How We Present Tanks For Cement

You Have To Keep It Dry! (mini blog)

Whether wagons like the above were ever used for "loose" cement is unclear but mostly it was transported in sacks loaded into a covered van. Then a whole range of tank wagons was developed using compressed air to make the cement powder behave like a liquid.

A train of such wagons would deliver the product to the distribution centres for onward transit, ready-mixed, by road.

An awful lot of cement is still distributed in bags for the smaller trader to purchase from his local builders merchant's yard.

Breedon ...

... sells a huge variety of different cement and associated prodcts in 25kg bags.

Concrete is, of course, a mixture of cement, sand and gravel (a k a "aggregate").

Buying Bigger Tankers!

Like everything else traveling by rail today, huge cement tanks are now the norm. They are still loaded and unloaded by compressed air, and an awful lot of them (like that shown above) carry the logo "VTG".

VTG used to be the VT Group with the V and the T descending from Vosper Thorneycroft. 

Their business was ship building. In turn this company was formed by the merger of two firms, both heavily involved in naval vessel building.

How we get from there to VTG, a major leasing company, whose tank wagons are used by cement companies, is complex and a bit beyond this blog. Suffice it to say, most JPA tankers are owned by VTG.

The company also has flat wagons ...

... box wagons ...

... and hopper wagons.

But their latest product, ordered for use by Breedon, is one of these.

To most of us, it looks like a bog standard bogie cement wagon like the metallic grey one shown earlier.

But this is an  iwagon . It's got a prefix "i" so it must be special!

It has "technology"!

So there!

And fbb has just bought a JPA tank wagon branded for VTG and it isn't an  iwagon ! The old man will surely be awake for many a long night weeping with devastation.

For tomorrow's blog, fbb will be exercising his iBrain and continuing his exploration of First's purchase of RATP London.

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"NOT the Advent Calendar", but ...

     The      

  CHRIST -mas 

  Criss-muss  

   Confusion  

 Critique  19 

What Does "Son of God" Mean?

Over the centuries, we have made Criss-muss so unreal that it is easy to forget what it is all about. One thing is certain - it was not pretty. The manger would not have been clean, the cloth wrapped round the baby would not have been white and, certainly initially, the child would have been messy and bashed about.

Human birth is a messy business.

We already know that the baby was nor conceived by human activity but by Divine interventions, perfectly feasible for a God outside our universe and beyond our experience or understanding.

John' Gospel has a go at explaining the event.

The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father's only Son.

No one has ever seen God. The only Son, who is the same as God and is at the Father's side, he has made him known.

The activity and authority of God is born as a child in a manger ...

... but a child with a purpose, a child who grew up! In due course, that activity and authority will be revealed

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  Next First RATP blog : Friday 20th Dec