Snippets
Not So Fast, Sheildsman
The Chaserider leaflets have been reprinted and will be on the streets soonest. Not only have the excellent D & G people produced leaflets in the first place; they have reprinted an update. THREE chocolate peanuts.
Leaflet Location Lottery
Some years ago fbb was involved in designing and printing some leaflets for Harrogate and District, then one of young Fearnley's companies. Faced with competition from Harrogate Independent Travel (they soon gave up) what was needed was something cheap, quick and cheerful. fbb and a chum loaded them (printed quickly on IoW) into their vehicle, drove to Harrogate, distributed them to all newsagents (and the bus station) and drove back to the Isle of Wight.
They were received with enthusiasm in all outlets.
Within a short space of time after the demise of HIT new material was produced and similarly distributed locally.
Of course, you could also make your leaflets available at your company's enquiry office, located conveniently in the town centre.
Oh, you've closed it so save money!
Happy Holy Hobbyist
It is good to see in the March Railway Modeller that railways and a clergy still form a holy alliance. The reverend illustrated above is Michael Bourke, emeritus (i.e. retired) Bishop of Wolverhampton who has built a splendid layout based on Sandy (Beds).
The station was, in reality, two stations ...
... LNER on the main East Coast route and LMS on the cross-country amble to Cambridge.
His reverence admits that he is not a rivet counter, being more interested in creating the overall impression of the real setting.
This he does by using a slight reduction of scale for the nearby station appurtenances (3.5mm to the foot) and a bigger reduction at the rear (3mm to the foot). Because real station buildings vary in size, the artistic "trompe l'oeil" makes the station area look larger than it is.
That Happens To My Loco
Things going both ways at once over pointwork happens quite often on model railways; so it is good to see that there is valid evidence that the prototype can do the same!
Beautiful Stations
Antwerp Central takes a lot of beating, both outside and in.
But lets not forget we have a few goodies of our own. This one is often neglected because we don't look UP.
Edinburgh Waverley. And below ...
... work in progress to uncover the hidden glories of the former refreshment rooms at Retford.
And Now, This Man
William Heath Robinson (31 May 1872 to 13 September 1944) was an English cartoonist, illustrator and artist, best known for drawings of whimsically elaborate machines to achieve simple objectives
In the UK, the term "Heath Robinson contraption" gained dictionary recognition around 1912. It became part of popular language during the 1914–1918 First World War as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contrivance. "Heath Robinson contraption" is perhaps most commonly used in relation to temporary fixes using ingenuity and whatever is to hand, often string and tape, or unlikely cannibalisations. Its continuing popularity was undoubtedly linked to Britain's shortages and the need to "make do and mend" during the Second World War.
This man, Tim Dunn ...
... affable presenter of a series on railway architecture (On Yesterday yesterday - Tuesday 10th Feb; back numbers on UKTV Play), has twittered a memory from his childhood.
He claims, in a burst of twitteration, that, as a child, he really believed that Mr Brunel used balloons to help raise the bowstring girders of the Saltash Bridge.
The joys of Heath Robinson always lies in the detail. A packed cream tea shop with more workers shinning down to enjoy the deliciousness ...
... the high class structural engineering ...
... and the balloons!
fbb's favourite cameo is the rowing teams bringing the next girder from upriver.
And, by the looks of it, at speed! Joyous!
Superb Streamlining Stateside B & O? The Burlington and Ohio Railway in the USA. They were very keen on their streamlining, both for steam ...
... and diesel units.
It was all a bit of nonsense really ...
... as at the speeds of the day, streamlining made no difference at all. About its only measurable effect was to increase costs because the engineers had to strip off the sheets of metal to get at the bits they wanted to maintain.
If you are passing that way, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum looks a good place to visit.
Not everything is American huge ...... but a lot of it is - very!You wouldn't want to meet one of those up a quiet Great Western Railway Cornwall branch line.
This man ...
... is postponed (poor man)!Tomorrow we take an expedition to Eboracum.
Next Plans for Interchange blog : Thursday 17th February
Your streamlined steam locomotive, magnificent as it is, isn't from the B&O but from the Milwaukee Road. In fact it's one of the four Class A Atlantics built in about 1935 to haul the high-speed "Hiawatha" express train, the fastest steam services ever scheduled and requiring speeds of 100 mph to keep to the timetable.
