What’s Going On?
I happened to pass Westminster Abbey this morning on the top of a 24 bus.
This is the video I took.
What’s going on?
My First London Marathon
C and I akways said that one day we’d go and see the London Marathon. But we never did!
So today, I took the East London Line from Dalston Junction to Shadwell and walked through to The Highway to see the leaders of the men’s race and a lot of the other runners pass. Interesting I talked to a couple of people, who were using the line for the first time. They were impressed. I should also say that the line was crowded, but it appeared to be coping wioth probably the busiest Sunday of the year.
It was a very good atmosphere and I enjoyed it. Quite a few of the pictures were taken by standing on the wall outside St. George’s Gardens. At least my balance must be getting quite good.
I also took this video standing on the wall, as the elite flashed by and the others jogged towards Canary Wharf.
I always said that one day, I’d do the marathon. But I suspect after the stroke and with my dodgy heart valve, it’s now out of the question. Unless of course, I can persuade a good cardiologist to run, or more likely walk, with me.
Part of the reason was always that Chris Brasher was one of my heroes. In this post, I explain why and also say a bit more about the London Marathon.
From the Match Factory to Eastfield
Today, as I went to the football in Ipswich, I took a video as the train passed the site for the London Olympics in 2012.
The video starts as the train passes the old Bryant and May match factory and continues until the new Westfield shopping centre at Stratford. It opens in September 2011 and will inevitably be called Eastfield.
The red-bricked former match factory is now flats and a few houses and is called the Bow Quarter. It is famous for the match girls’ strike in 1888, which was part of the suffragette movement and one of the defining moments in trade union history. A musical, The Matchgirls, was written and produced about the strike in the 1960s. The musical was written by Bill Owen, who later appeared as Compo for many years in Last of the Summer Wine.
The Olympic Stadium is now substantially complete or at least on time for its full opening later this year.
The red tower after the stadium is the ArcelorMittal Orbit.
The Aquatics Centre is next.
The recently completed London Velopark is to the back of the Olympic Park and is not really visible.
The video ends at the new Eastfield Shopping Centre, which opens in September. The owners as you can see are still calling it Westfield.
But of course it will be part of that new Olympic sport; shopping, based on the new Underground line; the Shopping line, which must be the new name for the Central line. You start at Eastfield, after arriving by train and perhaps even from Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam on Eurostar, before travelling to Oxford and Bond Streets and then taking the line onto Westfield at White City.
Note that the video was shot from left side of the train in First Class. My thanks go to the driver, who specially slowed the train, so I could get a better video and to the ticket collector, who didn’t interrupt me to check my tickets. If you listen carefully, you can here his voice on the video.
It would be nice to repeat this on a clear day from the DVT on the front of the train. It would hopefully be as spectacular as the video, I took from the High Speed Train on the way to Inverness.
The Castle Climbing Centre
I passed this iconic building, which is now the Castle Climbing Centre, on a 141 bus. It used to be a water pumping station and I took a video as I passed.
In the next month or so, I must go and look inside. And perhaps have a climb, as that must be good for my balance.
The Lost 243 Bus
Today as I travelled to Liverpool Street Station to go to the football at Ipswich, I got to sit at the front on the top deck of the 141 bus. The bus today was one of the Wright hybrid ones, which certainly to me seem to be the future for bus travel.
I had my camera with me and decided to take a Mitchell and Kenyon-style video as the bus travelled through de Beauvoir Town and along the Regent’s Canal towards Old Street.
But things don’t quite work out as you think they do, because for some reason a lost 243 bus got in front of the 141 and tried to steal the video.
I suppose there was probably some road works on the Kingsland Road, which meant that the bus had been diverted.
Train Across the Mersey
Everybody knows about the Mersey Ferries, in part due to Gerry Marsden‘s song of the same name. The train though crosses the river at Runcorn on one of my favourite bridges, the Ethelfreda or Britannia Bridge, depending on your preference.
The bridge lies alongside the Runcorn-Widnes road bridge, which was built in the 1960s. I remember after a party once in Cheshire getting C to stop the car on the bridge as I was feeling unwell. I then proceeded to puke my guts into the river below. After that incident, she nearly didn’t marry me! I never went to another party, where ICI’s Petrochemicals and Polymer Laboratory, were responsible for the punch.
There is an interesting footnote to the design of the bridge and that is why it is not a suspension bridge. It is hinted at in the Wikipedia entry for the bridge.
The next idea was for a suspension bridge with a span of 1,030 feet (314 m) between the main towers with a 24 feet (7 m) single carriageway and a 6 feet (2 m) footpath. However aerodynamic tests on models of the bridge showed that, while the bridge itself would be stable, the presence of the adjacent railway bridge would cause severe oscillation.
But the true story is all about how good engineers know their subjects.
The designers of the bridge made a presentation before the design was finalised to the ICI Merseyside Scientific Society. One of those attending was Mond Division’s vibration expert, who supposedly had a fearsome knowledge of the subject, even if he was slightly eccentric. After the presentation, he rose to his feet and said that he’d done some quick calculations and because of the proximity of the two bridges, the proposed suspension bridge would shake itself to pieces at a particular windspeed.
The bridge designer was not amused.
But ICI’s vibration expert was proved to be right in wind tunnel tests and we now have the steel arch bridge. Here are some notes on the design from Wikipedia.
The design of the bridge is similar to that of Sydney Harbour Bridge but differs from it in that the side spans are continuous with the main span rather than being separate from them. This design feature was necessary to avoid the problem of oscillation due to the railway bridge.
So good design avoided creating another Galloping Girtie.
I took a video as the train crossed and you can see the road bridge and some of the details of the railway bridge, with the large Fiddlers Ferry power station in the distance.
New Trains for Old
Ever since I’ve lived in West Suffolk, the trains between Ipswich and Cambridge have been on their last legs. But these last few weeks with the cold weather has been a bit of a nightmare, with possibly the worst day shown here. Some days the trains haven’t been able to keep to the timetable because of cold weather, suicides and mechanical problems. On possibly four occasions, the trains have either not turned up or been very late at Dullingham. To make matters worse some journeys out of Cambridge have been very crowded to say the least.
But all was supposed to change today, as larger, faster, more comfortable and very much newer Class 170 have been cascaded onto the service from the Cambridge to Norwich service.
This video shows the first train arriving at Dullingham, exactly on time at 10:06.
And here’s the train at its destination in Cambridge.
The First Ipswich-Cambridge Class 170 at Cambridge
Coming back I did have a problem at Tottenham Hale getting the train to Cambridge, but after diverting to King’s Cross, I arrived at Cambridge to get the on-time 17:12 to Newmarket for a taxi home.
There is only one problem with the new timetable and that is after just getting used to the old one, I have to look up each train to find out their times. But after today’s experience with the new service, it is to be hoped that the timetable will be what happens and not what is supposed to.
South From Tottenham Hale and Over the River Lee
Ever since I moved to West Suffolk and have been travelling to London, I’ve been fascinated by the view as the train goes over the marshes south of Tottenham Hale and over the River Lee, before disappearing amongst the houses, buildings and factories of East London.
So yesterday, I took a video from the train.
It looks a good place for a walk and there seem’s to be a propwe pub by the water. But how do you get there?
Pamela Survives Another Week
She has now been in the top three of the judges voting on Strictly Come Dancing for the first four weeks.
And she’s still there, which makes my four pounds safe for another week!
If you think she can’t dance, then look at this video, where she takes off Kate Bush.
My so also remembered that we saw her in Pirates of Penzance with others including George Cole, Peter Noone, Paul Nicholas and Tim Curry.
The Anonymous Widower 