Ex-railways / ex-tramways on the Isle of Portland have featured on Saturday Timewatch before. For example, there have been those serving the Portland Stone quarry industry. Then there was the passenger service that ran from the port up the east cliff to Easton.

This weekend's quiz asks what the track in the above photo facilitated?

(If no-one guesses correctly, the answer will be given on Monday. But I doubt it will get that far!!)

This remarkable photo in the Isle of Portland "then and now" series, dates from the early 20th century, just a few years before the outbreak of WW1. The pier was the 'coaling pier' and this, plus one of the harbour entrances just to the left of the "Portland Harbour" photo title, are the only really recognisable features in a scene that couldn't be more different in the recent photo shown below.

This week is steam week. We were delighted to be onboard Waverley two years ago. However, for her almost annual visit, this year we opted for the maritime equivalent of railway 'linesiding'. The main photo shows the port paddle turning whilst docking today at Weymouth.

For those not familiar with the vessel, she is the world's last seagoing paddle steamer. Nearly 80 years old, 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of carrying passengers in her preservation era. A real "national treasure".

These old silos stand at the corner of Hempstead and Long Point Rd, Houston, TX.

I've mentioned before that it seems quite difficult to get information about older buildings around Texas compared to the UK. I don't know when they were built; which company operated them or even when they were closed, though I suspect around 30 years ago. I'm not even certain of their use though given the location, rice silos seems far more likely than anything else.

Although not shown in this photo, it is just possible to figure out where the rail spur ran to join a line running along Hempstead that is still in operation. I reckon that the low-rise industrial units were erected after the silos closed to enable a new usage of the site.

This week's Saturday Timewatch looks at Sargent swing bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway. The last bridge of its kind in Texas, it is currently being replaced by a fixed-span, high-clearance bridge. The work on that is well underway off picture to the right of the photo.

Rather than trying to explain the operation, it is easier to share this YT video taken by someone else from the same spot as the photo above www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHwTyj8rGk4

As Wiki explains, "The Intracoastal Waterway is a 3,000-mile inland waterway along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts of the United States, running from Boston, Massachusetts, southward along the Atlantic Seaboard and around the southern tip of Florida, then following the Gulf Coast to Brownsville, Texas"

The full story is here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracoastal_Waterway

With my watch to give scale these are a selection of giant ammonite imprints found recently on Ringstead Beach.

This advertising sign is on an old building in the centre of Sturminster Newton which these days is actually a tea room. I don't know whether the sign does indeed date back to the bread-makers advertising slogan of the 1920s. Note to self : I should have gone in and asked!

Any thoughts on "the rule of the road"?? My guess is that when travelling a century ago, the rule of the road was to make sure you stopped for refreshment at an establishment that served Hovis bread!

Ray recently posted a far better photo of KLM's retro scheme than I ever managed to get www.flickr.com/photos/flickrway/29215731224/in/dateposted/

That reminded me of Finnair's "Silver Bird" retro scheme, the above photo being taken at Manchester in August 2008, just one month after the inaugural flight. OH-LVE was about to depart for Helsinki from Runway 2 (23L).

The A319 was painted in the livery of Finnair's 1950s Convair in honour of the airline's 85th anniversary, the airline being the sixth oldest operating in the world. Sadly the scheme only lasted a measly 4 years after which time the aircraft was returned to the lessor as it was not actually owned by Finnair.

(Note : Just realised that I've scored a century of aircraft posts)

....before it became Heathrow!

This week's Saturday Timewatch results from a modicum of spring cleaning that rapidly ground to a halt having found this gem in the vaults. A first edition, published in 1957, it must have sold well because a second edition followed a year later.

More memorabilia from this rediscovered horde will follow in the coming weeks.

Steam week continues.....

Today was a red-letter day for Eddystone (the locomotive, not the lighthouse!). Although seen in recent years on the heritage line of Swanage Railway, this was the first time in 6 decades that she hauled passengers on the mainline, in this instance on a special down from London.

