PhilJ W

You have to remember that HGV's are legally required to be fitted with a speed limiter keeping them to below 56 mph.

A bit more information about the Gotto Plan mentioned above. There is only one copy and that is in poor condition but has had conservation. Fortunately the whole 14 sheets are online (but I can't find the link at the moment).

Just send me down to the glue factory when my turn comes.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. The sore foot kept me up for most of the night but now that I'm up its calmed down. One of the most interesting maps I have ever seen is of where I was born, Romford. It is called the Gotto Plan, after the cartographer. It's to a very large scale, larger than the OS 25" scale and large enough to show individual rails, not lines of the railway. It dates from c. 1850 and was used to illustrate the towns (proposed?) sewage system showing every privy in the town. As you can imagine even though the town was a lot smaller back then it took IIRC 14 maps to cover the town. The railway station is on one of the maps in its entirety, this is the original 1837/38 ECR station so was only 10-15 years old when mapped. I was able to spot something that was in error in several publications and articles. The railway access to the brewery (north of the railway) in later years was through a tunnel under the main line from the goods yard on the south side. Before the yard was opened rail access was by a wagon lift. Most if not all authors assumed that it was on the north side the same as the brewery but the map revealed that it was on the south side and the tunnel was in place at the time the map was published. In fact the tunnel still exists and alongside it can be seen the site of the wagon lift marked by the different coloured brick of the retaining wall also painted white in the picture.

Goodnight all.

The vessel looks too big to go through the Panama canal and is probably too big for the Suez canal as well.

Oops.

Its not a map they need, more like better communication.

Evening all from Estuary-Land. The sore foot has decided to play up again just before bed time so a brace of Nurofen has been taken. Something like cartologist? I looked it up but its another word for cartographer, a map maker. Apparently there is no name for a map collector unlike stamp and coin collectors. Perhaps we could ask the Oxford English Dictionary to come up with something?

Oh dear:-

My map collecting started many years ago when I found an LMS rating map in a junk shop for the grand sum of 50p. It dates from 1929 and covers an area to the north of Swansea. Its an OS 25 inch map and it is annotated with sidings and loading banks marked out in green or red ink and details written out in pencil in an immaculate and tiny copperplate writing. Sadly its in a not very good condition so I don't get it out very often. I have dozens of other maps and charts and every time I look at them I seem to notice a detail or details that I hadn't spotted before.

They were probably on delivery from the makers of the ambulance bodies. The most common chassis chosen for ambulances was the BMC LD or the Bedford J. There were several body builders producing ambulance bodies. Oxford Diecast make a model of the Bedford J ambulance.

Oops, I meant to write mile, duly amended. Thats what comes from being a railway modeller, most things are quoted as to the foot such as 4mm or 7mm to the foot.

I too like maps. A couple of years ago I was able to get my hands on a load of 25" to the mile OS maps ex British Rail. They were recovered from a skip during an office clearance, only trouble is that you need a big table to open these maps out. The sea charts are of similar size and a bit more colourful but the problem with displaying them would be the bits cut out. Though also in Ostend there was a bar with the charts papering the walls and ceiling, one way of displaying them.

It wasn't the council per se' it was the county councillor responsible for highways. The response was a standard 'brush off' letter so thats why I notified the media in the shape of the local BBC. We no longer have any local newspapers worthy of the name, same as many other places.

A Trolleybus?

It seems to me that most American sausages are of German origin and style and even the names such as frankfurter indicate that. I was thinking perhaps thats why black pudding was not so popular and then I remembered blutwurst, very much like black pudding using the same ingredients but spicier.

Two comments about gears v. brakes. When I took my first driving lesson I was sat in the driving seat while the instructor explained the controls. He pointed to the gear lever and said "That is the change speed lever, you use that to control your speed." (my italics) and I have followed that ever since. But that was 54 years ago! Of course cars have changed a lot in those 54 years. My current car, a Hyundai I10 has a high revving short stroke engine and a five speed gearbox compared to my first car, a Ford 100E with a slow revving long stroke engine and only three speeds. With my current car the engine braking is not as noticeable as it was on the 100E. The Hyundai will speed up when going downhill in top gear with feet off of everything whereas the 100E would almost stop. Another practice that I was taught was to always use the same gear going down a hill as you used going up.

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. I received a reply from the (Essex) county councillor responsible for highways who I e-mailed about the ongoing local road 'improvements'. All it was was the usual politicians waffle about what they've done to inform residents what was going to be done but not addressing the fact that what they said would be done and should have been done hasn't. I've now passed the correspondence onto the media in the shape of the BBC local news.

You definitely do not want to mix those two up!

Full marks to them for trying despite the dietary rules. I seem to recall a bit of a to-do in Israel a few years ago when an up-market Tel-Aviv restaurant was serving pork under the name of white beef.

At the moment the overnight curfew will not be much of a hardship.

The idiot on the water ski, what was he wearing? T-shirt, jeans and trainers and not much more is my guess. And as for a life jacket? The icing on the cake would be if the young lady he was intending to visit ditched him for being such an idiot.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. No trouble from the foot last night but this morning it was making up for it from the off. Even a long-ish soak in the bath seemed to make no difference. Nurofen has been deployed and is starting to have an effect. So he'll be spending Christmas/New Year in the slammer. There used to be an antique shop on the Ostend waterfront specialising in marine antiques. They had plenty of (not so) old sea charts for sale quite cheaply. They all had the box containing the magnetic pole information cut out.

Goodnight all.