I had another Sunday outing - this time, a day trip to the district of Hampshire towards the South West of London. Why Hampshire? that's where the Mid-Hants Railway was, and they were having a Gala Weekend of steam trains from the 13th to the 15th. So I visited on the 15th, and was able to get there relatively easily by tube and then train. What's a Gala? basically a Festival weekend where quite a number of engines are running. There's been quite a few Gala's in the last month or so, 2 of which seriously tempted me but I decided to forgo them in favour of just visiting this one which had wider array of engines that interested me more. I hadn't been to the railway before so part of the trip was "scoping and fact finding" - in the end I thought I did a good job ascertaining where photo opportunities were to be had on the line. Rather than describe the day, I'm going to let some pictures paint the scene - not necessarily the best pictures I took, but a combination of pictures I like and ones which are representative of the day. So here is the "dirty dozen" from the Mid Hants Spring Gala. One of the star locos of the Gala was the recently overhauled 70000 "Brittania", which I rode behind the length of the line from Alton to Arlesford and then I watched it depart for Alton again, as seen here. This engine is about to become a star on main line tracks once again replacing another star... ...no less than the streamlined A4 4464 "Bittern", which will spend a year away from main line duties visiting the Mid Hants Railway and then it will go for overhaul. The green engine behind is 850 "Lord Nelson", which was not in action this day due to some kind of brake problem. Another drawcard for me was to see a 9F freight engine in action - this is that 9F, 92212 but very much parked up for the weekend at Ropley. Turns out it needed some minor boiler work which they didn't finish in time for the Gala, so it sat it out. A bit disappointing, but this engine is based at Mid Hants (although owned by the same owners as the previous two engines pictured) so no doubt I'll get a chance to see it going yet. You could wander into the workshop - or so it seemed, there were no barriers unlike everywhere else yet they were still performing work on restoring engines, using grinders and welders and all which I wouldn't have thought would be good while having the public wander around in the same space. This is a Class 4 Standard, being restored from scrapyard condition for the first time while on the right is the smokebox of a Bulleid West Country/Battle of Britain type. This is 925 "Cheltenham" - the Mid Hants line was once a part of the Southern Railway, and 925 is a Southern Engine and the carriages are all painted in Southern Region green. I for one am not fond of the looks of 925 or the similar 850 "Lord Nelson" nor really any of the pre-Bulleid main line locos of Southern - they all look like the designer was stuck in the Victorian era when designing this loco and its compatriots, despite being built in 1930. They come across to me as quite backward for their era. When it comes to Southern engines, this is more my thing - the streamlined 34007 "Wadebridge", designed in 1945 by the New Zealand born Oliver Bulleid who seemingly drew Southern out of being 50 years behind the times when it came to locomotive technology but threw it right into the forefront of steam locomotive technology at the time, pioneering many innovations at the time - some successful, some not quite so much. "Wadebridge" was only being used between Ropley and Arlesford pulling a freight train, and I found a path alongside the railway line which took me to this spot to take photos from - neat. Brittania on its passenger train, much from the same place as the above photo but with the sun now deciding to come out from the cloud and backlight the scene and then doesn't go away. Time to find a new spot. Having moved across to the opposite side of the railway and having found a suitable spot where I wasn't shooting into the sun, the sun decides to dive behind cloud just at the wrong time as "Bittern" comes along. Pop goes the diesel - I think I saw 3 of these 08 Class shunters at the Mid Hants. Black Five 45379 arrives into Ropley with its train - I've always had a soft spot for the Black Fives, no doubt in part due to the fact that they are what Henry from Thomas the Tank Engine was based on although I always thought they were a neat looking engine before I found that out. How to make a big engine look small - photograph it from an absurdly tall bridge. "Brittania" heads tender first towards Medstead & Four Marks Station The same spot as the previous photo - this time with Black Five 45379 heading towards Alton through the deep cutting. My first Steam Gala - I quite liked it, and its a neat railway too. I was most impressed by "Brittania" - I hadn't seen its type before and unlike some British engines it actually sounds powerful and purposeful even at rest in a station. I think I'd quite like to ride behind "Brittania", or its only other surviving classmate 70013 "Oliver Cromwell" on the main line as I dare say they'd sound and look very impressive at 75mph. Was good to see "Bittern" and get to ride behind it, but I didn't get as many good photos of it as I would have liked. No matter - since it will be at the railway till the end of the year, there will be other opportunities.
