC2 broadcast its documentary about Gordon Welchman, Bletchley Park: Code-breaking’s Forgotten Genius, filmed extensively on location at Bletchley Park.
The Bletchley Circle
The hugely popular ITV drama, The Bletchley Circle Series One and Two, was broadcast in the UK and the US and in the UK attracted an average of 5 million viewers per episode. Both series were filmed on location at Bletchley Park.
A whole new meaning is given to the phrase "rolling stock" in this gravity siding. Not my original but a photo of one displayed at Maiden Newton Station, Dorset. No date is given.
Those who know a lot more about the operation of railways than myself may well be familiar with the concept of a "gravity siding". I certainly wasn't! So this is what I understand to be happening here.
Arriving from the direction of the bridge, the steam locomotive has already pulled the two carriages into the platform at the extreme left. Once the passengers have departed, the engine has then pushed the carriages up the slope of the siding to the left of the water tower. Once uncoupled, the loco has returned into the platform and subsequently moved out of the way to its present position. Under the control of the guard, the carriages are then rolled back down the incline to the platform so that the engine can rejoin the set for the return journey out of Maiden Newton Station.
The Maiden Newton to Bridport (and eventually West Bay) branch line ran for about 10 miles off the still operational Yeovil Pen Mill to Weymouth route. Remarkably it survived the infamous Beeching "axe" but eventually bit the dust some 10 years later in 1975. It is still easy to see various bridges along the branch line and some sections of trackbed though most are very heavily overgrown. By the way, that property is still also standing and occupied.