A Use For A Small Sheba Knife
My Sheba cutlery gets used in all sorts of ways.
A Use For A Small Sheba Knife
As the small knives are more designed for spreading butter and jam, rather than cutting, they are ideal for opening packages without damaging the contents.
Sheba is the greatest cutlery design ever. And they were made in Sheffield and my upward of twelve settings have been used for nearly fifty years!
A New Route To Legal Services
I passed this cafe in Hampstead yesterday on Haverstock Hill.
A New Route To Legal Services
I suppose that The Legal Cafe might make a sensible profit on the coffee and cakes.
The Advantage Of Contactless Payment On Public Transport In London
On Tuesday, I had a visitor, who came from outside London. He parked his car at the northern end of the Jubilee Line at around nine in the morning and then bought himself a Travelcard for twelve pounds. By changing at West Hampstead, he was able to easily get to me in Dalston. He went back the same route and was in his car going north before the evening peak.
If he’d used an Oyster Card, this would have been capped at £5.20,according to this page on the TfL web site.
You also get the same cap, if you use a contactless bank or credit card.
So are the days of Travelcards numbered?
As I can’t find any problems with contactless ticketing in London on the Internet, I think next time you visit London and have a contactless card that is accepted, then I think it would be an idea to try it.
I certainly wouldn’t bother with a ticket if I needed to buy one and look forward to the day, when I can use my contactless card to take a local train or tram in Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and Liverpool, by just touching in or out as necessary.
Ultimate Low Flying
Some pilots consider flying low an ultimate thrill.
So look at this report on the BBC web site.
Serail Cooking – A Simple Chicken Curry
This recipe came from The Times on Saturday.
Matt Tebbutt was right, in that I used a big slug of Geeta’s Mango Chutney and this really made it a delicious curry. I also used some of St. Helen’s Farm Goats Milk Double Cream, as it comes in small pots, so there is less waste, which helps to stop my fridge getting cluttered with bits and pieces.
So to make this curry, all I need to purchase is one onion, a pack of Waitrose Chicken breast chunks and the small pot of double cream. Hopefully, I’ll have the chutney, garlic, tomatoes, chicken stock cube if I use one to hand, and the coriander in my little herb garden. There will be some spare chicken, but as it’s such a useful ingredient for cooking, it won’t stay in my fridge for long.
Why Public Transport Development Is Good For Everybody
This story from New Civil Engineer entitled Northern Line Extension Was Catalyst For Nine Elms Development should be read by everyone from the average guy on the Dalston Omnibus through politicians and those running businesses to property developers.
Like Kirkstall Forge, where the developers of the site are helping to fund the improvements, the development of the Northern Line Extension is substantially funded by the developers., so London gets the extension at a much lower cost.
I think we’ll see more deals like these in the next few years. London’s next big development of this type appears to be in fashionable Haringey to the around Tottenham Hale station. The link is to the Council web site and the says this.
Plans to create a new district centre at Tottenham Hale have moved forward after Haringey Council announced that it is working on a proposal to bring forward a joint venture (JV) to redevelop the area.
Discussions are ongoing to create a JV between the council and Hermes Real Estate and Argent which would see land joined together to create 2000 new homes and 400 new jobs.
The announcement follows news that Tottenham Hale has been designated a Housing Zone by the Mayor of London which will see £45m of public money invested in unlocking sites, paving the way with mixed-tenure homes, with up to 50% affordable, along with new transport links, new bridge access to Lee Valley Regional Park, new public spaces, shops and restaurants, and new employment opportunities.
Every Council in the country, should be pursuing schemes like these around rail stations, that enhance their towns and cities for both residents and visitors.
Always Have A Flat Piece Of Oak Handy
I don’t have access to short lengths of greenheart cutting sticks from his state-of-the-art, made-in-Glasgow Grieg guillotine that my father used to use as padding to stop a hammer damaging softer woods.
Always Have A Flat Piece Of Oak Handy
So I just used a nice piece of oak! I could always go to B & Q and buy a rubber hammer.
Serial Cooking – Chicken, Spinach And Tomato Stew
This is another recipe from Lindsey Bareham in The Times.
It was certainly worth cooking.
Note how to avoid cutting the chicken, I used some chicken chunks from Waitrose.
The only tricky bit was skinning the tomatoes in boiling water. But I’ve done it twice now and it’s not that difficult.
Train Departure Information On The Go!
I took this picture of my Samsung S5 just before I left to get the connecting train to Leeds, before my scenic trip to Manchester Victoria.
Train Departure Information On The Go!
I just used the phone’s browser to access nationalrail.co.uk, chose Live Departures and then entered Leeds and Manchester Victoria. In the end I caught the 09:26. A god thing about this example, is that it shows all companies and routes for direct trains,
I also use it on a train, when I’m making a connection, to find out from which platform my next train is leaving. Or not as the case may be!
So simple and it works for every station and route in the country. To prove that, I’ve just found out that the 08:55 from Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh is on time.
Who needs all the hassle of downloading an app for every train company you might need?
