Down by the old colliery buildings there were no street-lights and, with tonight’s bright moonlight, eerie shadows were crossing the broken concrete slabs of the old access road. The hard frost made Ernie’s steps crackle. As he hit the frozen remains of a small puddle, an even sharper crack as it split and shattered under… Read More »
Phoenix Yard (Mark 1) With the success of the recent Great Model Railway Challenge TV programme, as aired on Ch 5, together with the upcoming Warley Model Railway Show at the NEC I decided to build a very simple “shunting plank” layout to try to draw visitors to the SLS stand. Have it available so… Read More »
Garage As part of the ongoing tidying and fixing of the garage it became apparent that the roof was leaking. Closer inspection indicated that almost the whole of the edge strip where the roofing felt bends over the edge had split. On getting onto the roof I also discovered that the original installation in several… Read More »
Early Railways 6 – Edited by Anthony Coulls This book, Early Railways 6, for which this is the advance call for subscriptions, will be my next academically published work. The series of Early Railways Conferences held its sixth gathering in June 2016 in the cradle of railway history that is Newcastle, with visits and events across… Read More »
Missed blog posts (April & June) This is a shortened rewording of what formed the Editorial to the most recent SLS Journal and Newsletter (J912 July/August), a bi-monthly magazine which I now edit and giving the reasons for my missing the task of making blog posts here during both April and June. SLS Stand ready for… Read More »
Why no April post? Due to the increasing pressures of my SLS workload since taking on the role of Journal Editor, plus other work related to the new GDPR system there was no time to write and publish an April blog post for which I apologise. I had content to write, just not the time… Read More »
A month of solid editing I ended last month’s blog expressing hopefully “What would have been the January content will therefore appear during February when I get back home and resume normality.” Well that hoped for return to normality during February went well, or not! What it ended up as was a month of solid… Read More »
Change versus progress When I started to write this blog post about changes and progress, I felt a bit like a real life incarnation of Victor Meldrew whilst at the same time trying desperately not to fall into grumpy old man syndrome. There have, undoubtedly, been many changes that are progress. As just one of those… Read More »
A literary month Two connected, but disparate, sections to this blog post describing my literary month. The first a completed task and introduction to a new role as Editor of The Stephenson Locomotive Society Journal; the second related to local theatre productions. Stella, my wife, stage managed Me and My Girl so a lot of… Read More »
A summer catch up (part 2) Traveling For my wife and I the spring and summer has been an eclectic mix that seems to have involved much traveling for us to and from Yorkshire, our knowledge of motorway snarl-ups increased several times. The trips have been for both business and pleasure/family reasons, and to this… Read More »