Riding The Mustange 5

 Food Glorious Food

The two sons sent copious pictures of their meals which looked, well, unusual. But they seemed to trough them down very happily.

fbb is not sure whether the above was breakfast, lunch, dinner ot a bedtime snack! 

Ribs?

Morro The Mound!

Their last drive was from San Francisco to Morro Bay and then on to Los Angeles.

What interested fbb was that Morro Bay was a small settlement of 10,000 souls (Seaton is just over 8,500), quite a change from everywhere else they had rested their weary heads and paused the non-weary Mustang.

"Morro" is the Spanish for "small rounded hill" and there was one ...

... just offshore in days past but now linked by a causeway created when a proper harbour was built.

It is the plug of a long-extinct volcano and looks quite weird on the richly endowed California coast.

You can walk to the Morro and round its base; but climbing is forbidden on safety grounds and to protect wildlife.

Beach Glorious Beach

A few miles before Morro Bay, the sons stopped at "a beach" where the sunshine and deep blue sea was a marked contrast with the snow of Tahoe. The beach came complete with lavish public conveniences ...

...which leaked.

The sandy bay was vast (like everything else in America) and almost completely deserted ...

... apart from two men behaving badly! Here No 1 son followed a tradition frequently experienced since young boyhood.

He got his feet wet.

Trolley Glorious Trolley?

But, back at Morro Bay they sent a photograph of a bus stop.

There was adequate bus stop information ...

... but no buses. It was "out of season". fbb became excited when he saw the flag which announced that it was a "Trolley".

"Trolley" is a tram in the States, but the picture on the flag did not look like any tram fbb has ever encountered. And there were no rails and no overhead wires.

It's a bus, innit?

It (they?) is built to look like an old-fashioned tram.

But trolleys were there none. It was twirly - summer season only.

There are no useful videos on-line of the "Trolley" in normal service, but there is a three minute clip of the bus on a Christmas tour.

Well ....

The company also operates a more traditional town service for which fbb could not find a full timetable. Departure times (presumably every hour) appear on the excellent route map, showing a complex north ...

... to south route.

A list of stops is provided and buses will divert for up to three quarters of a mile on demand.

Vehicles used are the US equivalent of midi buses.

This is where the sons stayed, even more Columboesque than Tahoe.

Glorious Lacka Litta

The next pit stop was Santa Monica ...

... c/w seaside entertainments.

The one thing fbb noticed was how clean and tidy these places were; but then there was a rather strong warning.

... but it seems to work!

The City Of Angels Sadness

fbb has written about LA extensively in relatively recent blogs so will pass on this visit. 

There was a sad but meaningful reason for this particular end to their road trop.

It was in LA that No 2 son died.

It was simple but emotional visit to the scene and to the hospital which tried to resuscitate him.

 Next Havant Happening blog : Tues 8 April 

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 The Easter Jigsaw 

All four Gospels tell of "Palm" Sunday (Palm leaves above) but only John tells us that the branches strewn in front of Jesus were from palm trees. Although palms were not particularly prolific in Jerusalem (Jericho was "The City Of Palms") it is highly likely that the leaves would be collected especially for this sort of event.

Throughout written history, even before the Bible came into being, the gift of a palm leaf was a mark of respect for a well deserved victory. Palm leaves were awarded at sports events in ancient Greece and Rome and, even today, the "Palme D'Or" is the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

So Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday as a victorious leader?

Victorious? Five days later he was crucified for treason against Rome.

Some victory!

Palm Sunday is on Sunday 13th April.

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Sunday Variety

Building Bridges

Using a bridge as a scenic break in a model railway is standard practice. It disguises the fact the the length of the layout is crazily too short to represent anything on the full size network. And we all love the experience of seing oue train bursting from under a bridge, coming from far off places just three feet away!

fbb's bridge model appeared in the 1961 Triang Catalogue ...

... and in one form or another is still there today 64 years later! Here is a slightly busted one in a Triang box ...

... a complete model in a Triang Hornby box ...

... and a slightly modified version in a Hornby box.

The road deck in grey shows you how it was assembled; three arches with a separate top bit! And it is the one arch version that is in this year's Hornby catalogue ...

... and just for the record, here is the original Triang version from about 63 yeears ago.

But this one picture is very misleading!

The bidge will take a single OO railway track across the top, but, as wrongly hinted above, the arches are not tall enough to take OO scale trains underneath.