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Although it wasn't a fortnight since my last trip, last weekend I did have a bit of another trip. I didn't really plan it - it kind of just fell into place while I was out doing errands in Wimbledon on Saturday and I stumbled across the Movie theatre and saw The Imitation Game was playing, the biopic about Alan Turing and the work done at Bletchley Park. There was a screening of the movie starting in about 30mins from when I was walking past - so I went in and bought a ticket and watched the movie. The movie focuses on Alan Turing, who was a member of a British team of codebreakers trying to decrypt German messages during World War Two at Bletchley Park and who came up with the design of a machine to help them crack the codes. This machine was the world's first Digital Computer - or in other words, the beginning of the digital revolution that sees us have computers in our homes and cellphones in our pockets and all sorts of marvellous creations. Bletchley Park itself, as the birthplace of the computer has been on my list of places to go see - it seemed fitting to visit the place after seeing the movie, so I decided I'd go visit Bletchley on Sunday. Bletchley Park and the codebreakers played a very key part in World War 2, although their work has only become recognised in the last 20 years or so as documents have become declassified. In a nutshell, the Nazi's had this set of incredibly clever encryption machines to send their messages to one another in secrecy called Enigma and Lorenz; the Allies were able to intercept messages but couldn't make heads or tails of them, and the system was so complex that the code was regarded as unbreakable. Capturing Enigma or Lorenz encoding machines wasn't enough - you had to know which settings were being used that day by which branch of the armed forces and at midnight, the encryption changed. To get the upper hand, the Allies needed to know what those messages said and so they established Bletchley Park in great secrecy to try and crack the codes. The code encryption possibilities were immense - so immense that Alan Turing recognised that they needed a machine to calculate decryption possibilities quicker than people could. Exploiting a few technical weaknesses in the code systems, the Allies managed to break the Enigma & Lorenz codes - and find out what the Nazi's were planning and doing, but the problem then was keeping the fact that the code had been cracked hidden from the Nazi's so that they didn't change the system and the work would have to begin all over again. This meant that the Allies had to devise a system where they took the minimum number of actions to win the war based on the information, but also the maximum number without the Nazi's becoming suspicious - meaning there were often cases where the Allies knew an attack on their troops was going to happen, but for the sake of keeping the upper hand had to let it happen. Bletchley Park, and the work done there was basically one of the two King Hits made by the Allies in World War 2. It is claimed that thanks to the work done at Bletchley Park it shortened the war by up to 2 years, a claim which I personally think is misleading as it implies World War 2 could have continued on to 1947 otherwise - which I don't believe it would have. The biggest difference Bletchley Park made to the course of World War 2 in my opinion is that the intelligence gathered very likely managed to prevent Germany getting into a position that enabled them to completely cut off the Allied supply lines to Britain or even launch an invasion of Britain; and also, by bringing the war in Europe to a conclusion by May 1945 it stopped the other of the Allies King Hit - the Atomic Bomb - being used on Germany and Europe, which given the attitude of the US to use the bomb no matter what doubtless would have happened in August 1945 (the work at Bletchley Park had absolutely no effect on the progress of the Atomic Bomb, so the first bomb would still have been ready when it was). Given the fact World War 2 was clearly unwinnable for the Germans by 1943 and they knew it yet still blindingly carried on, it is an open question had the bomb been used against Germany whether the war would have been over after the first bomb explosion, or the 2nd as was the case with Japan, or whether the Germans would have perservered on until the bombs ensured there was nothing or no-one left to