The Parcel From Widnes (2)

Railbus Requirement Realised?

The DIY motorising of the Airfix kit was abandoned, but the idea remained deep in the desires of your recent returnee to railway modelling. Way back in the 1960s, Railway Modeller magazine had published an article on how to do what fbb could not.

The magazine regularly carries an advert for the kit and the wherewithal to motorise it ...

... and the interwebnet shows various other options.

Should fbb try again? What about painting the finished model? No, it was still beyond the old blokes' shaky hand skill set.

Enter a Danish firm called Heljan.

One of their principle product lines is scale models in HO (3.5 millimetres to the foot) as here with the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen.

The colours are a tad garish ...

... but it looks just right. Another historic model is Thomas Edison's laboratory ...

... again based firmly on the real thing.

Intriguing, but we digress (as usual).

Their catalogue illustrates a rather fine European-style turntable ...

... but surrounded by UK diesel locomotives. Uh?

That's because, a few years ago, the Danish firm entered the UK market, producing UK diesel locomotives and diesel railcars. Thus joy was unbounded when the firm announced models of UK railbuses; joy which rapidly evaporated when fbb saw the price!

£120 - OUCH!!!! (actually they were a bit cheaper when they first appeared).

fbb decided to wait until one turned up second hand. Then, in the blogging (and busted) confuser's in-box, appeared a Summer special chop to approximately HALF PRICE.

So that was what was in the parcel from Widnes - and what a beauty she is!

If you can work out how to get it out of the box!

Manipulating a card sleeve round a card box, containing a plastic sleeve with complex plastic surround inside, was a bit like one of those infuriating wooden block puzzles.

But, here she is out of the box and on her inaugural test run emerging from Peterville tunnel ...

... and on her way to Aviemore.

The detail is magnificent ...

... with a full interior and a very well hidden motor!

The underframe is exquisite with finely crafted steps and wire handrails ...

... which ping off if you grasp the body too firmly; superglue and shaky hands to the rescue!

It makes an ideal vehicle to transport the 4mm scale visitors to Peterville Quarry Railway Heritage Centre on quieter open days.

fbb Makes a Mistake!

Surely not?

In Wednesday's blog and critique of Buses for Sheffield's exciting "underground-style" bus map, fbb wrote thus:-

In fact, the "pinkish" line is route 20. Everything else is correct, i.e. WRONG. But the map is worse, far worse, in this area than fbb at first spotted.

The 97/98 (DEEP PURPLE) and the 75/76 (MUD) all enter the city via Highfield(no "S") and therefore should join the 20 (PINKISH) at that point. The 24/25 (BLUE) leaves the 20 just past Heeley Retail Park and should NOT be shown via Highfield or even Highfields.

It is really really bad!

Bob, an occasional correspondent, sent fbb the higher resolution map picture that provides these screenshots. He opined that the map, called by fbb "appallingly awful",  looked "pretty good".

He did admit that he had not looked in detail - but he has now.

An email from Bob (Sheffield resident) arrived yesterday. It said simply, but graciously,

"You are right!"

Thanks Bob.

But South Yorkshire PTE, Stagecoach and First Bus have all checked it, according to a senior PTE boss.

 Weekend newsbites blog : Saturday 9th June 

Mrs fbb's Cruise News

Price-wise, We Could Affijord It!
[groan!]
This is the Balmoral ...

... and this is the Balmoral!

The former operates round the coast of Great Britain as part of the paddle seamer Waverley company activities. The latter is in the fleet of Fred Olsen and was Mrs fbb's choice for her first ever cruise. The vessel is small by today's cruise standards, with a total of 1350 passengers and 510 crew.

Departure was on Sunday May 3rd from a marquee erected behind the famous Southampton Docks flour mill. Luxury departure it wasn't!

The mills, completed in October 1934, heralded the beginning of a new commercial life for Southampton Docks. It was the first building constructed on 200 acres of reclaimed land, set aside by Southampton Railways for industrial development that was to establish Southampton as a major centre of industry and commerce.

All went well, apart from a minor rescheduling due to bad weather and Mrs fbb was routinely tucking into her share of 155kg of butter, 2,289ltrs of milk, 1,223kg of pork and 521ltrs of ice cream. There was the basking beside the pool ...

... and evenings at the roulette wheel!

Actually neither of these! But fbb's good lady did indulge in various concerts including an Elvis tribute show. But soon the luxury cruise was to become ...

Well, since departure from home,
The toilet's the place to dwell.
Balmoral the boat had changed its name
to Heartbreak Hotel.

... because there was an outbreak of a "gastric bug" which, reputedly, struck 300 (or 500, depending on the rumour source) down at various times. For Mrs fbb the "attack" lasted 7 hours, but she was confined to her cell for 48 hours to help prevent the bug's spread. Ironically, her travelling chum with whom she shared the cell cabin was unaffected!

This meant that she missed the coach tour of Bergen ...

... and the trip on the Flåm Railway.

Whilst the separate holidays were the result of happy familial agreement, fbb was incredibly jealous of the Flåm trip. 

As you travel on the Flåm Railway, you’ll notice the train is almost always running on a slope. That’s because the line runs from the mountain station in Myrdal to the town of Flåm at sea level, with a gradient of 55/1000 on almost 80% of its line. The constant twists and turns on the route ensures there’s never a dull moment, whether you’re passing over a bridge, through tunnels or flanking mountains. And as folklore has it, as you approach the Kjosfossen waterfall in Aurland ...

... you may catch a glimpse of the legendary Huldra, a nordic creature, part woman, part beast who lures men deep into the mountains with her song.