So fbb's had to be built up on plinths. The old man is not skilled enough to match the exquisite fine detail of the arches, so made some bases out of chunks of 2x1 and plastic stone facing.

Some "weeds" complete the conversion into a farm access bridge, little used by motor traffic.

Ironically, you cannot see most of it - the carriage shed blocks the view. But fbb knows it is there and visually complete!

Talking of Blocking The View

Buses taking yopu to Leavesden Studios for the Harry Potter "Experience" have always been plastered with Contravision. But thanks to the activites of a certain schoolboy wizard ...

... hero of the film "Barry Putty and the Goblet of Chocolate", the buses are now bigger with three axles ...

... and even more adept at sending their passengers dotty.

Enjoy your ride!

New Trains For Grand Central

First it was HSTs, the best ever; then a few Adelantes were added ...

... and now it's all Adelante.

Arriva, owners of Grand Central, has just been awarded a further eleven years' "access rights". They can continue playing trains.

On the strength of this an order has flown off by express post to Hitachi for shiny new stock.

Order worth around £300 million for fleet of new trains, which will increase seats by 20 per cent, improving capacity and connectivity.

45 cars to be manufactured at Hitachi Rail in the North East and financed by Angel Trains, helping secure highly skilled jobs and unlocking a new advanced manufacturing opportunity for rail.

State-of-the-art ‘tri-mode’ train technology has proven its ability to cut emissions and fuel costs by around 30 per cent to support UK Government’s decarbonisation agenda.

Announcement is made from Hitachi’s Newton Aycliffe factory and attended by the Secretary of State for Transport, Heidi Alexander MP.

Does anyone other than Hitachi make "Intercity" type trains? Train spotting is getting very boring. "Tri-mode" means they will draw power from overhead; have diesels on board; and loads of batteries.

Hopefully there will be enough room for passemngers but there is an awful lot to go wrong!

April Fool (1)

Vlogger Sam Turner (of Sam's Trains fame) posted are rather feeble gag for All Fools' Day. In his traditional and oft-repeated style, he was viewing a new OO gauge model.

fbb will not bore his readers with the full detail, but the gag (not at all obvious from the verry first second, was for a vehicle designed by Richard Maunsell (he's real) to carry two passengers by leaping over other trains!

Sam's review overlooked the fact that to leap it wpuld need power and it ain't got none! The two passengers were hung, inexplicably, on the hub of te rotating frame.

One mildly amusing addition was the inclusion in the model of two Firth Brown wheels, apparently added by Oliver Bulleid when he rebuilt the vehicle.

These,  of course, mirror the wheels used in Bulleid's famous "Spam Can" trains for the Southern Railway.

The above picture is on-line and neither a Sams Trains nor an fbb creation. Here is a real Spam Can, and note Olly Bulleid's wheels.

A far better gag would have been to propose a new Triang Hornby loco powered by a propellor.

No, that would be equally ridiculous!

April Fool 2

As ridiculous as this! The proposal is to create a dry ski slope down Ryde's main Union Street shopping area and bus route. 

The April 1st published picture is as daft as Sams Trains video.

You can tell it is Union Street by the street name on the left ...

... and the number of properties selling "Rydes" on it - especially at Christmas. But on the right ...

... it had become Dain Street and there is a sign for the Dry Skip Slipe.

Chat GPT doing it worst yet again! And they say that AI will revolutionise all our lives?

Ryde has had a water slide down Union Street for several summers, sponsored by Wightlink ...

... so a proper picture of Union Street, maybe with snow and real life skiers added, might have been a better April Fool gag.

Blog plans for next week include:- the final part of sons' road trip; major bus revisions by Stagecoach in the Portsmouth area and a possible new station for Herefordshire.

 Next Mustang blog : Mon 7 Aptil  

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 The Easter Jigsaw 

The Easter Story begins in the Garden of Eden with mankind's disobedience, a challenging picture of the risks in having the Godly gift of Free Will. But our jigsaw piece shows the donkey of Palm Sunday.

A victorious King might parade into his captured city on a donkey, rather than on his big black snorting charger, to symbolise that he came in peace and humility. The message was that peace was his to give; all that was needed was for the population to accept the new regime and all would be well.

So where is Jesus' Peace today?

Still largely rejected as it was at the first Easter.

Palm Sunday is one week from today.

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