continue the war. It seems to me though that whatever the outcome, World War 2 would have ended in 1945 or at the latest, very early 1946 - there is no way it would have stretched on to 1947. Sorry I'm kind of getting off track here! so, on Sunday 8th February I made the trek out to the British equivalent of Los Alamos - Bletchley Park. I arrived in Bletchley in time for lunch, which I got from a supermarket in Bletchley itself before heading to Bletchley Park itself. This detour was somewhat neccessary in order to obtain an SD card - I had left home without checking to see if I had any in my bag like I should, and turns out I didn't! Was fixed however and very cheaply so, luckily enough. Bletchley Park is still a military facility although largely a museum now. There was a lot of buildings to see, and it seemed clear you could actually spend all day there looking at things. I decided to head to the Mansion building near the back of the complex first, and work my way "back" towards the entrance. The Mansion was largely where the offices of Bletchley had been, and had been used a lot in The Imitation Game as the film used the real locations of the events. In this building too was an exhibition of items and scenes from the Film - but it turns out Alan Turing's family were visiting Bletchley for the first time that day and there were BBC cameras everywhere so accessing the exhibition took a bit of time waiting until it was free. Upon getting into the exhibition, there was still a BBC reporter standing in front of the replica of the "Bombe" computer which helped crack the decryption used in the movie. A number of the other hut buildings around the site were where the actual "magic" happened, and are set up to represent their role as it would have been during WW2 but don't contain any of the actual equipment or furnishings from that time. In another set of buildings, that post-date WW2 there was a cinema with film projection cameras on display; and in another building, a display of all the various kinds of Enigma and Lorenz coding machines as well as a working replica of a "Bombe". It doesn't look much like a computer as we know it, and although it is sort-of programmable by changing coding wheels to get it to decode the sequence for the various encryption types used, it isn't capable of being used for anything else other than Enigma decryption. On the site, but not actually a part of the museum itself is another museum - the National Museum of Computing. It had a separate admission fee and the whole thing isn't open 7 days a week like the rest of the park. However, it was on a Sunday and this too was worth visiting as they had a replica of the Colossus, the world's first programmable computer which was developed to help decrypt the Lorenz encryption. This machine was more true to Turing's "Universal Computer" concept and although huge, it is somewhat more recognisable as a computer as it is purely electric and not electromechanical like the Bombe. This machine could be programmed to do other tasks - and therefore infinitely more useful than a Bombe. Here too, they have a replica (under constriction) of the EDSAC which was one of the first computers with a stored program - in other words, it had a program which it always had stored to refer to instead of having to be programmed with instructions each time completely. On the other side of the room is a computer known as the WITCH, which has been recently resurrected and is not a replica - it dates from 1949 and is the world's oldest still working computer (and is still completely fully functional). There was a variety of large, old computers (but not as large as the EDSAC or WITCH) either in working order or not, before the museum gets a bit less cluttered feeling and some of the more familiar computers can be seen - Apple Lisa's (one of the few vintage computers that are worth more now than when they were new, which is considerable since they cost US$10,000 when new - and there were 2 of them here!), an Osborne Portable, and in that portable section amongst the usual notable suspects I was heartened to see a Toshiba T5200 - I have the earlier T3200, which was one of the very first laptop-shaped portable computers. Further round, on a table of machines where you were allowed to play games on them was an Acorn A3010 playing Lemmings - I couldn't help but indulge in playing a level. Since the Acorn was a british computer I wasn't surprised to see it