In grim conditions of steady drizzle, she coasts into Wareham for a two-minute stop before departing for Worgret Jct. and the spur down to Swanage Railway metals and her final destination of the seaside resort of Swanage.

The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight turned out their Avro Lancaster PA474 and Spitfire MK356 for yesterday's Bournemouth Air Festival. It has been way over a decade since I last saw the BBMF so the good weather was welcome. The seafront site at Bournemouth means that for photographs you basically have to shoot towards the sun but that was a minor point.

I hope the 'regulars' will forgive my repetition that the Lancaster brings back a teenage memory. I never flew in a Lancaster but whilst in the RAF Air Cadets I did fly out on a maritime patrol over the Atlantic aboard an Avro Shackleton. That aircraft was developed out of the Avro Lincoln which itself was developed from the Avro Lancaster shown above. So there are similarities!

Apologies for the play on words but we got wind that T/S Elissa was due to sail out of Galveston on a day trip. Sadly the $300 per person to be onboard the tall ship was way out of our price range for a trip round the bay. However, we certainly could afford the free front row seats at Galveston's East Beach to watch her sail by. Here she is passing the decommissioned lighthouse across the bay at Bolivar Point.

A three-masted barque with an iron hull, she was launched in Glasgow in 1877. Over the decades she sailed under a number of different flags and names. It is in recent decades that she has been moored at Galveston where inevitably major maintenance issues have had to be addressed on several occasions.

This week's Saturday Timewatch looks to the future rather than the past. What on earth (excuse the play on words) will future archaeologists make of this ground feature taken from UA4 climbing through 17,000' near Bedford, England?

It is Millbrook Proving Ground, a private vehicle testing and development facility that has around 43 miles / 70 kms of track. It is also used for specialist driver training and hired out for tv and film business.

This week's Saturday Timewatch features a third posting taken from the excellent Rodney Legg book "Dorset Flight : The Complete History". I will of course be removing this and any other images from the book should anyone moan about copyright. However, I think the photos deserve a wider showing.

In this instance it is easiest to repeat the caption to the photo. There is no exact date given. However, it will likely have been between 1939 and 1948. I'm not sure why the caption below says "British Airways"? "BOAC" was created in 1939 by the merger of Imperial Airways and British Airways

"Splash down : An 'Empire' flying boat of British Airways, which has landed on a "trot" (water runway) in Poole Harbour on arrival from Calcutta, is led by Duty Operations Officer in his launch, as she taxis to her mooring buoy. They are off Lilliput, heading westwards, and two other flying boats can be glimpsed in the background (centre left) off Salterns Pier"

This week, Saturday Timewatch looks at the remains of Rufus Castle on Dorset's Isle of Portland. Most of the remains date from the 15th century though fortifications are known to have been here earlier than that.

A detailed history can be found here

www.portlandhistory.co.uk/rufus-castle.html

Going back much further in time than yesterday's medieval defence castle flic.kr/p/2kQUm7Z this photo shows two of the Iron Age hillforts in north Dorset.

The photo is taken from Rawlsbury Camp, sometimes known locally as Rawlsbury Rings. The earthworks in the foreground extend right around a flat enclosure on the top, much smaller but very similar in design to the more famous Maiden Castle near Dorchester.

On the horizon, the middle one of the three hills that can be seen is Lyscombe Hill. There is a promontory on which sits Nettlecombe Tout, another Iron Age hill fort.

It is difficult to give accurate dates but they are likely to have been built around 600BC - 300BC.

This week's Saturday Timewatch features a classic rail poster displayed at Swanage Railway's Corfe Castle Station. Superb detail can be seen on large size. For example, is that an argument going on at the bottom left corner?

Questions!

Do any of the railway bods know where this is??

Likewise, does anyone know the artist? The signature in the bottom left corner looks something like 'Cuneo'???

EDIT :

Answers courtesy of Simon.

The artist is T Cuneo.

The location is Calais, France.

