The Silly Season - Internet Insanity

It's All On Line : It's Rubbish!

Readers may remember this weird picture, later repeated with the same image flipped from left to right. Well now, wherever that location might be, a place where trains can cross a major dual carriageway without track or signalling anywhere in sight, it seems to have suffered yet another disaster.

There has been a volcanic eruption!

What is more, the disaster has happened when exactly the same cars are passing. Not only that, but most of those observing the flow of lava have nipped off, changed their clothes and returned to stand in exactly the same places.

Remarkable!

Astute readers may also remember thus picture of a horrific train crash ...

... which showed a train that looked identical, but in a completely different location to one published previously.

But here it the same marque of train a third time.

Clearly, this type of train is very accident prone, but so is the above location or something very like it.

But this time Miss Scantily clad was not present to enliven the picture but Mr Hi-vis vest is running along the "four foot" in exactly the same pose. Oddly, although the location looks very similar, the bottom picture shows extra tracks have replaced a tall wall of sandstone rock face.

But surely we should be warned about travelling in these dangerous trains!

Wikipedia, accurate for once, tells is how it is!

Because of slight eyesight problems fbb has turned to YouTube for his bedtime "reading", and, more often than not, turns quickly away!

So here is a small election of YouTube "title pages" all of which have one thing in common. The incident or vehicles never appear in the subsequent video and they are never referred to in the commentary. 

The images are all false.

Some may claim the images are generated by AI - Awful and Insulting - but fbb knows that these are AX, Artificial eXtrapolations by clever drawing or painting software.  The technology is about as Intelligent as fbb's cat, Mr Tubbles ...

... but that is an insult to Mr Tubbles; alert and decisive as ever!

Considering Carrots

Who would load "loose" carrots into a curtain sided trailer? And what breed of carrot grows as long and thick as the workman's arm?

Vlogging about Logging

Comment on the above is superfluous. 

Below; the driver has obviously given up or fallen to his death out of the cab leaving his load for another employee to deliver.!

It is equally dangerous to take he strain by using a train!

High Capacity Highbridge

This blog tends to concentrate on public transport for passengers. Maybe this vehicle could help with the peak hour crowds ...

... as long as there were no over bridges en route. In a similar vein, one video adulates luxury mobile homes ...

... as long as the tour avoids width and height restrictions. If the height and width bother you, you might try this chauffeur driven limo.

Is the helicopter included in the fee?

Colossal Containerisation

The vessel is called "Ever Ace" but fbb has found a better picture of the actual vessel.

Or is it?

Is the watcher of the video or the viewer of the supposedly correct lower picture, meant to believe that Evergreen have filled up their vessel with a zillion pristine containers just for the publicity photo. 

This is a more realistic Evergreen picture!

Convoi Exceptionel!
It is amazing how clever they are at conveying big stuff by road!

But at least there are a couple of hi-vis staff to give the tank a bit of a shove if things get tricky with the cornering! 

In the picture below there would appear to be enough staff to carry the transformers!

Carry On Cruising

How clever of the naval architect to design both halves of the vessel exactly the same! 

And if you don't like your port of departure ...

... just pop the ship on the back of a truck and move it to another port. A quick visual comparison suggests that either the truck driver is a super-strength giant ...

... or the ship's passengers are all toddlers in nappies.

The Big Conference

The media has been reporting on the chummy get together of the Presidents of Russia, China and India held a day or so ago. The on-line media offers some insight into personal transport, sadly eschewed My Mr Modi.

But Vlad and Xi seem to be enjoying themselves in their hovering eggs.

Dashed clever. these Chinese!

They might try something with one wheel?

Or a small plane.

Dashed clever these Chinese and they can defy the Laws of Physics as well! Xi seem to be wearing exactly the same expression in both. Perhaps he's a waxworks dummy?

fbb must try one of the three sometime.

In case you had forgotten, NONE of this transport phantasmagorical appears in any of the YouTube videos for which they provide the "title page".

