Replacing an earlier digital photo with a better version, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 01-Mar-24.

 

A 'one airline' aircraft, it was delivered to Saudia - Saudi Arabian Airlines as HZ-AKL in Nov-98. after just under 19 years in service it was permanently retired at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in Aug-17.

Taken inside the studio. Julia is the subject here. some post processing in LR and PS. Replace.

  

... Russian Santa replaced the elves with squishies?"

 

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Squishies by DJB.

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version 10-Sep-16, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 29-Aug-24 (very 'yellowed' negative!).

 

Delivered to SABENA Belgian World Airlines as OO-STA in Jun-67, this aircraft was sold to Hapag-Lloyd Airlines as D-AHLO in Feb-74. In Jul-81 it was sold to the Eagle Aviation Corporation as N577JB. The Golden Nugget Aviation Corporation bought it in Aug-83 and re-registered it N711GN in Feb-84.

 

The aircraft was converted to a freighter with a main-deck cargo door in Aug-85 and it was leased to DHL Worldwide Courier in Dec-87. It was transferred to Express One International in Jun-89 while the lease to DHL continued. It was re-registered N712DH in May-90 and DHL bought it in Apr-91.

 

It was finally retired and stored at Kingman, AZ, USA in Feb-02 after 35 years in service. You'd think that would be it after 35 years, but no. In Sep-04 the aircraft was sold to Hewa Bora Airways in the Democratic Republic of Congo as 9Q-CHK and continued in service until late 2009 when it was permanently retired at Kinshasa, Congo.

I've rediscovered PicMonkey.....found some options I overlooked before, so I now like it more than Pixlr. And more good news I discovered today......the old Picnik team is about to launch a new site that is very similar to Picnik called ribbit! Not up and running yet, but soon!

 

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Engineers replaced over 1,200 roof glazing panels, repaired roughly 2,500 pieces of historic steelwork (far exceeding initial estimates of 250), completed full electrical rewiring, and applied a heritage-appropriate paint scheme (grey, red, gold, and cream). The major overhaul began around 2020–2022 and reached major completion milestones through 2026, with the full removal of the overhead safety scaffolding wrapping up towards the end of 2026. Originally built in the 1870s as part of the station's expansion, the Victorian train shed and main train shed roofs have been preserved to protect the historic character of the Isambard Kingdom Brunel-associated landmark while improving natural light and passenger experience.

Islington Green School, Prebend St, Islington, 1992, 92-12r-53

Built 1964, architects Scherrer and Hicks it was demolished in 2010, replaced by new buildings for the City of London Academy. Only the mural, one of two by William Mitchell, was saved. James Dunnett described the building in islingtonsociety.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ISOC-2... Islington News as "an impressive neo-constructivist secondary school in the form of a slab block of five storeys showing plenty of evidence of care in its one-off design by the architects."

Replacing the usual 787 afternoon service.

Thermit reaction

Bhubaneswar, also spelt as Bhubaneshwar, is the capital of the Indian state of Odisha. The city has a history of over 3,000 years starting with the Mahamegha-bahana Chedi dynasty (around the 2nd century BCE) which had its capital at Sisupalgarh, nearby. Bhubaneswar, derived its name from Tribhubaneswar, which literally means the Lord (Eeswar) of the Three World (Tribhuban), which refers to Shiva. Bhubaneswar has been known by names such as Toshali, Kalinga Nagari, Nagar Kalinga, Chakra Kshetra, Ekamra Kanan, Ekamra Kshetra and Mandira Malini Nagari ("City of Temples"). It is the largest city in Odisha and is a centre of economic and religious importance in Eastern India.

 

With many Hindu temples, which span the entire spectrum of Kalinga architecture, Bhubaneswar is often referred to as a 'Temple City of India' and with Puri and Konark it forms the Swarna Tribhuja ("Golden Triangle"), one of eastern India's most visited destinations.

 

Bhubaneswar replaced Cuttack as the capital in 1948, the year after India gained its independence from Britain. The modern city was designed by the German architect Otto Königsberger in 1946. Along with Jamshedpur and Chandigarh, it was one of modern India's first planned cities. Bhubaneswar and Cuttack are often referred to as the 'twin cities of Odisha'. The metropolitan area formed by the two cities had a population of 1.7 million in 2011. Bhubaneswar is categorised as a Tier-2 city. An emerging information technology (IT) and education hub, Bhubaneswar is one of the country's fastest-developing cities.

 

HISTORY

The history of Bhubaneswar may be viewed in ancient and modern eras. The ancient city has a history of thousands of years, while the modern city emerged in 1948.

 

Bhubaneswar's first mention was during the Kalinga War, which took place near Dhauli (now in the south of the city) in the 3rd century BCE. Later Emperor Kharavela established his capital at Sisupalgarh, on the outskirts of the modern city. The Hathigumpha inscriptions at the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves by Kharavela give a good account of that period, which is estimated as 1st–2nd century BCE. Temples built throughout the ancient and medieval periods chronicle the city's history. Bhubaneswar is famous for its heritage culture around the world.

 

Jain and Buddhist temples portray the settlements around Bhubaneswar in the first two centuries BCE. One of the most complete edicts of the Mauryan emperor, Ashoka, dating from between 272–236 BCE, remains carved in rock 8 kilometres to the southwest of the modern city.

 

The city was the ancient capital of the Kalinga Empire, and the architectural legacy of the period is manifest. Historical sites testify to the importance of the region during the 7th to 11th centuries CE, when the Kalinga kings ruled Odisha and beyond. The Ananta Vasudeva Temple and Bindusagar Tank is the only temple of Vishnu in the city. The temples in Bhubaneswar are regarded as having been built from the 8th to 12th centuries under Shaiva influence.

 

On 1 April 1936, Odisha, then known as Orissa, became a separate province in British India with Cuttack as its capital. This date is celebrated as Utkal Divas. Cuttack had been Odisha's capital since the 12th century. With independence in 1947, Odisha became a state. Because of Cuttack's vulnerability to floods and space constraints, the capital was moved to Bhubaneswar, which was formally inaugurated on 13 April 1948. The new capital was built as a modern city, designed by German architect Otto Königsberger with wide roads, gardens and parks. Though part of the city followed the plan, it has grown rapidly over the last few decades, outstripping the planning process.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Bhubaneswar is in Khordha district of Odisha. It is in the eastern coastal plains, along the axis of the Eastern Ghats mountains. The city has an average altitude of 45 m above sea level. It lies southwest of the Mahanadi River that forms the northern boundary of Bhubaneswar metropolitan area, within its delta.

 

The city is bounded by the Daya River to the south and the Kuakhai River to the east; the Chandaka Wildlife Sanctuary and Nandankanan Zoo lie in the western and northern parts of Bhubaneswar, respectively.

 

Bhubaneswar is topographically divided into western uplands and eastern lowlands, with hillocks in the western and northern parts. Kanjia lake on the northern outskirts, affords rich biodiversity and is a wetland of national importance. Bhubaneswar's soils are 65 per cent laterite, 25 per cent alluvial and 10 per cent sandstone. The Bureau of Indian Standards places the city inside seismic zone III on a scale ranging from I to V in order of increasing susceptibility to earthquakes. The United Nations Development Programme reports that there is "very high damage risk" from winds and cyclones. The 1999 Odisha cyclone caused major damage to buildings, the city's infrastructure and cost many human lives. Floods and waterlogging in the low-lying areas have become common due to unplanned growth.

 

URBAN STRUCTURE

The Bhubaneswar urban development area consists of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation area, 173 revenue villages and two other municipalities spread over 393.57 square kilometres. The area under the jurisdiction of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation covers 135 square kilometres. The city is somewhat dumbbell-shaped with most of the growth taking place to the north, northeast and southwest. The north–south axis of the city is widest, at roughly 22.5 kilometres. Growth in the east is restricted due to the presence of Kuakhai River and by the wildlife sanctuary in the northwestern part. The city can be broadly divided into the old town, planned city (or state capital), added areas and outer peripheral areas. It is subdivided into Units and Colonies.

 

The old town or "Temple Town", the oldest part of the city, is characterised by many temples, including the Lingaraj, Rajarani, and Muktesvara temples, standing alongside residential areas. This area is congested, with narrow roads and poor infrastructure. Among neighbourhoods in the old town are Rajarani Colony, Pandav Nagar, Brahmeswar Bagh, Lingaraj Nagar, Gouri Nagar, Bhimatanki and Kapileswar.

The planned city was designed in 1948 to house the capital. It is subdivided into units, each with a high school, shopping centres, dispensaries and play areas. While most of the units house government employees, Unit V houses the administrative buildings, including the State Secretariat, State Assembly, and the Raj Bhavan. Private residential areas were later built in other areas of the planned city, including Saheed Nagar and Satya Nagar. Unit I, popularly known as the Market Building, was formed to cater to the shopping needs of the new capital's residents. Later, markets and commercial establishments developed along the Janpath and Cuttack-Puri Road at Saheed Nagar, Satya Nagar, Bapuji Nagar and Ashok Nagar. A dedicated institutional area houses educational and research institutes, including Utkal University, the Institute of Physics, the Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology and Sainik School. Indira Gandhi Park, Gandhi Park and the Biju Patnaik Park are located in the unit.

 

The added areas are mostly areas lying north of National Highway 5, including Nayapalli, Jayadev Vihar, Chandrasekharpur and Sailashree Vihar, which were developed by Bhubaneswar Development Authority to house the growing population.

 

The peripheral areas are outside the municipal boundary or have subsequently been included within the extended boundary, including Tomando, Patia and Raghunathpur. Most of these areas were developed in a haphazard manner, without proper planning.

 

CLIMATE

Bhubaneswar has a tropical savanna climate, designated Aw under the Köppen climate classification. The annual mean temperature is 27.4 °C; monthly mean temperatures are 22–32 °C. Summers (March to June) are hot and humid, with temperatures in the low 30s C; during dry spells, maximum temperatures often exceed 40 °C in May and June. Winter lasts for only about ten weeks, with seasonal lows dipping to 15–18 °C in December and January. May is the hottest month, when daily temperatures range from 32–42 °C. January, the coldest month, has temperatures varying from 15–28 °C. The highest recorded temperature is 45 °C, and the lowest is 12 °C.

 

Rains brought by the Bay of Bengal branch of the south west summer monsoon lash Bhubaneswar between June and September, supplying it with most of its annual rainfall of 1,542 mm. The highest monthly rainfall total, 330 mm, occurs in August.

 

ECONOMY

Bhubaneswar is an administrative, information technology, education and tourism city . Bhubaneswar was ranked as the best place to do business in India by the World Bank in 2014. Bhubaneswar has emerged as one of the fast-growing, important trading and commercial hub in the state and eastern India. Tourism is a major industry, attracting about 1.5 million tourists in 2011. Bhubaneswar was designed to be a largely residential city with outlying industrial areas. The economy had few major players until the 1990s and was dominated by retail and small-scale manufacturing. With the economic liberalisation policy adopted by the Government of India in the 1990s, Bhubaneswar received investment in telecommunications, information technology (IT) and higher education.

 

As of 2001, around 2.15% of the city's workforce was employed in the primary sector (agriculture, forestry, mining, etc.); 2.18% worked in the secondary sector (industrial and manufacturing); and 95.67% worked in the tertiary sector (service industries).

 

In 2011, according to a study by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, Bhubaneswar had the highest rate of employment growth among 17 Tier-2 cities in India. It has been listed among the top ten emerging cities in India by Cushman and Wakefield, taking into consideration factors like demographics, physical, social and real estate infrastructure, current level and scope of economic activities and government support. In 2012, Bhubaneswar was ranked third among Indian cities, in starting and operating a business by the World Bank.

 

Bhubaneswar has been traditionally home to handicrafts industry, including silver filigree work, appliqué work, stone and wood carvings and patta painting, which significantly contributes to the city's economy. The late 2000s saw a surge of investments in the real estate, infrastructure, retail and hospitality sectors; several shopping malls and organised retails opened outlets in Bhubaneswar.

 

The Department of Industries established four industrial areas in and around Bhubaneswar, in the Rasulgarh, Mancheswar, Chandaka, and Bhagabanpur areas. In the informal sector, 22,000 vendors operate in regulated or unregulated vending zones.

 

In 2009, Odisha was ranked ninth among Indian states in terms of software export by NASSCOM, with most IT/ITES companies established in Bhubaneswar. In 2011–12, Odisha had a growth rate of 17% for software exports. According to a 2012 survey, among the tier-2 cities in India, Bhubaneswar has been chosen as the best for conducting IT/ITES business. The government fostered growth by developing of IT parks such as Infocity-1, Infovalley, STPI-Bhubaneswar and JSS STP. Infocity was conceived as a five-star park, under the Export Promotion Industrial Parks (EPIP) Scheme to create infrastructure facilities for setting up information technology related industries. Infosys and Tech Mahindra have been present in Bhubaneswar since 1996. Other software companies include TCS, Mindfire Solutions, Wipro, IBM, Genpact, Firstsource, Mindtree and MphasiS. Apart from the big multinationals, some 300 small and mid-size IT companies and business start ups have offices in Bhubaneswar.

 

DEMOGRAPHICS

As per the 2011 census of India, Bhubaneswar had a population of 837,737, while the metropolitan area had a population of 881,988. As per the estimate of IIT Kharagpur, which made a development plan, the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Urban complex, consisting of 721.9 square kilometres, has a population of 1.9 million (as of 2008). As of 2011, the number of males was 445,233, while the number of females were 392,504. The decadal growth rate was 45.90 per cent. Effective male literacy was 95.69 per cent, while female literacy was 90.26 per cent. About 75,237 were under six. Bhubaneswar's literacy rate is 93.15 per cent - significantly higher than the national average of 74.04 per cent.

 

According to the 2001 census, 11 per cent lived in 99 unauthorised and 47 authorised slums. In 2009, the number of slums in Bhubaneswar increased to 377, mostly unauthorised. Migration from rural areas and neighbouring states drove the growth of the slums. According to the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Police Commissionerate, the number of crime incidents reported in Bhubaneswar during 2011 was 3,350, decreasing from 4,417 incidents in 2010.

 

The residents are known as Bhubaneswarites. The main language spoken in the city is Odia, however, Hindi and English are understood by most residents. Although Odias comprise the vast majority, Marwaris, Bengalis and Telugus also live there. Growth in the information technology industry and education sector in Bhubaneswar changed the city's demographic profile; likely infrastructure strains and haphazard growth from demographic changes have been a cause of concern.

 

CIVIL ADMINISTRATION

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) oversees and manages civic infrastructure for the city's 67 wards. Residents of each ward elect a councillor to the BMC for a five-year term. Standing committees handle urban planning and maintain roads, government-aided schools, hospitals and municipal markets. As Bhubaneswar's apex body, the corporation discharges its functions through the mayor-in-council, which comprises a mayor, a deputy mayor and other elected members. The executive wing is headed by a Commissioner. BMC responsibilities include drainage and sewerage, sanitation, solid waste management and street lighting. As of 2014, the Biju Janata Dal party controlled the BMC; the mayor was Ananta Narayan Jena and deputy mayor was K. Shanti. The Bhubaneswar Development Authority is responsible for statutory planning and development and building regulation.

 

As the seat of the Government of Odisha, Bhubaneswar is home to the Odisha Legislative Assembly and the state secretariat. Bhubaneswar has lower courts: the Court of Small Causes and the District Civil Court decide civil matters; the Sessions Court rules in criminal cases. The Bhubaneswar–Cuttack Police Commissionerate, established in 2008, is a city police force with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation in the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack area. Rajendra Prasad Sharma is the police commissioner.

 

Citizens of Bhubaneswar elect one representative to India's lower house, the Lok Sabha, and three representatives to the state legislative assembly, through the constituencies of Bhubaneswar North, Ekamra-Bhubaneswar and Bhubaneswar Central.

 

EDUCATION

Colleges are affiliated with a university or institution based in Bhubaneswar or elsewhere in India. Bhubaneswar has emerged as an education hub in eastern India, with several private and government colleges geared towards engineering, management, and other courses. Utkal University, established in 1939, is the oldest, with 267 affiliated general colleges, 15 law colleges, six medical and pharmacy colleges. Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology established in 1962, is the second oldest agricultural university in the country. Utkal University of Culture is dedicated for research, teaching and education.

 

Bhubaneswar has a large number of institutes for high education. Bhubaneswar is one of the few cities in India which houses IIT, NISER, and many other premier Government institutes. Premier educational institutions include the IIT Bhubaneswar, National Institute of Science Education and Research, International Institute of Information Technology, Bhubaneswar (IIIT-Bh), Xavier Institute of Management (XIMB), Institute of Mathematics and Applications (IOMA), National Institute of Fashion Technology, Institute of Physics, Institute of Life Sciences, Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology, Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture, Regional Medical Research Center and Regional Institute of Education. The premiere Engineering college owned by the state Government of Odisha, College of Engineering and Technology, Bhubaneswar, is the most comprehensive engineering Institute in the capital having a set of specialization which include, electrical engineering, architecture, textile, and fashion technology, etc. The Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology located in Bhubaneswar is a unique Institute owned by Government of India. Rama Devi Women's University is a University located in Bhubaneswar which is specifically dedicated to Woman education.

 

Bhubaneswar has two deemed universities: KIIT University and Siksha O Anusandhan University. KIIT University as well as Siksha O Anusandhan University has wide range of programs. These are private Universities.

 

There are four medical colleges such as All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar, Kalinga Institute of Medical Sciences, Hi-Tech Medical College & Hospital and Institute of Medical Sciences and Sum Hospital. All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar is considered as a finest medical college owned by the Government of India. The other 3 medical colleges are privately owned.

 

Oriya and English are the primary languages of instruction. Schools in Bhubaneswar follow the "10+2+3" plan. After completing secondary education, students typically enroll in schools that are affiliated with the Council of Higher Secondary Education, the ICSE, or the CBSE. The regional CBSE board office for Odisha is in Bhubaneswar. Liberal arts, business, science and vocational programs are available. Two colleges located in Bhubaneswar and owned by Government of Odisha are mainly dedicated for higher secondary education. Buxi Jagabandhu Bidyadhar College is an autonomous government college. Rajdhani College, Bhubaneswar was established in in 1973 is also government owned. Schools in Bhubaneswar are run by the state government or private organisations. The important established Government schools of located in Bhubaneswar includes: Badagada Government High School, Bhubaneswar, Capital High School, Bhubaneswar, Kendriya Vidyalaya No.1 Bhubaneswar, and Sainik School, Bhubaneshwar.

 

TRANSPORT

The headquarters of the Odisha State Road Transport Corporation (OSRTC) is in Bhubaneswar. The main Bhubaneswar inter-state bus terminus is at Barmunda, 8 kilometres from the city centre, from where OSRTC and private operators run buses connecting Bhubaneswar to cities in Odisha and with the neighbouring states of Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh. Bhubaneswar is connected to the rest of Odisha and India by National Highways-NH 5, which is a part of the Kolkata-Chennai prong of the Golden Quadrilateral, NH 203, State Highway 13 (Odisha) and State Highway 27 (Odisha).