...and it didn't. According to WikiWhoKnowsAlmost Everything, Sentinel Waggon Works Ltd only ever built four steam-powered buses. Quite why they even did that in the mid-1920s is a bit of a mystery as oil-based internal combustion engines were already well established and clearly the way forward.

The above photo shows Sentinel DG4 No.8714, built at the Sentinel Works in Shrewsbury in 1932 as a flat back steam lorry. In 2002, with no original buses still in existence, new owners undertook considerable research using works photographs to recreate an authentic looking bus body on top of the DG4 chassis, which is what those four buses actually built also used.

On completion, the bus ran a short-lived tourist service in the Lake District some ten years ago. Still fully roadworthy, she now consumes about 50 gallons of water and 110lb of coal for every 10 miles travelled. No wonder it never caught on.

Happy New Year 2017 to all my contacts. A sincere thanks for your most interesting posts and comments throughout the year.

Special thanks to Miss Kim www.flickr.com/photos/digitalfemme57 who put together the collage of 'Past, Present and Future'. It seems appropriate on a day when so many of us look back, enjoy the present and anticipate the future.

The three friezes survive on the exterior walls of Houston's 1940 Air Terminal across from the modern day terminal at Hobby Airport. An art-deco masterpiece, the building still stands due to a group of aviation enthusiasts who saved it from demolition a couple of decades ago. Operating on a shoestring budget, it is a museum that desperately needs decent funding to fully restore the building, including the three friezes shown above.

Note to our aircraft enthusiasts : Can anyone confirm what the past and present aircraft are? I think the 'present' i.e. 1940 aircraft, is a DC3? However, was there something like a DC2 or DC4 that was similar?? As to the 'future' I found that flight of fancy absolutely fascinating - half piston aircraft / half helicopter!

Flickr Explore # 493 on Sunday, January 1, 2017

Without access to a boat, it is nigh on impossible to get close to the Victorian fortifications that still stand around Portland Harbour, once a major naval base. This photo, taken from the sailing vessel Moonfleet, this shows the East Ship Channel through the outer breakwater to the open sea where an unidentified yacht and Weymouth's "Ernest and Mabel" lifeboat are passing by. The buildings to the right of the photo are known as Breakwater Fort whilst those on the lighthouse side rejoice in the bland name of "A" Head. Breakwater Lighthouse remains an operational lighthouse first lit in 1905.

This is another 10 years ago today photo from southern Spain although a decade is nothing compared to the more ancient history on view in the foreground. It is the Puente Romano de Cotobro, near Almunecar. Although called "Roman" it is thought the bridge structure dates from medieval times but lies on Roman foundations. They were likely laid between the 1st and 3rd centuries and themselves probably were situated on the line of an even earlier track. That track will have been a key east - west route along the southern coast of Spain.

It is no great surprise then that the modern bridge in the background carries the N-340. That road is now the key east-west route along the Spanish southern coastline.

Some 30 miles distant from Bournemouth, we have now reached Sturminster Newton on our Somerset & Dorset Railway exploration. Unfortunately I don't know the name of the photographer or the date of the above image that is taken from the old Station Road bridge.

The bridge is no longer there as the whole cutting at this point has been filled in for new buildings and a car park. There are many instances where it is relatively easy to see where old rail lines ran. That is not the case here as barely anything remains. The building on the left is still in use, now Streeters Carpets and Beds. The hillfort of Hambledon hill in the distance does of course still stands high although it is no longer visible from this point as mature trees now line what has become the North Dorset Trailway where the track in this photo runs east towards Blandford Forum.

Manufactured exactly 100 years ago, guest locomotive GWR 2-8-0 4247 works on the climb from the River Frome to Norden Junction on the Swanage Railway.

She was hauling the return leg of the FIRST scheduled passenger service to run on this re-opened stretch of railway line since New Year's Day 1972. It is true that some freight ran until 2005 and there have been very occasional passenger 'specials' down the line over the last 15 years, though these have been few and far between. Considerable sums of money and a huge number of volunteer hours have been used to get the track and infrastructure back into condition and the title "Over the Road" refers to the line going over the new Norden Gates level crossing.

