Building Bridges
Using a bridge as a scenic break in a model railway is standard practice. It disguises the fact the the length of the layout is crazily too short to represent anything on the full size network. And we all love the experience of seing oue train bursting from under a bridge, coming from far off places just three feet away!
fbb's bridge model appeared in the 1961 Triang Catalogue ...
... and in one form or another is still there today 64 years later! Here is a slightly busted one in a Triang box ...
The road deck in grey shows you how it was assembled; three arches with a separate top bit! And it is the one arch version that is in this year's Hornby catalogue ...
... and just for the record, here is the original Triang version from about 63 yeears ago.
But this one picture is very misleading!
The bidge will take a single OO railway track across the top, but, as wrongly hinted above, the arches are not tall enough to take OO scale trains underneath.
So fbb's had to be built up on plinths. The old man is not skilled enough to match the exquisite fine detail of the arches, so made some bases out of chunks of 2x1 and plastic stone facing.
Some "weeds" complete the conversion into a farm access bridge, little used by motor traffic.
Ironically, you cannot see most of it - the carriage shed blocks the view. But fbb knows it is there and visually complete!
Talking of Blocking The View
Buses taking yopu to Leavesden Studios for the Harry Potter "Experience" have always been plastered with Contravision. But thanks to the activites of a certain schoolboy wizard ...
... hero of the film "Barry Putty and the Goblet of Chocolate", the buses are now bigger with three axles ...
... and even more adept at sending their passengers dotty.
Enjoy your ride!
New Trains For Grand Central
First it was HSTs, the best ever; then a few Adelantes were added ...
... and now it's all Adelante.
Arriva, owners of Grand Central, has just been awarded a further eleven years' "access rights". They can continue playing trains.
On the strength of this an order has flown off by express post to Hitachi for shiny new stock.
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The Easter Story begins in the Garden of Eden with mankind's disobedience, a challenging picture of the risks in having the Godly gift of Free Will. But our jigsaw piece shows the donkey of Palm Sunday.
A victorious King might parade into his captured city on a donkey, rather than on his big black snorting charger, to symbolise that he came in peace and humility. The message was that peace was his to give; all that was needed was for the population to accept the new regime and all would be well.
Order worth around £300 million for fleet of new trains, which will increase seats by 20 per cent, improving capacity and connectivity.
45 cars to be manufactured at Hitachi Rail in the North East and financed by Angel Trains, helping secure highly skilled jobs and unlocking a new advanced manufacturing opportunity for rail.
State-of-the-art ‘tri-mode’ train technology has proven its ability to cut emissions and fuel costs by around 30 per cent to support UK Government’s decarbonisation agenda.
Announcement is made from Hitachi’s Newton Aycliffe factory and attended by the Secretary of State for Transport, Heidi Alexander MP.
Does anyone other than Hitachi make "Intercity" type trains? Train spotting is getting very boring. "Tri-mode" means they will draw power from overhead; have diesels on board; and loads of batteries.
Hopefully there will be enough room for passemngers but there is an awful lot to go wrong!
April Fool (1)
Vlogger Sam Turner (of Sam's Trains fame) posted are rather feeble gag for All Fools' Day. In his traditional and oft-repeated style, he was viewing a new OO gauge model.
fbb will not bore his readers with the full detail, but the gag (not at all obvious from the verry first second, was for a vehicle designed by Richard Maunsell (he's real) to carry two passengers by leaping over other trains!
Sam's review overlooked the fact that to leap it wpuld need power and it ain't got none! The two passengers were hung, inexplicably, on the hub of te rotating frame.
One mildly amusing addition was the inclusion in the model of two Firth Brown wheels, apparently added by Oliver Bulleid when he rebuilt the vehicle.
These, of course, mirror the wheels used in Bulleid's famous "Spam Can" trains for the Southern Railway.
The above picture is on-line and neither a Sams Trains nor an fbb creation. Here is a real Spam Can, and note Olly Bulleid's wheels.
A far better gag would have been to propose a new Triang Hornby loco powered by a propellor.
No, that would be equally ridiculous!
April Fool 2
As ridiculous as this! The proposal is to create a dry ski slope down Ryde's main Union Street shopping area and bus route.
The April 1st published picture is as daft as Sams Trains video.
You can tell it is Union Street by the street name on the left ...
... and the number of properties selling "Rydes" on it - especially at Christmas. But on the right ....jpg)
... it had become Dain Street and there is a sign for the Dry Skip Slipe.
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Chat GPT doing it worst yet again! And they say that AI will revolutionise all our lives?
Ryde has had a water slide down Union Street for several summers, sponsored by Wightlink ...
... so a proper picture of Union Street, maybe with snow and real life skiers added, might have been a better April Fool gag.
Blog plans for next week include:- the final part of sons' road trip; major bus revisions by Stagecoach in the Portsmouth area and a possible new station for Herefordshire.
Next Mustang blog : Mon 7 Aptil
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The Easter Jigsaw
The Easter Jigsaw
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So where is Jesus' Peace today?
Still largely rejected as it was at the first Easter.
Palm Sunday is one week from today.
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Back in the early 1930s there really was a propeller-powered railcar, the German Schienenzeppelin. I'd imagine that standing on a platform as it passed by could have been "interesting"! The Bennie Railplane - of course a sort of monorail - was also prop-powered.
ReplyDeleteIn answer to FBBs question, Hitachi are the only manufacturer assembling intercity trains in the UK. LNERs next new trains will be from CAF though. You suspect part of the business case for the Open Access operators, whose place in the new nationalised rail network has been questioned, for buying from Hitachi is to show importance in supporting UK plants. There was concerns about the future of the Hitachi plant as there was a gap between the last orders from franchised operators for IEPs and the start of the delivery of HS2 trains which Hitachi are building joint with Alsthom at Derby (assuming that survives their own gap in orders) but the two orders from Open Access operators received so far may be enough to bridge that gap.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, the Harry Potter shuttle buses do get their passengers in the mood for the experience by playing an onboard video - probably of far more interest to the typical passenger than the views of suburban Watford!
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