A letter to my mother. Blaenau Ffestiniog 13 - 7 - 86 I know you like getting letters, so here is one. Got up fairly late today, well it is Sunday, and went down to Porthmadog on the Ffestiniog Railway. Lots of shops open here (Blaenau) and in Porthmadog on Sundays, shopping no problem. Very … Continue reading A letter from North Wales.
What a load of tosh that Thomas and Friends lark is on the TV, I grew up reading the books don'tcha know, nothing wrong with reading the books. At least in the books Annie and Clarabel were proper bogie coaches and not the four-wheeler miscreations depicted by Britt Allcroft and Co. on the telly box. … Continue reading Thomas and…
At work, they (yes, those mysterious "they") are trialling a new set of group email addresses so for a couple of days there have been these emails arriving telling us that they are trialling a new set of group email addresses. They are dynamic apparently, these email addresses, so when new members of staff join … Continue reading An interesting ride? I wouldn’t bank on it.
Welcome aboard, we're going on a journey… When I was 9 or 10 or so years old, the school library contained a small set of softback books about notable ships. Amongst the titles as I recall were Titanic, Royal Sovereign, Cutty Sark and Gipsy Moth IV. Recalling now from this distance in time is a … Continue reading Not the Chelsea Flower Show.
Like many of us, Lenny the LNER engine was feeling just a bit down in the dumps. Ever since he'd arrived at his new home he'd been confined to quarters under lockdown... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2kpQxXOPLk
29th November, 2020 I have a new friend, another eBay refugee… Meet LNER, J72 class, number 68745 or "Lenny" as I think I’m going to call him. Him? Yes, most locomotives would be "her" but this one just looks like a "him" to me so "him" it is. Lenny is a Palitoy “Mainline” model from … Continue reading Another eBay Refugee
When I was a young boy, back in the 1960s, I had a train set, I’ve written about it before in this blog (Railways) but I’ll recap: I had a few locomotives and some carriages, wagons and track. I never had a permanent track layout, the track was just placed on the floor or on … Continue reading Return to childhood, second hand.
Listening to information being broadcast over a railway station PA system is, in my experience, never an easy proposition, even if it is in a language in which you are fluent. Most, not all I grant you but most PA systems carry a certain amount of distortion, are too loud or too quiet and are … Continue reading Inowrocław, the journey home.
I grew up in the Hertfordshire town of Berkhamsted where for the early part of my life my parents and I lived with my mother's parents in George Street at number 130. There are two roads here, in this particular part of the town, not in the town itself, George Street and Ellesmere Road, both … Continue reading Railways
It's Thursday 28th April 2011 and I’m sitting on the 05.51 departure from Chesham, staring up at Chesham’s disused signal box, it’s a grey morning but I have planned a rendezvous with a lady in red. The train doors rumble shut and we’re off, winding up the hillside to gain the Metropolitan main line at … Continue reading A spotter’s tale.
A Point of Views, A Polish Odyssey and Other Stories. 