Today's service was only allowed to run to the River Frome which is the limit of Swanage Railway's empire. On that up line service the train was pulled by one of their own locomotives, 31806, whose steam can be seen at the rear of the down line photos above. After a brief stop at the river, 4247 headed the return run.

Swanage Railway is now making an application to run a full service in 2017 a further mile to Wareham Station on the main London-Weymouth line. However, these will be diesel operated, primarily because there is no turntable at Wareham.

This week's combined "Saturday Flashback" and "Sunday Landscape" pays homage to Ansel Adams who, in 1942, photographed this scene far better than I ever could.

This week's Saturday Timewatch features an unexpected find on our road trip. The building has clearly been there a long time although I cannot find any detailed history. Unfortunately it was closed when we passed by but it apparently also acts as a local bar as well as a general store.

This week's Saturday Timewatch is for Cap'n Pervez and of course everyone else.

Taken whilst taxiing for departure at Manchester Ringway on July 16th 2009, this is GainJet's "757BBJ" i.e. Boeing Business Jet SX-RFA. Apparently the aircraft remains in active service though business must have slowed so much she has been parked since December 2020.

Should you wish to hire the plane, this is what you get

www.gainjet.com/vip-boeing-b757-200/

Climbing out over London Heathrow's Terminal 5B gave the opportunity to show a representative selection of BA's fleet in 2016.

I find it difficult to distinguish the minutiae of aircraft variations. However, I reckon this is more or less what is on show. I'm very happy for those who know more than i do on the subject to make corrections!

Boeing 747 (6) Good to see these keeping the passenger jumbo spirit alive. One of my favourites! Most of these classic planes will be around 20 years old.

Boeing 777 (4) Another workhorse of a plane, even these probably have an average age of 14 years.

Airbus 319 / Airbus 320 (1 of each?) Not sure about these. Short haul workhorses par excellence, averaging 10 years old?

Airbus A380 (1) BA were slow off the blocks with ordering 380's. Most of their current fleet will be less than 2 years old.

Boeing 787 (5.....in two different configurations?) BA's Dreamliner fleet is already into double figures. Many of them will only have been in service for around a year.

Airbus A350 (1) Not sure about this but I think it is an A350 to the left of the Dreamliner being pushed back from T5C. Again a newish plane with not too many miles on the clock. BA have 18 on order.

There are a number of contacts who hang around this back corner of flickr's bike sheds who will remember the sights, sounds and smell of old railway yards and stations.

A third and last post for now from Mayflower's visit to Dorset a couple of days ago. This was taken at Swanage.

One more post from Swanage Railway.

This is ex-Southern Railway 4-6-2 "Battle of Britain" Class No. 34070 Manston, named after RAF Manston in north east Kent. Officially known as Light Pacifics but actually known by everyone as Spam Cans, these locomotives were designed for the Southern Railway by its Chief Mechanical Engineer Oliver Bulleid and built between 1944 - 1951.

Quite a number of this class survive. About half a dozen are operational with double that number under various stages of restoration or overhaul.

In this photo, Manston is pulling away from Corfe Castle Station en route to Norden Junction.

This week's Saturday Timewatch again goes back to the Jurassic period. Seeing the light of day for the first time in around 150 million years, give or take, this large fist-sized chunk of giant ammonite had been washed out of the cliffs during a very wet winter season. It is a very degraded specimen but look carefully and you can make out vertical grooves.

What is most interesting is that there was a 'bonus ball' underneath. A degraded but recognisable belemnite, part of a squid-like creature, is embedded in the same chunk of rock (see photo below). Although it is tempting to think so, I don't know of any evidence to suggest ammonites ever ate the creatures of which belemnites were a part. It is just coincidence that both have emerged together after all these years.