in the museum, but I was totally unprepared for when I moved further into the museum and found the Acorn exhibition room. Acorn Computers were my first real introduction to computers - I know I'd seen and used other computers on occasion prior, but when I was at primary school in Hawkes Bay they got Acorn Computers which seemed far more advanced and someone I had a natural affinity of how to use them and troubleshoot them, something which later spread to other computers I used. Acorn computers were by and large ahead of their time - the technology Acorn used was wildly different to what anyone else was using, and the designs of the computers often were different to - there is no question that Acorn were the British equivalent of Apple. I've even got a few examples of Acorn computers in my vintage collection. In the room, they had pretty much everything - all the Acorn Computers there ever was, and I was unprepared for it and "geeked out". Not the least of which was when I saw the distinctive yellow case of the Acorn Phoebe - the last computer developed by Acorn, which came so close to being finished but never completed when Acorn decided to get out of the desktop computer game in 1996 - about the same time Apple nearly died. The Phoebe would have been a game changer on the market because it would have had a processor 6 times more powerful than any other home computer on the market, but the computer would have been about twice the price of a normal computer. The Phoebe, and Acorn's legacy is they refined the processor architecture and it is now used in every tablet/iPad and smart phone. I'm sure the Phoebe's case was just that, a case - one of the 300 or so cases that had been built by the time production was cut and flogged off to anyone that was interested, and not one of the 2 known completed Phoebe's. In the adjacent room was a very curious sight - a classroom filled with Acorn BBC's with a tutor and student all using them, looking for all the world like a school classroom straight out of the early-90's or possibly even earlier. After exiting the museum I then headed back to the train station and caught the train back to Euston and then the tube home. I had a good day out - can you tell? I've also managed to find out there is another Computer museum in Cambridge, which has one of the completed Acorn Phoebes (no idea if its on display though) and since Cambridge is in the sphere of a day trip from London, I'll be making a visit there one day soon. Not next weekend though - I have other plans in mind...
You know it's winter when you walk outside and there's snow on the ground. As was the case today in London! I have to say I was surprised when I glanced out the window and noticed it was white on the ground outside - But that explained why it was so cold. I thought that it might only be in the area in front of the house like it had been very early Saturday morning. But nope, it was out there on the street as well. It was even still snowing - very light snowflakes. The snow wasn't thick - maybe 1-2cm at most, not like in NZ where when it snows in urban areas, it gets a bit of height. But even being so thin, it was causing issues - traffic was slow and as a result lots of people were waiting in the cold for buses. School kinds made the most of the wait by throwing snowballs however. I had been told that when it snows in London the place can't cope. This was the teensiest bit of snow you could ever expect for the "white" look - and it was causing some havoc. A colleague of mine took nearly 2 hours to drive to work, which normally takes 30min. Cars were crashing or spinning out - the snow wasn't deep but it was dense and slippery. Mond you snow isn't exactly a super rare occurrence and you'd think the city (or the populace) would be better prepared to cope. Walking, I found it best to walk on the U trampled snow or where there was no snow left at all - compacted snow was treacherously slippery. Since I catch the tube, my transport to work was unaffected and on time. I thought that it might only be in the area in front of the house like it had been very early Saturday morning. But nope, it was out there on the street as well. Sorry for the crappy photo but that shows the snow coverage over the park near Clapham South station on my walk to work - not enough to hide the grass fully. We ran out of hot chocolate at work this morning too, with lots of people complaining - but perhaps not surprising!