 

ROAD

Bhubaneswar has wide roads in grid form in the central city. Bhubaneswar has approximately 1,600 kilometres of roads, with average road density of 11.82 square kilometres. Baramunda bus stand is the major bus terminus in the city from where buses ply to all the districts in Odisha as well as to neighbouring state's cities like Hyderabad, Kolkata, Visakhapatnam, Raipur and Ranchi. City bus service runs in public-private partnership between Bhubaneswar-Puri Transport Service Limited (BPTSL) and Dream Team Sahara (DTS) under JNNURM scheme. A fleet of 105 buses cover all major destinations including Cuttack, Puri and Khordha. Auto rickshaws are available for hire and on a share basis throughout the city. In parts of the city, cycle rickshaws offer short trips. To ease traffic jams, over-bridges at major road junctions and expansion of roads are under construction. In a study of six cities in India, Bhubaneswar was ranked third concerning pedestrian infrastructure. The city scored 50 points out of maximum 100. The government of Odisha introduced the much-awaited Bhubaneswar BRTS (bus rapid transit) in Bhubaneswar.

 

RAIL

The East Coast Railway has its headquarters in Bhubaneswar. Bhubaneswar railway station is one of the main stations of the Indian railway network. It is connected to major cities by daily express and passenger trains, but daily service to all metro cities is not available from here. For this the government is asking new trains for last consecutive years which is not getting sanctioned from the central government. However, the station is overloaded by existing traffic. Currently, the station has six platforms. There are plans to add two more platforms. A satellite station is under construction near Barang to decongest the existing one.

 

Bhubaneswar has five railway stations within its city limits (from north to south):

 

Patia railway station

Mancheswar railway station

Vani Vihar railway station

Bhubaneswar railway station

Lingaraj Temple Road

 

AIR

Biju Patnaik International Airport, also known as Bhubaneswar Airport, 3 kilometres south of the city center, is the major and sole international airport in Odisha. There are daily flights from Bhubaneswar to Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore. In March 2013, a new domestic terminal with a capacity of handling 30 million passengers per year was inaugurated to handle increased air traffic. On 10 July 2015, the first international flight took off from terminal 2 of Biju Patnaik International Airport.

 

UTILITIES

Electricity is supplied by the state-operated Central Electricity Supply Utility of Odisha, or CESU. Fire services are handled by the state agency Odisha Fire Service. Drinking water is sourced from the Mahanadi, Kuakhai and Daya rivers. Water supply and sewerage are handled by the Public Health Engineering Organisation. State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, or BSNL, as well as private enterprises, among them Vodafone, Bharti Airtel, Reliance, Idea Cellular, Aircel, and Tata DoCoMo, are the leading telephone, cell phone and internet service providers in the city.

 

CULTURE

Bhubaneswar is supposed to have had over one thousand temples, earning the tag of the 'Temple City of India'. Temples are made in the Kalinga architectural style with a pine spire that curves up to a point over the sanctum housing the presiding deity and a pyramid-covered hall where people sit and pray.

 

Famous temples include Lingaraj Temple, Muktesvara Temple, Rajarani Temple, Ananta Vasudeva Temple.

 

The twin hills of Khandagiri & Udayagiri, served as the site of an ancient Jain monastery which was carved into cave-like chambers in the face of the hill. These caves, with artistic carvings, date back to the 2nd century BCE. Dhauli hills has major edicts of Ashoka engraved on a mass of rock and a white Peace Pagoda was built by the Japan Buddha Sangha and the Kalinga Nippon Buddha Sangha in the 1970s. Apart from the ancient temples, other important temples were built in recent times include Ram Mandir and ISKCON.

 

Bhubaneswar along with Cuttack is the home of the Oriya cinema industry, dubbed "Ollywood", where most of the state's film studios are. Odia culture survives in the form of Classical Odissi dance, handicrafts, sand artistry and sculpturing as well as theatre and music. Boundary walls and gardens are increasingly being redone to depict the folk art of the state. Odissi, the oldest of the eight surviving classical dance forms of India can be traced from archaeological evidence from the temples in Bhubaneswar.

 

Odissi dance is generally accompanied by Odissi music. Srjan, the Odissi dance academy founded by Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, the legendary Odissi dancer is found here. The Rabindra Mandap in central Bhubaneswar plays host to cultural engagements, theatre and private functions. As a part of the Ekamra Festival, many cultural sub-festivals takes place in January in Bhubaneswar which includes Kalinga Mahotsav (for traditional martial arts), Dhauli-Kalinga Mahotsav (for classical dance forms), Rajarani Music Festival (for classical music) and Mukteswar Dance Festival (for Odishi dance). Residents engage in khattis, or leisurely chats, that often take the form of freestyle intellectual conversation.

 

Though Oriya women traditionally wear the sari and the shalwar kameez, Western attire is gaining acceptance among younger women. Western-style dress has greater acceptance among men, although the traditional dhoti and kurta are seen during festivals.

 

The Odisha State Museum offers archaeological artifacts, weapons, local arts and crafts as well as insights into Odisha's natural and indigenous history. The Tribal Research Institute Museum hosts authentic tribal dwellings created by tribal craftsmen. Nandankanan Zoological Park, located on the northern outskirt of the city, is India's first zoo to join World Association of Zoos and Aquariums. The State Botanical Garden (Odisha) and Regional Plant Resource Center, popularly known as Ekamra Kanan, a park and botanical garden, has a large collection of exotic and regional fauna. The Ekamra Haat is a hand-loom and handicrafts market. Nicco Park and Ocean World are amusement parks. Other museums include Pathani Samanta Planetarium, Regional Museum of Natural History, Regional Science Center and State Handicrafts Museum.

 

FESTIVALS

On the day of Ashokashtami in the month of March or April, the image of Lingaraja (Shiva) and other deities are taken in a procession from Lingaraja Temple to the Mausima Temple, where the deities remain for four days. Hundreds of devotees participate in pulling the temple car that carries the deities, known as Rukuna Rath. Ratha-Yatra, "Temple Car Festival," is the most important festival in Odisha and Bhubaneswar. The festival commemorates Jagannath, who is said to have been the incarnation of India's revered deities, Vishnu and Krishna. Durga Puja, held in September–October, is an occasion for glamorous celebrations.

 

Other festivals celebrated include Shivaratri, Diwali, Ganesh Puja, Nuakhai and Saraswati Puja. Eid and Christmas are celebrated by the religious minorities in the city.

 

Adivasi Mela is a fair that displays art, artefacts, tradition, culture, and music of the tribal inhabitants of Odisha is held in January. Toshali National Crafts Mela, held in December, showcases handicrafts from all over India and from foreign countries. Other important fairs in the city include the Rajdhani Book Fair and Khandagiri Utsav.

 

CUISINE

Key elements of the city's cuisine include rice and a fish curry known as machha jholo, which can be accompanied by desserts such as Rasagola, Rasabali, Chhena Gaja and Chhena Poda. Odisha's large repertoire of seafood dishes includes various preparations of lobsters and crabs brought in from Chilika Lake. Street foods such as Gupchup (a deep-fried crêpe with tamarind sauce), Cuttack-chaat, Dahi bara-Aloo dum and Bara-ghuguni are sold all over the city. Traditional Oriya food such as Dahi-Pakhal (rice soaked in water with yogurt and seasonings) is considered as a body coolant, accompanied by Badi chura or saga are consumed during months of April–June.

 

The Abadha of Lingaraj Temple and Ananta Vasudeva Temple served for devotees is considered a vegetarian culinary delight. Other vegetarian dishes are Dalma (made of lentils and vegetables boiled together and then fried with other spices) and Santula (lightly spiced steamed vegetables). Sweets play a large part in the diet of Bhubaneswarites - especially at their social ceremonies. Bhubaneswar is known for its kora-khhaii which are made up of paddy, jaggery and coconut pieces. Pitha, a kind of sweet cake, bread or dim sum are winter specialties.

 

SPORTS

Bhubaneswar's major sporting arena is the Kalinga Stadium, having facilities for athletics, football, hockey, basketball, tennis, table tennis and swimming. Kalinga Lancers, the sixth franchise of Hockey India League and Samaleswari S.C., a franchise of I-League 2nd Division, are based in Bhubaneswar with Kalinga Stadium as their home ground. East Coast Railway Stadium, a prominent cricket stadium hosts Ranji Trophy and other matches.

 

Construction of galleries and stadium renovation is in process. An air-conditioned indoor stadium with a capacity of 2000 spectators for badminton, volleyball, basketball and table tennis games is under construction. Barabati Stadium in Cuttack, Odisha's only venue for international cricket matches, is located around 25 kilometres away. Bhubaneswar has a franchise of Odisha Premier League, Bhubaneswar Jaguars, which started in 2010. Bhubaneswar Golf Club, a nine-hole golf course is situated in Infocity.

 

The city's widely circulated Oriya-language newspapers are Sambad, Dharitri, Pragatibadi, Samaja, Khabar, Orissa Bhaskara, Prameya and Samaya. Orissa Post and Orissa Age are the English-language newspaper that is produced and published from Bhubaneswar. Other popular English-language newspapers published and sold in Bhubaneswar include The Times of India, The Telegraph, The Statesman, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, The Indian Express, and the Asian Age. Bhubaneswar has substantial circulation of financial dailies, including The Economic Times, The Financial Express, Business Line, and Business Standard. Vernacular newspapers, such as those in the Hindi, Bengali and Telugu, are read by minorities. Major periodicals based in Bhubaneswar include Saptahik Samaya, Saptahik Samaja, and Kadambini.

 

All India Radio, the national state-owned radio broadcaster, airs several AM channels from the radio station located in Cuttack. Bhubaneswar has five local radio stations broadcasting on FM, including two from AIR. India's state-owned television broadcaster Doordarshan Odia provides two free-to-air terrestrial channels, while a mix of Oriya, Hindi, English, and other regional channels are accessible via cable subscription and direct-broadcast satellite services. Some of the Odia language television channels are Colors Odia, Sarthak TV and Tarang TV. Oriya-language 24-hour television news channels include Odisha TV, Kanak TV, ETV News Odia, MBC TV and Naxatra News.

Tourism

 

Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa, is also popularly known as the "Temple City of India". Being the seat of Tribhubaneswar or 'Lord Lingaraj', Bhubaneswar is an important Hindu pilgrimage centre. Hundreds of temples dot the landscape of the Old Town, which once boasted of more than 2000 temples. Bhubaneswar is the place where temple building activities of Orissan style flowered from its very inception to its fullest culmination extending over a period of over one thousand years.

 

The new Bhubaneswar with its modern buildings and extensive infrastructure perfectly complements its historic surroundings. With facilities to cater to every type of visitor, Bhubaneswar makes an ideal tourist destination.

 

Approach: The modern Biju Patnaik airport is being extended to receive wide bodied aircraft, and one may well see international charters landing here soon.

 

Best time to visit: Bhubaneswar can be visited round the year, but the ideal time is from October to March.

 

Stay: With numerous hotels as well as the Odisha Tourism Development Corporation's Panthanivas, Bhubaneswar is well equipped to accommodate every type of visitor.

 

Handicrafts of the Region Silver filigree, Stone and Wood carving, Patta paintings, Tie and Dye textiles, bamboo basketry, brass and bell metal work, horn work, and many other famous handicrafts of Orissa can be selected as souvenirs from the local markets. Purchases can be made from Utkalika (run by the Department of Handicrafts) or at the many privately run shops.

 

Some of the other important tourist spots of Bhubaneswar are:

 

ANCIENT TEMPLES

Ananta Vasudeva (c. 13th century A.D.)

Bharateswar Temple (c. 6th century A.D.) - Bharatimath -

Bhaskareswar Temple - Brahma Temple

Brahmeswar Temple (c. 11th century A.D.) - Chandana Temple Chitrakarini - Daiteswar Temple - Dwarabasini Temple Gosagareswar Temple - Kainchi Temple - Kedareswar Temple Kotitirtheswar - Laxmaneswar Temple (c. 6th century A.D.)

Lingaraj Temple (c. 11th century A.D.) - Makarewswar Markandeswar Temple - Mukteswar (c. 10th century A.D.)

Mohini Temple - Papanasini -

Parsurameswar Temple (c. 7th century A.D.)

Rajarani Temple (c. 11th century A.D.) - Rameswar Temple

Satrughaneswar Temple (c. 6th century A.D.)

Subarneswar - Swarnajaleswar Temples (c. 7th century A.D.)

Taleswar Temple - Tirtheswar Temple - Uttareswar Temple

Vaital Temple (c. 8th century A.D.) -

Vimaleswar / Gaurisankar Vishnu Temple

Khandagiri & Udaygiri caves (c 1st century B.C.)

 

MODERN TEMPLE

Baya Baba Matha - Ram Mandir - Shirdi Sai Baba Mandir - ISKCON Temple

 

WIKIPEDIA

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

Armored wheeled vehicles were developed early in Germany, since they were not subject to the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty. The Sd.Kfz. 234 (Sonderkraftfahrzeug 234, or Special Purpose Vehicle 234) belonged to the ARK series (the type designation of the chassis) and was the successor to the earlier, eight-wheeled Sd.Kfz. 231/232/233 family. The Sd.Kfz. 234 incorporated several innovative features, including a monocoque chassis with eight wheels, and an air-cooled Tatra 103 diesel engine for use in North Africa. The latter gave the vehicle an extraordinary range of more than 600 miles (1.000 km). The vehicle had eight-wheel steering and drive and was able to quickly change direction thanks to a second, rear-facing, driver's seat. Chassis were built by Büssing-NAG in Leipzig-Wahren, while armoured bodies were provided by Deutsche Edelstahlwerke of Krefeld and turrets by Daimler Benz in Berlin-Marienfelde and Schichau of Elbing, with engines from Ringhoffer-Tatra-Werke AG of Nesseldorf.

 

The first and possibly best known version to reach frontline service was the Sd.Kfz. 234/2 ‘Puma’. It had a horseshoe-shaped turret armed with a 5cm L/60 gun, which was originally intended for the VK 1602 Leopard light tank. Even though it was a reconnaissance vehicle, the armament made it possible to take on lighter armored vehicles, and it was produced from late 1943 to mid-1944. This variant was replaced in production by the second version, the Sd.Kfz. 234/1, which had a simpler open turret (Hängelafette 38) armed only with a light 2 cm KwK 38 gun; it was manufactured from mid-1944 to early 1945.

The SdKfz 234/3, produced simultaneously with the 234/1, served as a support for the reconnaissance vehicles with more firepower. It had an open-topped superstructure, in which a short-barreled 7.5cm K51 L/24 gun was installed. This gun was intended primarily for use against soft targets, but when using a hollow charge shell, the penetration power exceeded that of the 5cm L/60 gun. This variant was produced from mid-1944 to the end of 1944, before switching production to the 234/4 and other variants. The Sd.Kfz. 234/4 replaced the L/24 gun with the 7.5cm L/46 PaK 40. This was yet another attempt to increase the mobility of this anti-tank gun; however, with this weapon the 234 chassis had been stretched to its limits, and it only carried limited ammunition (twelve rounds) due to lack of storage space. This variant was manufactured from the end of 1944 on in limited numbers.

 

Another interesting use of the chassis was the Sd.Kfz 234/6. When, towards late 1945, the Einheitschassis for the German combat tanks (the ‘E’; series) reached the front lines, several heavily armed anti-aircraft turrets had been developed, including the 30mm Kugelblitz, based on the outdated Panzer IV, the ‘Coelian’ turret with a twin 37mm cannon (mounted on the Panzer V Panther hull), but also twin 55 and even 88mm cannons on the new E-50, E-75 and E-100 chassis'. With alle these new vehicles and weapons, firepower was considerably increased, but the tank crews still had to rely on traditional visual tracking and aiming of targets. One potential solution for this flaw, in which the German Heeresleitung was highly interested from the start, was the use of the Luftwaffe’s radar technology for early target identification and as an aiming aid in poor weather conditions or at night. The German Luftwaffe first introduced an airborne interception radar in 1942, but these systems were still bulky and relied upon large bipolar antenna arrays. Esp. the latter were not suitable for any use in a ground vehicle, lest to say in a tank that could also carry weapons and ammunition as an independent mobile weapon system.

 

A potential solution at least for the mobility issue appeared in late 1944 with the development of the FuG 240 ‘Berlin’, a new airborne interception radar. It was the first German radar to be based on the cavity magnetron, which eliminated the need for the large multiple dipole-based antenna arrays seen on earlier radars, thereby greatly increasing the performance of the night fighters which carried the system. The FuG 240 was introduced by Telefunken in April 1945, primarily in Junkers Ju 88G-6 night-fighters, behind a streamlined plywood radome in the aircrafts’ nose. This so greatly reduced drag compared to the late-model Lichtensteins and Neptun radars that the fighters regained their pre-radar speeds, making them much more effective esp. against heavy and high-flying Allied bombers. The FuG 240 was effective against bomber-sized targets at distances of up to 9 kilometers, or down to 0.5 kilometer, which, as a side benefit, eliminated the need for a second, short-range radar system.

 

Right before the FuG 240's roll-out with the Luftwaffe the Heer insisted on a ground-based derivative for its anti-aircraft units. The Luftwaffe reacted very reluctantly, but heavy political pressure from Berlin convinced the RLM to share the new technology. Consequently, Telefunken was ushered to adapt the radar system to armored ground vehicles in February 1945.

It soon became clear that the FuG 240 had several drawbacks and was not perfectly suited for this task. Ground clutter and the natural horizon greatly limited the system's range, even though its 9 km range made high-altitude surveillance possible. Furthermore, the whole system, together with its power supply and the dirigible dish antenna, took up a lot of space. Its integration into an autonomous, tank-based anti-aircraft vehicle was still out of reach. The solution eventually came as a technical and tactical compromise: armed anti-aircraft tanks were to be grouped together in so-called Panzer-Fla-Züge, with an additional radar surveillance and guidance unit, so that the radar could guide the tank crews towards incoming targets, which would still rely on individual visual targeting.

 

The first of these dedicated guidance vehicles became the ‘Funkmess-/Flak-Kommandowagen Sd.KfZ 234/6’, which retained its secondary reconnaissance role. Together with Telefunken, Daimler Benz developed a new turret with a maximum armor of 30mm and a commander's cupola that would hold most of the radar equipment. This was christened ’Medusa’, after the monster from Greek mythology with snake hair and a petrifying sight, and during the system’s development phase, the radar's name was adopted for the whole vehicle, even though it never was official.

The turret held a crew of two, while the Sd. Kfz 234 chassis remained basically unchanged. Despite the cramped turret and the extra equipment, the Sd.Kfz. 234/6 was not heavier than its earlier brethren, because it remained unarmed, just a manually-operated FlaMG on the turret roof was available for self-defense. A heavier armament was not deemed necessary since the vehicle would either stay close to the heavily armed tanks it typically accompanied, or it would undertake lone reconnaissance missions where it would rely on its high speed and mobility. The vehicle's crew consisted of four: a driver in the front seat, a commander and a radar operator in the turret and a radio operator/second driver in the hull behind the turret, facing rearwards.

 

The Medusa antenna array was installed at the turret's front. The dish antenna, hidden under a hard vinyl cover, had a diameter of 70cm (27 1/2 inches), and it was directly adapted from the airborne FuG 240. Power output was 15kW, with a search angle of +80/− 5° and a frequency range: 3,250–3,330MHz (~10 cm). Range was, like the airborne variant, 0.5–9.0 kilometer. Power came from a separate generator directly attached to the vehicle’s Tatra diesel engine, hidden under an armored fairing on the bonnet that partly obscured the rear driver's field of view.

Beyond the radar system, the vehicle was furthermore equipped with a visual coincidence range finder, installed right through the turret. The system worked as follows: Light from the target entered the range finder through two windows located at either end of the instrument. At either side, the incident beam was reflected to the center of the optical bar by a pentaprism, and this optical bar was ideally made from a material with a low coefficient of thermal expansion so that optical path lengths would not change significantly with temperature. The reflected beam first passed through an objective lens and was then merged with the beam of the opposing side with an ocular prism sub-assembly to form two images of the target which were viewed by the observer through the eyepiece. Since either beam entered the instrument at a slightly different angle the resulting image, if unaltered, would appear blurry. Therefore, in one arm of the instrument, a compensator was integrated which could be adjusted by the operator to tilt the beam until the two images matched. At this point, the images were said to be in coincidence. The degree of rotation of the compensator determined the range to the target by simple triangulation, allowing the calculation of the distance to the observed object.

