Yes, it is an hilarious pun on the Blue Öyster Cult track 'Hot Rails To Hell', hilarious I tell you. Laugh or it's the Remote Nuclear Detonator!
Having mentioned the track I have to include some BOC artwork, so - Art!
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| Courtesy 'Classic Album Reviews' |
It's a track on their second album, 'Tyranny And Mutation' and made an excellent intro to the Intro, which is going to cover the fascinating and little-known field of -
- RAILWAY ARTILLERY!
SIT BACK DOWN! Remote Nuclear Detonator. No second warning.
Pretty obviously, you couldn't have railway artillery before there were railways, and indeed the size of ordnance was limited by how many horses it took to haul, until the invention of the internal combustion engine and the substitution of mechanical horsepower for Dobbin. Art!
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| Courtesy 'Railways And War Before 1918' |
For your enlightenment, 'R.O.D.' is the 'Railway Operating Division', a subset of the Royal Engineers, who - you may be ahead of me here - ran railways during the First Unpleasantness.
Artillery's use on railways commenced with the South Canadian Civil Unpleasantness, and up to 1914 had accommodated guns of up to 6" calibre. With the arrival of static warfare on the Western Front in France and Flanders, the need for guns that fired enormous shells a very long way also arrived. The problem was, such guns or howitzers were equally enormous, possibly weighing 150 tons all up, and utterly impractical to move by a hundred horses or ten tractors. The solution to mobilise these metal monsters was to put them on rails, hence our generic 'gun' being towed in the lower picture. 150 tons was no problem for a locomotive to haul. Art!
There are a couple of niceties about railway artillery; for one thing, these guns were so massive and generated so much recoil that they had very little traverse, meaning that they effectively pointed only in the direction of the rails themselves. Thus a spur line was often laid off the main permanent way, in a curve, allowing the direction of fire to be adjusted. Managing the recoil needed to be addressed or the actual rails and sleepers would end up being damaged. Art!
These are French railway guns, which were hastily improvised from naval or coast defence guns, priority being given to speed of creation rather than utility. The first two sketches indicate the guns recoil needed to be accommodated by digging a pit underneath the carriage, which was time-consuming work. Art!
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| Pit just visible |
The third sketch shows a less improvised howitzer, which used massive blocks to stabilise the gun, obviating the need to dig a pit - to the obvious relief of their crews, because once the firing program had been completed, who had to fill the pit back in again? Art!
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Typically, there are no photographs showing the 'Canone 93/96' with the stabilising platforrms in use, so that picture above will have to serve.
The last sketch shows another later-war model of railway gun that used a specially constructed platform to remove all loading from the rail wheels. Only trouble was, it took 12 hours to construct said platform. Mister Bishop doesn't identify the weapon by anything other than it's calibre, 400 mm. Art!
This might be the right model, judging by the absence of an excavation underneath the gun. Art!
Ol' Bish gives the info that this is a 370 mm ex-naval gun and describes the carriage it is mounted on in detail - without giving the model name, although he mentions some of the shell's characteristics. "It was mounted on two 4-axle bogies, each with an axle load of 20 tons -" and the 500 kilo shell could be fired to a maximum range of 16 kilometres. The gun could only be traversed 6º either side of the rails. Conrad did a bit of digging -
| Carriage | 2 railroad bogies, 4 axles each |
|---|---|
| Elevation | -6° to +65° |
| Traverse | 12° |
| Rate of fire | 1 round every 6 minutes |
| Muzzle velocity | 475–535 m/s (1,560–1,760 ft/s) |
| Effective firing range | 14.7–16.5 km (9.1–10.3 mi) |
Found it. Thanks for the confirmation, Wiki. Art!
The Obusier 370 mm Modele 1915. Ha!
Wiki states that 8 of these beasts were built, with another 4 spare barrels being present, since the barrels would wear out over time.
I think that's enough of railway artillery for one Intro. PLEASE NOTE we have taken pains not to dub these weapons as 'rail guns' as that's an entirely different and contemporary infernal engine.
Just To Keep You Updated
I like to keep people informed about the death toll on 'The 100', which can be tricky as one tends to get caught up in the flow of events, hampering the use of a five-bar gate. However - a word you know was coming - Bellamy himself, at the 3 minute 46 second mark of Episode 13 actually explicitly states that 18 of the original 100 are now worm-fodder. Art!
That's Bellamy Blake, by mutual acceptance the co-leader of the survivors. No, he's not smiling, because he has little to smile about.
SO - 82 of them left, and this is the last episode of Season 1. How many are going to start in Season 2? I will keep you informed.
You What?
Conrad is frequently baffled by the cryptic headlines and sidebar titles on his news feed, which seems to assume that we are all familiar with the world of South Canadian sports, reality television and celebritutes. Here is a case in point. Art!
Are they setting themselves up as moral guardians? Do they mean 'Alcatraz'? What is a 'US Open' when it's at home? Is there an equivalent 'US Closed'? Why am I wasting my time bringing this drivel up*?
How Did You Get Your Boss Fired?
A succinct tale of Don't Mess With Me, Manglement.
Contractor Of Worth, hereafter COW, had explained to his employer that he had served multiple clients before commencing work there, and would be taking calls from them on his personal mobile.
Bear in mind that his desk was three yards from that of the Chief Technical Officer.
COW takes a call from a prior client on his mobile, which triggered Middle (Useless) Manager, hereafter MUM, into a frothing rage, screaming at COW that he wasn't allowed to take calls on his own mobile.
Predictably, the CTO emerged from his office to see what was going on. COW looked at them and said 'Either it's him or me and I don't give a <expletive> which you pick.'
Tellingly, the CTO walked MUM out of the building and fired him on the spot. Clearly it was far more important to keep the contractor doing valuable work rather than the bumbletuck MUM who could be replaced by a promotion or sideways cover.
Predictably, the CTO emerged from his office to see what was going on. COW looked at them and said 'Either it's him or me and I don't give a <expletive> which you pick.'
Tellingly, the CTO walked MUM out of the building and fired him on the spot. Clearly it was far more important to keep the contractor doing valuable work rather than the bumbletuck MUM who could be replaced by a promotion or sideways cover.
Just To Be Clear
I am currently watching a Youtube channel titled 'Fantasy For The Ages' because of the title - 'Top 10 Sci-fi Novels Critics Loved But Fans Hated', just to see if I've read any of them and whether I agree or not. Art!
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| Number 7 |
Yup, read a library version, and it is slightly confusing. May have to go back and re-read it, but one fan described it as 'Space opera written whilst drunk on metaphors'. Which might be a good thing, right?
O yes! Art!
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| Number 5 |
This novel proposes that Kuwait goes to war with Europe, using their air-force to spray permanently-effective LSD derivatives over the whole continent. Cue a long hallucinatory road trip. One comment was 'What happened? Seriously, what happened?' The kind of novel you read only once. Art!
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| Number 3 |
Read it, loved it, even saw the play at the Exchange. It is undeniably difficult to read, as it's written in a slang argot, which does get easier over time.
Final score: 3 out of 10. Is there hope for me?
Okay, time to gird my loins and head for a trip into Lesser Sodom.
* Ah yes the Word Count
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