Sunday Variety

PLEASE NOTE

At 2030 yesterday the complete blog for today vanishjed from the screen and all devices.  Whether it was the result of the Microsoft outage ...

... or the US Air Traffic Control outage ...

... or something like the French Freezer hack ...

... fbb cannot be sure.

It could have been fbb's incompetence. Surely not?

But pressing the "undo" button did not recover what was a lengthy blog to compose. "Variety" blogs are harder to recreate because of their very nature, a complex collection of buts and pieces.

Rather than attempt to rewrite the whole lot later yesterday evening, fbb will list the contents and start again today to recreate the full posting for tomorrow.

So expect ...

East Midlands Railway - Really?

TGV inOui : Ouigo : version 5

Great : Extra Gatwick Express

The Professor and the Model Train

For The Record

fbb does not use Microslop Windslow on any of his devices, so was immune from the outage. His main machines use Linux, but Google supplies Blogger software. Maps for blogs and visuals for his Fellowship Meetings are created on Software which was introduced in 1992.

Is Nothing Reliable Today?

 CHRISTmas 

reminds us of the reliability

of the Message of the Bible,

a reliability that dates back

many many years.

We don't know who wrote

These words, BUT ...

I look to the mountains;

where will my help come from?

My help will come from the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.

He will not let you fall;

your protector is always awake.

The protector of his people

never dozes or sleeps.

The Lord will guard you;

he is by your side to protect you.

The sun will not hurt you during the day,

nor the moon during the night.

The Lord will protect you from all danger;

he will keep you safe.

He will protect you as you come and go

now and forever.

... Many millions recognise that reliability day by day! The above is Psalm 121, written about 2700 years ago, probably when the author was exiled in Babylonia, having seen Jerusalem destroyed.

 Sunday Monday Variety : 16th Nov 

Saturday Variety

Not Just Taking The Bacon?

Lokaltog A/S (English: Local Trains Ltd) is a Danish railway company responsible for train operation and related passenger services on nine local railways on the islands of Zealand, Lolland and Falster in Denmark. The cmpany was formed on 1 July 2015 as a merger of Lokalbanen A/S and Regionstog A/S. Movia owns a part of Lokaltog, whereas buses are owned by companies, subcontractors, that are paid by this transit agency to drive according to contract.

Now your aged blogger knows little about Denmark. He does remember adverts for Bacon ...

... with "Danish" printed on the rind of every slice. Then fbb's granny always ate Lurpak ...

... on her sarnies. And we all remember (?) the classic Mermaid of the harbour at Copenhagen.

What is interesting, geographically, is that the capital in not on Denmark mainland; it is in the island called Zeeland. Local Tog, the train operator, is to be found on the green bits ...

... with Lolland and Falster being the two almost-touching islands at the bottom. The road map may help.

Lokaltog's website site has a poor quality map with no intermediate stations ...

... or, you could try the national rail site diagram ...

... which shows the Lokaltog lines in grey, again with no intermediate stations.

Fortunately the company site provides a list of its timetables ...

... and, via an on-screen click, to the timetables themselves. Again these present some mysteries. Here is 110R/210R for Monday to Friday ...

... with a distanced lack of station times! But then on Saturdays, Sundays and Public Holidays, the hourly service goes "all the way" and serves all the stops.

Note that both tables are very much "fixed interval". Here is the useless grey line on the network diagram.

This is the sort of train you might expect on your Lokaltog service ...

... but the company has just ordered some single car units for the quieter routes.

Why will it take nearly FIVE years to get these units into service?

Shrewsbury Edition 2

fbb reviewed Keith Shayshutt's Shrewsbury timetable book some weeks ago (months ago?).  Keith has rushed out a second edition consequent on significant changes from 2nd November.

Most notably, Arriva has lost the contract for the city's Park and Ride services; all passing to Hotspur.

Hotspur now has a very significant presence in Shrewsbury!

Arriva used to be dominant and had already lost several of their local routes on tended. The loss of the Park & Ride might make their whole Shrewsbury operation non viable.

So do we expect another Arriva capitulation?

The other change is with the X81.

This offers five return journeys a day ...

... between Newtown and Craven Arms, thus providing important new links connecting with various bus and train services from Shrewsbury.

On the map below, you can spot the X81 running via Bishops Castle.

The booklet is available from MDS books at £4.99 plus 91p postage.

Trees To Please!

Railway modellers struggle with trees. To be realistic, they need to be hand made and thus can be expensive. Trees are often big, but rarely big enough on a model.

The relatively innocuous trees on the left are at least FOUR times the height of the train. So on this posh OO scale model ...

... the trees behind the goods shed are about right. But the modellet has used false perspective to "trompe l'oeil" with progressively smaller trees and buildings to a reduced scale.