 

The optical bar had a span of 230 cm (90.75 in) and went right through the turret, just above the radar device installation. For the most effective range it even protruded from the turret on both sides like pylons, an arrangement that quickly earned the vehicle several nicknames like ‘Hirsch’, ‘Zwoender’ (a young stag with just two antlers) or ‘Ameise’ (ant). Fixed target reading with the rangefinder was effective on targets from 2,700 to 14,500 yards. Aerial courses could be recorded at all levels of flight and at a slant range between 4,000 and 12,000 yards - enough for visual identification beyond the group's effective gun ranges and perfectly suitable for long range observation.

 

The first Sd.Kfz. 234/6s reached, together with the first new FlaK tanks, the front units in summer 1945. Operating independently, they were primarily allocated to the defense of important production sites and of the city of Berlin, and they supported tank divisions through visual reconnaissance and general early warning duties. In due course they were supported and partly replaced by the bigger and more capable ‘Basilisk’ system, which had, due to the sheer bulk of the equipment, to be mounted on a tank chassis (initially on the Panzer V ‘Panther’ as the Sd.Kfz. 282/1 and from early 1946 onwards on the basis of the new Einheitspanzer E-50 hull as the Sd.Kfz. 282)

 

Operationally, the Sd. Kfz 234/6 was surprisingly successful, even though the radar remained capricious, its performance very limited and the unarmored equipment at the turret’s front was easily damaged in combat, even by light firearms. But the Sd.Kfz 234/6 offered, when the vehicle was placed in a location with a relatively free field of view (e. g. on a wide forest clearance or in an open field), a sufficient early warning performance against incoming bombers at medium to high altitudes, esp. when the general direction of incoming aircraft was already known.

The radar system even allowed a quick alert against low-flying aircraft, esp. when operating from higher ground. The radar information reduced the anti-aircraft tank/gun crews' reaction time considerably and allowed them to be prepared for incoming targets at the right altitude, direction and time. Hit probability was appreciably improved since quick passes of aircraft could be pre-determined.

 

Until the end of hostilities, probably fifty Sd.Kfz 234/6 were built new or converted from existing 8x8 chassis. Beyond this, the relatively light ‘Medusa’ device was furthermore mounted on outdated tracked armored vehicles like the Panzer III and IV, of which another forty vehicles were produced as Funkmess-/Flak-Kommandowagen III and IV.

  

Specifications:

Crew: Four (commander, radar operator, driver, radio operator/2nd driver)

Weight: 11,500 kg (25,330 lb)

Length: 6.02 m (19 ft 9 in)

Width: 2.36 m (7 ft 9 in)

Height: 2.84 meters (9 ft 4 in) w/o AA machine gun

Suspension: Wheeled (Tires: 270–20, bulletproof), with leaf springs

Track width: 1.95 m (6 ft 4 1/2 in)

Wading depth: 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in)

Trench crossing capability: 2m (6 ft 6 1/2 in)

Ground clearance: 350 mm (13 3/4 in)

Climbing capability: 30°

Fuel capacity: 360 l

Fuel consumption: 40 l/100 km on roads, 60 l/100 km off-road

 

Armor:

9-30 mm (.35-1.18 in)

 

Performance:

Maximum road speed: 80 km/h (49 mph)

Operational range: 950 km (590 mi)

Power/weight: 19 PS/t

 

Engine:

Air-cooled 14,825 cc (905³ in) Tatra 103 V12 diesel engine,

with 157 kW (220 hp) output at 2.200 RPM

 

Transmission:

Büssing-NAG "GS" with 3 forward and reverse gears, eight-wheel drive

 

Armament:

1× anti aircraft 7.92 mm Maschinengewehr 42 with 2.800 rounds

  

The kit and its assembly:

This whiffy and almost Ma.K-looking vehicle was inspired by the late WWII anti-aircraft tanks that never made it into hardware. I wondered how the gap between the simple visual aiming and the next logical step to surveillance and tracking radars could have been achieved, and the German airborne radars were a suitable place to start.

 

The idea of a dedicated vehicle was a logical step, since it would take many more years to develop a system that would be compact enough to be carried together with effective armament in just a single vehicle. It would take until the Sixties that such stand-alone systems like the Soviet ZSU-23-4 (1965) or the AMX-13 DCA (1969) would be produced.

 

I chose the light Sd.Kfz. 234 as basis because I do not think that a full armored tank would be devoted to a limited radar operation role, and instead of relying on heavy armor I deemed a light but fast vehicle (just like many other later AA tanks) to be the more plausible solution.

 

Basically, this is an OOB Hasegawa Sd.Kfz. 234/3, the “Stummel” with the short 7.5cm gun and an open hull. The latter was closed with 1mm styrene sheet and a mount for a turret added.

The turret itself is based on an Italeri Matilda Mk. II turret, but with a highly modified front that holds a resin ‘Cyrano’ radar (actually for an 1:72 Mirage F.1C) on a movable axis, an added rear extension and the antler fairings for the visual coincidence range finder. As a side note, similar systems were to be integrated into German late WWII combat tanks (e. g. in the Schmalturm), too, so this is another plausible piece of technology.

 

A German tank commander figure (from a vintage ESCI kit) populates the open hatch of the commander's cupola, the AA machine gun with its mount is an addition from the scrap box.

On the hull, the only modification is the additional generator fairing above the engine, for a slightly modified silhouette.

  

Painting and markings:

The turret looks weird enough, so I wanted a simple, yet typically late-WWII-German camouflage. I settled upon a geometric variation of the Hinterhalt three-tone scheme, primarily with dark yellow and olive green fields and stripe and a few red brown additions - inspired by a real late war Panther tank.

 

The basic color is RAL 7028 (modern variant, though), applied from the rattle can on the semi-finished hull and turret as a primer. On top of that, the shapes were added with acrylic dark grey-green (RAL 7009, Revell 67) and red brown (Humbrol 180) with a brush. The less bright colors were chosen on purpose for a low contrast finish, and the edgy shapes add a slightly SF-ish look.

 

A black ink wash and some dry-brushing along the many edges were used to weather the model and emphasize details. After decals had been applied, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish and some artist pigments were added around the wheels and lower hull in order to simulate dust and dirt. On the lower chassis, some pigments were also cluttered onto small patches of the acrylic varnish, so that the stuff soaks it up, builds volume and becomes solid - the perfect simulation of dry mud crusts.

  

A whiffy tank kit with a long background story - but the concept offers a lot of material to create a detailed story and description. And while the vehicle is a fantasy creation, it bears a weird plausibility. Should be a nice scenic addition to a (whiffy, too) German E-75 Flak tank (to be built some day)?

 

Starting to replace my photos of Passiflora with ones carrying watermark to prevent further theft. I don't rate myself as a photographer but I use the pictures to tell a story.

 

Last time I posted this picture it got viewed 278 times and attracted comments by four people. Please support me by viewing this and commenting.

 

Here is the "story" -

 

Bred in the Netherlands by Cor Laurens and registered with Plant Breeder's Rights in the EU & named in honour of Princess Máxima of the Netherlands.

 

Sold under licence from Belgium.

 

A hybrid of (P. amethystina II x P. caerulea) x P. caerulea ‘Constance Eliott‘ according to the official register. Very fragrant!

 

Similar to 'Purple Haze' also bred by Cor - see gallery in the link below.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/maracuja_rama/galleries/72157625519...

 

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version 05-Mar-21.

 

Fleet No: "625".

 

This Viscount, ex Air Canada sat in this position at Vancouver for many years before being floated across to Victoria, Vancouver Island on a barge for restoration. It's now complete and on display at the British Columbia Aviation Museum in the original Trans-Canada livery. The Museum is located at Sydney, BC, Canada (on the east side of Victoria International Airport).

 

The aircraft was delivered to Trans-Canada Air Lines as CF-THG in Mar-57. TCA was renamed Air Canada in Jun-64. It was withdrawn from service in Mar-74 and stored at Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

 

Along with another 23 Air Canada Viscounts, the aircraft was sold to Beaver Enterprises at the end of Apr-74 and remained stored. It was sold to Harrison Air in Jan-77 and stored at Vancouver, BC, Canada.

 

It never entered service and was sold to BCIT British Columbia Institute of Technology in Jun-80 for use as an instructional airframe. It was retired by BCIT in late 1995 and remained in open storage at Vancouver International.

 

The aircraft was sold to the British Columbia Aviation Museum in Apr-05, external restoration in the original Trans-Canada livery was completed by late 2008.

TE894 (LK08NVJ) working route 607.

Replacing an earlier digital photo with a better version 04-Jul-19.

 

Taken just a few months before the BKK airport code was transferred from Don Muang to the new Bangkok airport at Suvarnabhumi. Don Muang was re-coded DMK.

 

This is the 'reversed' version of the original AirAsia livery which later became standard on the A320's.

 

This aircraft was delivered to Piedmont Airlines as N322P in Sep-86. It was sold to a lessor in Oct-86 and leased back to Piedmont. It was re-registered N342US in Nov-88 prior to being merged into US Air in Aug-89. US Air was renamed US Airways in Feb-97. The aircraft was returned to the lessor and stored at Mojave, CA, USA in Dec-02. In Oct-03 it was leased to AirAsia as 9M-AAJ and sub-leased to subsidiary company Thai AirAsia as HS-AAJ in Dec-04. The aircraft was permanently retired at Kuala Lumpur in Oct-10 after 24 years in service and was subsequently broken up at Kuala Lumpur in Oct-11.

Replaced with a foot bridge, Kilby Bridge Junction

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 04-Sep-25.

 

This aircraft was delivered to Singapore Airlines as 9V-SYB in Dec-98. It was withdrawn from service and stored at Singapore in Dec-11.

 

It was sold to VEBL-767-300 Ltd as EI-UNP in Mar-12 and leased to Transaero Airlines, Russia in May-12. Transaero ceased operations on 26-Oct-15, the aircraft was returned to the lessor and stored at Teruel, Spain.

 

In Aug-15 the aircraft was to Rossiya - Russian Airlines. It was repainted in Feb-17 in a memorable 'Far Eastern Leopard' special livery with the head and face of a leopard around the nose and forward fuselage.

 

The aircraft was re-registered RA-73282 in Mar-22 after Russia invaded Ukraine. Due to western sanctions the Russian Government re-registered all aircraft owned by western leasing companies.

 

It was withdrawn from service and stored at Moscow-Sheremetyevo the day after it was re-registered in Mar-22, and returned to service in Dec-23. It was withdrawn from service and stored at Moscow-Sheremetyevo again on 05-Jul-25. Possibly due to non-availability of spare parts? Updated 04-Sep-25.

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version 25-Mar-18, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 07-Feb-24.

 

This aircraft was delivered to a lessor and leased to German Wings as D-AGWD in May-89. It was repossessed by the lessor in May-90 and stored at Bremen-Lemwerder (now closed).

 

It was sold to the Cirrus Capital Corporation as N848CP in Oct-90 and remained stored until it was leased to ZAS Airline of Egypt as SU-DAM in May-91.

 

The aircraft was returned to the lessor in Dec-94 and was leased to Allegro Airlines (Mexico) as XA-SWW in Jan-95. It was returned to the lessor in Jul-98 and sold to AeroMexico the same day.

 

AeroMexico sold it to Pegasus Aviation Inc in Dec-98 and leased it back. It was returned to the lessor in Apr-07 as N814PG and leased to EuroAir (Greece) as SX-BEU the following month.

 

It was withdrawn from service and stored at Malmo, Sweden in Oct-08 before being repossessed and re-registered N848SH in Feb-09.

 

It remained in storage until it was leased to AeroMexico and sub-leased to their 'low-cost' subsidiary AeroMexico Travel in Jul-10 (still as N848SH). It returned to the lessor in May-12 and was stored at Opa Locka, FL, USA.

 

The aircraft was sold to ASERCA Airlines (Venezuela) as YV539T in Mar-13 and it was permanently retired at Caracas, Venezuela in Sep-16 after 27.5 years in service.

St Mary Star of the Sea was built in 1891-1900 to replace an earlier church built in 1854. The new building was designed by the architect Edgar Henderson and the contract was awarded in September 1891 to C W Crompton. The 1890s depression and lack of funds slowed work considerably and in 1896, with the walls still incomplete, Henderson left Victoria for Western Australia. He was replaced by the architect Phillip Kennedy who made a number of alterations to Henderson's design, and is credited with the final design of the roof and the interior. In 1897 the spire was eliminated from the design due to financial problems. In 1898 the specifications were accepted for a new pipe organ, a huge electric-powered three manual instrument by Fincham & Hobday. Windows were commissioned from the leading manufacturers in England, Germany and Australia. The church was officially opened on 18 February 1900 by Cardinal-Archbishop Moran of Sydney. The fixtures and fittings were supplied by some of the most highly-regarded artists and furnishers in Melbourne and beyond. With the completion of the new church the old one was used as a school. A new boys' school designed by the architects Kempson & Conolly was built on Howard Street in 1910, and three years later the old church was demolished and a girls' school designed by the same architects was completed in 1914 on the Chetwynd Street corner. The old denominational school south of the old church was converted into clubrooms (now demolished and replaced by a new school building). Further decoration of the interior took place in the inter-war period and in the 1920s the original timber altars were replaced by altars of Italian marble. The building and interiors underwent major restoration works in the early twenty-first century. .

The St Mary Star of the Sea complex includes the church, the presbytery, and the boys' and girls' schools. The church is a Latin Cross plan French Gothic style building of brick faced with random coursed sandstone on a bluestone plinth, with limestone dressings, a slate roof and an incomplete tower on the north-east corner. The slate roof is embellished with a series of dormer vents, fabricated from sheet zinc. At the centre of the roof is a polygonal fleche of pressed zinc on timber framing, with louvred vents on the sides and surmounted by a tapering conical spire. The colonettes flanking the window and door openings are of polished red Aberdeen granite. The total length of the building is 175 ft. (54 m) and the height of the roof ridge is 75 ft. 23m). The interiors are opulently decorated, with a strong Italian Baroque influence. The nave is painted pink and there is extensive use of high-quality building stone such as Swedish red granite in the nave columns, Carrara white marble for the transept piers and Pyrenean rose marble for the chapel columns. This is further enhanced by the reflective finishes of the mosaic-tiled sanctuary floor, the brass altar rails, the scagliola (imitation marble) of the colonettes and the polished timber, especially in the distinctive two-toned groined ceiling. The ceiling is lined with timber panelling, and painted statues of angels blowing trumpets stand on the hammerbeams. The church retains much original furniture and fittings, including its pews (1900), elaborate marble altars (1925-7) and font (1900), a fine set of Stations of the Cross by Peter Hansen (1901), a Mission Cross by James Curtin (1891), a Bishop's throne made for Daniel Mannix in 1913, and several notable stained glass windows made by prominent local and overseas craftsmen. .

The Fincham organ in the gallery is a large three manual organ with richly gilded and decorated pipes arranged on either side of a large stained glass window, possibly by Brooks Robinson & Co, and with a fine blackwood console. The presbytery is a symmetrical two storey rendered building with a slate roof, and a two storey cast iron verandah with unusual round-arched flying buttresses supporting the walls. The boys' school is a two storey symmetrical rendered Free Classical style building with a slate roof and with twin gabled parapets on the front elevation. The front facade of the girls' school has a very similar composition, but is of face brick with rendered dressings and has Gothic arched openings..

.

St Mary Star of the Sea is historically significant as Melbourne's largest parish church and as one of the most costly parish churches built in Australia, a reflection of the spirit of the substantial Catholic population, predominantly of Irish extraction, of the area in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that helped fund its construction..

St Mary Star of the Sea is architecturally significant as unusual example of a church in the French Gothic style, and as a major example of the work of the distinguished architects Edgar Henderson, a Catholic architect who later achieved considerable success and renown as a designer of Catholic churches, schools and convents in Western Australia, and Phillip Kennedy. The complex includes an interesting presbytery designed by William Wardell and altered by Reed & Barnes and two early twentieth century school buildings by Kempson & Connolly..

St Mary Star of the sea is of aesthetic significance for its opulent interior, with imposing marble and granite pillars, an unusual timber ceiling, thought to be unique in Victoria, intricate marble fittings, especially the marble altars and font, Stations of the Cross by Peter Hansen and an oak mission cross by James Curtin. The magnificent stained glass windows are by prominent local and European makers, such as William Montgomery, Hardman & Company of London and Franz Mayer & Company of Germany.

The Fincham pipe organ is historically and technologically significant as the largest example of nineteenth century indigenous organ building in Australia to remain essentially unaltered. It is the most intact surviving example of the work of the prominent organ builder George Fincham and was the last organ completed by Fincham himself. It one of a very small number of surviving three-manual Fincham organs, and is believed to be the second largest organ, after that in the Sydney Town Hall, to retain a tubular-pneumatic key and action stop..

St Mary Star of the Sea is socially significant for its important role in the lives of the Roman Catholic community of Melbourne..

 

Found some fresh architecture!

 

Edit: replaced with an almost identical shot, due to bird :)

 

© Andy Brandl / PhotonMix (2012)

Don´t redistribute / use on webpages, blogs or any other media. See my profile page for information regarding licensing of this image for personal or commercial use.

    

Link to my website, where you can watch a slideshow with my favorite shots, listen to some soothing music, order prints, have a look at my photos in better quality, etc.

andybrandl.zenfolio.com/

Opened in fall 2004 to replace the older McDonald's nearby in town.

 

As of March 2022, that Mickey D's is getting #McBoxed.

 

The Rockville McDonald’s will be entirely CLOSED starting Sunday, through Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This will give them time to install a 2-way drive thru. When the new drive thru is installed, it will be a new system for those employees that they will have to go through and two lanes definitely create more pressure than 1, so it may start off a little slow as the employees adjust to the change.

 

The lobby at Rockville McDonald’s is also going to be closed entirely for the installation of the Kiosks. Their lobby isn’t expected to reopen until sometime in April. Deming Street and especially the Vernon location is definitely probably going to feel the affects of Rockville store closing for four days, it is also one of the busiest stores, if not the busiest.

So for those who regularly go to Rockville, this is a heads up for you, they will not be open starting this weekend starting Sunday until Wednesday.

Replacing the Morris 8 was the Morris Minor, quite an advanced little car for its day, with rack and pinion steering and independent front suspension.

1948 MM; (lowlight Minor) the first, available in 2 door Saloon and Tourer; 918cc from the old Series E.

1950; 4 door Saloon introduced.

1951; headlights raised and set in mudguards

1952; Series II; Austin 803cc OHV 4 cyl.

1953; 2 door Traveller (external wooden trim), Van and Pickup introduced.

1954; new slat grille and new dash.

1956-71; Minor 1000; 948cc engine, one piece windscreen and larger back window.

From 1947-54 Nuffield Australia assembled the Morris Minor and Morris Oxford from CKD kits.

Dominion Motors In New Zealand also assembled the Minor from 1948-69

Replacing the "Coke bottle" styling was a more "swoopy" body style, while still retaining some traditional elements. The top of the rear window line went almost straight down to the lip of the trunk lid. The new design was initially characterized by a large B-pillar, until 1975 when the rear window was enlarged. Originally, the "wraparound" style window that occupied more of the b-pillar was initially supposed to be the deisgn, but problems with the glue and sealing the rear window led to the flat style window being used until the re-designed body in 1975. This style became the look that was to epitomize the F-body styling for the longest period during the Firebird's lifetime.