 Next Silly Season, Pickering Pottiness - Weds 3 Sept 

The Silly Season - Cement Stupidity

Depressed By Depressed

Readers with an astounding memory may remember that fbb has previously waxed not very lyrical about cement wagons, the one below being known as a "Presflo" because compressed air was used to load and unload the cement powder. 

A later design consisted of two large tin cans ...

... also using air pressure as before. A further development was the so-called "depressed centre" tanks, the cause of fbb's current grief. Here is a "single" on a short fixed chassis.

When they were new they were shiny white or pristine grey.

 

But the combination of cement powder spills and very little cleaning led to a perpetual mucky image.

The next development was to plonk two tanks (both depressed) on a bogie chassis.

They soon acquired the same tatty image! 

And so to Lima.

Lima was an Italian company that produced a wide range of railway models from all over the world.

In the mid 1970s, Lima entered the British market like no other company had ever done before or since. At first their range consisted of a UK locomotive (as with the Deltic below) ...

... but paired with with a mixed bag of wagons, some UK style, others from their continental range but nominally painted to suggest UK origin.

A much bigger UK range followed.

Experts tell us that Lima had a more efficient production technique which enable them to sell a much greater variety of liveries and wagon types. In theory a production run of 500 vehicles was viable, whereas Triang Hornby needed at least 4000. The benefit of the Lima operation is that, for example, depressed centre tanks could proliferate in  many attractive (?) liveries.

How many of these colourful wagons were genuinely used on the UK network must be somewhat dubious. 

Experts say that, at peak production, the company had 300 UK modes in its catalogue.

Perhaps their business model was not quite as slick as it appeared, because in the mid 1990s, Lima merged with Rivarossi, Lionel and Jouef. This deal did not produce the goods (literally!) and the whole lot went bust in 2004.

The assets were bought by Hornby who absorbed much of the UK product into their own range. The depressed centre tanks were taken over from the depressed Lima and made into Hornby models.

The only change was the imprinted manufacturer's name in the plastic of the chassis.

Anyway, as readers will already know, fbb realised to his horror that he only had Lima's two types in his collection; but nowhere in the coal measures of his layout did he have the Hornby versions.

He does now! Here is the four wheel tank ...

... and the bogie twin.

The Lima bogie version came complete with extra bits for the purchaser to add (desperate to cut production costs as the company sank slowly!?) which fbb hasn't!

AI - Awful Installations

As fbb was preparing the content above, he came across this article. This is just an extract but ...

... it doesn't look good for the Active Investors in the new systems.

Oh dear! Customers at Waitrose has better be VERY VERY careful as they check their till receipts.

Maybe go to Tesco?

Undaunted, fbb decided to try AI for himself, by commissioning ChatFBB to write a short Ode about his recent experiences with the panic search and subsequent acquisition of the missing Hornby tank wagons. 

The results, using Adequate Inspiration are, as is to be expected, very weak poetically but well above the standard of today's so-called AI. The verses are certainly miles better that could be Automatically Invented by any commercially available AI stupidware!

Enjoy!

An Ode To Missing Tank Wagons

and their subsequent arrival

by

A Gentleman Of Quality

(Using AI)

=========================

Your blogger confessed

To being depressed;

His zeal was repressed.

Two tanks he possessed

Each lacking one "guest".

Both missing! A pest!

He was a bit stressed!

So he had to invest,

(With funding he's blest),

Thus, at Ebay's behest,

With no bidding contest,

He searched east and west;

The challenge addressed!

Success was finessed ...

 ... He purchased the best

To add to the rest.

(To childhood regressed?

It's hard to digest!).

Once, sad that he messed

Up, now passes the test.

His failure redressed,

His woes now suppressed,

He feathers his nest.

And now, well impressed 

His shelf fully dressed;

He redoubles his zest

And has not digressed

To continue his quest.

His target's assessed -

To own ALL tanks, no jest.

