Lost in the woods with Lyd

Lyd on Cei Mawr, seen from Rhiw Goch

 We've spent a few afternoons lately roaming about the Coed Cae Fali, between Penrhyndeudraeth and Tan-y-Bwlch. The line of the Ffestiniog railway is very attractive there, especially as many trees have been cut down in recent forestry harvesting operations. Our main aim wasn't to photo the trains, rather these are incidental glimpses, when we were alerted to the presence of a train by a stentorian bark from Lyd's funnel as she tackled the banks around the line here. The line has some evocative names for it's features through the woods...Gysgfa curve (sleeping place) Cei Mawr (great quay), Lead Mine curve and of course, Rhiw Goch (red bank).
The signal box there looks just like something from a model railway...

 A long lens shot from the other side of Cei Mawr as Lyd powers through the Rhiw Goch loop.

"I'm sure there are some rails here somewhere!"

Lyd approaching Rhiw Goch on an up train

A Chance Find...

I was trawling the internet a while ago, looking for some ideas for a model I'm building of an engineering works. The above photo turned up and immediately grabbed my attention because of the very early traction engines in the shot. There's an Aveling roller with some interesting adaptation from the cylinder block, and what looks like it might be a Marshall traction engine. In the background is possibly a Ransomes thresher and above, sitting bizarrely on the balconies, are chaff cutters and other bits of cast iron wonderment.

I kept the photo in my "curiosity" folder, not really expecting anything to turn up, as there was no label on the photo that gave any clues. So, imagine my delight, when searching for something else, this photo turned up, with a link back to a site.

The engineering works is, in fact, the premises of  John Archibald Stephens and Son, East Back, Pembroke. They seem to have been kept very busy with manufacturing and hiring out of equipment and were a very successful concern. I guess that this was the business to be in for that period, when technology was only just one remove from the blacksmith stage and machinery repairs were a matter of clever extemporisation.

There is much more information and a wealth of fascinating photographs at the "Pembroke Story" site- the Stephens page is here, and well worth a look.

Old Iron...

"All the cycles I've ever owned..."  Not really, that would be a very long list. You'll be relieved to know that I'm just going to give some edited highlights, starting with the first, a Triumph Palm Beach. My Dad did actually "put aside" a British Racing Green Raleigh from Curry's one Christmas when I was ten, but the shop sold it to someone else. My Uncle took pity on me and gave me his old bike. Into my teens, I repainted the poor thing white, put dropped handlebars on it and by the time I was fourrteen and growing fast, I had to buy a new, longer seat pin. It was a little like a pimped-up chav bike, before those things had ever been thought of.
I toured all over the Peak District, Cheshire and Anglesey on it. I didn't even have a puncture once. By now, I was riding with a local club and feeling the need for a "proper" racing machine. So I sold the Triumph (for £12!!) and bought a Penine with Reynolds 531 tubing. I remember my Dad telling me that I could "Buy a bloody car fer what that 'bike cost!" but it was like flying, riding that thing.
 It was a blessing and a curse. I won a couple of small-time club races on it, but it had this strange unsteadiness about it when at speed. The last time I rode it, I was going away from my then girl-friend's house at the top of a steep hill. I set off like Mario Ciappucci, with bravura. The bike went into serious instability as I reached the "wobble band" at about 25 mph and I just couldn't control it. I went over the wall at the first bend and straight into the River Etherow. All this with her and her dad watching.

As so often happens in cycling clubs, when the news of my embarrassing incident became known and the laughter had died down, (that took quite a while) one of the old stagers in the club very kindly gave me a bike "to tide me over". Not just any old bike. A Reg Harris, no less, long in the tooth but immaculate- and a joy to ride. Later, I owned or had the use of several very fine machines but when out for a pleasure run, I would always take the Reg Harris. Someone tried to steal it once, while I was in a Model Shop in Manchester. I just caught sight of him outside and I tore after the guy. He couldn't get his foot into the rat-traps and I grabbed him by his neck. It must have hurt, judging by the scream he let out.He flailed at me, catching me with the pliers he'd used to break my cheapo lock. I had to walk the bike, blood streaming down my face, to Harry Hall's to get the forks re-set as he had bent them falling off. It never felt the same afterwards, but I kept it for a long time, until it was eventually stolen for good from our shed.

I subsequently had a number of exotic steeds, none of which I can remember with much fondness. Then I gave up cycling for hill-walking until I watched the 1987 Tour de France. Galvanised with rekindled passion for the sport, I ordered a Peugeot Perthus Pro. It was a grand's worth of bike and rode superbly... almost like riding nothing, like simply achieving locomotion by thinking about it. By now I was a member of a Glasgow cycling club and one or two of the other guys were unkind enough to say that the Perthus was wasted on an old man (I was 33 at the time). It just made me train harder, until one glorious afternoon in a club race, I strung the peloton out for a mile while climbing the Crow Road and gave my critics a little pain, as Bernard Hinault would have said.

I still have the Perthus. It has done over 8,000 miles, many of those in France. It's topped the Ventoux and the Snake Pass a few times. It sprints for village signs without my even needing to ask. I still get a thrill of excitement looking at it, sitting in our cosy store room. A few years ago, I got Harry Quinn to build me something similar, exactly to my own measurements...it's very comfortable. But I still prefer the Perthus.

Two Wheeled Tales- what goes round, comes around...