 

In 1980, ever-increasing emissions restrictions led Pontiac to drop all of its large-displacement engines. 1980 therefore saw the biggest engine changes for the Trans Am. The 301, offered in 1979 as a credit option, was now the standard engine. No manual transmission was available for the Formula or Trans Am in 1980, all received the 3-speed automatic Turbo Hydramatic 350. Engine options included a turbocharged 301 or the Chevrolet 305 small block. The turbocharged 301 used a Garrett TB305 turbo attached to a single Rochester Quadrajet four-barrel carburetor and featured a hood-mounted "boost" gauge that would light up as the TB305 accumulated boost. The hood of the 301T equipped Firebirds had a large offset bulge to accommodate for the mounting position of the carburetor on the engine as the turbocharger exhaust occupied a large amount of space in the engine bay.

 

This 1980 Firebird TransAm Highway Patrol CarTurbo was featured in the film 'Cannonball Run' released in 1981.

Potsdamer Platz (German: [ˈpɔtsdamɐ plats] (About this sound listen), literally Potsdam Square) is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany, lying about 1 km south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park. It is named after the city of Potsdam, some 25 km to the south west, and marks the point where the old road from Potsdam passed through the city wall of Berlin at the Potsdam Gate. After developing within the space of little over a century from an intersection of rural thoroughfares into the most bustling traffic intersection in Europe, it was totally laid to waste during World War II and then left desolate during the Cold War era when the Berlin Wall bisected its former location. Since German reunification, Potsdamer Platz has been the site of major redevelopment projects.

 

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Potsdamer Platz began as a trading post where several country roads converged just outside Berlin's old customs wall. The history of Potsdamer Platz can probably be traced back to 29 October 1685, when the Tolerance Edict of Potsdam was signed, whereby Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia from 1640 to 1688, allowed large numbers of religious refugees, including Jews from Austria and Huguenots expelled from France, to settle on his territory. A key motivation behind the Edict was so the Elector could encourage the rapid repopulation, restabilising and economic recovery of his kingdom, following the ravages of the Thirty Years' War (1618–48). Altogether up to 15,000 Huguenots made new homes in the Brandenburg region, some 6,000 of these in its capital, Berlin (indeed, by 1700 and for a while afterwards as much as 20% of Berlin’s population was French-speaking). Two other things resulted from this huge influx. Firstly, Berlin’s medieval fortifications, recently rebuilt from 1658 to 1674 in the form of a Dutch-style star fort, on an enormous scale and at great expense (and similar to examples still in extant today in the Netherlands like Naarden and Bourtange), became virtually redundant overnight; and secondly, the already crowded city became even more congested.

 

Several new districts were founded around the city's perimeter, just outside the old fortifications. The largest of these was Friedrichstadt, just south west of the historic core of Berlin, begun in 1688 and named after new Elector Frederick William III, who later became King Frederick I of Prussia. Its street layout followed the Baroque-style grid pattern much favoured at the time, and was based on two main axes: Friedrichstraße running north-south, and Leipziger Straße running east-west. All the new suburbs were absorbed into Berlin around 1709-10. In 1721-3 a south-westwards expansion of Friedrichstadt was planned under the orders of King Frederick William I, and this was completed in 1732-4 by architect Philipp Gerlach (1679–1748). In this expansion, a new north-south axis emerged: Wilhelmstrasse.

 

In 1735-7, after Friedrichstadt’s expansion was complete, a customs or excise wall, 17 km long and 4.2 m high, was erected around Berlin’s new perimeter. Consisting of a wooden palisade at first, it was later replaced with a brick and stone wall, pierced by 14 gates (later increased to 18), where roads entered the city. Here taxes were levied on goods passing through, chiefly meat and flour. The most prestigious gate was the Brandenburg Gate, for the important road from Brandenburg, but 1 km to the south was the entry point of another road that gained even greater significance.

 

This road had started out in the Middle Ages as a lane running out from Berlin to the hamlet of Schöneberg, but it had developed into part of a trading route running right across Europe from Paris to St. Petersburg via Aachen, Berlin and Königsberg. In 1660 the Elector Frederick William made it his route of choice to Potsdam, the location of his palace, which had recently been renovated. Starting in 1754 a daily stagecoach ran between Berlin and Potsdam, although the road was in poor shape. But in 1740 Frederick II had become King. Not a great lover of Berlin, he later built a new palace, the Sanssouci, at Potsdam in 1744-7, followed by the New Palace in 1763-9, so the road now had to be made fit for a King, plus all his courtiers and staff. After numerous other improvements, in 1791-3 this section was made into Prussia's first all-weather road. It later became Potsdamer Straße; its point of entry into Berlin, where it passed through the customs wall, became the Potsdamer Tor (Potsdam Gate); once inside the gate Leipziger Straße was its eastwards continuation, and Wilhelmstraße was the first north-south thoroughfare that intersected with it. It was around this gate that Potsdamer Platz was to develop.

 

As a physical entity, Potsdamer Platz began as a few country roads and rough tracks fanning out from the Potsdam Gate. According to one old guide book, it was never a proper platz, but a five-cornered traffic knot on that old trading route across Europe. Just inside the gate was a large octagonal area, created at the time of Friedrichstadt's expansion in 1732-4 and bisected by Leipziger Straß; this was one of several parade grounds for the thousands of soldiers garrisoned in Berlin at the height of the Kingdom of Prussia. Initially known appropriately as the Achteck (Octagon), on 15 September 1814 it was renamed Leipziger Platz after the site of Prussia's final decisive defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Leipzig, 16–19 October 1813, which

 

brought to an end the Wars of Liberation that had been going on since 1806. The Potsdam Gate itself was redesignated the Leipziger Tor (Leipzig Gate) around the same time, but reverted to its old name a few years later.

 

The history of Leipziger Platz has been inextricably linked with that of its neighbour almost since its creation. Yet their respective stories have in many ways been very different. The future Potsdamer Platz was most definitely outside Berlin, and therefore not subject to the planning guidelines and constraints that would normally be expected in a city keen to show itself off as the capital of an empire. It grew very rapidly in a piecemeal and haphazard way, and came to epitomise wildness and excess in a manner that contributed much to its legendary status. Leipziger Platz however, was inside the city (and had a name almost a century before its neighbour did), and always had an orderly, disciplined look about it. After all, it had been planned and built all in one go by Johann Philipp Gerlach. One late 18th-century artistic depiction shows a range of buildings relentless in their uniformity. Indeed, this, together with the grid pattern of the streets, is what one would expect in Prussia’s chief garrison city. One writer of the time said that a stroll round Friedrichstadt was like walking round military barracks. In this respect the Potsdam Gate was a dividing line between two different worlds. It was not until later on that many of these buildings began to be replaced by important historical palaces and aristocratic mansions.

 

By this time however, Leipziger Platz was no longer a parade ground, and there had been much speculation about a possible complete redesign for the whole area. Back in 1797 had come the first of two proposed schemes that would have afforded the future Potsdamer Platz the appearance of a proper square. Under both schemes the old rural intersection just outside the Potsdam Gate, and the Octagon (Leipziger Platz) just inside, were to be joined together to create a long rectangular space, with a gargantuan edifice standing in the middle of it. The 1797 scheme came from the renowned Prussian architect Friedrich David Gilly (1772–1800), who proposed a monument to the former Prussian King, Friedrich II. Though containing some Egyptian and French neo-Classicist features, the design was basically a huge Greek temple in the Doric style, loosely modelled on the Parthenon in Athens, though raised up on an enormous geometric plinth and flanked by numerous obelisks (the Egyptian element). A grand new Potsdam Gate formed part of the design. It was never built, but eighteen years later in 1815 Gilly's pupil, Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), put forward plans for a National Memorial Cathedral to commemorate the recent victories in the Wars ofLiberation. To be known as the Residenzkirche, it was again, never built due to lack of funds, and in any case the national fervour of the period favoured the long-awaited completion of Cologne Cathedral over a new building, but Schinkel went on to become one of the most prolific and celebrated architects of his time.

 

So the layout stayed put, although in 1823-4 Schinkel did get to rebuild the Potsdam Gate. Formerly little more than a gap in the customs wall, it was replaced by a much grander affair consisting of two matching Doric-style stone gate-houses, like little temples (a nod to Friedrich Gilly perhaps), facing each other across Leipziger Straße. The one on the north side served as the customs house and excise collection point, while its southern counterpart was a military guardhouse, set up to prevent desertions of Prussian soldiers, which had become a major problem. The new gate was officially dedicated on 23 August 1824. The design also included a new look for Leipziger Platz. Attempts to create a market there to draw off some of the frenetic commercial activity in the centre of the city had not been successful. And so Schinkel proposed to turn it into a fine garden, although this part of the design was not implemented. It was a rival plan by gardener and landscape architect Peter Joseph Lenné (1789–1866), drawn up in 1826, that went ahead in 1828 but with modifications. In later years Lenné would completely redesign the Tiergarten, a large wooded park formerly the Royal Hunting Grounds, also give his name to Lennéstraße, a thoroughfare forming part of the southern boundary of the park, very close to Potsdamer Platz, and transform a muddy ditch to the south into one of Berlin's busiest waterways, the Landwehrkanal.

 

Meanwhile, country peasantry were generally not welcome in the city, and so the gates also served to restrict access. However, the country folk were permitted to set up trading posts of their own just outside the gates, and the Potsdam Gate especially. It was hoped that this would encourage development of all the country lanes into proper roads; in turn it was hoped that these would emulate Parisian boulevards - broad, straight and magnificent, but the main intention was to enable troops to be moved quickly. Thus Potsdamer Platz was off and running.

 

It was not called that until 8 July 1831, but the area outside the Potsdam Gate began to develop in the early 19th century as a district of quiet villas, for as Berlin became even more congested, many of its richer citizens moved outside the customs wall and built spacious new homes around the trading post, along the newly developing boulevards, and around the southern edge of the Tiergarten. Initially the development was fairly piecemeal, but in 1828 this area just to the west of Potsdamer Platz, sandwiched between the Tiergarten and the north bank of the future Landwehrkanal, received Royal approval for a more orderly and purposeful metamorphosis into a residential colony of the affluent, and gradually filled with houses and villas of a particularly palatial nature. These became the homes of civil servants, officers, bankers, artists and politicians among others, and earned the area the nickname "Millionaires' Quarter" although its official designation was Friedrichvorstadt (Friedrich's Suburb), or alternatively the Tiergartenviertel (Tiergarten Quarter).

 

Many of the properties in the neighbourhood were the work of architect Georg Friedrich Heinrich Hitzig (1811–81), a pupil of Schinkel who also built the original "English Embassy" in Leipziger Platz, where the vast Wertheim department store would later stand, although Friedrichvorstadt's focal point and most notable building was the work of another architect—and another pupil of Schinkel. The Matthiaskirche (St. Matthew's Church), built in 1844-6, was an Italian Romanesque-style building in alternating bands of red and yellow brick, and designed by Friedrich August Stüler (1800–65). This church, one of fewer than half a dozen surviving pre-World War II buildings in the entire area, forms the centrepiece of today's Kulturforum (Cultural Forum).

 

Meanwhile, many of the Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France, and their descendants, had also been living around the trading post and cultivating local fields. Noticing that traffic queues often built up at the Potsdam Gate due to delays in making the customs checks, these people had begun to offer coffee, bread, cakes and confectionery from their homes or from roadside stalls to travellers passing through, thus beginning the tradition of providing food and drink around the future Potsdamer Platz. In later years larger and more purpose-built establishments had begun to take their place, which in turn were superseded by even bigger and grander ones. The former district of quiet villas was by now anything but quiet: Potsdamer Platz had taken on an existence all its own whose sheer pace of life rivalled anything within the city.

 

By the mid-1860s direct taxation had made the customs wall redundant, and so in 1866–7 most of it was demolished along with all the city gates except two – the Brandenburg Gate and the Potsdam Gate. The removal of the customs wall allowed its former route to be turned into yet another road running through Potsdamer Platz, thus increasing still further the amount of traffic passing through. This road, both north and south of the platz, was named Königgrätzer Straße after the Prussian victory over Austria at the Battle of Königgrätz on 3 July 1866, in the Austro-Prussian War.

 

THE RAILWAYS ARRIVE

The railway first came to Berlin in 1838, with the opening of the Potsdamer Bahnhof, terminus of a 26 km line linking the city with Potsdam, opened throughout by 29 October (in 1848 the line would be extended to Magdeburg and beyond). Since the city authorities would not allow the new line to breach the customs wall, still standing at the time, it had to stop just short, at Potsdamer Platz, but it was this that kick-started the real transformation of the area, into the bustling focal point that Potsdamer Platz would eventually become.

 

Just three years later a second railway terminus opened in the vicinity. Located 600 metres to the southeast, with a front facade facing Askanischer Platz, the Anhalter Bahnhof was the Berlin terminus of a line opened on 1 July 1841, as far as Jüterbog and later extended to Dessau, Kothen and beyond.

 

Both termini began life as fairly modest affairs, but in order to cope with increasing demands both went on to much bigger and better things in later years, a new Potsdamer Bahnhof, destined to be Berlin's busiest station, opening on 30 August 1872 and a new Anhalter Bahnhof, destined to be the city's biggest and finest, following on 15 June 1880. This latter station benefitted greatly from the closure of a short-lived third terminus in the area – the Dresdner Bahnhof, located south of the Landwehrkanal, which lasted from 17 June 1875 until 15 October 1882.

 

In addition, a railway line once ran through Potsdamer Platz itself. This was a connecting line opened in October 1851 and running around the city just inside the customs wall, crossing numerous streets and squares at street level, and whose purpose was to allow goods to be transported between the various Berlin stations, thus creating a hated traffic obstruction that lasted for twenty years. Half a dozen or more times a day, Potsdamer Platz ground to a halt while a train of 60 to 100 wagons trundled through at walking pace preceded by a railway official ringing a bell. The construction of the Ringbahn around the city's perimeter, linked to all the major stations, allowed the connecting line to be scrapped in 1871, although the Ringbahn itself was not complete and open for all traffic until 15 November 1877.

 

In later years Potsdamer Platz was served by both of Berlin's two local rail systems. The U-Bahn arrived first, from the south; begun on 10 September 1896, it opened on 18 February 1902, with a new and better sited station being provided on 29 September 1907, and the line itself being extended north and east on 1 October 1908. In 1939 the S-Bahn followed, its North-South Link between Unter den Linden and Yorckstraße opening in stages during the year, the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn station itself opening on 15 April.

 

By the second half of the 19th century, Berlin had been growing at a tremendous rate for some time, but its growth accelerated even faster after the city became the capital of the new German Empire on 18 January 1871. Potsdamer Platz and neighbouring Leipziger Platz really started coming into their own from this time on. Now firmly in the centre of a metropolis whose population eventually reached 4.4 million, making it the third largest city in the world after London and New York,[2] the area was ready to take on its most celebrated role. Vast hotels and department stores, hundreds of smaller shops, theatres, dance-halls, cafés, restaurants, bars, beer palaces, wine-houses and clubs, all started to appear. Some of these places became internationally known.

 

Also, a very large government presence, with many German imperial departments, Prussian state authorities and their various sub-departments, came into the area, taking over 26 former palaces and aristocratic mansions in Leipziger Platz, Leipziger Straße and Wilhelmstraße. Even the Reichstag itself, the German Parliament, occupied the former home of the family of composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47) in Leipziger Straße before moving in 1894 to the vast new edifice near the Brandenburg Gate, erected by Paul Wallot (1841–1912). Next door, the Herrenhaus, or Prussian House of Lords (the Upper House of the Prussian State Parliament), occupied a former porcelain factory for a while, before moving to an impressive new building erected on the site of the former Mendelssohn family home in 1899–1904 by Friedrich Schulze Colditz (1843–1912). This building backed on to an equally grand edifice in the next street (Prinz-Albrecht-Straße), also by Colditz, that had been built for the Preußischer Landtag (the Prussian Lower House), in 1892-9.

 

Potsdamer Platz was also the location of Germany's first electric street lights, installed in 1882 by the electrical giant Siemens, founded and based in the city.

 

INNERWAR YEARS

The heyday of Potsdamer Platz was in the 1920s and 1930s. By this time it had developed into the busiest traffic center in all of Europe,[1] and the heart of Berlin's nightlife.[citation needed] It had acquired an iconic status, on a par with Piccadilly Circus in London or Times Square in New York. It was a key location that helped to symbolise Berlin; it was known worldwide, and a legend grew up around it. It represented the geographical centre of the city, the meeting place of five of its busiest streets in a star-shaped intersection deemed the transport hub of the entire continent. These were:

 

Königgrätzer Straße (northern portion), earlier names Brandenburgische Communication and then Schulgartenstraße, running along the former route of the customs wall and leading north to the Brandenburg Gate. After a brief spell as Budapester Straße in the late 1920s (although this name was not widely recognised), on 6 February 1930 it was renamed Ebertstraße after Friedrich Ebert (1871–1925), first President of Weimar Germany. In 1935 the Nazis renamed it Hermann-Göring-Straße after Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, whose official residence was on the east side of the street near the Brandenburg Gate. On 31 July 1947, it reverted to Ebertstraße again.

Königgrätzer Straße (southern portion), earlier names Potsdamer Communication and then Hirschelstraße, also running along part of the customs wall's old route, actually leading mainly south east. On 6 February 1930, it was renamed Stresemannstraße after Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929), the first Chancellor to serve under President Ebert. In 1935 the Nazis renamed it Saarlandstraße after the region of south western Germany that had been under League of Nations rule since the end of World War I but which on 13 January 1935 elected by a huge (90.3%) majority to return to Germany. On 31 July 1947, it reverted to Stresemannstraße.

Leipziger Straße, leading east.

Potsdamer Straße, developed out of that old road to Schöneberg and Potsdam, part of the former trading route across Europe, and leading south west. Today this section is called Alte Potsdamer Straße, a pedestrianised cul-de-sac severed by post-World War II developments and subsequently by-passed by a new section – the Neue Potsdamer Straße, leading due west and then curving southwards to rejoin its old course at the Potsdam Bridge, over the Landwehrkanal.

Bellevuestraße, earlier name Charlottenburger Allee, leading north west through the Tiergarten to Schloss Bellevue, today the official residence of the Federal President of Germany.

 

As well as the stations and other facilities and attractions already mentioned, in the immediate area was one of the world’s biggest and most luxurious department stores: Wertheim. Founded by German merchant Georg Wertheim (1857–1939), designed by architect Alfred Messel (1853–1909), opened in 1897 and extended several times over the following 40 years, it ultimately possessed a floor area double that of the Reichstag, a 330-metre-long granite and plate glass facade along Leipziger Straße, 83 elevators, three escalators, 1,000 telephones, 10,000 lamps, five kilometres of pneumatic tubing for moving items from the various departments to the packing area, and a separate entrance directly from the nearby U-Bahn station. It also contained a summer garden, winter garden and roof garden, an enormous restaurant and several smaller eating areas, its own laundry, a theatre and concert booking office, its own bank, whose strongrooms were underground at the eastern end of the building (and generated their own history decades later), and a large fleet of private delivery vehicles. In the run-up to Christmas Wertheim was transformed into a fairytale kingdom, and was well known to children from all over Germany and far beyond. In Stresemannstraße, and paralleling the Potsdamer Bahnhof on its eastern side, was another great magnet for shoppers and tourists alike – a huge multi-national-themed eating establishment: the Haus Vaterland. Designed by architect Franz Heinrich Schwechten (1841–1924), who was also responsible for the Anhalter Bahnhof and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, it was erected in 1911-12 as the Haus Potsdam. 93 m in length and with a dome rising 35 m above the pavement at the north (Stresemannstraße) end, it contained the world’s largest restaurant – the 2,500-seat Café Piccadilly, plus a 1,200-seat theatre and numerous offices. These included (from 1917 to 1927), the headquarters of Universum Film AG (aka UFA or Ufa), Germany's biggest film company.