Another then and now scene from Fortune's Well, Isle of Portland , which is very much one where one half of the street is still easily recognisable whilst the other side of the street has completely disappeared in modern times.

The main photo is undated but probably from the 1920s. Note the shop "Comben" on the right. That company name still exists on Portland albeit in an industrial unit in Top Hill. We bought a washing machine from them a couple of years ago! Also note the building behind the traction engine. Dating from the 1700s, early Methodists met there and apparently they were such a rowdy lot that the locals nicknamed it "Bedlam", a name that has stuck to that corner of Fortune's Well to this day. By the way, it also where the gentleman we talked to mentioned in the last Portland then and now post lives. It can easily be picked out behind the car in the modern photo below.

So what happened to the other side of the road? Some buildings suffered bomb damage during WW2. Don't forget a major naval harbour was nearby. In the end, the whole row was demolished in the 1950s to enable road widening. The area below the railings is a car park.

To quote the pilot "Nothing stopping us now except fear and common sense"

Having arrived at King Salmon airport flic.kr/p/2kDtBrR the next leg of the journey to Katmai provided my one and only (return) flight by amphibious seaplane that I've ever been lucky enough to enjoy. This photo is on board Peninsula Airways' Grumman G-21 "Goose" N4763C (see below). The flight only took around 20 minutes but was exhilarating.

Pelican of London is a regular sight in Weymouth Harbour. Here she is seen under sail passing one of the entrances to Portland Harbour, a short distance from Weymouth.

She has an interesting and varied history. It was 1948 when she was built in France as an Artic trawler named "Pelican". 20 years later she was reclassified from "trawler" to "coaster" and under the name "Kadette" lasted in that role until 1995. On being sold, the following 12 years were spent transforming her into a barquentine tall ship, at which point she gained her current name. She is now primarily operates as a sail training vessel for young people by the charity Adventures Under Sail.

Known locally as the Bincombe Bumps, these round barrows (tumuli) date from the Bronze Age. Even with archaeological finds, such tumuli are difficult to date exactly. However, in Britain most of these burial mounds are thought to have originated between c.1700 B.C. and c.1000 B.C. There are several dozen in this immediate vicinity. In fact in the general area of Dorset, there are a couple of thousand barrows of different styles that are still visible to a greater or lesser degree.

This week's Saturday Timewatch records our pilgrimage to Gruene Hall, pronounced 'green'.......

."Gruene Hall, built in 1878, is Texas’ oldest continually operating and most famous dance hall. By design, not much has physically changed since the Hall was first built. The 6,000 square foot dance hall with a high pitched tin roof still has the original layout with side flaps for open air dancing, a bar in the front, a small lighted stage in the back and a huge outdoor garden" Plus I'll add a fine wooden dancefloor.

Pretty much anybody who is anybody in both mainstream and rebel country music has played here over the years, often many times. Just a few names to whet the whistle : George Strait, Willy Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, Joe Ely, Kacey Musgraves, Jerry Jeff Walker as well as some classic r&b from the likes of Bo Diddley.

In the background is Gruene water tower.

Photos from inside the hall will follow. Here is one from Mrs. Kim! Oh, what a night flic.kr/p/2nT6dFH

World War 2 remnants provide another layer of history along Dorset's Jurassic coastline. A concrete Type 25 pillbox (according to those that know these things!) is now exposed on the beach at Kimmeridge Bay. It shows just how much erosion has taken place in recent decades. In the foreground two anti-tank blocks guard access to the narrow Gaulter Gap, one of two places that a German invasion force could get off the beach without having to scale cliffs.

This week's Saturday Timewatch goes back almost exactly 7 years to my one and only week-long visit to Arkansas. It features the rather obscure Arkansas and Missouri railroad, established in 1986 as a Class III Railroad operating a 150 mile route from Monett, Missouri to Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Built in 1965, locomotive 42 is nearest to the camera with 58 furthest away, built just one year later. For the aficionados, both are Alco C420s.