Electrification In The North And East Anglia
There has been two major announcements about electrification of railways in recent weeks.
In this article on the BBC, they lay out the twelve lines in the north that have been prioritised for electrification in the report of the North of England Electrification Task Force. They are in all parts of the North.
- Calder Valley
- Liverpool to Manchester via Warrington Central
- Southport/Kirkby to Salford Crescent
- Chester to Stockport
- Northallerton to Middlesbrough
- Leeds to York via Harrogate
- Selby to Hull
- Sheffield Meadowhall to Leeds via Barnsley/Castleford
- Bolton to Clitheroe
- Sheffield to Doncaster/Wakefield Westgate
- Hazel Grove to Buxton
- Warrington to Chester
If the project goes ahead soon after completion of the current electrification project in the North West, it will take another large step towards creating a modern electrified railway in the north.
Joining the electrification together on a map, shows that after it is all completed there will effectively be two major east-west routes that are fully electrified.
The Huddersfield Line will allow electric trains to run from Liverpool to Hull, York and Newcastle, via Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and Doncaster, with a choice of two routes between Liverpool and Manchester. After all the work is completed there will be six fast trains an hour between Leeds and Manchester.
I was surprised that one of my favourite rail lines, the Calder Valley Line was also prioritised for electrification along with all its branches. But according to their correct methodology the line scored highest of all lines considered in the report. It is very much a scenic line and I recently took it from Leeds to Manchester, as it wound its way over the Pennines and through towns, like Bradford, Halifax, Hebden Bridge and Rochdale. Electrification will speed the journey and add capacity to the route. It will be a good home for more of those refurbished Class 319 trains and will link Preston, Blackpool and Manchester in the east with Leeds in the east. But perhaps more importantly, it will bring faster electric trains to all those towns dotted across the Pennines. Only knowing the area from occasional football matches in places like Burnley, Blackburn and Barnsley, I would not try to quantify the economic benefits. But I have a feeling that those who made the predictions would have erred on the low side!
The other lines prioritised for electrification fall into two distinct groups.
The Western or Lancashire/Cheshire group is a set of extensions to the current North West Electrification radiating out of the Northern Hub and includes Liverpool to Manchester via Warrington Central, Southport/Kirkby to Salford Crescent, Chester to Stockport, Bolton to Clitheroe, Hazel Grove to Buxton and Warrington to Chester. It virtually leaves only a few smaller lines to be electrified in the area.
The Eastern group is generally a set of extensions off the East Coast Main Line or the soon-to-be electrified Midland Main Line and includes Northallerton to Middlesbrough, Leeds to York via Harrogate, Selby to Hull, Sheffield Meadowhall to Leeds via Barnsley/Castleford and Sheffield to Doncaster/Wakefield Westgate. As with the Western group, it leaves very few important lines that are not electrified.
Looking at all this electrification, I think it has all been very well-thought through and the Task Force has chosen well. If you look at the Tier Two and Three lines that will follow these twelve Tier One schemes, it certainly seems to have been touched by the hand of a good project manager, who has arranged the schemes so that the teams can efficiently do one after another.
There was also a report in Modern Railways entitled Felixstowe Wires Study, which contained the following.
Network Rail is to conduct a study into the possibility of wiring the busy cross-country freight route from the port to Birmingham, with the results feeding into its Initial Industry Plan for Control Period 6 (2019 to 2024), due to be announced in September 2016.
The Modern Railways report also talks about looking into the eastern end of the East West Rail Link, a new station at Addenbrookes and the possible reopening of the March to Wisbech branch.
Both the North of England and the East Anglian reports seem to be the sort of comprehensive and intelligently-written reports, that have been severely lacking in the last few decades from UK rail companies. The work being proposed seems to be lacking in any political vanity, but geared very much to commuting, leisure, freight and bringing investment and infrastructure to places that need it.
I can’t help feeling though that if you look at all of the electrification schemes proposed for the North, there is a very strong focus on leisure.
For instance, increased frequency, capacity and comfort on the Calder Valley Line, will help those commuting into Leeds and Manchester, but the line will also carry a large amount of all sorts of leisure traffic like walkers, shoppers and families just taking a scenic train ride. As a lady said to me, when I travelled from Leeds to Manchester last week, the train is so much easier than the M62.
This leisure focus continued with adding the Barrow to Carnforth, Settle to Carlisle, the Carlisle to Newcastle, York to Scarborough, Hull to Scarborough, Cumbrian Coast Line and a few others into the program. I never thought I’d ever see some of these lines ever mentioned with the e-word.
Quite frankly all of this electrification should have been planned and implemented years ago, so it’s very much a case of better late than never. The big irony, is that some of the British Rail built, nearly thirty-years-old, Class 319 trains, will be returning to the county of their creation to move tourists and business passengers all over Yorkshire and the rest of the North.
It looks to me, that if you’re interested in a job with a future, then they’ll be plenty of work in railway electrification for quite a few years.
Or you could open a quality B & B near to a picturesque station in the North!
The Anonymous Widower 