The Night Mail

[NHY 581]

14 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

But I also blotted my copybook with my fellow Midland modellers at Mark when I also let some of my lesser motive power pull the breakdown train.

Like this little Peckett

 

And my little Andrew Barclay

 

But when the Brush diesel appeared, tongues really started to wag.

 

Will my position in the Midland Railway Society survive?

 

Dave

 

 

Excellent motive power for a small, rural industrial, side project cameo layout...........which is about all I could manage in my available space. 

 

Think 1/35th military diorama approach meets 7mm railway modelling.........

 

Rob

[Happy Hippo]

1 hour ago, NHY 581 said:

 

Excellent motive power for a small, rural industrial, side project cameo layout...........which is about all I could manage in my available space. 

 

Think 1/35th military diorama approach meets 7mm railway modelling.........

 

Rob

The illustrious DH does have enough space for such a 7 mm sideshow if he were to finally finish up his workshop declutter😄.

 

It would look very good in the full blown Iain Rice cameo style theatre presentation.

 

I have the book if Dave feels the urge!

[bbishop]

10 hours ago, br2975 said:

Friday, 21st. October, 1966

 

and Mum sitting by the phone, in case any of her cousins' families were affected.  We were lucky.

[br2975]

2 hours ago, GMKAT7 said:

Good morning br2975,

 

The Boss and I have recently started watching The Crown, and on Friday night came to the episode in series three about the Aberfan disaster.

 

IMO it was a superb episode in it's sensitive handling of the disaster and the Royal Family members reaction to it.

British Television at its best.

 

Given I was only seven at the time I have little memory of it.

 

Cheers, Nigel.

.

I was ten, in Standard 4, when our teacher, Mr. Harry sat us all down and told us what was taking place about 18 miles north of our school.

.

I doubt we took it all in at that time, but did later.

.

What "The Crown" didn't cover was the disgraceful political actions that followed, where the government of the day in the form of Harold Wilson and George Thomas (Viscount Tonypandy)  oversee the 'pillaging' of the disaster fund (public donations) of hundreds of thousands of pounds in order to fund the removal of the waste tips, allegedly at the behest of Lord Rovbens, Chair of the NCB.

.

It took thirty years until Ron Davies, Secretary of State for Wales saw the £150,000 repaid, and a further ten years until the government repaid some £2million, the lost interest.

[br2975]

[Oldddudders]

My takeaway from that dreadful day is Cliff Michelmore, seldom an on-the-spot reporter, but the best big gun the BBC could dig up, being virtually overwhelmed by emotion, on camera, as he stood on-site that evening. He had been a Squadron Leader in WW2, so had seen some horrid things then, no doubt, but this was off any known scale for most of us.

 

He and wife Jean Metcalfe lived locally to me, in Reigate, and I had caddied for him a few times at Betchworth Park golf club.  

[TheQ]

For some strange reason the BBC decided to transmit today a "Garden Rescue", from a new build house on an old coal tip in Aberfan..

No mention of the events though.

 

 

Edited 21 hours ago by TheQ

[jamie92208]

Yes I remember Aberfan very well.  I was 13 at the time and the next day the Times had a huge frontbpage spread picture of the devastation.  I got into trouble from my E glish teacher, who was also my housemaster, for showing the picture to the boy sitting next to me. 

 

This morning I announced in our French lesson that it was Trafalger day. Our teachers face was a picture. 

 

Jamie

[polybear]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

For some strange reason the BBC decided to transmit today a "Garden Rescue", from a new build house on an old coal tip in Aberfan..

No mention of the events though.

 

Now is it just Bear, or does anyone else find the idea of building new houses on an old coal tip worrying?

[4630]

11 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Now is it just Bear, or does anyone else find the idea of building new houses on an old coal tip worrying?

It’s not uncommon though @polybear.  The site of the former Prince of Wales colliery at Pontefract in West Yorkshire is now an estate of some 400+ houses.

[jamie92208]

16 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Now is it just Bear, or does anyone else find the idea of building new houses on an old coal tip worrying?

My daughter and granddaughter live on the former Allerton Bywater pit site.  The capped shafts are in the park where young Emily plays. I suspect that the houses in Aberfan are on a former colliery site rather than a former tip.  Probably first class journalism.  My memory of the former pit stack site at Aberfan is that it was on a rather steep hillside. 

 

Jamie

[AndyID]

12 hours ago, pH said:

 

I think you may have been having your young leg pulled, That's not to say those big tanks couldn't move - I've been behind both Fairburn and Standard varieties doing more than 80mph. But I don't think crews would complain about engines going too fast when the remedy was in their own hands.  

