Jefferson Airplane

Knackered But Smiling

Having sunk four bottles of Hawkshead's Brodie's Prime, after an indifferent, Guinness (to be drunk only in extremis) lubricated, lunch, and now 'appreciating' Pusser's rum in large measures, I find myself smiling as I reflect on the excesses of last night (mine, not the customers'). Those who 'believe' that the customer is always right have clearly swallowed far too much of their own self-serving bullshit and should try serving the always right customer.

Those who live by serving know that the customer is almost always wrong, and invariably unpleasant to boot.

Bellissima

The Elegants

This a very ropey film with a very ropey soundtrack but it does demonstrate that once upon a time people could do things without the aid of trickery (listen to the original).

Might Have Beens

I saw an illustration of the first locomotive in a book in Foyles, in 1986 or 7, and have looked for information on it, without success, since then. I've just come across this illustration while looking for images of the 3 metre gauge railway that Hitler dreamed of building to link the Nazi empire. I'd always thought the LMS proposal was for a three unit locomotive but the illustration clearly shows it as two units and the caption describes it as a Bo-Bo+Bo-Bo. Apparently it was conceived at Derby in 1937; it would have been manually fired with a 50 sq ft grate and boiler steam pressure of 800 psi. A condensing tender carrying just 2,000 imp gals was considered sufficient for a non-stop run from Euston to Glasgow.


The second locomotive is one that I don't recall seeing or reading about before but may well have done, long ago. Like the LMS machine above it never ran, though the frames and some of the bodywork were constructed by the North British Locomotive Co. Power would have been provided by a pulverised coal fired gas turbine, developed by Parsons & Co of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Coal fired gas turbines for railway locomotives were a dead end, as the Americans had discovered with the white elephants produced by the Union Pacific, Norfolk and Western and Chesapeake and Ohio railroads.



Both illustrations are the work of Robin Barnes and can be seen here.