Fresh air & photos

[Andrew Duncan]

Hi Andy/Andrew,
I go out fishing and come back to find all the cars have been identified Good calls though by the looks of it. The old Arley shot ( which I can now see, unlike Tuesday night ) is very good.

I won't bore everybody with how good the fishing used to be along the River Severn. Hampton Loade was great for..........and then just upstream of Arley...........and of course Ironbridge was the best spot for.......etc etc. I blame the cormorants for eating all the little fish before they grew big enough to stay out of the way of the birds.

Rob

Hello Rob and Andy,
Well, not all I think. Might the unidentified car be a Bullnose (Morris)?
Andrew

 

[Andrew Duncan]

Hi Andrew.
I'm no Civil engineer, but I would suggest that in order to gain access to the river bank, a near vertical structure was needed. An embankment, which would be load bearing is unlikely to be stable in wet conditions such as floods. Brick is much more stable and arches use far fewer bricks than a solid structure. This is why they were used so much under railways and even platforms. Economy.
Regards
Tony.

Hello Tony
When you say "use far fewer bricks" it would appear nonsensical at first. Then I wondered if an arch might be thinner (less layers of bricks) so using less material in that way. Am I on the right track?
Andrew

 

[Martin Wynne]

It's that tree again, just coming into leaf.

We have had a very dry Spring, the sandy soil in these parts is unusually dry and dusty for the time of year. The farmer today was busy laying out irrigation pipes (visible along the hedgerow). A strange sight in April.

Meadow with fence.

Lockdown walkabout has caused landowners so much damage and litter that a rash of new fencing and gates is appearing across the local countryside. Never to be removed. Ancient grassy rights of way which wandered across a field between old wooden stiles have become well-trodden footpaths, fenced off from the fields and gated. Today I opened and closed 7 shiny new galvanised gates which weren't there the last time I came this way. The landscape is changing for ever -- no-one ever takes down a fence.

Martin.

 

[Martin Wynne]

.......and then just upstream of Arley.....

@Guinea_Pig_Tester

Here you go.

30th May 2016.

Martin.

 

[Tony W]

Hello Tony
When you say "use far fewer bricks" it would appear nonsensical at first. Then I wondered if an arch might be thinner (less layers of bricks) so using less material in that way. Am I on the right track?
Andrew

Hi Andrew.
What I was meaning was that the spaces between the arches are not full of bricks as a continuous wall would be. Sometimes / often, the piers of arches were hollow and filled with rubble. If a retaining wall were built, it would need to be quite substantial with strengthening ribs to resist the outward pressure of the back fill.

Regards
Tony.

 

[Rob Manchester]

@Guinea_Pig_Tester

Here you go.

View attachment 894

30th May 2016.

Martin.

Thanks for the picture Martin, I remember this spot although I wouldn't have remembered if it was upstream or downstream of Arley. You wouldn't have seen any fishermen that day* as the old close season still persists on most rivers. The start of the new season on June 16th was always an event worth taking part in - many happy nights down by a river. The close season was to protect the fish when they were spawning but these days the weather patterns are all screwed up with the spawning taking place anytime from February to July.

Rob

*Salmon and trout seasons differ from the one for coarse fish. So in theory and with the correct licence you could fish the spot above for salmon or trout during the coarse close season and be catching coarse fish full of spawn - you would have been restricted to fly, spinner or worm as bait though rather than the more usual groundbait and maggots.

 

[AndyB]

Hi Andy/Andrew,
I go out fishing and come back to find all the cars have been identified Good calls though by the looks of it. The old Arley shot ( which I can now see, unlike Tuesday night ) is very good.

I won't bore everybody with how good the fishing used to be along the River Severn. Hampton Loade was great for..........and then just upstream of Arley...........and of course Ironbridge was the best spot for.......etc etc. I blame the cormorants for eating all the little fish before they grew big enough to stay out of the way of the birds.

Rob

Hi Rob,

Oddly enough I can still remember many of the UK cars from 40 years ago but I could not tell you what any of the newest ones are. They all look pretty much the same

I once had ambitions to do some fishing. We live by a large lake which has a great variety of fish. I bought a small boat and all the appropriate fishing gear but ultimately I found it was more entertaining just to zoom around the lake in the boat.

Maybe I'd have found fly-fishing more interesting but it's probably a bit late to start that now.

Cheers!
Andy

 

[Martin Wynne]

Arley in the news today:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-56847542

Martin.

 

[Andrew Duncan]

Hi Andrew.
What I was meaning was that the spaces between the arches are not full of bricks as a continuous wall would be. Sometimes / often, the piers of arches were hollow and filled with rubble. If a retaining wall were built, it would need to be quite substantial with strengthening ribs to resist the outward pressure of the back fill.

Regards
Tony.

Yes, I think I was somewhere close to your reasoning....Thanks Tony
Andrew

 

[Martin Wynne]

A little place in the country.

Martin.

 

[Martin Wynne]

Recreating the 1950s branch line atmosphere -- total silence in the mid-week sunshine.

Martin.

