Selected Sunday Snippets

Old news item removed. An fbb bludner of the inexcusable kind?

Back to the Future
Downham Market is a pretty little town ...

... situated on the electrified line between Kings Cross, Cambridge and Kings Lynn. It has an hourly service of electric trains enhanced to half hourly at peak times.

Naturally, the station has carried branding for Great Northern, now a bit of the new and much reviled mega Thameslink franchise.

Of course, it used to be part pf Chris Green's Network SouthEast (NSE) and, long after privatisation, still had its NSE sign.

So what is this, a picture that popped into the fbb in-box?

A brand new replacement sign, just like the old one.

The powers that be have refurbished the station in full NSE style and, according to all sources, it looks magnificent.

It's not just the colours, all the signs have been re-NSE-ed.

Below are Chris Green (ex NSE creator) wearing his railway heritage hat (far left - actually not wearing a hat at all) and other railway glitterati at the "official" launch of the new look a few weeks ago.

Wonderful! And here is the "before" version ...

... and the "after".

An Odd Place for a B15 to B Cn?

The B15 was supposed to be the natural successor to the once ubiquitous Leyland National ...

... the bus that dominated the National Bus Comany's single deck fleet in the 1970s amd early 1980s. But the B15 was not a great success. It's engineering was unpopular and a series of strikes and re-organisations at British Leyland did not help. Eventually the Olympian replaced it.

We now go to Kenwood Road in Sheffield, once the leafy home of the more wealthy suburban dwellers, but now replete with  offices and replacement blocks of flats.

It was here that Sheffield correspondent Roy found a purple B15.

It was having its purple paint touched up (hence paint pot bottom left).

the wonderful "Ian's Bus Stop" web site gives the vehicle's history in great detail. fbb offers the expurgated version!

10/79    new to Aldenham
 6/80    into service (North Street garage)
 9/94    privatised to Leaside Buses

         painted with gold Leaside Travel & swan logo

11/97    withdrawn
         bought by Arriva Scotland West

         centre doorway panelled over (no window)
 5/00    bought by Finch, Wigan
         window added to door panel

 9/12    sold to Used Coach Sales, (Warrington)
         bought by The Oak Loft,(furniture store)in
         Bridport, Torquay or Exeter
         painted purple

None of which explains how it gets to Kenwood Road!

The intrepid Roy asked the painters and records their response as follows.

Parked in Kenwood Road, having its paint work tided up. It will be used on a Channel 4 programme to be screened in November of this year - title not known (they wouldn't tell me). It will do a 3000 mile trip round the UK.

More news, as they say, when we have it.

Talyllyn Topics
The mysterious Twitter has sent fbb some lovely pictures of this historic narrow gauge line. Here is a train arriving at Rhydyronen amongst springtime floral magnificence.

William Wordsworth would have been in ecstasy! His unpublished variant version of "Daffodils" is appropriate here.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er Tywyn's hills,

At Rhydyronen was a crowd,

A host of golden daffodils;

Beside the line, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

and twinkle at the close of day,

They filled the places by the line

along the margin all the way:

Ten thousand saw I brightly gleam,

Almost as lovely as puffs of steam.

Also, here is how the Talyllyn joins the "Thomas the Tank Engine" promotional craze.

The front loco is the real life Talyllyn posing as Sodor's narrow gauge Peter Sam ...

... behind is a red version of Duncan ...

... who, in literary form, is yellow.

Sodor's red narrow gauge loco is Rheneas ...

... surely a better disguise for the real-life Douglas?

Narrow gauge railway modellers can obtain the Bachmann model of Skarloey ...

... oddly only available in America.

And Finally...
It's not just fbb who gets it wrong. Here is an advert for a second-hand model bus from Hattons.

Not quite!

 Next Dorset Doom blog : Monday 5th June