I used to go to the BoB day airshows there in the 50’s, one of the tricks at the displays was for the performing a/c to dissappear below the end of the runway which terminated short of the River Trent that is much lower than the edge of the escarpment on which Syerston is situated. Fortunately I had gone to Cottesmore for a change and missed the infamous display when the Vulcan crashed, 1958 wasn’t it.

The “pedigree” of steam locos does seem harder to pin down doesn’t it with boilers and frames not always being reuinted after overhaul when in regular use. There have been a couple of re-visions of names and numbers as a result IIRC.

I think the Altlantic will indeed be a good one when she is completed.

Isn’t one of the BR standards being rebuilt into a missing BR standard class – the only difference being one had a tender and the other was a tank engine?

I was unaware of the Dibnah theft.
(Oddly enough I was reading about him at the weekend and his perfection on his riveting on the boiler of his Avling & Porter convertable.)
Disgusting.

The theft occured just before Xmas, try looking it up on the local Bolton newspaper website.
Considering Fred’s profile in the media and the BBC in particular, the lack of publicity about this has been a disgrace, I only found out about it when I bought a copy of ‘Old Glory’ magazine recently, even some of my enthusiast friends who live not far from Bolton, knew nothing about it. I would have thought that national coverage of this disgusting crime against a true British icon would only help to catch the scum that did this.

The County project has been controversial apparently in some circiles as the 8F being canabalised is the only surviving Doncaster built example.
It would appear that the railway world have sticklers too…!

I was aware of that, you obviously read Railway Magazine as well, however, the critics have a point, there must be other, less contraversial unrestored 8f’s about. My favourite recreation is the LBSC Atlantic, it’s interesting to note that the boiler for this project was found in Witham where I lived for a couple of years, I remember going round Crewe and Doncaster works in the 60’s and finding some really cool stationary boilers, even then, I thought that they must have been worth saving. I notice that the new boiler for Flying Scotsman is from a deceased A-3, was this from an old stationary boiler, the previous one was from an A-4, sorry, boiler matters quite intrigue me, yawn, after all, the boilers give the things their identity, appearance and character.
Incidentally, does anyone out there have any info on the Fred Dibnah burglarly, don’t worry, if I found any, the perpertrators would be found floating face down in a septic tank where they belong.

One of the best examples in the UK has to be the golden circle over Lakenheath a few years ago, at the time, I was driving home from Takeley to Finchingfield and was completely puzzled by this strange vision ahead of me in the gathering sunset, it was visible for miles over East Anglia, the F-15 pilots excuse was the US basketball team winning an Olympic gold medal, does anyone have a picture of this event.

Out of the 280 steam loco’s at Barry, All but 10 went to preserved railways. Many are in steam, others await their turn, or are used as spares. The ten left behind were put into storage by the local council, and have since been the subject of sale and removal for further projects. If it wasn’t for Dai Woodham, we would have maybe a quarter of the country’s fleetof steam locos.

Some of these are being used to create long lost locomotive types, ie the frames of a Hall and the boiler of an 8F are being used to create a County, similar projects will be to create a Grange and a Saint.
It’s always been controversial that some of the last surviving GW types never made it to Woodhams, particularly the Granges, there have been rumours that a strategic store of steam locos were hidden away in an underground facility in case of nuclear attack, who knows, it did happen in Finland, some of those survivors are now stored at Ongar and at an industrial estate in Suffolk.
Unfortunatley I never made it to Barry, in 1969 I worked at Butlins in Minehead and you could see their Barry Island camp across the Bristol Channel, this was where a mate of mine worked and he used to spend sometime wandering round the scrapyard, without a camera though, what a missed opportunity.
We used to go round the local scrapyards in the 60’s, the local sheds were full of withdrawn locos, particularly Annesley and Toton, I do have pictures of these sad scenes if anyone is interested. The locos tended to be cut up at a wagon works in Basford, Notts, Wrigleys I think it was called, plus a scrapyard on the outskirts of Derby next to the A52, thats where all the Jubilees seem to end up. Sad days.

That’s a common buzzard, mate. Buteo buteo to the likes of Bill Oddie. 🙂

An impressive creature that is, happily, becoming more widespread in the UK.

They’re a common sight near MAN these days.

By coincidence I just sent off the results of my RSPB Garden Watch, no Buzzards round here but I did have a Kestrel hovering very low over the bird table yesterday afternoon until he worked out that it was less effort to sit in a tree instead.
Buzzards are becoming more widespread, up until recently they were not found in this area at all, only the odd migrating example, however last summer I spotted one sussing out Finchingfield from a great height and later discovered a pair living in some woods between Lt Sampford and Thaxted possibly attracted by the success of the Red Kites established between Sampford and Finchingfield.
We’ve only been living here a few weeks but the wilderness surrounding the river Blackwater just over the fence suggests some interesting sightings, we’ve already had a cormorant flying around and herons are more common than sparrows.
I would suggest that your Buzzard lives in Charnwood Forest, there are plenty of woodland sites up there to support them.
As for Eagles, nahhh, the number of remote places I’ve visited in Scotland in search of these fabled beasts has always drawn a blank, otters 4, eagles 0.
Hopefully I will be up there at Easter and perhaps this time…………..

Marham is missing from the list, just had a look though and can’t work out how they got the Victor to land so neatly in the car park.

Back on line at last, my new computers were installed today so I have a lot of catching up to do, life has changed drastically since I was last on here, good riddance to Finchingfield and it’s petty little ways, it’s more satisfying to be a towny again after 20 years of ‘peaceful’ village life.

You may be interested to know about this. Peaodaphilia seems to have developed as a new thing, but it isn’t. Back in the late 50’s and 60’s the area where we lived, on the edge of the city was rife with odd blokes attempting to obtain sexual favours from us kids, using blackmail. We were actually pretty wise and fought back. My mate and I had a large dog which we trained to attack these scum, of course we never told our parents as they would never have let us play out in the woods.
A great incident, now bearing in mind we were only about 12 at the time, my mate and I spotted a suspicious looking character lurking on our railway bridge, he dissapeared into the woods so we followed him, at a safe distance of course, and we knew all the secret paths so he had no chance.
We came across some quite young kids in a clearing and asked if anything had happened, yes, said this little kid who was about 6, ‘he got his willy out’
what did you do, I fired my catapult straight into his B######, he ran.
So we followed him.
We caught him hiding behind a bush watching a young couple snogging, we warned them and he turned on us and produced a mallet from under his coat, the dog did the rest and locked his jaws round the b###### wrist, he then legged it down the canal. Oh joy, a group of Teddy Boys were coming the other way firing indiscrimently into the canal with airguns, ‘Whats up Boys’.
‘That mans a perv trying to assault little kids’
He was last seen running down the bank, trousers down his ankles being peppared with airgun pellets and persude by some really nasty looking guys, I presume he’s now under a landfill site.
Never saw him again.
Signing off for a while now as I’m moving house, merry Xmas.