 

On 16 August 1914, less than three weeks after the start of World War I, the Café Piccadilly was given a new name – the more patriotic-sounding Café Vaterland. However, in 1927–8 the architect and entrepreneur Carl Stahl-Urach (1879–1933) transformed the whole building into a gastronomic fantasy land, financed and further elaborated upon by new owners the Kempinski organisation. It reopened on 31 August 1928 as the Haus Vaterland, offering "The World in One House," and could now hold up to 8,000 guests at a time. The Café Vaterland had remained largely untouched, but the 1,200-seat theatre was now a 1,400-seat cinema. The rest of the building had been turned into a large number of theme restaurants, all served from a central kitchen containing the largest gas-fuelled cooking plant in Europe. These included: Rheinterrasse, Löwenbräu (Bavarian beer restaurant), Grinzing (Viennese café and wine bar), Bodega (Spanish winery), Csarda (Hungarian), Wild West Bar (aka the Arizona Bar) (American), Osteria (Italian), Kombüse (Bremen drinking den – literally "galley"), Rübchen (Teltow, named after the well-known turnip dish Teltower Rübchen, made with turnips grown locally in the small town of Teltow just outside Berlin), plus a Turkish cafe and Japanese tearoom; additionally there was a large ballroom. Up to eight orchestras and dance bands regularly performed in different parts of the building, plus a host of singers, dancers and other entertainers. It should be pointed out here though that not all of these attractions existed simultaneously, owing to changes in those countries that Germany was or was not allied to, in the volatile years leading up to and during World War II, a good example being the closure of the Wild West Bar following America's entry into the war as an enemy of Germany.

 

Among the major hotels at or near Potsdamer Platz were two designed by the same architect, Otto Rehnig (1864–1925), and opened in the same year, 1908. One was the 600-room Hotel Esplanade (sometimes known as the "Grand Hotel Esplanade"), in Bellevuestraße. Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo were guests there, and Kaiser Wilhelm II himself held regular "gentlemen's evenings" and other functions there in a room that came to be named after him – the Kaisersaal.

 

The other was the Hotel Excelsior, also 600 rooms but superior provision of other facilities made it the largest hotel in Continental Europe, located in Stresemannstraße opposite the Anhalter Bahnhof and connected to it by a 100-metre-long subterranean passageway complete with a parade of underground shops.

 

Two other hotels which shared the same architect, in this case Ludwig Heim (1844–1917), were the 68-room Hotel Bellevue (sometimes known as the "Grand Hotel Bellevue"), built 1887-8, and the 110-room Palast Hotel, built 1892-3 on the site of an earlier hotel. These stood on either side of the northern exit from Potsdamer Platz along Ebertstraße. The Bellevue was well known for its Winter Garden.

 

Meanwhile, facing the Palast Hotel across the entrance to Leipziger Platz (the Potsdam Gate), was the 400-room Hotel Fürstenhof, by Richard Bielenberg (1871–1929) and Josef Moser (1872–1963), erected in 1906/07, also on the site of an earlier building. With its 200-metre-long main facade along Stresemannstraße, the Fürstenhof was less opulent than some of the other hotels mentioned, despite its size, but was still popular with business people. The new U-Bahn station was being built at the same time as the hotel and actually ran through the hotel's basement, cutting it in half, thus making the construction of both into something of a technical challenge, but unlike the Wertheim department store (and contrary to several sources), the hotel did not enjoy a separate entrance directly from the station.

 

The Weinhaus Huth, with its distinctive corner cupola, was a wedge-shaped structure located in the angle between Potsdamer Straße and Linkstraße (literally "Left Street"), and with entrances in both streets. Wine merchant Friedrich Karl Christian Huth, whose great-grandfather had been kellermeister (cellar-master) to King Friedrich II back in 1769, had founded the firm in 1871 and taken over the former building in Potsdamer Straße on 23 March 1877. His son, the wine wholesale dealer William (“Willy”) Huth (1877–1967), took over the business in 1904 and, a few years later, commissioned the replacement of the building by a new one on the same site. Running right through the block into Linkstraße, this new Weinhaus Huth was designed by the architects Conrad Heidenreich (1873–1937) and Paul Michel (1877–1938), and opened on 2 October 1912, and contained a wine restaurant on the ground floor, and wine storage space above, so it had to take a lot of weight. It was thus given a strong steel skeleton, which would stand the building in very good stead some three decades after its completion. Famous for its fine claret, numerous members of European society were made welcome there as guests. A total of 15 chefs were employed there, and Alois Hitler, the stepbrother of the future Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, was a waiter there in the 1920s, before he opened his own restaurant and hotel at Wittenbergplatz, in the western part of the city.

 

Café Josty was one of two rival cafés (the other being the Astoria, later Café Eins A), occupying the broad corner between Potsdamer Straße and Bellevuestraße. The Josty company had been founded in 1793 by two Swiss brothers, Johann and Daniel Josty, who had emigrated to Berlin from Sils in Switzerland and set up a bakery from which the café was a 1796 offshoot. It had occupied various locations including (from 1812 till 1880), a site in front of the Berlin City Palace, before moving to Potsdamer Platz in the latter year. A major player on the Berlin café scene, Josty attracted writers, artists, politicians and international society: it was one of the places to be seen. The writer Theodor Fontane, painter Adolf von Menzel, and Dadaist Kurt Schwitters were all guests; Karl Liebknecht, the Spartacus Communist movement leader read a lot here and even made some key political speeches from the pavement terrace, while author Erich Kästner wrote part of his 1929 bestseller for children, Emil und die Detektive (Emil and the Detectives), on the same terrace and made the café the setting for an important scene in the book.

 

Despite the prestige associated with its name, Café Josty closed in 1930. It then went through an odyssey of reopenings, closures and relaunches under a number of different names including Conditorei Friediger, Café Wiener, Engelhardt Brau and Kaffee Potsdamer Platz (sometimes appearing to have two or more names simultaneously), before its eventual destruction in World War II.

 

Among the many beer palaces around Potsdamer Platz were two in particular which contained an extensive range of rooms and halls covering a large area. The Alt-Bayern in Potsdamer Straße was erected by architect Wilhelm Walther (1857–1917) and opened in 1904. After closing in 1914, it underwent a revamp before reopening in 1926 under the new name Bayernhof.

 

Meanwhile, in Bellevuestraße, sandwiched between Café Josty and the Hotel Esplanade but extending right through the block with a separate entrance in Potsdamer Straße, was the Weinhaus Rheingold, built by Bruno Schmitz (1858–1916) and opened on 6 February 1907. Originally intended to be a concert venue until concerns were raised about increased traffic problems in the already congested streets, it was ruled that it should serve a gastronomic purpose only. Altogether it could accommodate 4,000 guests at a time, 1,100 of these in its main hall alone. Many of the total of 14 banquet and beer halls had a Wagnerian theme – indeed, the very name of the complex was taken from the Wagner opera Das Rheingold, the first of the four parts of the cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, although this name did hark back to the building's planned former role as a concert venue. Another building by the same architect but which still stands – the "Rosengarten" in Mannheim, has a remarkably similar main facade.

 

Finally, on the corner between Potsdamer Straße and the Potsdamer Bahnhof, stood Bierhaus Siechen, built by Johann Emil Schaudt (1874–1957), opened in 1910 and later relaunched under the new name Pschorr-Haus.

 

At 8.00 p.m. on 8 October 1923, Germany's first radio broadcast was made, using the world's first medium-wave transmitter, from a building (Vox-Haus) close by in Potsdamer Straße. Standing alongside the Weinhaus Rheingold's Potsdamer Straße entrance, this five-storey steel-framed edifice had been erected as an office building in 1907-8 by architect and one-time Berlin inspector of buildings Otto Stahn (1859–1930), who was also responsible for the city's Oberbaumbrücke over the River Spree. In 1920 the Vox-group had taken over the building and the following year commissioned its remodelling by Swiss architect Rudolf Otto Salvisberg (1882–1940), and then erected two transmitting antennae. Despite several upgrades between December 1923 and July 1924, the nearby Hotel Esplanade's formidable bulk prevented the transmitter from functioning effectively and so in December 1924 it was superseded by a better sited new one, but Vox-Haus lived on as the home of Germany's first radio station, Radiostunde Berlin, founded in 1923, renamed Funkstunde in March 1924, but it moved to a new home in 1931 and closed in 1934.

 

In addition, the former Millionaires' Quarter just to the west of Potsdamer Platz had become a much favoured location for other countries to site their embassies. By the early 1930s there were so many diplomats living and working in the area that it came to be redesignated the "Diplomatic Quarter". By 1938, 37 out of 52 embassies and legations in Berlin, and 28 out of 29 consulates, were situated here.

 

Although a contraption at Stephansplatz in Hamburg is now thought to have predated them by two years, it has often been stated that the first traffic lights in Continental Europe were erected at Potsdamer Platz on 20 October 1924, in an attempt to control the sheer volume of traffic passing through. This traffic had grown to extraordinary levels. Even in 1900, more than 100,000 people, 20,000 cars, horse-drawn vehicles and handcarts, plus many thousands of bicycles, passed through the platz daily. By the 1920s the number of cars had soared to 60,000. The trams added greatly to this. The first four lines had appeared in 1880, rising to 13 by 1897, all horse-drawn, but after electrification between 1898 and 1902 the number of lines had soared to 35 by 1908 and ultimately reached 40, carrying between them 600 trams every hour, day and night. Services were run by a large number of companies, but in 1929 all these were unified into the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (Berlin Transport Services) company, which has operated Berlin’s trams ever since.

 

Up to 11 policemen at a time had tried to control all this traffic, many of them standing on small wooden platforms positioned in key locations around the platz, but with varying success. The traffic lights, again from Siemens, were mounted on a five-sided 8.5 m high tower designed by Jean Kramer, shipped over from the United States, and actually modelled on a similar one erected on Fifth Avenue in New York in 1922, although towers like this had been a feature of New York since 1918. A solitary policeman sat in a small cabin at the top of the tower and switched the lights around manually, until they were eventually automated in 1926. Yet some officers still remained on the ground in case people did not pay any attention to the lights. The tower remained until c.1936, when it was removed to allow for excavations for the new S-Bahn line (on 26 September 1997, a replica of the tower was erected, just for show, close to its original location by Siemens, to celebrate the company's 150th anniversary. The replica was moved again on 29 September 2000, to the place where it stands today).

 

The traffic problems that had blighted Potsdamer Platz for decades continued to be a big headache, despite the new lights, and these led to a strong desire to solve them once and for all. By now Berlin was a major centre of innovation in many different fields including architecture. In addition, the city’s colossal pace of change (compared by some to that of Chicago[4]), had caused its chief planner, Martin Wagner (1885–1957), to foresee the entire centre being made over totally as often as every 25 years.[4] These factors combined to produce some far more radical and futuristic plans for Potsdamer Platz in the late 1920s and early 1930s, especially around 1928-9, when the creative fervour was at its peak. On the cards was an almost total redevelopment of the area. One design submitted by Wagner himself comprised an array of gleaming new buildings arranged around a vast multi-level system of fly-overs and underpasses, with a huge glass-roofed circular car-park in the middle. Unfortunately the worldwide Great Depression of the time, triggered by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, meant that most of the plans remained on the drawing board. However, in Germany this depression was virtually a continuation of an economic morass that had blighted the country since the end of World War I, partly the result of the war reparations the country had been made to pay, and this morass had brought about the closure and demolition of the Grand Hotel Belle Vue, on the corner of Bellevuestraße and Königgrätzer Straße, thus enabling one revolutionary new building to struggle through to reality despite considerable financial odds.

 

Columbushaus was the result of a plan by the French retail company Les Galeries Lafayette, whose flagship store was the legendary Galeries Lafayette in Paris, to open a counterpart in Berlin, on the Grand Hotel Belle Vue's former site, but financial worries made them pull out. Undaunted, the architect, Erich Mendelsohn (1887–1953), erected vast advertising boards around the perimeter of the site, and the revenue generated by these enabled him to proceed with the development anyway. Columbushaus was a ten-storey ultra-modern office building, years ahead of its time, containing Germany's first artificial ventilation system, and whose elegance and clean lines won it much praise. However, despite a Woolworths store on its ground floor, a major travel company housed on the floor above, and a restaurant offering fine views over the city from the top floor, the economic situation of the time meant that it would not be followed by more buildings in that vein: no further redevelopment in the immediate vicinity of Potsdamer Platz occurred prior to World War II, and so Columbushaus would always seem out of place in that location. Nevertheless, its exact position showed that the platz was starting to be opened out: the former hotel had mostly stood on a large flagged area laid out in front of it, indicating that the new building curved away from the existing street line; this would have enabled future street widening to take place.

 

HITLER AND GERMANIA PLANS

Columbushaus was completed and opened in January 1933, the same month that the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) came to power. Hitler had big plans for Berlin, to transform it into the Welthauptstadt (World Capital) Germania, to be realised by his architect friend Albert Speer (1905–81). Under these plans the immediate vicinity of Potsdamer Platz would have got off fairly lightly, although the Potsdamer Bahnhof (and the Anhalter Bahnhof a short distance away) would have lost their function. The new North-South Axis, the linchpin of the scheme, would have severed their approach tracks, leaving both termini stranded on the wrong side of it. All trains arriving in Berlin would have run into either of two vast new stations located on the Ringbahn to the north and south of the centre respectively, to be known as Nordbahnhof (North Station) and Südbahnhof (South Station), located at Wedding and Südkreuz. In Speer's plan the former Anhalter Bahnhof was earmarked to become a public swimming pool; the intended fate of the Potsdamer Bahnhof has not been documented.

 

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WIKIPEDIA

Replaced my old 100-400 Olympus with the mk ii

Railway Gazette reported on the 16th December 2016 that the leaders of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority had givene the go-ahead for a £460m project to replace the Merseyrail suburban electric multiple-unit fleet. This includes the selection of Stadler to supply a fleet of 52 trainsets for entry into service from the end of 2020. Contracts are expected to be signed in early 2017.

‘This is a once in a generation opportunity for custom-built trains that will be safer and carry more people more quickly’, said Chair of the combined authority and Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson. ‘Unusually, these trains will be owned by us locally, meaning we can make sure the trains are exactly what passengers want and that they are ready for our future plans.’

The project is being financed from a reserve fund which had been established for the purpose, as well as loans which the combined authority is to secure from sources including the European Investment Bank. Transport authority Merseytravel will own the trains and lease them to the operating concessionaire, which will be paid a lower operating fee to account for the expected increase in revenue and lower running costs.

The fleet renewal programme also includes power supply, track, and station upgrades and refurbishment of the Kirkdale and Birkenhead North depots. The reduced journey times and better reliability means the decision has been made to order 52 EMUs to replace the current fleet of 59 trains.

The first EMU is scheduled to be delivered in summer 2019 for several months of testing ahead of the delivery of series-built trains by the end of 2020. A new timetable will be introduced in 2021 once the existing Class 507 and 508 units dating from the 1970s have been withdrawn; the new trains’ better acceleration and braking is expected to enable Hunt’s Cross – Southport journey times to be reduced by 9 min.

The 65 m long four-car EMUs will have the same number of seats as the existing three-car sets, but will be 4 m longer with wide through gangways to provide an increase in standing space. This will increase total capacity per EMU from 303 to 486 passengers.

There will be a mix of airline and facing seats, with more space for bicycles, pushchairs and persons with reduced mobility. The train body will be designed specifically for the Merseyrail network, with lower floors and a sliding step to provide near-level access.

There will be a passenger intercom and CCTV linked to the driver and control room. The doors will be illuminated red, amber and green inside and out to show when they are opening or closing and when it is safe to board and alight.

At 99 tonnes, the EMUs will be lighter than the current 105 tonne trains, and energy consumption is expected to be 20% lower, including regenerative braking; options for energy storage are to be studied.

The 750 V DC third-rail EMUs will be capable of conversion to dual-voltage operation for use on 25 kV 50 Hz lines with a view to serving Skelmersdale, Warrington and Wrexham in the longer term.

The trains will be equipped for driver controlled operation, which the combined authority said was ‘put forward by all bidders’ as way to meet the requirements of a report into a fatal incident in 2011. The driver will be responsible for opening and closing the doors and for train dispatch, eliminating the need for guards. Roving customer service roles will be created, with staff available to assist passengers ‘at key locations and times’. There will be fewer customer service roles than guards positions, and while the combined authority envisages there will be natural wastage over the next four years, it has endorsed proposal to guarantee continued employment for all guards currently permanently employed.

‘In an ideal world we’d like to have a second member of staff on every train to ensure the highest level of customer service, but there aren’t the resources to do that’, said Councillor Liam Robinson, Chair of the Merseytravel Committee. ‘Some guards will have the opportunity to be employed in a new on-board customer service role and others will be able to take advantage of other redeployment opportunities, all on the same terms and conditions as now.’

 

The contract came in slightly over budget (£460m vs target of £400m)

52 units, slightly over the tender requirement of 50 but a reduction from current fleet of 59 (increased reliability and faster journey speeds anticipated to compensate)

65m versus tender specification of 60m to allow doubling up, though that wasn't expected to be normal operating practise just for event strengthening (3m longer than current 62m fleet) and they have significantly higher capacity (60%) from being a wide aisle articulated design.

No mention of earlier proposed fleet extension options, the tender called for 60 options on top of original 50

99 tonnes, 6 tonnes lighter than existing trains and 20% more energy efficient.

DOO but with driver aides such as radar to detect obstructions and people standing too close.

The single doors in the end cars appear to be to allow them to work in multiples without having to extend the platforms. By having a single door in the middle of the car the front and or back could potentially overhang the platform ends to provide a capacity uplift without the additional infrastructure costs.

 

Images- Merseytravel/Stadler.

 

Perspective AC electric freight locomotive 2ЭС11 was developed by the Ural Locomotives (Sinara Transport Machines). In contrast to previous modern models of the Malachite family (8800 kW AC electric 2ЭС7 and DC electric 2ЭС10) it slightly less powered (8000 kW) but has electrical equipment including power inverters on IGBTs and asynchronous traction motors all made in Russia that replaced ceased components produced by Siemens.

  

SONY DSC

Beamish Museum is the first regional open-air museum, in England, located at Beamish, near the town of Stanley, in County Durham, England. Beamish pioneered the concept of a living museum. By displaying duplicates or replaceable items, it was also an early example of the now commonplace practice of museums allowing visitors to touch objects.

 

The museum's guiding principle is to preserve an example of everyday life in urban and rural North East England at the climax of industrialisation in the early 20th century. Much of the restoration and interpretation is specific to the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, together with portions of countryside under the influence of Industrial Revolution from 1825. On its 350 acres (140 ha) estate it uses a mixture of translocated, original and replica buildings, a large collection of artefacts, working vehicles and equipment, as well as livestock and costumed interpreters.

 

The museum has received a number of awards since it opened to visitors in 1972 and has influenced other living museums.[citation needed] It is an educational resource, and also helps to preserve some traditional and rare north-country livestock breeds.

