Public Transport Experience: Emergency Blog

Panic! Crisis! Disaster! Help!

All day yesterday - at least all day while this blog was being composed - fbb's internet has thrown a wobbly. The little lights on the modem (a k a router) ...

... against Power, 1, 2, 3 and 4, (whatever that means) but NOT against Internet, ADSL and WLAN, (whatever that might mean) were flashing furiously.

No 3 son (who knows about this stuff) proffered the following solution and advice as to what to do.

So now we know. The ADSL is down and no one at the Seaton end of the electirc string, it seems, can help it back up again.

ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) is a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ADSL differs from the less common symmetric digital subscriber line (SDSL). In ADSL, bandwidth and bit rate are said to be asymmetric, meaning greater toward the customer premises (downstream) than the reverse (upstream). Providers usually market ADSL as a service for consumers for Internet access for primarily downloading content from the Internet, but not serving content accessed by others.

So if your ADSL is down nothing comes IN along the pipes, but things can go OUT!

So fbb popped next door do his friendly neighbours and asked to "borrow" their internet for a while. Denise took away fbb's laptop and performed some dark technological nacromancy and internet was restored much to fbb's glee and delight.

But for reasons equally mysterious, fbb could still not log in to his emails.

Easy, you might think; download the pictures needed for today's blog via the mobile phone; pictures sent to correspondents specifically for the "Virus Variety Part 2" blog as meticulously planned by your forward-thinking author.

Except the phone is now on 4G and a feeble 4G at that; and the pictures are too big to download.

So you are getting a cobbled together oddments blog today - in the hope that the man who can help fbb's ADSL up from the pit into which it has fallen down will do something really clever and stuff will start happening again.

Remember The Bus Bus Shelter?

fbb has found the original Twit and is therefrom informed ...

... that he needs to go to India where he will find a place called Thrissur in Kerala. India has no streetview, but fbb could find what looked like a busy railway station ...

... with blue and white electric trains.

There is a propensity to decorate your locomotive, but fbb could not find out whether this was simple pride in the beast or for one of the many religious festivals that fill the Indian calendar.

Whilst dangly fronds of floral pulchritude might survive on a slow freight train on the other side of the world, fbb feels that bouquets on the front of a Pendolino might be swept away once the train reached speed!

Thrissur also has a busy bus terminal ...

... but there was no sign of the twittered bus bus shelter.

Un-Boxing ... What?

A favourite feature on YouTube is a video in which the purpetrator opens the box in which his latest purchased model railway item is stowed. Presumably those who view you tube too are on the edge of their seats as the precious purchase is progressively produced somewhat like an oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus out of a prestidigitator's headgear.

So here is fbb's exciting unboxing.

It comes with an outer wrapping of shiny grey plastic ...

... which, when removed, reveals a non-shiny cardboard box.

Open the box ...

No! Take the Money!

No! Open the Box!

Sorry, fbb forgot to take his pills yesterday morning. Anyway, open the box ...

... and amongst the wadnib-less packing stuff is ... wait for it ...

... a box ...

... wrapped, for no particular reason, in delicate and diaphanous tissue paper.

Remove the tissue ...

... and there is a bus! It takes, as Mrs fbb might suggest, ten men and a wee feller to get into the model+specific package, but once in, there is still a battle to struggle with.

The bus us contained snugly is a 3D jigsaw of plastic pieces which, once disconnected, allows the exhausted purchaser to get his clammy hands on the actual model.

fbb does not collect bus models as such; there are far too many made; and the old man's interests are wide-ranging and waver like ears of corn in a spring breeze. But this is a bus he remembers, personally.

The "Kneeling National" was the first bus delivered to South Yorkshire PTE that would "kneel". If a person of reduced mobility wished to board the driver would manipulate as piece of gubbins and the suspension would wheeze gently and the front entrance would slowly lower.

Once the passenger was safely stowed the system would raise up the bus very very slowly - painfully slowly indeed - before setting off.

It's favourite haunt was service 31 to Lower Walkley from the Central Bus Station ...

... but in its declining years it found its way on to the busy City Clipper 500.

It was the only bus in the fleet with red bumpers front and rear.

SYPTE 88 is a Leyland National 10351/2R, new in 1975. It was the subject of experiments to lower the platform of the bus at stops to assist boarding by the elderly and disabled. This was successfully achieved and 88 received wide media coverage (including a TV appearance on Tomorrow's World) as "the Kneeling National".

Such a device is now standard equipment on new buses.

and it works a lot faster!

In Praise Of Panscrub (No 237)

The two very low relief "premises" have been embellished by a low relief garden hedge. This will give a touch of domesticity to the view; but actually is designed to hide the fact that the buildings do not fit correctly.