Even with a grain silo in the photo, I can't place the exact location. However, I suspect it was taken at a crossing in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Approaching Spring Old Town, TX, out of all the photos taken this was just about the only one that got a really clear view of the articulated 4-8-8-4 locomotive structure. Built in 1941 to power loads over the mountain gradients of western America, especially Utah, 4014 is the only one of eight remaining class locomotives that is in operation. Rebuilt by Union Pacific and converted to oil operation between 2016 -2019, 'Big Boy' is on a nationwide UP tracks tour to celebrate 150 years since the Golden Spike was struck to complete the transcontinental railroad.

Kim's video is well worth watching below to hear the wonderful, wonderful sound of the horn blowing long and loud. She apologises for having to re-situate her spot early on when some plonker blocked her chosen spot, but she soon got set up again. There is also a very short cut to eliminate rather choice words by some English bloke, can't think who, telling the culprit to get out of the effing way.

Taken almost exactly a decade ago, this is the last in my short series celebrating this week's 50th anniversary of the first fare-paying passenger flight by a Boeing 747. That flight was was operated by Pan-Am from JFK - London Heathrow.

In this photo, a China Airlines Cargo is about to touch down on 05L at Ringway, Manchester Airport. Today, the company still operates just over 20 jumbos. Like the one above, most are dedicated to freight.

Long may we continue to see the Queen of the Skies!

An elderly gentleman (with rather broken English) stopped his car and talked about this water wheel in Olden, Norway. He said that he was born and raised in a house, no longer standing, just down the road from here though he now lived in a nearby small town. The wheel provided power to grind whatever grain could be grown and that was then used to make bread. He said that it was last used in 1946.

It wasn't entirely clear whether this was the wheel's original position or if it had been moved here for display purposes from somewhere very close by.

Note the sod roof!

Note : I would ask you to refrain from political comments on this particular post. This is not the place. It is merely shown here as probably the most famous locomotive in Texas and one with a most interesting special livery.

Only built in 2005, this locomotive saw relatively little active service for a variety of reasons including the economic crash of 2007-2010. Painted in a scheme that reflects that of Air Force One, the number is chosen because George Bush was the 41st President of the United States. Previously, it was last in Houston to haul his funeral train in 2018, a major event.

Photographed here as part of the 'Big Boy' 4014 operation, it was moved the following day to be donated by Union Pacific to the George Bush Presidential Library at College Station, TX. After prepping, the locomotive will be on permanent display in the pavilion from next year.

Saturday Timewatch this week features a disused Texaco gas station at the junction of FM150 and FM 170, Driftwood, Texas. I would hazard a guess that it dates from around the 1930s?

Driftwood has been a tiny community ever since the 1880s, often with a population below 100. However, being not that far from the San Marcos - Austin corridor, that is all changing and we could certainly see evidence of significant residential development, not to mention several wineries, wedding venues, a golf and ranch club nearby etc etc.

Note that a sign mentions the Driftwood Historical Preservation Society so let's hope that the building survives the changes going on in the community.

This week's Saturday Timewatch is for everyone but especially Tom and all the other rail enthusiasts. Apologiesfoir the poor quality but it is a photo of a photo on the interpretation board at Maiden Newton station. The station is still open for business on the Heart of Wessex line from Weymouth to Castle Cary and onwards to either Bristol or Bath.

This photo (date unknown) concerns the branch line that ran from Maiden Newton down to West Bay via Bridport. A first section opened in 1857, extending to West Bay by 1884. The line finally closed in 1975. In this photo, the locomotive (4562) has previously pushed the Bridport branch train up an inclined siding and then withdrawn to the branch approach (see post below). Under the control of the guard the train has then rolled back into the platform bay. Once the carriages had come to a stop, the locomotive has rejoined the train for the next service to Bridport.

Taken by an unknown (to me) photographer in 1929, this photo shows the paddle steamer P/S St.Julien boarding at Weymouth Quay, after the arrival of a boat-train service from London Waterloo. The ship would shortly sail for the Channel Islands.