Most of the snow was gone by 11am, but we're supposed to get more later this week. Might be nice if its a white weekend, especially if the snow is right down in London's centre? In my last blog post, I mentioned that after getting the job and flat I shan't be having any grand travels for a while but some domestic trips should be possible. By domestic, I mean internal to the UK - and in the short term, this means fairly inexpensive trips out of London to somewhere for the day. Coupled with that is an aim (but not a fixed target) to try and do over the course of a year, on average a trip once every 2 weeks - or 26 trips a year, which should be feasible. How you define a 'trip' is open to interpretation as well, so - should be interesting. This blog post is about the first of these trips, on Saturday 31st January. It was a day trip from London; it was not inexpensive. Yes, it involved a steam train. An excursion from London to Carlisle (very top of Northwest England - in fact only 16km from the Scottish border) which would travel along the Settle-Carlisle railway line which is remarked to be one of the most scenic in the UK. There's a whole heap of trips along this line throughout the year - 2015 is a boom year comparatively with a large number of extra trips originating from London (usually very few start from London). I could have waited before doing this trip, but a number of things came into play - namely the steam train portion was being pulled by a type of engine which is a favourite; it had snowed around a lot of England and Scotland during the week, and there was a good chance the trip would see snow-covered English countryside and that was something I wanted to see; by doing the 31st trip I could claim to have kept to the fortnightly trip aim so far for January; and it seemed fitting to do a steam train trip on Grandad's birthday, since I couldn't be in NZ to celebrate it with him. Add to that I wanted to do something to treat myself for having got my job and flat, so on Wednesday I booked a seat on the train for Saturday (Standard Class, that was cheapest - I was interested to compare it to First Class which I had travelled to Lincoln in as well as being frugal). I should also point out that an original idea was to do this trip, get off at Nuneaton on the way back, get to and stay the night at Leicester and visit the Grand Central Railway's winter steam train gala on the Sunday - but that would have cost almost twice as much, so I opted to just do the trip. Saturday began at 5.30am - way early but necessary in order to get to Euston Station in time for the 7.10am departure. There was a light smattering of snow on the ground when I left the house, an encouraging sign. I got to Euston just as the train arrived in the station for boarding, so wandered up the front to see the vintage electric loco that would take us to Carnforth where the steam loco took over. Instead, I found two older diesels - not that it mattered much to me, so long as we got the steam loco they'd advertised. In the UK it appears as if you have a 50/50 chance of getting the advertised steam loco on your train; the trip ex-Manchester the week prior was originally meant to be two Jubilee steam locos, then a month out became a Jubilee and a Black Five; on the day, only a Black Five hauled the trip as the other Jubilee failed the night before. We left slightly late, and I was the sole occupant of my carriage until the first pick-up stop, and even then it wasn't till nearly an hour into the trip when the carriage had more than 5 people in it. Much of this first hour was spent on Skype through my cellphone talking to friends back in NZ, and even at one point involved me listening to a train passing a house in NZ while riding a train in the UK. After the cell coverage couldn't sustain the call properly, that stopped and I started paying more attention to the countryside out the window - which was now visible instead of the darkness we had set out in. The snow got heavier as we headed north, until a point when it got thinner and then disappeared altogether in the lovely sunny winter's day. I shared the group of 4 seats around the table with 2 gentleman who after some initial conversation when they hopped on the train, spent the rest of the trip largely in silence (and I had the seat next to me free). We continued to head north, speeding along at 160km/h until nearly 4 hours into the trip we passed through Lancaster and we started getting glimpses of a large body of water - my first time seeing the Irish Sea (I only saw the River Mersey when in Liverpool). Not long after we arrived at Carnforth where the diesels came off and the advertised steam loco, 46233 "Duchess of Hamilton" hooked on. Here at Carnforth as we arrived into the station, I went to a door window to get a couple of photos of the old carriages in the Carnforth depot - the end doors are the only place you can open windows and poke your camera out. The door on the other side had someone standing in it, and it look me a minute or two to realise he had already staked out his spot for the upcoming trip ahead. In the minute that followed, others came past to claim a window but they were already taken - so I quickly darted into the carriage, got my coat and gloves and claimed the window for myself, even though it was likely on the wrong side for the best train photos it should still be okay since we're the 2nd to last carriage and if nothing else, it would be good for scenery. I