Apparently you always DO see Huldra. The rumour that she is a minimum wage employee of the Railway with central heating and a jacuzzi in her remote and doom-laden cavern is entirely unsubstantiated. But it does get a bit chilly in the rain, fog or snow.

Talking of luring, the Mrs was definitely NOT lured by the option of Railway to the summit and cycling back down to the port!

So poor Mrs fbb got off the ship twice; once for a walk round Bergen in the pouring rain ...

... and a sit-down in a bus shelter.

Foolishly, she failed to write down the location; shameful. But she did photograph (?) a passing service bus ...

... and a tour bus at the quayside ...

... tour price £20.50.

Her second trip off the boat was at Southampton on return!

Some cruising life is glam
With trips on the railway at Flåm
 the bugs just make you puke and retch
 When you're throwing up the gristle,
Don't grumble, give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best...
And...

...always look on the bright side
 of life...

It was, concluded Mrs fbb as she sang the refrain for the fiftieth time, an experience!

It was Billy Connolly who defined a cruise as being "like a prison but with the added option of drowning." The wife's opinion might well be "like a sanatorium with the added option of starving!"

To be fair to Fred and his team, refunds were given for lost trips and there was the offer of 50% discount on on selected alternative prison ship cruises. And the staff worked really hard to cope!

And then Tuesday's Daily Mail reported the story ...

... with its usual even handed style.

It certainly wasn't the best introduction to cruising for Mrs fbb. Maybe a week with Mabel Crabbitt at her "Mon Repos" establishment in Bognor next year?

 Next bus blog : Friday 15th May 

Geeks of the Week!

The Radio Channel (DARC) is a high-rate (16 kbit/s) standard for encoding data in a subcarrier over radio station broadcasts. Decoder software for DARC does not exist, according to search engines. To read the actual data frames, I'll have to acquire block synchronization, regenerate the pseudorandom scrambler used and reverse its action, check the data against CRCs for errors, and implement the stack of layers that make up the protocol. The DARC specification itself is luckily public, albeit not very helpfully written; in contrast to the RDS standard, it contains almost no example circuits, data, or calculations. So, a little recap of Galois field mathematics and linear feedback shift registers for me.

 Doctors Who?  Or, perhaps ...

Stephen Hawking.

In fact, neither. These are the pearls of dubious wisdom that drop from the lips of ...

... the delectable Oona Räisänen!

Oona has a strange hobby; she decodes computer data as broadcast in radio signals and telephone lines; in a way she's an upmarket hacker. And she comes from Finland.

In company with fbb and myriads of other sad and slightly silly souls, she writes a blog ...

... telling the world at large (well, those bits of the world that can understand what she's prattling on about!) what she has just decoded.

And so to Helsinki bus services.

Public transport in Helsinki consists of bus, tram, metro, train, and ferry services. The system is managed by Helsinki Region Transport (HSL/HRT) and covers Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen, Vantaa and the outlying Kerava, Kirkkonummi and Sipoo.

Oona discovered that information for the real time electronic displays ...

... was being sent as part of a VHF radio signal via a Data Radio Channel; in other words carried piggy-back in the spare bandwidth of the speech and music signal that you hear on your tranny.

It's that fuzzy stuff at the right hand end. [fbb  apologises for any technological inexctitudes; there is a link to Oona's blog at the end of this post if you wish to get it right!]

Cleverly she was able to decode these signals and she found, firstly, route number and destination names ...

Here's a chunk of the map for the 23N:-

Place names are shown in in Finnish and Swedish.

Ruskeasuo (ruots. Brunakärr) on kaupunginosa Helsingin kantakaupungin luoteiskulmassa Mannerheimintien molemmin puolin. Peruspiirijaossa Ruskeasuo kuuluu yhdessä Laakson ja Meilahden kanssa Reijolan peruspiiriin. Ruskeasuon asukasluku on noin 6900 (1.1.2008) ja työpaikkoja alueella on noin 6100 (31.12.2005).

Languages are fascinating. There's a word with four "u"s in it - kuuluu. fbb thinks (rubbish, google translate thinks) that it is part of the verb meaning "belongs to". Maybe stick to English Wikipedia?

Ruskeasuo (Brunakärr in Swedish, verbatim "Brown swamp"), is a neighbourhood of Helsinki (Helsingfors in Swedish), about 3 kilometres north of the city centre.

Then she found evidence of times ...

... and, intriguingly, a sentence in German, "Bus 61 nach Flughafen aus Haltestelle 1" (Bus 61 for the airport from stand 1)! As with all geekish activity, the fun is in the searching and sorting and Oona has concluded her project by making her own real time screen.

Of course, conspiracy theorists will be aghast to know that facilities are readily (?) available to decode stuff that flies invisibly through the air. Link this to the recent news that the USA is listening in to phone calls and emails from supposedly "friendly" politicians and nothing electronic is safe or sacred.  Spookeeee!

Talking of Doctor Who and Geeks. Some dedicated whovian has posted a video on YouTube showing every version of the show's introductory captions over the past 50 years. This you must see!

Geeky or what?

Then there are sad, sad people around who seem to enjoy such esoteric activities; people who can tell you that the lowest bus route nunber ever used in Sheffield was ...

and the highest for a normal daytime service was ...

fbb, a geek? Perish the thought!

And, of course, the next Doctor Who is to be Peter Capaldi. But he has already appeared in a story about Pompeii ...

... nothing to do with his forthcoming assumption of the Doctor's persona.

Or, maybe ...

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fbb is much indebted to No 2 son for guiding his old man to the Oona blog (read here). No 2 does clever computer stuff including writing games and designing flashy publicity for a caff ...

... so please feel free to pop in and enjoy. Teo's is just round the corner from the bus station ...

... in San José del Cabo; MEXICO!

 Next bus blog : Sunday 1st December