 

In 1958, days after starting as director of the Bowes Museum, inspired by Scandinavian folk museums, and realising the North East's traditional industries and communities were disappearing, Frank Atkinson presented a report to Durham County Council urging that a collection of items of everyday history on a large scale should begin as soon as possible, so that eventually an open air museum could be established. As well as objects, Atkinson was also aiming to preserve the region's customs and dialect. He stated the new museum should "attempt to make the history of the region live" and illustrate the way of life of ordinary people. He hoped the museum would be run by, be about and exist for the local populace, desiring them to see the museum as theirs, featuring items collected from them.

 

Fearing it was now almost too late, Atkinson adopted a policy of "unselective collecting" — "you offer it to us and we will collect it." Donations ranged in size from small items to locomotives and shops, and Atkinson initially took advantage of a surplus of space available in the 19th-century French chateau-style building housing the Bowes Museum to store items donated for the open air museum. With this space soon filled, a former British Army tank depot at Brancepeth was taken over, although in just a short time its entire complement of 22 huts and hangars had been filled, too.

 

In 1966, a working party was established to set up a museum "for the purpose of studying, collecting, preserving and exhibiting buildings, machinery, objects and information illustrating the development of industry and the way of life of the north of England", and it selected Beamish Hall, having been vacated by the National Coal Board, as a suitable location.

 

In August 1970, with Atkinson appointed as its first full-time director together with three staff members, the museum was first established by moving some of the collections into the hall. In 1971, an introductory exhibition, "Museum in the Making" opened at the hall.

 

The museum was opened to visitors on its current site for the first time in 1972, with the first translocated buildings (the railway station and colliery winding engine) being erected the following year. The first trams began operating on a short demonstration line in 1973. The Town station was formally opened in 1976, the same year the reconstruction of the colliery winding engine house was completed, and the miners' cottages were relocated. Opening of the drift mine as an exhibit followed in 1979.

 

In 1975 the museum was visited by the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and by Anne, Princess Royal, in 2002. In 2006, as the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, The Duke of Kent visited, to open the town masonic lodge.

 

With the Co-op having opened in 1984, the town area was officially opened in 1985. The pub had opened in the same year, with Ravensworth Terrace having been reconstructed from 1980 to 1985. The newspaper branch office had also been built in the mid-1980s. Elsewhere, the farm on the west side of the site (which became Home Farm) opened in 1983. The present arrangement of visitors entering from the south was introduced in 1986.

 

At the beginning of the 1990s, further developments in the Pit Village were opened, the chapel in 1990, and the board school in 1992. The whole tram circle was in operation by 1993. Further additions to the Town came in 1994 with the opening of the sweet shop and motor garage,Beamish Museum 2014 followed by the bank in 1999. The first Georgian component of the museum arrived when Pockerley Old Hall opened in 1995, followed by the Pockerley Waggonway in 2001.

 

In the early 2000s two large modern buildings were added, to augment the museum's operations and storage capacity - the Regional Resource Centre on the west side opened in 2001, followed by the Regional Museums Store next to the railway station in 2002. Due to its proximity, the latter has been cosmetically presented as Beamish Waggon and Iron Works. Additions to display areas came in the form of the Masonic lodge (2006) and the Lamp Cabin in the Colliery (2009). In 2010, the entrance building and tea rooms were refurbished.

 

Into the 2010s, further buildings were added - the fish and chip shop (opened 2011) band hall (opened 2013) and pit pony stables (built 2013/14) in the Pit Village, plus a bakery (opened 2013) and chemist and photographers (opened 2016) being added to the town. St Helen's Church, in the Georgian landscape, opened in November 2015.

Undergoing repair (HT capacitor replacement)

 

The bias electrolytics have already been replaced on the rectifier board. The removed units checked out fine on my capacitor tester.

 

The root cause of my problem (low and ripply HT) was that one of the two main HT smoothing capacitors had completely failed open circuit. My capacitor tester didn't even register there was a capacitor present when I tested the faulty component!

 

All of the other high voltage capacitors actually checked out OK, though they all tended to be somewhat high in value, which is often regarded as a sign that they are on their way out.

 

The main replacement HT capacitors are of the newer "snap-in" design which required some work to fabricate mounting points for the existing wiring to connect to. This was achieved using stout tinned copper wire, and appears so far to have been a success.

Replacing an earlier scanned print with a better version 18-Nov-18.

 

Taken through glass from the old Emirates offices in the Control Tower Block Extension.

 

This aircraft was delivered to CSA Czechoslovak Airlines as OK-OBL in Nov-84. It was leased to Air Moravia in Dec-91 and returned to CSA in Jun-92 (presumably why it has no titles in my photo). The aircraft operated CSA's last IL-62 flight in Oct-94 and was stored at Prague. It was sold to Bemoair in Apr-96 and sold to Egretta in May-97. The aircraft was leased to Air Cess (based at Sharjah, UAE) in May-98. It was sold to Yana Air as XU-229 (Cambodia) in Jan-99 and operated out of Ras Al Khaimah, UAE with additional Sin-Sad titles. It was stored at Ras Al Khaimah in mid 2001 and broken up there in Oct-06.

The Palace of Versailles is a former royal residence commissioned by King Louis XIV located in Versailles, about 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris, France.

 

The palace is owned by the French Republic and since 1995 has been managed, under the direction of the French Ministry of Culture, by the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. About 15,000,000 people visit the palace, park, or gardens of Versailles every year, making it one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world.

 

Louis XIII built a simple hunting lodge on the site of the Palace of Versailles in 1623. With his death came Louis XIV who expanded the château into the beginnings of a palace that went through several changes and phases from 1661 to 1715. It was a favorite residence for both kings, and in 1682, Louis XIV moved the seat of his court and government to Versailles, making the palace the de facto capital of France. This state of affairs was continued by Kings Louis XV and Louis XVI, who primarily made interior alterations to the palace, but in 1789 the royal family and capital of France returned to Paris. For the rest of the French Revolution, the Palace of Versailles was largely abandoned and emptied of its contents, and the population of the surrounding city plummeted.

 

Napoleon, following his coronation as Emperor, used Versailles as a summer residence from 1810 to 1814, but did not restore it. Following the Bourbon Restoration, when the king was returned to the throne, he resided in Paris and it was not until the 1830s that meaningful repairs were made to the palace. A museum of French history was installed within it, replacing the apartments of the southern wing.

 

The palace and park were designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979 for its importance as the center of power, art, and science in France during the 17th and 18th centuries. The French Ministry of Culture has placed the palace, its gardens, and some of its subsidiary structures on its list of culturally significant monuments.

 

History

Main article: History of the Palace of Versailles

An engraving of Louis XIII's château as it appeared in 1652

Versailles around 1652, engraving by Jacques Gomboust [fr]

In 1623, Louis XIII, King of France, built a hunting lodge on a hill in a favorite hunting ground, 19 kilometers (12 mi) west of Paris and 16 kilometers (10 mi) from his primary residence, the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye The site, near a village named Versailles, was a wooded wetland that Louis XIII's court scorned as being generally unworthy of a king; one of his courtiers, François de Bassompierre, wrote that the lodge "would not inspire vanity in even the simplest gentleman". From 1631 to 1634, architect Philibert Le Roy replaced the lodge with a château for Louis XIII, who forbade his queen, Anne of Austria, from staying there overnight, even when an outbreak of smallpox at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1641 forced Louis XIII to relocate to Versailles with his three-year-old heir, the future Louis XIV.

 

When Louis XIII died in 1643, Anne became Louis XIV's regent, and Louis XIII's château was abandoned for the next decade. She moved the court back to Paris, where Anne and her chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, continued Louis XIII's unpopular monetary practices. This led to the Fronde, a series of revolts against royal authority from 1648 to 1653 that masked a struggle between Mazarin and the princes of the blood, Louis XIV's extended family, for influence over him. In the aftermath of the Fronde, Louis XIV became determined to rule alone. Following Mazarin's death in 1661, Louis XIV reformed his government to exclude his mother and the princes of the blood, moved the court back to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and ordered the expansion of his father's château at Versailles into a palace.

 

Louis XIV had hunted at Versailles in the 1650s, but did not take any special interest in Versailles until 1661. On 17 August 1661, Louis XIV was a guest at a sumptuous festival hosted by Nicolas Fouquet, the Superintendent of Finances, at his palatial residence, the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. Louis XIV was impressed by the château and its gardens, which were the work of Louis Le Vau, the court architect since 1654, André Le Nôtre, the royal gardener since 1657, and Charles Le Brun, a painter in royal service since 1647. Vaux-le-Vicomte's scale and opulence inspired Louis XIV's aesthetic sense, but also led him to imprison Fouquet that September, as he had also built an island fortress and a private army. Louis XIV was also inspired by Vaux-le-Vicomte, and he recruited its authors for his own projects. Louis XIV replaced Fouquet with Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a protégé of Mazarin and enemy of Fouquet, and charged him with managing the corps of artisans in royal employment. Colbert acted as the intermediary between them and Louis XIV, who personally directed and inspected the planning and construction of Versailles.

 

Construction

Work at Versailles was at first concentrated on gardens, and through the 1660s, Le Vau only added two detached service wings and a forecourt to the château. But in 1668–69, as a response to the growth of the gardens, and victory over Spain in the War of Devolution, Louis XIV decided to turn Versailles into a full-scale royal residence. He vacillated between replacing or incorporating his father's château, but settled on the latter by the end of the decade, and from 1668 to 1671, Louis XIII's château was encased on three sides in a feature dubbed the enveloppe. This gave the château a new, Italianate façade overlooking the gardens, but preserved the courtyard façade, resulting in a mix of styles and materials that dismayed Louis XIV and that Colbert described as a "patchwork". Attempts to homogenize the two façades failed, and in 1670 Le Vau died, leaving the post of First Architect to the King vacant for the next seven years.

 

Le Vau was succeeded at Versailles by his assistant, architect François d'Orbay. Work at the palace during the 1670s focused on its interiors, as the palace was then nearing completion, though d'Orbay expanded Le Vau's service wings and connected them to the château, and built a pair of pavilions for government employees in the forecourt. In 1670, d'Orbay was tasked by Louis XIV with designing a city, also called Versailles, to house and service Louis XIV's growing government and court. The granting of land to courtiers for the construction of townhouses that resembled the palace began in 1671. The next year, the Franco-Dutch War began and funding for Versailles was cut until 1674, when Louis XIV had work begun on the Ambassadors' Staircase , a grand staircase for the reception of guests, and demolished the last of the village of Versailles.

 

Following the end of the Franco-Dutch War with French victory in 1678, Louis XIV appointed as First Architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, an experienced architect in Louis XIV's confidence, who would benefit from a restored budget and large workforce of former soldiers. Mansart began his tenure with the addition from 1678 to 1681 of the Hall of Mirrors, a renovation of the courtyard façade of Louis XIII's château, and the expansion of d'Orbay's pavilions to create the Ministers' Wings in 1678–79. Adjacent to the palace, Mansart built a pair of stables called the Grande and Petite Écuries from 1679 to 1682 and the Grand Commun, which housed the palace's servants and general kitchens, from 1682 to 1684. Mansart also added two entirely new wings in Le Vau's Italianate style to house the court, first at the south end of the palace from 1679 to 1681 and then at its north end from 1685 to 1689.

 

War and the resulting diminished funding slowed construction at Versailles for the rest of the 17th century. The Nine Years' War, which began in 1688, stopped work altogether until 1698. Three years later, however, the even more expensive War of the Spanish Succession began and, combined with poor harvests in 1693–94 and 1709–10, plunged France into crisis. Louis XIV thus slashed funding and canceled some of the work Mansart had planned in the 1680s, such as the remodeling of the courtyard façade in the Italianate style. Louis XIV and Mansart focused on a permanent palace chapel, the construction of which lasted from 1699 to 1710.

 

Louis XIV's successors, Louis XV and Louis XVI, largely left Versailles as they inherited it and focused on the palace's interiors. Louis XV's modifications began in the 1730s, with the completion of the Salon d'Hercule, a ballroom in the north wing, and the expansion of the king's private apartment, which required the demolition of the Ambassadors' Staircase In 1748, Louis XV began construction of a palace theater, the Royal Opera of Versailles at the northernmost end of the palace, but completion was delayed until 1770; construction was interrupted in the 1740s by the War of the Austrian Succession and then again in 1756 with the start of the Seven Years' War. These wars emptied the royal treasury and thereafter construction was mostly funded by Madame du Barry, Louis XV's favorite mistress. In 1771, Louis XV had the northern Ministers' Wing rebuilt in Neoclassical style by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, his court architect, as it was in the process of falling down. That work was also stopped by financial constraints, and it remained incomplete when Louis XV died in 1774. In 1784, Louis XVI briefly moved the royal family to the Château de Saint-Cloud ahead of more renovations to the Palace of Versailles, but construction could not begin because of financial difficulty and political crisis. In 1789, the French Revolution swept the royal family and government out of Versailles forever.

 

Role in politics and culture

The Palace of Versailles was key to Louis XIV's politics, as an expression and concentration of French art and culture, and for the centralization of royal power. Louis XIV first used Versailles to promote himself with a series of nighttime festivals in its gardens in 1664, 1668, and 1674, the events of which were disseminated throughout Europe by print and engravings. As early as 1669, but especially from 1678, Louis XIV sought to make Versailles his seat of government, and he expanded the palace so as to fit the court within it. The moving of the court to Versailles did not come until 1682, however, and not officially, as opinion on Versailles was mixed among the nobility of France.

 

By 1687, however, it was evident to all that Versailles was the de facto capital of France, and Louis XIV succeeded in attracting the nobility to Versailles to pursue prestige and royal patronage within a strict court etiquette, thus eroding their traditional provincial power bases. It was at the Palace of Versailles that Louis XIV received the Doge of Genoa, Francesco Maria Imperiale Lercari in 1685, an embassy from the Ayutthaya Kingdom in 1686, and an embassy from Safavid Iran in 1715.[

 

Louis XIV died at Versailles on 1 September 1715 and was succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV, then the duke of Anjou, who was moved to Vincennes and then to Paris by Louis XV's regent, Philippe II, Duke of Orléans. Versailles was neglected until 1722, when Philippe II removed the court to Versailles to escape the unpopularity of his regency, and when Louis XV began his majority. The 1722 move, however, broke the cultural power of Versailles, and during the reign of Louis XVI, courtiers spent their leisure in Paris, not Versailles.

 

During Christmas 1763, Mozart and his family visited Versailles and dined with the kings. The 7-year-old Mozart played several works during his stay and later dedicated his first two harpsichord sonatas, published in 1764 in Paris, to Madame Victoria, daughter of Louis XV.

 

In 1783, the palace was the site of the signing of the last two of the three treaties of the Peace of Paris (1783), which ended the American Revolutionary War. On September 3, British and American delegates, led by Benjamin Franklin, signed the Treaty of Paris at the Hôtel d'York (now 56 Rue Jacob) in Paris, granting the United States independence. On September 4, Spain and France signed separate treaties with England at the Palace of Versailles, formally ending the war.

 

The King and Queen learned of the Storming of the Bastille in Paris on 14 July 1789, while they were at the palace, and remained isolated there as the Revolution in Paris spread. The growing anger in Paris led to the Women's March on Versailles on 5 October 1789. A crowd of several thousand men and women, protesting the high price and scarcity of bread, marched from the markets of Paris to Versailles. They took weapons from the city armory, besieged the palace, and compelled the King and royal family and the members of the National Assembly to return with them to Paris the following day.

 

As soon as the royal family departed, the palace was closed. In 1792, the National Convention, the new revolutionary government, ordered the transfer of all the paintings and sculptures from the palace to the Louvre. In 1793, the Convention declared the abolition of the monarchy and ordered all of the royal property in the palace to be sold at auction. The auction took place between 25 August 1793 and 11 August 1794. The furnishings and art of the palace, including the furniture, mirrors, baths, and kitchen equipment, were sold in seventeen thousand lots. All fleurs-de-lys and royal emblems on the buildings were chambered or chiseled off. The empty buildings were turned into a storehouse for furnishings, art and libraries confiscated from the nobility. The empty grand apartments were opened for tours beginning in 1793, and a small museum of French paintings and art school was opened in some of the empty rooms.

 

By virtue of an order issued by the Versailles district directorate in August 1794, the Royal Gate was destroyed, the Cour Royale was cleared and the Cour de Marbre lost its precious floor.

 

19th century – history museum and government venue

When Napoleon became Emperor of the French in 1804, he considered making Versailles his residence but abandoned the idea because of the cost of the renovation. Prior to his marriage with Marie-Louise in 1810, he had the Grand Trianon restored and refurnished as a springtime residence for himself and his family, in the style of furnishing that it is seen today.

 

In 1815, with the final downfall of Napoleon, Louis XVIII, the younger brother of Louis XVI, became King, and considered returning the royal residence to Versailles, where he had been born. He ordered the restoration of the royal apartments, but the task and cost was too great. Louis XVIII had the far end of the south wing of the Cour Royale demolished and rebuilt (1814–1824) to match the Gabriel wing of 1780 opposite, which gave greater uniformity of appearance to the front entrance. Neither he nor his successor Charles X lived at Versailles.

 

The French Revolution of 1830 brought a new monarch, Louis-Philippe to power, and a new ambition for Versailles. He did not reside at Versailles but began the creation of the Museum of the History of France, dedicated to "all the glories of France", which had been used to house some members of the royal family. The museum was begun in 1833 and inaugurated on 30 June 1837. Its most famous room is the Galerie des Batailles (Hall of Battles), which lies on most of the length of the second floor of the south wing. The museum project largely came to a halt when Louis Philippe was overthrown in 1848, though the paintings of French heroes and great battles still remain in the south wing.

 

Emperor Napoleon III used the palace on occasion as a stage for grand ceremonies. One of the most lavish was the banquet that he hosted for Queen Victoria in the Royal Opera of Versailles on 25 August 1855.

 

During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the palace was occupied by the general staff of the victorious German Army. Parts of the château, including the Gallery of Mirrors, were turned into a military hospital. The creation of the German Empire, combining Prussia and the surrounding German states under William I, was formally proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors on 18 January 1871. The Germans remained in the palace until the signing of the armistice in March 1871. In that month, the government of the new Third French Republic, which had departed Paris during the War for Tours and then Bordeaux, moved into the palace. The National Assembly held its meetings in the Opera House.

 

The uprising of the Paris Commune in March 1871, prevented the French government, under Adolphe Thiers, from returning immediately to Paris. The military operation which suppressed the Commune at the end of May was directed from Versailles, and the prisoners of the Commune were marched there and put on trial in military courts. In 1875 a second parliamentary body, the French Senate, was created and held its meetings for the election of a President of the Republic in a new hall created in 1876 in the south wing of the palace. The French Senate continues to meet in the palace on special occasions, such as the amendment of the French Constitution.

 

20th century

The end of the 19th and the early 20th century saw the beginning of restoration efforts at the palace, first led by Pierre de Nolhac, poet and scholar and the first conservator, who began his work in 1892. The conservation and restoration were interrupted by two world wars but have continued until the present day.

 

The palace returned to the world stage in June 1919, when, after six months of negotiations, the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending the First World War, was signed in the Hall of Mirrors. Between 1925 and 1928, the American philanthropist and multi-millionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr. gave $2,166,000, the equivalent of about thirty million dollars today, to restore and refurbish the palace.

 

More work took place after World War II, with the restoration of the Royal Opera of Versailles. The theater was reopened in 1957, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

 

In 1978, parts of the palace were heavily damaged in a bombing committed by Breton terrorists.

