Early Risers.

[polybear]

1 hour ago, DaveF said:

Many thanks for the thoughts on what I can do with the various pictures etc in my loft. I am going to have a good think and first make sure I don't want to swap any of the pictures round I have on my walls of which there are a lot - pictures not walls that is.

 

Talking of pictures....

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c07nm512l3do

[Grizz]

16 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Awake at 03:08 🙁 but at least I got a snap of the permanent way people at work.

Not the greatest photograph coming being taken with an iPhone on zoom.

 

Thinking about it, I don’t think that the various Japanese railway companies do much in the way of closing entire sections of track to traffic for days at a time. They even shifted an entire platform and track at Shibuya station overnight.

 

 

 

14 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

That can't be Grizz can it! He'd have mentioned it if he was going to be on an away day.

 

はい、それは私でした。私は架線マストに一番近い、白い帽子をかぶったオレンジ色の服を着た男です。

 

Hai, sore wa watashideshita. Watashi wa kasen masuto ni ichiban chikai, shiroi bōshi o kabutta orenji-iro no fuku o kita otokodesu.

I should add that, what with all this long distance commuting, I am exhausted. 🥱 

[iL Dottore]

12 hours ago, BoD said:

I have visited both and enjoyed both.

I’m not sure why people seem to have such a ‘downer’ on them.

 

 

3 hours ago, polybear said:

 

I suspect it's the knowledge of what they once were, as well as "what they could be"; the Science Museum in London in London is a prime example of that (the different between what it was in 1992 and what it is now almost reduced a hard-as-nails Poly to tears.....).

I am definitely with The Bear on this one! And I remember even further back to when the Science Museum in London, the Natural History Museum in London, the Maritime Museum in Greenwich were state of the art and highly respected museums (so mid 60s). The Science Museum is but a shadow of its former self and the great Hall on the ground floor, once home to an impressive collection of beam engines and other Victorian and Edwardian steam contraptions has now been turned over to flogging cheap and nasty souvenirs in the "museum shop". Maybe I am old-fashioned, but I think it's much more fun to watch 100 tons of beam engine work at the press of a button then to buy a Batman shaped pencil sharpener made from the cheapest materials possible in the PRC.

 

What's happened to the Maritime Museum is nothing but a national disgrace: once it had many galleries full of beautiful ship models; models made by apprentices, models made by prisoners of war and models made by skilled enthusiasts, these have all been swept away and replaced by offices for the "administration" (funnily enough I don't remember such a large "administration" needing so much office space back when there were many many more exhibits on display than there are nowadays)

 

Add to add a rather unpleasant icing to this particular cake, in addition to dumbing things down (to try to attract the sort of visitor that would have absolutely no interest in coming to a museum no matter what)., there is also the pushing of various agendas, such as DEI, into various periods of history that were anything else but diverse, equal or inclusive. Periods of history where the Empire was considered mostly a good thing and slavery was something bad that the British had taken the lead in abolishing.

 

And let's be very blunt here: back then White Western European Males were not considered the evil bogeyman as they are today (don't you know that for many in the museum, arts and media worlds no matter what it is, it's always the white man's fault!)

 

Fewer exhibits, trying to make everything fit or push an agenda of one kind or another and dumbing down.... So yes, they are a shadow of what they once were and nowhere near what they could be, especially when stacked up against the best American, Japanese and European museums.