He is really ...

 ...   ...   really ...   ...

...   ...   ...   really ...

 ...   OBSESSED!! ... 

and

Does not wear a vest

To keep warm his chest.

==========================

 Silly Season Internet Idiocy blog - Tues 2 Sept 

Eighty Years Of Diesels

 And Electrics!

As a comely little chap, fbb's memory of steam locos at Northampton Castle station (taken there by a doting maiden aunt!) was that they were black, very mucky and prone to make scary noises unpredictably! In his early trainspotting teens he recognised that big passenger engines were usually green ...

... but very occasionally red.

He never saw an A4 in blue.

Preservationists and modellers would have you believe that the Western Region painted everything green ...

... and it is true that more classes of passenger locos were green than in any other region; but not the humble Pannier.

Then along came diesels and for the "modernisation" era they were all green!

It very soon became a very dull oil-stained green. Then we had yellow ends ...

... which adorned everything!

Thus everything with an engine in it was green; until the electrification out of Euston when blue appeared ...

... soon gaining yellow ends as well!

Then along came blue, blue, blue and grey and bigger yellow ends. 

There were example thereof at "The Greatest Gathering".

But a person unfamiliar with the recent history of the so-called "commercial" railways of Britain, who happened across the farrago at Derby, might be forgiven for thinking every diesel and electric loco on the network was obliged by law to have a different livery.

There was even a diesel in all over battleship grey!

Maybe it was undercoat!

Freightliner had an electric celebrating 60 years of lining freight ...

... and, in a completely different livery, a diesel doing just the same.

The company and its business is very different from its revolutionary origins.

The original concept was a feature of the infamous Beeching Report!

One loco sported a livery developed, presumably, for a character from Game of Thrones.

We all remember Prince Drax of the Power Generators; sadly the Drax business is about as environmentally UNfriendly as any maker of the electric could be! But it is a craze to praise (like Kermit the Frog) the joys of being green!

It is hard, whether you were there or not, to grasp the extent and variety of what filled Alstom's tracks over the Bank Holiday weekend. Part of a Eurostar train showed its face ...

... and there were multiple unit trains outside ...

... and in.

It was good to see "InterCity" livery represented ...

... although the less than successful unique loco of class 89 was, perhaps, not the best advert for the era!

The ugliest locomotive ever designed as there ...

... as was the similarly gruesome class 99.

This is a freight diesel loco that can also be an electric loco which, we are told, will be the environmental answer to a green maiden's prayer. 

Wasn't Stadler a character from "The Muppets"?

It was good to see versions of the almost everlasting diesel shunter still around.

Two of the smallest rail vehicles ...

... (which also run on the road!) were on show. 

But the good news for everyone, in amongst the massive technology of today's rail industry, you could still enjoy an ice cream van and a bouncy castle.

So, after a thrilling weekend, you would say goodbye to Sweet Caroline ...

... goodbye to the flocks, herds, assemblages of the big stuff ...

... and goodbye to him ...

.. or her from Norton Canes!

Which all leaves us with one final question.

If this was "The Greatest Gathering", what happens for the 250th, or even for the 300th anniversary? You cannot have anything greater than greatest! Without cryogenics, fbb will not be available for either.

Maybe there won't be any railways in year 2225?

Maybe there won't be any humans in year 2225?

Maybe there won't be any universe in 2225?

Soon after the troubles of those days, the sun will grow dark, the moon will no longer shine, the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers in space will be driven from their courses. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky; and all the peoples of earth will weep as they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. The great trumpet will sound, and he will send out his angels to the four corners of the earth, and they will gather his chosen people from one end of the world to the other.

The Bible Book of Revelation has some scary predictions on that matter!

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Coming soon to a blog near you ...

The Silly Season - Cement Stupidity

The Silly Season - Internet Idiocy

The Silly Season - Pickering Pottiness

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 Next Collecting blog : Mon 1 September