Prevails And Fails And Wails On Rails

Plus Tanks

Of two different sorts.  Firstly, an apology is in order as I used the wrong link on Thursday night, putting up the blog from Wednesday again.  How bad can it be, though? it's not as if you pay to read this stuff.

     Enough humble pie at one serving.  We need a bit of click-baity pictography.  Art!

    A bit stark, but quite compelling.  This is what the AI Art Generator came up with from the prompt "All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe", which as any fule no is by Lewis Carroll, one of whose nonsense rhymes furnishes the blog with it's title.

     ANYWAY I'm returning to the rich pageant of artwork and concepts covered in 'Railways At War Before 1918', because I wanted to cover both tanks and railway transportation, which see.  Art!

   One of the things about tanks is their enormous weight; the Mark IVs you see contorting themselves onto a railway low-loader mass all of 35 tons each, an immense weight for the times.  These early chariots of war were highly unreliable and a wise OC had them travel by rail wherever possible, to avoid wear and tear and avoid breakdowns.

     The method above relied upon a side platform of sufficient height being present, and if there wasn't - Art!

    This ingenious little ramp trolley allowed the tank to drive up and onto a low loader, where it would be secured with chains.  The tank in front has a 'fascine' mounted on top, for release into wide trenches or anti-tank ditches, thus enabling crossing.  Art!

     A tale of two cities: at top, one of the enormous Teuton A7 tanks, captured by the British during their counter-offensive of late 1918, so they definitely prevailed.  At bottom, two of the diminutive yet extremely influential French Ft17Renault tanks, small enough that a brace can be loaded onto a single rail car.  The one to port has a large boxy barbette without a gun, making it the command version, just so we're clear.  Art!

     If your rails fail not prevail, you need one of these quick smart: a 35-ton Stother and Pitt breakdown crane.  The blurb to the picture states that it was easily capable of lifting a 0-6-0 locomotive, 'with the appropriate yoke', whatever that is.  Wait one - 

     Art!

     A cradle for applying lift to multiple points at once.

     Of course - obviously! - none of this is what I really intended to talk about, Conrad just wanted to establish a mise en scene.  

     We covered this story back in September, with a rather undefined map, but Jake Broe covered it again more recently, with a rather better map that shows the strategic big picture.  I am talking of the Ruffian fuel train blown up by Ukrainian drones on the line between Urozhaine and Tokmak, on August 19th.  Art!

     It's unclear if the train was equipped with electronic warfare equipment, or if the Ukrainian drones doing the damage were fibre-optic guided and thus resistant to EW.  Interesting to note that the Ukrainians obviously knew where and when this train would be.  

     ANYWAY AGAIN I did claim that the orcses could manage a hugely inconvenient work-around by using three other sections of line to avoid the blocked single-track wailway.  As it now is.  Art!

     WRONG!  Conrad was looking at a pre-war map, where the stretch of rail to the north is now inside Ukrainian-occupied territory.  So the line is definitively cut.  Jake's cursor indicates the rail line and where the fuel cars were explodified.  Art!

     There is no other way round it.  Not only that, the line is still blocked as per satellite photos, two months later.  The Ruffians dare not bring in a rail repair train because the Ukrainians would instantly smother it with drones, artillery and HIMARS.

     What is the point here?  Well, both Kherson and Crimea have been cut off from rail logistics to the east.  All they have now to sustain them strategically is the Kerch Straits bridge, whose damage to the rail bridge was such that it's dangerous to use too frequently or with too heavy a load.  Also, note that Jake's map is from July 2023 and if Art will put down that angle-grinder and spent fuel rod - 

     One feels the Chongar bridge might be getting a second round of explodification.

    Jake also notes that the Ruffians, unable to move fuel by rail, have been bringing it in by ship to Feodosia, one of the southern ports in Crimea, which had the biggest oil depot in Crimea.  Past tense, because the Ukrainians hit it last week and set it alight in an inferno that raged for three days before it was extinguished.  Once the fires were out, why the Ukrainians attacked it again.  Art!

Bring the largest marshmallow you have

     Going to be a chilly winter in Crimea.  Not freezing, it's far too geographically  south for that, but it will be unpleasant.

     
'Idiocracy' Was A Prescient Documentary
Rather than a satire.  This becomes more true with every day that the Boorish Orange Oaf Himself remains alive and in office and the worm in his brain dictates policies and procedures.

     So, too, with real life.  Art!

     First of all, that date of '1938' is only technically correct.  The company 'Lays' was founded in 1938 by Herman Lay in 1938,yes.  HOWEVER - O that word again! - it was acquired by Pepsi in 1965.  Which they take pains not to mention.

     THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM - 'real' potatoes?  Really?  Conrad was unaware that agricultural science had advanced to the point where it had created artificial potatoes.  But maybe that's just me not keeping up with current affairs.

     Bah!


The Answer Is Yes

Before you start quibbling, let me ask the question, via an illo.  Art!

     What people may not realise is that India managed perfectly well with minimal Ruffian oil imports before 2022 and the Special Idiotic Operation.  Then, thanks to the discount Mordorvia was forced to offer, India's imports multiplied by a factor of 22.  From 4 million tons annually to 88 million tons.  So, yes, they can cope without Ruffian oil, but it will come at the cost of losing their discount.  The question is whether Prime Minister Modi will care to accommodate the Orange Land Whale, and whether he can squeeze a few concessions out of DJ Tango in order to drop the imports.  We shall see!


Autumn Is Definitely With Us

Not only are my headphones cold to the ears when I don them, it's dark of a morning, especially on the earlier shifts, and each evening the lights need turning on earlier and earlier.  In less than two weeks the clocks go back, a splendid bit of time-travel that gifts us an extra hour, which Conrad is all for.  Art!

Goodbye boring green!

What It Is To Be Loved

Or hated.  Especially hated.  Let me inform you that the Commenters on the BBC's sports pages are convinced that the BBC staff are all secretly Manchester United Dairies fans.  In reality there is always a big response to anything mentioning that team, partly because their glory days are long behind them and resentful fans of other teams enjoy this, at length.

John C

08:16 16 Oct

Thank goodness for that - we hadn't had a MU article here for, well, hours.

Hindsight if only

08:10 16 Oct

Another sleepless night Simon, try having a week off and give us all a break.

I Told You: Idiocracy Is A Documentary

We have mentioned 'Moscow' Mike Johnson before, the repellent Speaker in the South Canadian House, whose sole talent is licking the shoes of BOOH to a high shine.  Art!

     A whopper of a Freudian slip, Johnson claimed that in the Second Unpleasantness, South Canada 'defended that evil ideology' referring to the Nazis.  Predictably, he has been rather savaged in the media for saying what he was thinking, which is all well and good in Conrad's eyes.  The oleaginous little git needs taking down a peg or ten.

AND WITH THAT WE ARE DONE!