ReplyDeleteI think that FBB may be, sadly, a little behind the times in his suggestion of distributing timetable leaflets around local newsagents, as good as that may seem at first glance.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I would question how many leaflets actually found their way into the hands of bus users (actual or potential). I suspect a proportion of ‘agents would quietly bin the leaflets once FBB had left the shop. Others, no matter how good their intentions, would have soon buried them under other leaflets and fliers, or even under stock. It’s just the reality of the business.
I wonder how often people visit a newsagent nowadays? It was 20+ years ago that the evening ’paper for the city I worked in blamed its falling sales on the No Smoking rule on our buses. They said that people no longer visited the newsagents to stock up with cigarettes for the bus journey home, and therefore weren’t making the “opportunity purchase” of the Evening Post. Maybe true, maybe not, but newspapers have seen a huge decline in sales in the past decade, taking many newsagents with them.
So many newsagents’ shops have become someone’s front room, or been merged into a “local”, “metro” or similarly branded branch of a major supermarket. Corporate policy [probably] doesn’t look kindly on free displays of other people’s publicity. Even our town’s main post office, which was once an agent for Explorer tickets, is a counter in one of the national chains which now runs about the closest thing we have to a newsagent, albeit more mini-supermarket than “fags and mags” corner shop.
Would a door-to-door leaflet drop do any better? Probably not. I well remember the sad look on the face of the free newspaper lad when I happened to be collecting in the recycling box as he delivered. “Put it straight in the box, please” I said, saving myself the trouble. How many would do the same with a bus timetable?
So how do you effectively distribute printed publicity to bus users, and more importantly potential bus users? Suggestions on a postcard to…
I was thinking much the same as I walked down to the supermarket to buy my paper and some groceries. There are no newsagents or "small shops" where we live, in an area of the city that was developed about years ago. And, in the adjacent area which was developed in the 60s/70s, most are very marginal and closing down - a combination of increasing car ownership and online deliveries, I suspect.
ReplyDeleteI did catch the bus to come back, though at present one has to plan for this as (a) services have been reduced and (b) buses tend to be running early due to low passenger numbers and traffic levels.
Me again! If you want to see one of those streamliners in action, look for "Nebraska Zephyr" on YouTube. This is a 1940s diesel set owned and run by the Illinois Railway Museum: loco and five carriages, all in gleaming stainless steel. Even today it's a head-turner!
ReplyDeletefbb has managed to merge two separate railroads. No 51 belonged to the Baltimore and Ohio and has been restored in its museum. Zephyrs were the brand name given to diesel expresses by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy RR in the mid-west, nowhere near Baltimore. (The lines are now the B in BNSF.) When Zephyrs were introduced between Chicago and Minneapolis, the competing Milwaukee streamlined their steam locos, as mentioned by Andrew Kleissner above, though they replaced them with diesels during the war. Most of this I remember from an article in a 1950s Trains Annual! But it is on the net if you want to read more.
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked for the NCB, my boss had a couple of Heath Robinson drawings of coal mining on his office wall - all bucket and rope.
The trouble is, a printed leaflet implies a degree of stability. I would not expect alterations just a week later. Yes, as a new operator, by all means produce printed publicity to introduce yourself, but in an era when timetables are having to change literally from one week to another, why become a hostage to fortune and undermine trust in the brand? How many people who got hold of the timetable book got hold of the amendment leaflet a week later? And the next one? And the one after that? There's been four changes so far in five weeks...
ReplyDeleteB&O Museum is excellent, curiously visited it in snowy weather rather like today in this part of the UK. It also has models, and we learned that the Lionel brand is pronounced "Leon-ell".
"Some years ago fbb was involved in designing and printing some leaflets for Harrogate and District, then one of young Fearnley's companies. Faced with competition from Harrogate Independent Travel (they soon gave up)..." Indeed, FBB, it was "some" years ago. According to Wikipedia, Harrogate Independent Travel was taken over by AJS Group (owners of the adjacent part of the former West Yorkshire RCC) in 1989. So that "some" is at least 32.
ReplyDeleteIn those 32 years various things have happened, the most relevant for this discussion being the growth in the number of smartphone users. I don't recall smartphones from that time - admittedly, mobile communication of sorts did exist then, but not in the form we know today. That is why the methods of 30 or 40 years ago simply don't work as effectively today.
If you want to reach a large umber of people, then the information needs to be easily accessible from a smartphone. That is not necessarily the only medium that a transport operator should use to communicate with their customers, but it is an important one - probably the most important one in 2021.
Truly a great post. Thanks for such a great information.
ReplyDeleteLeaflet Distribution company Wisbech
Leaflet drop Peterborough