 

(P.S. the station master at St. James in 1965 was Mr. Farish.)

 

IIRC what he said was they could easily cover the distance in less than the time allocated for the journey. He definitely seemed to like those engines.

[SM42]

1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

 

 

This morning I announced in our French lesson that it was Trafalger day. Our teachers face was a picture. 

 

Jamie

 

Don't forget the French also celebrate it as the day they killed Nelson  

 

Andy

Edited 19 hours ago by SM42

[pH]

28 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

My memory of the former pit stack site at Aberfan is that it was on a rather steep hillside. 

I hitched down that valley in 1968. The main road was on the east side of the valley then -  there’s now a newer road on the west side, the side where the slide happened. Looking across at the huge black scar on the opposite hillside was chilling.

[Happy Hippo]

19 minutes ago, pH said:

I hitched down that valley in 1968. The main road was on the east side of the valley then -  there’s now a newer road on the west side, the side where the slide happened. Looking across at the huge black scar on the opposite hillside was chilling.

The newer road is the A470 (Cardiff to Llandudno) and was partially built along the route of the old joint GWR/Rhymney Railway line from Quakers Yard (HL) to Merthyr which closed in the 1950's.

 

The Glamorganshire canal also ran alongside the GW/RR route through Aberfan

 

The old road on the east side which used to be the A470, is now A4054.

Edited 19 hours ago by Happy Hippo

[AndyID]

Western Larch

 

 

[Flanged Wheel]

1 hour ago, SM42 said:

 

Don't forget the French also celebrate it as the day they killed Nelson  

 

Andy

 

This is true. I once worked in a multi-national coalition. Every country had their own safe for nationally classified material. One day I was passing and noticed that one of my French colleagues was struggling to open their safe.

 

I made the helpful suggestion that “I think you’ll find that the combination is 21-10-05”.

 

Without a pause, he came right back with “Mais oui, the battle of the dead admiral”…!

 

I’ve been to a number of Trafalgar Night dinners with French guests and they have always been excellent fun.

 

To be honest, I always found the Marine Nationale were exceptionally good to work with. The second best Admiral that I ever worked for was French. The best one was American… 

[Dave Hunt]

10 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

The illustrious DH does have enough space for such a 7 mm sideshow if he were to finally finish up his workshop declutter😄.

 

It would look very good in the full blown Iain Rice cameo style theatre presentation.

 

I have the book if Dave feels the urge!

 

Get thee behind me Satan!! You know how weak willed I am when it comes to modelling. Jamie has already got me into French metre gauge and I need to live to 125 in order to finish everything I'm already doing.

 

But it does sound tempting....

 

Oh bu66er...

 

Dave

[br2975]

59 minutes ago, AndyID said:

Western Larch

 

 

.

.

 

[Chris Snowdon]

9 hours ago, br2975 said:

Sorry, this defeats me.  Memory fails.  Can't find my copy of ICS, so used an old ALRS Vol 5.  So, "MV".

[Chris Snowdon]

3 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Now is it just Bear, or does anyone else find the idea of building new houses on an old coal tip worrying?

More than "worrying".  Something called the Coal Authority still exists (or did until recently) to maintain records of abandoned mines going way-back, because of concerns about housing built on unstable ground.

[Dave Hunt]

9 hours ago, br2975 said:

 

???

 

Dave

[Compound2632]

21 minutes ago, Chris Snowdon said:

Sorry, this defeats me.  Memory fails.  Can't find my copy of ICS, so used an old ALRS Vol 5.  So, "MV".

 

You need Popham's 'Telegraphic Signals of Marine Vocabulary', or so Wikipedia tells me.

 

What's the date today?

 

I'll give you another clue - the father of the LNWR's chairman of 1852-1861 was one of the intended recipients.

Edited 16 hours ago by Compound2632

[Happy Hippo]

What did Nelson signal to the fleet?

[AndyID]

3 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

My daughter and granddaughter live on the former Allerton Bywater pit site.  The capped shafts are in the park where young Emily plays. I suspect that the houses in Aberfan are on a former colliery site rather than a former tip.  Probably first class journalism.  My memory of the former pit stack site at Aberfan is that it was on a rather steep hillside. 

 

Jamie

 

We bought a new construction house In Prestwick near the original runway. When they started to build the house next to us they drove a lot of metal pilings in to support it. Turns out there were old mine workings in that area but the well known UK building company assured me that our property was not at risk. I believed them until the concrete lintel at our bedroom window broke in two.