Recent content by stuving

Here is HS2's own video marking the completion of the platforms (also released 13th August). The host page has (I think) the full commentary text.

There are ads and news items in the BNA about the Euston Dining Club from 1907 to 1958. No doubt it existed earlier, as well as later, just wasn't in the papers. There are some ads for waitresses, WW1 and 20s, with hours 9-6. From reports of careers at retirement, the EDC was run by a committee...

It looks like I've added two plus two and got six; two unrelated issues (temporary for Fagioli). Forkast does look like a genuine merger; the dissolution of the parts was just how the merging was implemented. And while the branding etc. was acquired, they do seem to be in an unseemly hurry to...

I spotted a couple of unfamilar names in those Water Orton videos. The SPMTs, though Mammoet-red, have "Fagioli" on them. But there are also hangings with Ceva-Fagioli; Ceva took Fagioli over earlier this year. And on some bits of the viaduct formwork there is the name "Coffrage&Quipage", though...

It should help to see those two 6" OS maps together (from NLS): 1896 on the left and 1913 on the right. The earlier map has the LNWR main line already quadruple, and I was talking about the Rickmansworth branch being doubled in 1907-10. This was indeed part of the "New Line" works, most of...

While real coffee was not part of the general national culture until later, in upmarket places it always had been. I had a student holiday job at J Lyons main factory in Greenford in 1969 (I think). We were still in a mezzanine office up in a corner of the warehouse, not in the office block or...

I was expecting to find public notices in the Watford Observer about the stopping-up of Loates Lane at the crossing, but so far I haven't. I did however find a reported discussion in Watford UDC (on 31 Jan 1907) about "the LNWR's bill". This does refer to the level crossing in Loates-lane, with...

The use of this area in the Festival of Britain is shown in the attached image, taken from the wayfinding plan in the official "brochure". Here York Road runs across the bottom, and Sutton Walk is the diagonal road, going under the Charing Cross line that runs vertically up the central page...

If you're really interested in bridge strikes, the briefing for that part of FOAK 2025 is here. Despite being quite long, and focused on what NR's current problems are, I can't find anything about existing detection/warning systems and what the problems with them are. There are a number of links...

Re: mincemeat slice - (traditional) date slice is still fairly common, and this would be the same. Most likely shortcrust pastry, with mincemeat in between as a sandwich. So yes, a mince pie with modified geometry.

And they are not new. Here's a surviving BBC news item from twenty years ago! Since you don't need anything that complicated to make one, the surprise is that so few have ever been put in. Maybe they just are not very effective, and hard to make reliable enough. Those two in Swindon do seem to...

I find it odd that BR/CEGB discussions in 1965 would not be for merry-go-round trains. By January 1964 the preferred rail delivery system for other 2000 MW stations was MGR, and all those that could be were being changed over, even while being built. Four of the earliest (at least to start...

It sounds like Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which was about 2000 MW and built 1963-1968 (see Wikipedia). That had four 500 MW sets each of boiler, turbines, and alternator. I went to visit that the year after it opened! At that stage it was still all shiny (well, sort of) and new. And all the bits of it...

Were there problems in practice with the temperature compensation? Obviously the expansion to be made to balance out is greater on a long wire, but so are the possibilities for other factors to upset the balance. The main one (I think) was that some parts were heated by direct sunshine, other...

At that specific location they would be looking out for it - it's no accident there was a video camera set up there, to watch the trains but also in part wishing for this to happen. The clue is in the name of the site: "Horseshoe Curve". The track turns more than 180 degrees on an up grade so it...