After decades of wrangling, our useless local council finally decided this week to rip up the rails the main Weymouth Station to the old Weymouth Quay Station. As there is the land for a much larger car park very close to Weymouth Station, all sorts of pressure groups have long argued the potential for a heritage tram style service along this short stretch of line. Firstly that would have helped alleviate the traffic jams in town but also no doubt attract rail enthusiasts just to ride and photograph such a service.

Too late now. The council wouldn't even consider tarmacking over the tracks so that they could easily be uncovered should a future council want to reverse that decision. They should bow their heads in shame.

Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) near Kelowna, Brirish Columbia) features 18 trestle bridges and 2 tunnels, originally built at the turn of the last century, and rebuilt again (near exact replicas) between 2003 and 2008 after the Okanagan Mountain Park Fire claimed 12 of the trestle bridges. This steam train would have made its way through this steep-walled canyon along a railroad dotted with trestles in difficult terrain. Above is my photo of an old photo on an interpretation board showing a train crossing the original wooden # 6 trestle.

How I would love to have seen steam along this line. Sadly there are no more trains on this section but it can still be accessed as a cycle or walking trail.

(Apologies for short or complete lack of comments on your photos due to dodgy internet connections!)

Flickr Explore # 20 on Sunday, October 12, 2014

....but not quite gone.

Taken on April 14th 2025, the foreground features locomotive 568 in Galveston's BNSF boneyard. Meanwhile in the background, the old concrete grain silos are being taken down blow by blow.

This week's Saturday Timewatch features a notice affixed to the bridge over the River Cerne in Charminster, Dorset.

I do not know the original date of the sign. However, the code at the bottom left is very specific as to when the relevant legislation was passed. The Malicious Injuries to Property (England) Act went through the parliament session commencing in the 7th year and becoming law in the 8th year of the reign of King George 4th i.e. 1827. This Act was the 30th of the year and the relevant section is Section 13.

This week's Saturday Timewatch reveals a most unexpected find in the form of a VR Queen Victoria letter box, in situ and still in use today.

It is hidden away inside the old entrance to the current Young Offenders Institute, Portland. Then known as Portland Prison, the institution was built between 1848-57. Wall box-type post boxes first came into use for fixing into existing walls in 1857. So this could have been a very early example.

This week's Saturday Timewatch goes back exactly 13 years to a foul but wonderful morning at Manchester Airport for the departure of the one and only Antonov AN-225.

After a 5 day stay and lots of false rumours, the aircraft finally left for Tripoli, Libya en route to Lagos, Nigeria. The cargo was the stage and sound equipment for a concert that was part of Nigeria's Independence anniversary celebrations on October 7 and 8, 2006. Among those performing were Snoop Dogg, Beyonce, JayZ and numerous African-based artists.

UR-82060 is still airworthy as far as I know but doesn't seem to have had that much business of late. I suspect tension between Russia and the Ukraine may be behind the lack of current work. A second AN-225, remains in Kiev c70% built, but has never flown.

Like so much 'old' stuff in America, it is quite difficult to find any written history about these huge concrete silos in Katy, Texas, on the edge of Greater Houston, some 25 miles west of downtown. It seems they were built in 1944 both for rice drying and storage, possibly by the American Rice Growers Co-op based in Katy, though I cannot confirm that.

However, it is clear why the complex was built at this location. Each of the four silo buildings had direct access to the railroad. The rail tracks are those of the historic Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, known as "the K-T" and later "the Katy" after which the current city was named. Sadly towards Houston their tracks are no more, having been ripped up less than 20 years ago to facilitate yet another widening of Interstate-10. There seems to be an active line going west towards San Antonio but just how 'active' I do not know.

From the lack of information, it seems no-one is overly interested in preserving such iconic structures. I reckon the only reason they haven't been knocked down for yet another identikit shopping mall is that they are so strongly built of reinforced concrete that they would cost a fortune to demolish!