This is hard to do effectively, but helped if you trees are a green wodge of foliage; which is what lumps of real trees look like from a distance.

But the owner of this N scale view is less successful.

The trees are too green, too small and look like "bought" cheap trees. It is what fbb buys!

Sometimes you can clump trees together in a copse and thus hide the inaccuracy of the models. That helps if you budget does not extend to hand made trees.

The above is for ONE tree! But it does look fantastic!

No, fbb won't. He cringed at buying two large oak (?) trees a white back at a fiver each. But they do look fantastic!

Well, better than the cheap Chinese trees.

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Happy Christmas?

Each year, fbb has traditionally added a Christmas "thought" to blogs in December.  But this year there may be a problem. On 21st December your festive blogger is due to have cataracts vacuumed from his left eye - the right to follow after the festive fun, frolic and Faith season has faded into 2027.

He has also agreed to take a cancellation if one becomes available.

Interruption to blog writing is possible.

So a disconnected series of Seasonal Snippets will be added as the thoughts penetrate the fbb little grey cells.

For example:-

This picture is from The London City Mission.

It says, "This year, let's put Jesus the Christ (the Messiah, the Saviout) back into the Season that has become such an irrelevant money-grabbing mess."

Try it.  CHRISTmas  will be so much better!

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 Next Variety blog ; Sunday 15th Nov 

Ecclesiastical Omnibology (3)

Not Traveline; Not Book; Not Map; But In Porch!

How come, you may ask, is there a secret bus timetable posted pointedly in that porch? And why is this bus service not showing in any Cornwall publicity? fbb suspects that it does not appear in these timetable frames at the St Just bus stop!

Nope, not there.

Here's the full timetable as provided by the Church of St Just In Roseland.

We note that it runs on Wednesday only and links St Mawes with Tregony, although fbb suggests that the main business will be to bring shoppers into the retail hot spot that isn't St Mawes.

It will also bring more adventurous travellers to join the ferry from St Mawes to Falmouth - a lot quicker than the lengthy two bus ordeal via Truro.

Connections are not always ideal and crossing can be interrupted by bad weather. The mystery bus service is Wednesdays only, but, for the record and in (non) compliance with standard practice, NS means not Sundays.

Because there is no map for the mystery bus service, it is a bit of a challenge to work out where it goes.

Journeys run via Gerrans, Portreath and Veryan to Tregony providing links not always available on routes 50 and 51. Most journeys operate as a circulation continuing from Tregpny via Ruan Lanthorne, Phillips and Trelissick and vice versa.

The middle journey of the day, however, does not loop but operates both ways via Philleigh.

So who operates this intriguing and secret route?

RCT is Roseland Community Transport.

The service started on 11th March this year ...

... and is operated by a minibus ...

... with a flat fare of £3 - so a lot cheaper than a taxi.

Cornwall council does provide a list of a whole load of community bus services, but Round Roseland is not among them.

Maybe "the lad" who compiles the council's list is not commissioned to keep his list updated.

The secrecy continues!

Sadly, fbb was not in Cornwall on a Wednesday. Had he been there on the right day, it is likely that he would have escaped the clutches of his attentive hosts and gone for a ride.

Roseland Community Transport also runs excursions as shown below.

Whilst thinking about a ride, there is another ferry from St Mawes, operating for the summer season only.

It runs to a place called Place ...

... whence there is a pleasant walk to St Anthonys Head.

Aged readers, notably those who were parents of young kiddies, will recognise the lighthouse thereat.

Correct! It is the fictional setting for the delightful Jim Henson puppet series, Fraggle Rock.

Here us a better view of the lighthouse ...

... with its distinctive black chimney stacks.

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What A Relief 1

Three very "low relief" cottage buildings (six hereditaments) are completed (nearly so!) with one more to go. 

No 3, with yellow doors, is the best of the three with very little bodge work required.

No 4 should be completed by Monday with work on site to follow!

What A Relief 2

As a teenager, fbb was impressed with Airfix plastic kits of railway stuff and useful associated scenery, including houses and a church.

Then "Superquick" printed card kits arrived. Young fbb assembled some low relief townscape models on the road behind and higher up than his station,

One set of three low relief buildings included a cinema.

Imagine fbb's delight when he espied a scene in the current (December) issue of Railway Modeller.

There is the 'Superquick' ABC cinema of over 60 years ago, still available and on a layout of quality in a much respected periodical. fbb's  layout, back then, was also a layout if quality - poor quality.

As you can see, and as fbb remembers, Superquick buildings have less detail, e.g. 'sculptured' windows and doors, generally flatter than Metcalf as in the cottages above.

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 Next Variety blog : Saturday 14th Nov