stood on the doorway for the 30mins it took to swap locos, and for the 80mins to Carlisle. The Duchess is a beast amongst British locos, and showed why as we continued on for Carlisle - as it hauled the 12 carriage train into the snowy hills it pulled the train like it was on level track, only slowing down a bit as we got close to the Shap summit, a steep piece of line and probably the highest point of the trip from sea level. The engine was designed as a powerful express locomotive to run fast trains over the lines we were travelling so it was only doing what it was built to do, but it was impressive nonetheless. By now the snow covered the ground entirely, and looked extremely impressive against the blue sky. From my window, I got a couple of okay photos but I snuffed a few better ones. At Carlisle, we had 2 hours - which went extremely quick. There was no snow at Carlisle or the surrounding area by the time we got there, and I didn't venture too far around the city as I really wasn't sure where to go. Lunch was a must - but with a sudden influx of 400+ people from the train, all the fooderies were a bit stretched and it took a while to get food, so that chewed into the time even further. Carlisle seems a nice enough place but doesn't strike me as a place having any sort of striking character, not like Lincoln or York. I was at the station early enough to watch the steam train arrive back from turning and watch two diesels pull a single odd-looking wagon past me - which I realised was a waste nuclear fuel container wagon, probably from the nearby Sellafield Nuclear Power Plant. Every time I see a Nuclear Power Plant in Britain (there seems to be a lot of them) my skin crawls and the same happened upon realising what the wagon was. Hopping back into my carriage (which was now the 3rd from the front), we headed off onto the "main attraction" - the Settle-Carlisle line. The snow slowly began to come back as we climbed deep into Cumbria, but the scenery seemed fairly average and not as spectacular as we'd seen around Shap. It did get better though and almost fully snow-covered - but photos were a tad difficult as I hadn't staked a window (being so close to the engine I didn't see much point) and had to ask someone nicely if they minded moving out of the way for 5 seconds, by which time the photo opportunity had already passed. There was a stop for water at Appleby (no snow on the ground there) and we were allowed off the train, before continuing on up the climb to Ais Gill (the engine again made it look easy, causing much discussion amongst the carriage), on to Settle and stopping for more water at Hellifield. Watching the sun dipping low over the moors as we crossed over the Ribblehead Viaduct was quite something. By now I could see why people make a big deal about this stretch of railway - particularly in the snow it looked quite spectacular but even so, NZ's Midland Line, Coastal Pacific line and the Taieri Gorge Railway still blow it well and truly out of the water. As we departed Hellifield it was now too dark for all intents and purposes for photos, and we continued on in the dark. At Blackburn, the passengers who got on at Preston got off - being on a different line than we travelled up on, we didn't go through Preston but there was a commuter train waiting to take them on to Preston from Blackburn. Not 20mins later we stopped at Faringdon, where we said goodbye to Duchess of Hamilton and regained the diesels for the 4 hour trip onwards to London in the dark. Which we did, at the quicker pace of 160km/h again and stopping at the various stations to drop people off at (having rejoined the same track we came up on at Crewe). The rest of the trip there is not much to comment on - being dark outside, you can't see anything and eventually I was the last left in my carriage. By now, fairly tired I tuned back to my flat, arriving about 11.30pm - quite a long day. I had a great day out - I got to see the English countryside in snow, and I got to ride behind the Duchess. I can now say I've been to within cooee of the Scottish border, but can't claim to have been to Scotland - however I have now done a large portion of travel within the length of England itself, both on the east and west although there is much more to do. Travelling standard class is perfectly fine unless you particularly want the refreshments brought to your seat and you want a better chance at claiming one of those door windows. I'm also interested in seeing what the scenery might be like in summer for comparison - so don't be surprised if I do this trip again at some point, although probably only once more.
So that was my Saturday - Sunday has been a lot more relaxed, just finding the large supermarket nearby and stocking up on supplies as well as attending to a few chores. The supermarket is huge, so full of choice - and it even has a clothing section, book/DVD section and electronic equipment store inside it! In the same building is a large Marks & Spencers with more food and lots of clothes and manchester as well so pretty handy. Its next to a little river where people were fishing (did not look like a fishing river to me) and there's a water wheel by a market (which wasn't a very exciting one when I visited) so I'm in a neat wee area all round really. No idea what I might get up to next, or when - so stay tuned! |
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August 2019
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