 

[Rob Manchester]

Hi Martin,
Not quite the 1950's scene - everything is too clean and freshly painted and there are no fire buckets missing ! No porter leaning on a broom handle either.....

Nice picture though.

Rob

 

[Martin Wynne]

Hi Martin,
Not quite the 1950's scene - everything is too clean and freshly painted and there are no fire buckets missing ! No porter leaning on a broom handle either.....

Nice picture though.

Rob

Hi Rob,

Here is Bewdley in April 1962.

linked from: https://www.rmweb.co.uk

In the summer of 1962 I was 13 years old. I remember arriving on my bike on a glorious summer's day and sitting on that very seat with my bar of chocolate and a bottle of pop. A pannier tank loco (3601) was shunting those very wagons in the back road, and I watched fascinated as the shunter flicked the 3-link coupling onto the hook, seemingly without effort. Seeing my interest he kindly asked me if I would like to have a go. Needless to say I failed miserably, although with a bit of help I eventually got it hooked up again. No H&S worries in those days.

We had the entire station to ourselves, in timeless silence. It was a magical day, but even at that young age I had an uneasy sense that it was all under threat.

Amazing that it is all still there 60 years later, when so much else has gone.

Martin.

 

[AndyB]

A little place in the country.

Martin.

There should be room for a decent layout in the loft. How much do they want for it?

 

[Martin Wynne]

More of the same.

Martin.

 

[Rob Manchester]

Hi Rob,

Needless to say I failed miserably, although with a bit of help I eventually got it hooked up again.

Martin.

Hi Martin,

.....and just after that you decided to write some software to help people build correct looking track You would have been coding it all onto punched 80 column cards!

Rob

 

[Martin Wynne]

Hi Martin,

.....and just after that you decided to write some software to help people build correct looking track You would have been coding it all onto punched 80 column cards!

Rob

@Guinea_Pig_Tester

Hi Rob,

Yes, I still have a deck of punched cards in the attic, and some IBM green stripe assembler coding pads.

The best thing about punched cards was the high-quality metal trays which they were stacked in. Still very useful.

I remember taking a felt-tip pen and drawing a diagonal line across the top of the deck. So that if ever they got out of order, I could spot the misplaced ones.

But that was 10 years after that day at Bewdley. At that date all I knew about computers was in a book I found in the school library called "Giant Brains".

Martin.

 

[Rob Manchester]

@Guinea_Pig_Tester

Hi Rob,

Yes, I still have a deck of punched cards in the attic, and some IBM green stripe assembler coding pads.

The best thing about punched cards was the high-quality metal trays which they were stacked in. Still very useful.

I remember taking a felt-tip pen and drawing a diagonal line across the top of the deck. So that if ever they got out of order, I could spot the misplaced ones.

But that was 10 years after that day at Bewdley. At that date all I knew about computers was in a book I found in the school library called "Giant Brains".

Martin.

Martin,
Yes, the trick with the diagonal line was handy. It wasn't much help if the 'deck' got dropped as any dings in the edges of the cards didn't help smooth progress through the car readers. I have some of the metal trays somewhere, we had many cabinets at work into which they slotted for storage.

My first 'proper' job back in '78 was as a Trainee Computer Operator, loading the cards into the hoppers and making sure the fan-fold paper in the line printers was stacking correctly. We had a room full of punched card coding machines staffed by around 20 operators who spent all day punching the cards with programs that had been filled out on the 80 column coding sheets. There was a number of remote job entry stations each having a card reader and a line printer for input and output streams from the ICL mainframes. I was doing a degree course at the the local polytechnic at the time and they had 'interactive' teletypes each with a paper tape reader which seemed very advanced at the time. Meanwhile at home I was doing my best to get some kind of computer training using an old TV screen and a portable audio tape recorder. I can own up to being one of the many who made Clive Sinclair's later kits and actually got them to work.....which is something my Cambridge MK-14 never did

Rob

 

[Phil O]

Hi Martin,

Your picture of Highley, reminds me I must get around to visiting the museum there sometime, hopefully soon.

 

[AndyB]

Martin,
Yes, the trick with the diagonal line was handy. It wasn't much help if the 'deck' got dropped as any dings in the edges of the cards didn't help smooth progress through the car readers. I have some of the metal trays somewhere, we had many cabinets at work into which they slotted for storage.

My first 'proper' job back in '78 was as a Trainee Computer Operator, loading the cards into the hoppers and making sure the fan-fold paper in the line printers was stacking correctly. We had a room full of punched card coding machines staffed by around 20 operators who spent all day punching the cards with programs that had been filled out on the 80 column coding sheets. There was a number of remote job entry stations each having a card reader and a line printer for input and output streams from the ICL mainframes. I was doing a degree course at the the local polytechnic at the time and they had 'interactive' teletypes each with a paper tape reader which seemed very advanced at the time. Meanwhile at home I was doing my best to get some kind of computer training using an old TV screen and a portable audio tape recorder. I can own up to being one of the many who made Clive Sinclair's later kits and actually got them to work.....which is something my Cambridge MK-14 never did

Rob

When I were a lad you had to build the blinking computer before you could even program it.

(There's a photo somewhere. I'll post it if ever find it )