This One Has A Bit Of Preamble
But so do nearly all our Intros, so no surprise there.
As you should surely know by now, Conrad is ever on the lookout for content for BOOJUM! and this can lead to ventures down various rabbit warrens, until the final destination bears no resemblance to the original starting point.
Thus, I was perusing Quora, which I don't do very often nowadays, usually confining my social media browsing to Twitter. What did I espy? Art!
The following story. It was narrated by an Ex-Railway Employee, hereafter ERE, who worked for a coyly-un-named railway here in the UK, which is the sensible way to keep things on teh Interwebz. There are 28 of these rail companies, so guessing which one is a fool's game.
As ERE told it, his rail company was replacing it's old 'slam-door' railway carriages with new, centrally-locking ones, which dates his story to over 20 years ago. Art!
They were called slam-doors because to close them, one had to swing them shut with enough force for the lock to engage. They could be opened - EVEN DURING TRAVEL - by undoing the door catch from the inside, which is just asking for trouble. The central-locking carriages were all either opened or closed simultaneously by the guard or driver and that was that between stations. Art!
New rolling stock meant new dimensions and weights for the new carriages, which rendered ERE's depot's on-track train washing machine obsolete. Yes, such things exist and you can see one in action at top. Did you think it was done by a chap with a bucket and mop?
ANYWAY a bunch of technical staff were sent out to his depot, to obtain measurements of the new stock, and rather than go about measuring <thinks> height of carriage roof, height of carriage floor above tracks, maximum width, minimum width, area of frontage, area of rear, length of carriage, and so on, they simply went and asked a shunter for data.
BAD IDEA!
Art!
ERE described the shunter as doing several jobs, yet none of which involved staffing the new rolling stock. As you can see from the above, a shunting locomotive is used to move stock around in marshalling yards, assembling or dis-assembling trains for despatch. It doesn't haul passenger trains in service.
So. The new train washing machine was installed and a new-build train carriage was sent through.
The outer aluminium skin and horns were torn off by the washing machine, causing thousands of pounds-worth of damage. Ooops. Art!
What the shunter didn't know, and ERE did, was that one of these trains on a live track gains 6" in height when it's air-bag suspension unit is turned on, and the washing machine was on an inert track.
Conrad, of course - obviously! - sought to try and find out a little more detail, such as the name of the rail provider, and see if there were any pictures.
I struck out on both of those, not helped by a complete lack of dating information: ERE covered his bottom particularly well there. Nor was I helped by the lack of gore, since the only thing harmed was the train hull and certain technical manager's pride. Googling just didn't pan out.
BUT I did find a positively frightening resource. Art!
O boy. Did I. You can search for 'Railway Type', 'Report Type' and 'Date Of Occurrence', except that last doesn't go back beyond 2005. In total there are 578 of these reports, to which you, the public, have unfettered access.
RAIB review of station pedestrian crossings including pedestrian gates at highway level crossings
RAIB has reviewed the 97 pedestrian station crossings across the UK. Many are located on minor routes in rural locations. However, a number remain on busy lines, such as that located at Elsenham.
There is a detailed assessment of a fatal accident at Elsenham, with an explanation of what happened and steps to be taken to prevent it from happening again. It's rather sad reading so I won't put it up, but here's the link:
There are a whole lot of derailment and collision reports, too, if you feel like never travelling by train again. The thing about serious rail crashes is that they tend to happen at very high speed, involve vehicles weighing dozens of tons and have potentially hundreds of people involved.
ANYWAY there was no mention of a merely embarrassing incident involving a train's skin being ripped off.
Confused Old Man Shakes Fist At Sky
If you're tired of me beating the Orange Land Whale about the head with a metaphorical club, tough, because I shall continue to do so. I mean, he's just such an easy target. Not so much low-hanging fruit as lying on the ground. Art!
Next week he may say he's going for a fourth term, because he has all the mental consistency of a weathervane. In a hurricane. O and the BBC quotes the South Canadian Constitution:
The Constitution's 22nd Amendment says that "no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice".
Bear in mind that Donold will be 81 in 2028 and 85 in 2032, and that he has trouble at present knowing which way is up.
There have been suggestions from various administration and MAGA wags that J. D. Vance runs for Prez in 2028. Once he gets in - a rather big 'if' - he appoints D. J. Tango as Vice-President, and then he resigns and the VP, as per the Constitution, assumes office in the Oval Office.
Don't laugh. "Demolition Man" floated a Constitutional Amendment that would have allowed Arnie to become Prez. O for what might have been .....
"The War Illustrated Edition 107 29th May 1945"
Have we finished the central montage pages? It's been a few days and I forget. Conrad cannot blame the gin this time, I'm being sober for May. Art!
No, we hadn't, this is the last photograph. Here you see the Teuton naval garrison at Buxtehude, part of the city of Hamburg, captured by the British on April 29th, as they muster for the surrender. Note the (four!) British soldiers present are wearing berets, not Brodie-pattern helmets, and so are either Royal Marines or Parachute Regiment soldiers. Being black-and-white means I cannot tell if said berets are green (Marine) or red (Airborne) but, since this is a port, I would suspect Marines. Allow me to dig a little more. Art!
Spey Barracks
Updated 19 June 2024
Original name – Estetal (Kriegsmarine) Kaserne
Home to:
HQ 116th Infantry Brigade Royal Marines 1945 (1)
Company of 27th Infantry Battalion RM 1945 (2)
Ha! Vindicated! Or sad. Perhaps both.
May 9th Bingo Card
This date, as you may be aware, is when Ruffia tries to pretend that it didn't start the Second Unpleasantness in partnership with their bezzie mates at the time: Nazi Germany. Instead they try to pretend that they won the whole thing on their own, apart from never mentioning Japan. Art!
They have invited 38 leaders of various nations to attend. Putinpot has declared a ceasefire on this day so he prays and hopes no Ukrainian drones turn up to spoil the day. He, himself, won't be there. Instead he'll be attending remotely, because he is a massive coward. Already Fico, Vucic, Xi and Modi have said they won't be attending because they will be ill on the day.
Conrad's notes reveal that the parade in 2023 was over with indecent haste, done in 30 minutes - fears of Ukrainian guests arriving again - and there were no aircraft involved - those uninvited guests again.
I Remember Matey
O for the days when a South Canadian administration actually possessed capable members who were not alcoholics, idiots, criminals or offensive bottomwipes. Art!
This is Zbigniew Brzezinski, Polish immigrant to South Canada, and he rose before his political career to become a professor at Columbia University. He remained fluent in Polish, as well as English, the latter of which is more than you can say for more than a few contemporary bafunes.
Excuse me, I have to go Polish my brass hand.
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