Thanks to Ferev Garcia for the great photo, link at end of post

I wonder, as this blog is about transport, why I haven't mentioned cycling at all in the last seventy-odd posts. Especially when it has been such a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. So here goes. In an attempt to redress the balance, the first of my (many, I'm afraid...) two-wheeled tales.

I know it's a hard leap of the imagination now, but in my (slightly) earlier years, let's say between 18 and 45, I was a very keen racing cyclist. I'd ride to work by a circuitous route that added another 20 miles to the journey and on Sundays would do 80-100 miles with the club. Saturdays were for watching bike racing, racing, time trialling or usually....more miles. In order to preserve some sort of normal life and to make sure my wife didn't leave me, I would go out training in the summer months at 6 in the morning, an ideal time as the air is wonderful and there isn't much traffic on the road.

Except that when traffic comes, it isn't really awake, or expecting to see a cyclist. So, there I was, cycling along through East Kilbride, south of Glasgow, listening to the dawn chorus and powering up a slight hill, when I heard a heavy articulated truck behind me. I looked back to check and yes, it was coming for me. I didn't think for a minute that the driver hadn't seen me, since having an LGV licence myself, I had a good deal of faith in the profession.

The first thing I knew was that I was being propelled off my bike, head first in to a hedge, where I groggily noted that the truck had hastily stopped. As I picked myself up, wondering where I was, I saw the driver pulling the bike from under the tractor of his rig and then throwing it into the hedge. I shouted, to which he responded with a well known Glasgow response, questioning whether my parents had been married when I was born.

I knew the haulage company that owned the truck, because their vehicles were a familiar sight past my house at that time, so later, when I had walked home carrying the remains of my bike and treated the various cuts from the hedge, I gave them a phone. Of course, they denied everything, saying that they didn't have a truck on the road at that time. I phoned the police, who couldn't have been less interested, even when I told them that the company's story would be disproved by the tacho records of the truck. I decided to write it down to experience, telling myself that I had been incredibly lucky not to have been seriously injured.

Fast forward four years. I was called for jury service. A royal pain, as work was very busy at the time. Down at the courthouse, a very unsavoury character was being tried for attempted murder. The defence trotted out a story about how the gentleman managed a large haulage company and was of unimpeachable character. However, as the trial progressed, some very unpleasant stuff came out and, to cut a long story short, he was obviously going down. I was the foreman, and as I gave our verdict, the prosecution rushed to the bench and handed a huge sheaf of "previous" to be given in consideration, which made me feel we'd made the right decision.

A few days later, I was having a cup of coffee after a training run when my wife silently handed me the local newspaper, open at an article about the owner of a local haulage firm. He'd been sent to prison for 15 years.I looked at the photo-  It was my man, right enough, but what made me splutter was the name of the firm. Yes, the same one that owned the truck that had mown me down. The company went bust a few months after. I can't say I shed any tears for the drivers, if they were all like the one I made the acquaintance of on my training run.


Ferev Garcia on Flickr

Wonderful Zodiac

Martin was in the back seat of the Ford Zodiac, going at some clip—sixty, sixty-five on the speedo’. His Dad was in the front and his Uncle Derek was driving. It was misty, so that you couldn’t see further than a couple of hundred yards, but Martin made out lights, neon signs, then shadowy forms of things that could be buildings, or ships with companionways lit up, maybe oil gantries, all blurred with the fog and the speed.

The car lurched sideways , throwing him from one side of the rear seat to the other. Uncle Derek spun the wheel, this way, that way, churning the world around in a haze of tyre smoke. Eventually, things stopped moving. All was still, except for the dizziness in his head. The engine turned over quietly now, as if nothing had happened, as if this was all quite normal. Derek turned round, smiling. “How did you like that, Marty? She can shift, can’t she!”

Synonymous with the sixties, mini-skirts and pop music, the trans-atlantic styled Ford Zephyr and it's up-market cousin the Zodiac were to be a runaway success on the British market.

Wikipedia: "The Mark II Zodiac was slightly altered to distinguish it from the lesser variants, having more elaborate tail-end styling and at the front a different grille. The auxiliary lamps and wing mirrors were deleted from the Zodiac range but it retained two-tone paint, whitewall tyres, chrome wheel-trim embellishers and gold plated badges.
A car tested by the British magazine The Motor in 1956 had a top speed of 87.9 mph (141.5 km/h) and could accelerate from 0-60 mph (97 km/h) in 17.1 seconds. A fuel consumption of 21.5 miles per imperial gallon (13.1 L/100 km; 17.9 mpg_-US) was recorded. The test car cost £968 including taxes.

Photo: Adrian Pingstone

Coupe de Ville

A Cadillac...in the Scottish borders! This is a first generation Coupe de Ville, in magnificent condition.  I saw it at the Abingdon services on one of my Aberdeen runs in the summer...it later overtook me as I lumbered north. Have to say... it sounded superb.

Sorry about the Tupperware trailer in the head-on photo.

Here's a Wiki link to the marque.

Barn Finds

High up in a remote Welsh valley, we encountered a deserted farm. I knew from the cut of the place there would be an old tractor lurking - I just didn't expect two!

More Trains in the Landscape

Linda and Blanche on the Ffestiniog Railway, passing in front of the Moelwyn mountains.  Llyn Ystradau is in the middle left. Below, a view from the upper part of the quartz rib seen on the ground halfway up the mountain in the photo above. This time it's just Blanche.