 

Starting in the 1950s, when the museum of Versailles was under the directorship of Gérald van der Kemp, the objective was to restore the palace to its state – or as close to it as possible – in 1789 when the royal family left the palace. Among the early projects was the repair of the roof over the Hall of Mirrors; the publicity campaign brought international attention to the plight of post-war Versailles and garnered much foreign money including a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

 

One of the more costly endeavors for the museum and France's Fifth Republic has been to repurchase as much of the original furnishings as possible. Consequently, because furniture with a royal provenance – and especially furniture that was made for Versailles – is a highly sought-after commodity on the international market, the museum has spent considerable funds on retrieving much of the palace's original furnishings.

 

21st century

In 2003, a new restoration initiative – the "Grand Versailles" project – was started, which began with the replanting of the gardens, which had lost over 10,000 trees during Cyclone Lothar on 26 December 1999. One part of the initiative, the restoration of the Hall of Mirrors, was completed in 2006. Another major project was the further restoration of the backstage areas of the Royal Opera of Versailles in 2007 to 2009.

 

The Palace of Versailles is currently owned by the French state. Its formal title is the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles. Since 1995, it has been run as a Public Establishment, with an independent administration and management supervised by the French Ministry of Culture.

 

The grounds of the palace will host the equestrian competition during the 2024 Summer Olympics.

 

Architecture and plan

The Palace of Versailles is a visual history of French architecture from the 1630s to the 1780s. Its earliest portion, the corps de logis, was built for Louis XIII in the style of his reign with brick, marble, and slate, which Le Vau surrounded in the 1660s with Enveloppe, an edifice that was inspired by Renaissance-era Italian villas. When Mansart made further expansions to the palace in the 1680s, he used the Enveloppe as the model for his work. Neoclassical additions were made to the palace with the remodeling of the Ministers' Wings in the 1770s, by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, and after the Bourbon Restoration.

 

The palace was largely completed by the death of Louis XIV in 1715. The eastern facing palace has a U-shaped layout, with the corps de logis and symmetrical advancing secondary wings terminating with the Dufour Pavilion on the south and the Gabriel Pavilion to the north, creating an expansive cour d'honneur known as the Royal Court (Cour Royale). Flanking the Royal Court are two enormous asymmetrical wings that result in a façade of 402 metres (1,319 ft) in length. Covered by around a million square feet (10 hectares) of roof, the palace has 2,143 windows, 1,252 chimneys, and 67 staircases.[

 

The palace and its grounds have had a great influence on architecture and horticulture from the mid-17th century to the end of the 18th century. Examples of works influenced by Versailles include Christopher Wren's work at Hampton Court Palace, Berlin Palace, the Palace of La Granja, Stockholm Palace, Ludwigsburg Palace, Karlsruhe Palace, Rastatt Palace, Nymphenburg Palace, Schleissheim Palace, and Esterházy Palace.

 

Royal Apartments

The construction in 1668–1671 of Le Vau's enveloppe around the outside of Louis XIII's red brick and white stone château added state apartments for the king and the queen. The addition was known at the time as the château neuf (new château). The grands appartements (Grand Apartments, also referred to as the State Apartments[141][142]) include the grand appartement du roi and the grand appartement de la reine. They occupied the main or principal floor of the château neuf, with three rooms in each apartment facing the garden to the west and four facing the garden parterres to the north and south, respectively. The private apartments of the king (the appartement du roi and the petit appartement du roi) and those of the queen (the petit appartement de la reine) remained in the château vieux (old château). Le Vau's design for the state apartments closely followed Italian models of the day, including the placement of the apartments on the main floor (the piano nobile, the next floor up from the ground level), a convention the architect borrowed from Italian palace design.

 

The king's State Apartment consisted of an enfilade of seven rooms, each dedicated to one of the known planets and their associated titular Roman deity. The queen's apartment formed a parallel enfilade with that of the grand appartement du roi. After the addition of the Hall of Mirrors (1678–1684) the king's apartment was reduced to five rooms (until the reign of Louis XV, when two more rooms were added) and the queen's to four.

 

The queen's apartments served as the residence of three queens of France – Marie-Thérèse d'Autriche, wife of Louis XIV, Marie Leczinska, wife of Louis XV, and Marie-Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI. Additionally, Louis XIV's granddaughter-in-law, Princess Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy, duchesse de Bourgogne, wife of the Petit Dauphin, occupied these rooms from 1697 (the year of her marriage) to her death in 1712.

 

Ambassador's Staircase

The Ambassadors' Staircase (Escalier des Ambassadeurs) was an imperial staircase built from 1674 to 1680 by d'Orbay. Until Louis XV had it demolished in 1752 to create a courtyard for his private apartments, the staircase was the primary entrance into the Palace of Versailles and the royal apartments especially. It was entered from the courtyard via a vestibule that, cramped and dark, contrasted greatly with the tall, open space of the staircase – famously lit naturally with a skylight – so as to overawe visitors.

 

The staircase and walls of the room that contained it were clad in polychrome marble and gilded bronze, with decor in the Ionic order. Le Brun and painted the walls and ceiling of the room according to a festive theme to celebrate Louis XIV's victory in the Franco-Dutch War. On the wall immediately above the staircase were trompe-l'œil paintings of people from the Four Parts of the World looking into the staircase over a balustrade, a motif repeated on the ceiling fresco. There they were joined by allegorical figures for the twelve months of the year and various Classical Greek figures such as the Muses. A marble bust of Louis XIV, sculpted by Jean Warin in 1665–66, was placed in a niche above the first landing of the staircase.

 

The State Apartments of the King

The construction of the Hall of Mirrors between 1678 and 1686 coincided with a major alteration to the State Apartments. They were originally intended as his residence, but the King transformed them into galleries for his finest paintings, and venues for his many receptions for courtiers. During the season from All-Saints Day in November until Easter, these were usually held three times a week, from six to ten in the evening, with various entertainments.

 

The Salon of Hercules

This was originally a chapel. It was rebuilt beginning in 1712 under the supervision of the First Architect of the King, Robert de Cotte, to showcase two paintings by Paolo Veronese, Eleazar and Rebecca and Meal at the House of Simon the Pharisee, which was a gift to Louis XIV from the Republic of Venice in 1664. The painting on the ceiling, The Apotheosis of Hercules, by François Lemoyne, was completed in 1736, and gave the room its name.

 

The Salon of Abundance

The Salon of Abundance was the antechamber to the Cabinet of Curios (now the Games Room), which displayed Louis XIV's collection of precious jewels and rare objects. Some of the objects in the collection are depicted in René-Antoine Houasse's painting Abundance and Liberality (1683), located on the ceiling over the door opposite the windows.

 

The Salon of Venus

This salon was used for serving light meals during evening receptions. The principal feature in this room is Jean Warin's life-size statue of Louis XIV in the costume of a Roman emperor. On the ceiling in a gilded oval frame is another painting by Houasse, Venus subjugating the Gods and Powers (1672–1681). Trompe-l'œil paintings and sculpture around the ceiling illustrate mythological themes.

 

The Salon of Mercury

The Salon of Mercury was the original State Bedchamber when Louis XIV officially moved the court and government to the palace in 1682. The bed is a replica of the original commissioned by King Louis-Philippe in the 19th century when he turned the palace into a museum. The ceiling paintings by the Flemish artist Jean Baptiste de Champaigne depict the god Mercury in his chariot, drawn by a rooster, and Alexander the Great and Ptolemy surrounded by scholars and philosophers. The Automaton Clock was made for the King by the royal clockmaker Antoine Morand in 1706. When it chimes the hour, figures of Louis XIV and Fame descend from a cloud.

 

The Salon of Mars

The Salon of Mars was used by the royal guards until 1782, and was decorated on a military theme with helmets and trophies. It was turned into a concert room between 1684 and 1750, with galleries for musicians on either side. Portraits of Louis XV and his Queen, Marie Leszczinska, by the Flemish artist Carle Van Loo decorate the room today.

 

The Salon of Apollo

The Salon of Apollo was the royal throne room under Louis XIV, and was the setting for formal audiences. The eight-foot-high silver throne was melted down in 1689 to help pay the costs of an expensive war, and was replaced by a more modest throne of gilded wood. The central painting on the ceiling, by Charles de la Fosse, depicts the Sun Chariot of Apollo, the King's favorite emblem, pulled by four horses and surrounded by the four seasons.

 

The Salon of Diana

The Salon of Diana was used by Louis XIV as a billiards room, and had galleries from which courtiers could watch him play. The decoration of the walls and ceiling depicts scenes from the life of the goddess Diana. The celebrated bust of Louis XIV by Bernini made during the famous sculptor's visit to France in 1665 is on display here.

 

Private apartments of the King and Queen

The apartments of the King were the heart of the château; they were in the same location as the rooms of Louis XIII, the creator of the château, on the first floor (second floor US style). They were set aside for the personal use of Louis XIV in 1683. He and his successors Louis XV and Louis XVI used these rooms for official functions, such as the ceremonial lever ("waking up") and the coucher ("going to bed") of the monarch, which was attended by a crowd of courtiers.

 

The King's apartment was accessed from the Hall of Mirrors from the Oeil de Boeuf antechamber or from the Guardroom and the Grand Couvert, the ceremonial room where Louis XIV often took his evening meals, seated alone at a table in front of the fireplace. His spoon, fork, and knife were brought to him in a golden box. The courtiers could watch as he dined.

 

The King's bedchamber had originally been a Drawing Room before Louis XIV transformed it into his own bedroom in 1701. He died there on 1 September 1715. Both Louis XV and Louis XVI continued to use the bedroom for their official awakening and going to bed. On 6 October 1789, from the balcony of this room Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, joined by the Marquis de Lafayette, looked down on the hostile crowd in the courtyard, shortly before the King was forced to return to Paris.

 

The bed of the King is placed beneath a carved relief by Nicolas Coustou entitled France watching over the sleeping King. The decoration includes several paintings set into the paneling, including a self-portrait of Antony van Dyck.

 

Private apartments of The Queen

The petit appartement de la reine is a suite of rooms that were reserved for the personal use of the queen. Originally arranged for the use of the Marie-Thérèse, consort of Louis XIV, the rooms were later modified for use by Marie Leszczyńska and finally for Marie-Antoinette. The Queen's apartments and the King's Apartments were laid out on the same design, each suite having seven rooms. Both suites had ceilings painted with scenes from mythology; the King's ceilings featured male figures, the Queen's featured females.

 

Hall of Mirrors

The Hall of Mirrors is a long gallery at the westernmost part of the palace that looks out onto the gardens. The hall was built from 1678 to 1681 on the site of a terrace Le Vau built between the king and queen's suites. The hall is clad in marble and decorated in a modified version of the Corinthian order, with 578 mirrors facing 17 windows and reflecting the light provided by them. The ceiling fresco, painted by Le Brun over the next four years, embellishes the first 18 years of Louis XIV's reign in 30 scenes, 17 of which are military victories over the Dutch. The fresco depicts Louis XIV himself alongside Classical figures in the scenes celebrating moments in his reign such as the beginning of personal rule in 1661, breaking from earlier frescoes at Versailles that used allegories derived from Classical and mythological scenes.

 

The Salon of War and the Salon of Peace bookend the Hall of Mirrors on its northern and southern ends respectively. The Salon of War, constructed and decorated from 1678 to 1686, celebrates French victories in the Franco-Dutch War with marble panels, gilded bronze trophies of arms, and a stucco bas-relief of Louis XIV on horsebask riding over his enemies. The Salon of Peace is decorated in the same fashion but according to its eponymous theme.

 

Royal Chapel

The Royal Chapel of Versailles is located at the southern end of the north wing. The building stands 40-meter (130 ft) high, and measures 42 meters (138 ft) long and 24 meters (79 ft) wide. The chapel is rectangular with a semicircular apse, combining traditional, Gothic royal French church architecture with the French Baroque style of Versailles. The ceiling of the chapel is constituted by an unbroken vault, divided into three frescos by Antoine Coypel, Charles de La Fosse, and Jean Jouvenet. The palette of motifs beneath the frescoes glorify the deeds of Louis IX, and include images of David, Constantine, Charlemagne, and Louis IX, fleur de lis, and Louis XIV's monogram. The organ of the chapel was built by Robert Clicquot and Julien Tribuot in 1709–1710.

 

Louis XIV commissioned the chapel, its sixth, from Mansart and Le Brun in 1683–84. It was the last building constructed at Versailles during Louis XIV's reign. Construction was delayed until 1699, however, and it was not completed until 1710. The only major modification to the chapel since its completion was the removal of a lantern from its roof in 1765. A full restoration of the chapel began in late 2017 and lasted into early 2021.

 

Royal Opera

The Royal Opera of Versailles was originally commissioned by Louis XIV in 1682 and was to be built at the end of the North Wing with a design by Mansart and Vigarani. However, due to the expense of the King's continental wars, the project was put aside. The idea was revived by Louis XV with a new design by Ange-Jacques Gabriel in 1748, but this was also temporarily put aside. The project was revived and rushed ahead for the planned celebration of the marriage of the Dauphin, the future Louis XVI, and Marie-Antoinette. For economy and speed, the new opera was built almost entirely of wood, which also gave it very high quality acoustics. The wood was painted to resemble marble, and the ceiling was decorated with a painting of the Apollo, the god of the arts, preparing crowns for illustrious artists, by Louis Jean-Jacques Durameau. The sculptor Augustin Pajou added statuary and reliefs to complete the decoration. The new Opera was inaugurated on 16 May 1770, as part of the celebration of the royal wedding.

 

In October 1789, early in the French Revolution, the last banquet for the royal guardsmen was hosted by the King in the opera, before he departed for Paris. Following the Franco-German War in 1871 and then the Paris Commune until 1875, the French National Assembly met in the opera, until the proclamation of the Third French Republic and the return of the government to Paris.

 

Museum of the History of France

Shortly after becoming King in 1830, Louis Philippe I decided to transform the palace into a museum devoted to "All the Glories of France," with paintings and sculpture depicting famous French victories and heroes. Most of the apartments of the palace were entirely demolished (in the main building, practically all of the apartments were annihilated, with only the apartments of the king and queen remaining almost intact), and turned into a series of several large rooms and galleries: the Coronation Room (whose original volume was left untouched by Louis-Philippe), which displays the celebrated painting of the coronation of Napoleon I by Jacques-Louis David; the Hall of Battles; commemorating French victories with large-scale paintings; and the 1830 room, which celebrated Louis-Philippe's own coming to power in the French Revolution of 1830. Some paintings were brought from the Louvre, including works depicting events in French history by Philippe de Champaigne, Pierre Mignard, Laurent de La Hyre, Charles Le Brun, Adam Frans van der Meulen, Nicolas de Largillière, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Jean-Antoine Houdon, Jean-Marc Nattier, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Hubert Robert, Thomas Lawrence, Jacques-Louis David, and Antoine-Jean Gros. Others were commissioned especially for the museum by prominent artists of the early 19th century, including Eugène Delacroix, who painted Saint Louis at the French victory over the British in the Battle of Taillebourg in 1242. Other painters featured include Horace Vernet and François Gérard. A monumental painting by Vernet features Louis Philippe himself, with his sons, posing in front of the gates of the palace.

 

The overthrow of Louis Philippe in 1848 put an end to his grand plans for the museum, but the Gallery of Battles is still as it was, and is passed through by many visitors to the royal apartments and grand salons. Another set of rooms on the first floor has been made into galleries on Louis XIV and his court, displaying furniture, paintings, and sculptures. In recent years, eleven rooms on the ground floor between the Chapel and the Opera have been turned into a history of the palace, with audiovisual displays and models.

 

Estate of Versailles

The estate of Versailles consists of the palace, the subsidiary buildings around it, and its park and gardens. As of June 2021, the estate altogether covers an area of 800 hectares (8.0 km2; 2,000 acres), with the park and gardens laid out to the south, west, and north of the palace. The palace is approached from the east by the Avenue de Paris, measuring 17 miles (27 km) from Paris to a gate between the Grande and Petite Écuries. Beyond these stables is the Place d'Armes, where the Avenue de Paris meets the Avenue de Sceaux and Avenue de Saint-Cloud (see map), the three roads that formed the main arteries of the city of Versailles. Exactly where the three roads meet is a gate leading into the cour d'honneur. hemmed in by the Ministers' Wings. Beyond is the Royal Gate and the main palace, which wraps around the Royal and finally Marble Courts

 

The estate was established by Louis XIII as a hunting retreat, with a park just to the west of his château. From 1661, Louis XIV expanded the estate until, at its greatest extent, the estate was made up by the Grand Parc , a hunting ground of 15,000 hectares (150 km2; 37,000 acres), and the gardens, called the Petit Parc, which covered 1,700 hectares (17 km2; 4,200 acres). A 25-mile (40 km) long, 10-foot (3.0 m) high wall with 24 gateways enclosed the estate.

 

The landscape of the estate had to be created from the bog that surrounded Louis XIII's château using landscape architecture usually employed in fortress building. The approach to the palace and the gardens were carefully laid out via the moving of earth and construction of terraces. The water from the marsh was marshalled into a series of lakes and ponds around Versailles, but these reservoirs were not sufficient for the palace, city, or gardens. Great lengths were taken to supply Versailles with water, such as the damming of the river Bièvre to create an inflow in the 1660s, the construction of an enormous pumping station at the river Seine near Marly-le-Roi in 1681, and an attempt to divert water from the river Eure with a canal in the later 1680s.

 

Gardens

The gardens of Versailles, as they have existed since the reign of Louis XIV, are the work of André Le Nôtre. Le Nôtre's gardens were preceded by a simple garden laid out in the 1630s by landscape architects Jacques Boyceau and Jacques de Nemours, which he rearranged along an east–west axis that, because of Louis XIV's land purchases and the clearing of woodland, were expanded literally as far as could be seen. The resulting gardens were a collaboration between Le Nôtre, Le Brun, Colbert, and Louis XIV, marked by rigid order, discipline, and open space, with axial paths, flowerbeds, hedges, and ponds and lakes as motifs. They became the epitome of the French formal garden style, and have been very influential and widely imitated or reproduced.

 

Subsidiary structures

The first of the subsidiary structures of the Palace of Versailles was the Versailles Menagerie [fr],[199][200] built by Le Vau between the years 1662 and 1664, at the southern end of the Grand Canal. The apartments, overlooking the pens, were renovated by Mansart from 1698 to 1700, but the Menagerie fell into disuse in 1712. After a long period of decay, it was demolished in 1801. The Versailles Orangery, just to the south of the palace, was first built by Le Vau in 1663, originally as part of the general moving of earth to create the Estate.[191] It was also modified by Mansart, who, from 1681 to 1685, totally rebuilt it and doubled its size.

 

In late 1679, Louis XIV commissioned Mansart to build the Château de Marly, a retreat at the edge of Versailles's estate, about 5 miles (8.0 km) from the palace. The château consisted of a primary residential building and twelve pavilions, in Palladian style placed in two rows on either side of the main building. Construction was completed in 1686, when Louis XIV spent his first night there. The château was nationalized and sold in 1799, and subsequently demolished and replaced with industrial buildings. These were themselves demolished in 1805, and then in 1811 the estate was purchased by Napoleon. On 1 June 2009, the grounds of the Château de Marly were ceded to the Public Establishment of the Palace, Museum and National Estate of Versailles.

 

La Lanterne, is a hunting lodge named after the lantern that topped the nearby Menagerie that was built in 1787 by Philippe Louis de Noailles, then the palace governor. It has since 1960 been a state residence.

 

Petit Trianon

The Petit Trianon, whose construction from 1762 to 1768 led to the advent of the names "Grand" and "Petit Trianon", was constructed for Louis XV and the Madame du Barry in the Neoclassical style by Gabriel. The building has a piano nobile, basement, and attic, with five windows on each floor. On becoming king, Louis XVI gave the Petit Trianon to Marie Antoinette, who remodeled it, relaid its gardens in the then-current English and Oriental styles, and formed her own court there.

