Trainspotters

For a long time now I've had this photo (minus the words) on my Flickr account along with the comment "No human beings or trainspotters were harmed during the making of this photo".

Imagine my amusement a couple of weeks ago when those nice folk on the Unofficial WSR Discussion Group found the photo and for some reason thought it was real and not contrived. Oh dear, did they let rip with their comments about walking in the wrong places and giving the WSR a bad name. I hope they are still taking their tablets.

The good thing was that the number of views of my Trainspotters Set went up dramatically over a couple of days.

More from the 1500s

We have just received our copy of the latest Crowcombe Village Magazine - it's called CAW which apparently stands for "Crowcombe Area Worksheet", and is distributed in the Parish of Crowcombe. I hope you're all following this, as there will be a test !

One of the articles in the magazine has the same title as this Blog entry - it includes such gems as this:

"England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be," saved by the bell" or was considered a "dead ringer" ".

It's almost plausible, isn't it? Unfortunately this has been sent around the Net as part of Hoax emails for many years - there are some other "gems" which you can see for instance on the Sophos site at http://www.sophos.com/security/hoaxes/life_in_the_1500s.html

OK you say, so it's good that Editors of Parish Magazines have a sense of humour - and I would agree with you. But nowhere can I find anything that owns up to it being a hoax. So maybe these Editors are just gullible ???

Heatherdale

Heatherdale
Originally uploaded by Crowcombe Al.

Opposite the station and therefore just up the road from here is a plot of land that has a small single storey dwelling and various other buildings. The house hasn't been lived in for some time and the plot has now been sold - the sale includes planning permission for a replacement single dwelling and landscaping.

So we are all waiting with bated breath to see whether the new owners attempt to change the plans for the site and build far more houses. Reading the Planning Decision on the current proposal I can't see how the West Somerset Council could possibly change their approval - but one never knows.

Even the current proposal is likely to cause some disruption along our road and the station is likely to be badly affected as they have car parking immediately opposite the entrance to the site. This is a narrow road so getting lorries in and out of the site will be interesting.

Rail Grinder

The Fires of Hell
Originally uploaded by Crowcombe Al.

This photo is a great shot (though I say it myself !) of the Rail Grinder that came to sort out the WSR back in January 2008. We enjoyed watching it going up and down the line and you must admit it does make for good photos. However, as time went on, it became obvious that all was not well on the rails.

To cut a long and badly-managed story short, it appears that the grinding produced a rail profile that was not compatible with the steam engines that run on this line. As you would expect, the "rivet counters" have a long and very tedious explanation but we won't go into that here.

So most of the steam engines were removed from service whilst bits of the line were "shaped" (my word) by hand. So for about 6 weeks we only had one little tank engine that dared to venture out whilst most of the work was handled by diesels, or Smelly Nellys as they're called - and for good reason.

But now we're back to normal - we hope - and the plc is going to have an enquiry into the problems. We look forward to seeing the results, assuming that they are made public.