 

In 1668, Louis XIV purchased and demolished the hamlet of Trianon, near the northern tip of the Grand Canal, and in its place, he commissioned Le Vau to construct a retreat from court, remembered as the Porcelain Trianon. Designed and built by Le Vau in 1670, it was the first example of Chinoiserie (faux Chinese) architecture in Europe, though it was largely designed in French style. The roof was clad not with porcelain but with delftware, and was thus prone to leaks, so in 1687 Louis XIV ordered it demolished. Nevertheless, the Porcelain Trianon was itself influential and copycats were built across Europe.

 

The Grand Trianon

The Grand Trianon with courtyard and gardens. The wing at left is a residence of the President of France.

The Grand Trianon with courtyard and gardens. The wing at left is a residence of the President of France.

 

To replace the Porcelain Trianon, Louis XIV tasked Mansart with the construction in 1687 of the Grand Trianon, built from marble in three months. The Grand Trianon has a single story, except for its attached service wing, which was modified by Mansart in 1705–06. The east façade has a courtyard while the west faces the gardens of the Grand Trianon, and between them a peristyle. The interiors are mostly original,[214] and housed Louis XIV, the Madame de Maintenon, Marie Leszczynska, and Napoleon, who ordered restorations to the building. Under de Gaulle, the north wing of the Grand Trianon became a residence of the President of France.

 

The Queen's hamlet and Theater

Near the Trianons are the French pavilion, built by Gabriel in 1750 between the two residences, and the Queen's Theater and Queen's Hamlet, built by architect Richard Mique in 1780 and from 1783 to 1785 respectively. These were both built at the behest of Marie Antoinette; the theater, hidden in the gardens, indulged her appreciation of opera and is absolutely original, and the hamlet to extend her gardens with rustic amenities. The building scheme of the Queen's Hamlet includes a farmhouse (the farm was to produce milk and eggs for the queen), a dairy, a dovecote, a boudoir, a barn that burned down during the French Revolution, a mill and a tower in the form of a lighthouse.

 

Modern political and ceremonial functions

The palace still serves political functions. Heads of state are regaled in the Hall of Mirrors; the bicameral French Parliament—consisting of the Senate (Sénat) and the National Assembly (Assemblée nationale)—meet in joint session (a congress of the French Parliament) in Versailles to revise or otherwise amend the French Constitution, a tradition that came into effect with the promulgation of the 1875 Constitution. For example, the Parliament met in joint session at Versailles to pass constitutional amendments in June 1999 (for domestic applicability of International Criminal Court decisions and for gender equality in candidate lists), in January 2000 (ratifying the Treaty of Amsterdam), and in March 2003 (specifying the "decentralized organization" of the French Republic).

 

In 2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy addressed the global financial crisis before a congress in Versailles, the first time that this had been done since 1848, when Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte gave an address before the French Second Republic. Following the November 2015 Paris attacks, President François Hollande gave a speech before a rare joint session of parliament at the Palace of Versailles. This was the third time since 1848 that a French president addressed a joint session of the French Parliament at Versailles. The president of the National Assembly has an official apartment at the Palace of Versailles. In 2023 a state visit by Charles III to France included a state banquet at the Palace.

Replacing an earlier digital photo with a better version 11-Aug-19, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 29-Dec-24.

 

Fleet No: "1612".

 

This aircraft was delivered to Delta Air Lines as N1612T in May-01. It was fitted with blended winglets in Apr-09. It was withdrawn from service and stored at Victorville, CA, USA in Mar-20 as a consequence of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

 

In Jan-21 the aircraft was sold to Amazon Services LLC and ferried to Mexico City to await cargo conversion. It was re-registered N617AZ in Feb-22 and freighter conversion with a main deck cargo door was completed in Jun-22.

 

The aircraft was ferried to Wilmington, OH, USA in Jul-22 and leased to ATI - Air Transport International in Aug-22. It's operated by ATI on behalf of Amazon Prime Air. Current, updated 29-Dec-24.

POPULATION 1841 405 / 1851 695 / 1861 1,701 / 1871 5,896 / 1881 16,859 / 1891 59,762 /

1911 78,674 / 1921 91,761 / 1931 116,803 / 1939 144,451 / 1951 154,956 / 1961 155,620 /

1971 153,425 / 1981 144,803 / 1991 151,303 / 2001 163,444

 

This image was taken from the centre of The Square looking over towards Old Christchurch Rd and Gervis Place.

 

Place your cursor over parts of the image to reveal further information.

  

A very potted history of The Square.........

 

The Square is where seven roads leading to and from all parts of the borough converge. Although not geographically at the centre of town it is at the heart of what is known as the Town Centre.

The seven roads are.....Old Christchurch Rd ,Gervis Place, Exeter Rd, Commercial Rd, Avenue Rd, Bourne Ave and Richmond Hill.

 

Two hundred years ago and beyond it was the point at which the Bourne stream was crossed, by way of a ford, by those travelling over the unspoilt heath that lay between Christchurch and Poole.

The area was frequented by smugglers who carried out their illegal goings on along this isolated section of coast through much of the 1700s and early 1800s.

From the mid 1700s a small property, Bourne House / Decoy Pond Cottage stood where Debenhams now stands, with an associated decoy pond, used for hunting and trapping wildfowl, being created along the Bourne stream where the War Memorial now stands in the Central Pleasure Gardens.

  

The Square has undergone a number of facelifts in the last 200 years since Bournemouth was officially founded in 1810 by Lewis Tregonwell. The ford was replaced by a wooden bridge in the late 1830s, then a stone one in 1849. Over time the bridge was replaced and the area enlarged resulting in the stream running underground as it flowed from the Central Pleasure Gardens into the Lower Pleasure Gardens on its way to the sea, meaning it can be crossed by thousands of people every day without anyone having to get their feet wet.

 

Not suprisingly the area was known as The Bridge but became known as The Square from the mid 1850s.

 

In 1899 a roundabout with a tall lamp post was created in the centre of The Square which survived until around WW1 when a plain oval 'roundabout', minus the lamp post, replaced it.

In 1925 a Captain Norton donated a shelter cum waiting room, adorned by a clock, that was used by tram and trolleybus passengers until 1948, when it was replaced by a large roundabout in the middle of which stood a tall pedestal with the clock from the shelter ontop.

In 1992 The Square was semi-pedestrianised with a path created across the roundabout to link the two sides, with the opening of the fully pedestrianised Square, complete with a pebble mosaic, Millenium Flame and Obscura Cafe coming in February 2000.

  

FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE ABOVE IMAGE.

 

A.

The original St Andrews Church was built from corrugated iron sheet over a wooden frame on this site in 1857, and was known as the Scotch Church. This method of construction was a relatively cheap and cheerful way of providing a variety of community buildings such as churches, scout huts and village halls, popular in Victorian times.

It was replaced by this stone building in 1872.

 

In 1888 Central Chambers, that housed the Mansion Hotel was built, which became the Empress Hotel in 1906.

Various commercial premises occupied the ground floor, most notably the Cadena Cafe, part of a national chain.

 

In 1930 the Cadena Cafe was replaced by the National and Provincial Bank who expanded their premises from next door, which they had occupied since 1879.

In 1968, after a merger, the bank became the National Westminster Bank [ Nat West ], who still occupy the buildings today.

 

The Empress Hotel closed in 1953, with the name transferring to the Osborne Hotel on Exeter Rd.

 

B.

 

This National and Provincial Bank building was built in 1879.

It was where the small wooden hut that was Robert Day's photographic studio stood from the early 1860s.

Day took many of the early images of Bournemouth.

 

The National and Provincial Bank expanded into the neighbouring Central Chambers in 1930, replacing the Cadena Cafe.

In 1968, as a result of a merger, it became the National Westminster Bank who still occupy the premises today.

 

C.

This building dates from 1881 and replaced Beckford House which was built in 1848 as the home of George Fox who originally rented the nearby Tregonwell Arms from Mrs Tregonwell in 1837, before purchasing it in 1840.

 

The pub also became the town's first post office in 1839, a function that later transferred to Beckford House.

 

The above building was replaced by the present one in 1963, and has been home to the 'Alliance and Leicester', now Santander, ever since.

 

D.

Rebbeck's Corner at the junction of Old Christchurch Rd and Gervis Place.

William Rebbeck came to Bournemouth in the 1830s as estate agent to the 'Bourne Tregonwell' estate.

 

In 1851, Rebbeck's small single storey office was built here and had an extra floor added in 1873.

The building directly behind is Gervis Villa, the Rebbeck family home.

In 1887 the office and the villa were replaced by a much larger Rebbeck's building which they occupied until 1934 when they moved to their new premises, next door to what is today the Moon In The Square pub, where they still trade as Rebbeck Brothers, although there is no longer any family involvement.

Their former premises were replaced by the current building, a shop, in 1936.

It was a Dolcis shoe shop for years and is a T Mobile store in 2011.

 

E.

The Lower Pleasure Gardens were formally laid out in 1873 after several years spent draining and preparing the land.

A relatively small area had been enclosed in 1849, opposite the Westover Villas that stood on Westover Rd where a path through the pine trees was created and called Invalids Walk. Later renamed Pine Walk it is still used today.

Replaced 1980s Pony kiddie ride "Kiddie's Pony" (Yellow) At Angels World New York in 5502 5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY. It played Take Me Out To The Ballgame. Manufactured by Paul W. Hawkins Mfg Co in 1970s. Replaced into 1980s Horse kiddie ride "Carnival Horse" (Bright pink)

Replaced Mercerville Acme around a mile away

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 25-Jul-24.

 

Named: "St. Ronan / Ronan".

 

This aircraft was delivered to ILFC International Lease Finance Corporation and leased to Aer Lingus as EI-CDH in Apr-92. It operated Aer Lingus' last Boeing 737-500 service at the end of Oct-05.

 

It was returned to the lessor in Jan-06 and leased to Pulkovo Airlines (Russia), still as EI-CDH, the same day. The aircraft was returned to the lessor in Dec-08 and stored at Southend, UK.

 

Pulkovo Airlines was re-named Rossiya - Russian Airlines and the aircraft was re-leased to them in May-09. It was returned to the lessor in Nov-12 and stored at Vilnius, Lithuania.

 

In Jan-13 it was sold to AviaAm Leasing as LY-AYZ (Lithuania) and remained stored. It was leased to SCAT Airlines (Kazakhstan) in Jun-13, still as LY-AYZ. The aircraft was re-registered UN-B3724 in Aug-18. After 32 years in service it was permanently retired at Almaty, Kazakhstan in Jan-24. Updated 25-Jul-24.

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version 21-Jul-19.

 

'Grand Union', England World Tail livery. Operated on behalf of British Airways by BRA British Regional Airlines.

 

This aircraft was delivered to BRA British Regional Airlines as G-EMBF in Nov-98. It was operated on behalf of British Airways. British Regional was merged into British Airways CitiExpress in Mar-02, the operation for British Airways continued.

 

It was renamed BA Connect in Feb-06. In Mar-07 British Airways transferred many of their 'regional' services to FlyBe Airlines and this aircraft was transferred to FlyBe as well. The aircraft was sold to Dniproavia (Ukraine) as UR-DNA in Aug-07. I'm unable to find out when it was retired but the most recent photo I could find online was taken in Dec-12. It was withdrawn from use and stored at Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine and later broken up. Dniproavia ceased operations in 2017.

Fourth generation (1991–1996)

 

The 1991 model was completely restyled—It replaced the 1977-based rectilinear design with rounded, more aerodynamic sheetmetal. While the body and interior were all new, excluding the Anti-Lock Braking System, the chassis and powertrain were carried over from the 1990 model. and several major components (including the floor pan) are entirely interchangeable between 1977 and 1996.

 

Motor Trend awarded the new Caprice Classic Car of the Year. Two trim levels were initially offered—Caprice and Caprice Classic, replacing the previous Classic and Brougham models. General Motors had hoped to regain the top spot as America's favorite automobile with the new aerodynamic styling of their full-size offering.

 

The last-generation Caprice was not well received by critics and did not hold on to high sales numbers. The car's styling was criticized with car aficionados calling it a "beached whale" and "an upside-down bathtub". For 1993 there were some revisions, the most obvious being the removal of the skirted rear wheel wells in favor of more conventional, open wheel wells. This applied only to the sedan model; station wagons retained the skirted wheel wells. In 1995, minor modifications were made to the C-pillars & the wagon was given the same mirrors as the sedan; 1995 was the final year for the Caprice wagon.

 

In 1994 the Caprice received the new-generation GM engines, including an optional detuned version of the Corvette's LT1 350 cu in (5.7 L) engine that put out 260 hp (194 kW) and 330 lb·ft (447 N·m) of torque. The standard engine in all sedans, including the 9C1 police cars, was the 200 hp (150 kW), L99 263 (4.3 L) V8. The LT1 was optional in the 9C1 police-package and standard in the wagon. The LT1 350 was standard in the civilian sedans with the addition of the B4U towing package. The towing package also gave a heavy duty suspension nearly identical to the 9C1 police car suspension, 2.93 gears, heavy duty cooling, heavy duty rear drum brakes and positraction. The 265 (4.3 L) L99, and 350 (5.7 L) LT1 look nearly identical externally. Many 4.3 L99 equipped sedans are passed off as 5.7 LT1 cars. The 8th digit in the Vehicle Identification Number is the Engine code. W: 4.3 L L99, P: 5.7 L LT1. The 1994 Caprice's interior had a redesign which featured a Camaro steering wheel, digital speedometer and a new console.

 

The Caprice 9C1 with the LT1 engine became one of the fastest and most popular modern day police vehicles. This vehicle established such strong devotion by many police departments that a cottage industry thrived in refurbishing Caprices for continued police service after GM discontinued production of the car.

 

The car's production was stopped in 1996 from sales pressure from the mid-size Chevrolet Lumina, financial troubles at General Motors, and consumer demand shifting from full-sized family sedans to the increasingly popular sport utility vehicles. The Arlington, Texas vehicle assembly plant (used for Caprices, Buick Roadmaster, Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser, and Cadillac Fleetwood) was converted to produce GM's more profitable full size SUVs (the Tahoe and Suburban). In 1997, the Lumina LTZ would take the Caprice's place as Chevrolet's premium passenger car. Total production of 1991–96 models was 689,257 with production ending on December 13, 1996.

 

Aftermath

 

With the exit of the Caprice, the Ford Crown Victoria and its corporate siblings (Mercury Grand Marquis and Lincoln Town Car), continued as the sole traditional rear-drive, body-on-frame, V8-powered American sedans (though the final assembly point is in Canada) until their discontinuation in 2011. Thereafter the Ford Crown Victoria dominated police vehicle sales from 1997 through 2011. Dodge would introduce the unibody Dodge Charger in 2006 (Chrysler Corp and AMC had a long history of using unibody rather than body on frame for their full sized cars since 1960 and 1948, respectively), the division's first rear-wheel drive sedan since 1989.

 

The Chevrolet Impala nameplate was reintroduced to the American passenger car market in 2000 as the marque's premium offering, albeit in a front wheel drive configuration.

 

[Text from Wikipedia]

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Caprice

 

The car shown here is a 1992 Caprice Taxi from the film '28 Days'.

 

www.imcdb.org/vehicle.php?id=3421

 

www.imdb.com/title/tt0191754/

 

This miniland-scale Lego Chevrolet Caprice Taxi (1991 - '28 Days') has been created for Flickr LUGNuts' 92nd Build Challenge, - "Stuck in the 90's", - all about vehicles from the decade of the 1990s.

  

Replaced it today after 10 years good service. The screen had odd colour patches appearing all over it and so I reckoned it must be time for an upgrade!

Replaced the tortoise shell with a Bakelite pickguard. Looks. . ."rigjht" to me.

replaced with the full resolution image!

 

Testshot with f/1.4

the mirror in the middle is used to align the camera perfect vertically to the paper/wall

Scientists can now modify genes or replace faulty genes with healthy ones to treat, cure or prevent a disease or medical condition. Gene therapy can be performed both inside and outside the body. This graphic illustrates in simple terms how gene therapy works inside the body. Read the FDA Consumer Update to learn more.

 

This infographic is an original FDA creation and in the public domain. It may be shared, downloaded and redistributed without restriction. Credit to FDA is appreciated but not required.

 

FDA infographic by Michael J. Ermarth

Replacing an earlier digital photo with a better version 30-Sep-22.

 

Seen here on its first visit to Manchester in the original livery.

 

First flown in Dec-88 as CCCP-82060, this world-famous aircraft was operated by Antonov Airlines and originally designed to carry the Russian equivalent of the Space Shuttle, 'Buran'.

 

Russia's 'Space Shuttle' programme was cancelled and the aircraft converted into a freighter configuration, completed in Sep-93 and re-registered in Ukraine as UR-82060. It was withdrawn from use and stored at the Antonov factory airfield at Gostomel, Kyiv, Ukraine in Apr-94.

 

It was re-registered UR-480182 in May-96 and returned to its original registration, UR-82060 in May-98. The aircraft didn't fly again until May-01 when it entered service as the world's largest cargo carrier.

 

It was stored at Gostomel between Aug-20 and Jun-21. It was stored again at Gostomel in early Feb-22. Sadly, the aircraft was destroyed by Russian Forces on 24-Feb-22 in the early stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Replacing an earlier scanned photo with a better version, plus Topaz DeNoise AI 06-Apr-25.

 

Named: "Stuttgart".

 

Built as a Boeing 747-200B 'Combi' with a side cargo door, the aircraft was first flown in Nov-86 with the Boeing test registration N6038E. It was delivered to Lufthansa as D-ABZE in Jan-87. It was withdrawn from service and stored at Marana, AZ, USA in May-03.

 

The aircraft was wet-leased to Air Pullmantur (Spain) in Jul-03. The wet-lease became a dry-lease in Jan-04 when the aircraft was re-registered EC-IUA. It was returned to Lufthansa Leasing GmbH in early 2005 and stored at Marana again.

 

In Dec-05 it was leased to Air Universal (Mauritania) as 5T-AUE and returned to Lufthansa Leasing in Oct-06 when it was leased to Hellenic Imperial Airways as SX-DIE. It was wet-leased to Libyan Airlines in Jun-07 and returned to Hellenic Imperial in Apr-08 when it was re-registered SX-TIE.

 

Hellenic Imperial's AOC was cancelled by the Greek CAA in Nov-08 for three months. The aircraft was stored at Athens and eventually returned to service in May-09. It was wet-leased to Med-View Airlines (Nigeria) in Oct-09 for a Haj Pilgrimage and returned to Hellenic Imperial in Dec-09.

 

After a scheduled service to Karachi, Pakistan in Oct-11, the Pakistan Authorities declared the aircraft 'not airworthy' and it was grounded and stored at Karachi.

 

Hellenic Imperial stopped their few scheduled services the following day and operated charter flights until mid 2012 when they 'suspended operations'. SX-TIE was last noted still stored at Karachi in Jan-14. Updated, 27-Jul-22.

replacing the low quality ones

Replacing an earlier digital photo with a better version 15-Apr-20.

 

First flown with the Embraer test registration PT-SAD, this aircraft was delivered to the Hellenic Air Force (Greece) as 135L-484 in Jul-02. As far as I'm aware, it's still in service. Current, updated (Apr-20).

Salem City Schools 15 - 1985 Carpenter International - Retired; former Bus Yard - Salem, Ohio. Bought used in 1997. Formerly owned by Columbiana County Educational Service Center. Bus was already retired from service when picture was taken. Replaced with a 2002 Thomas Freightliner.