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Trains And Boats And Planes


Peter Clark

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What is it with organists and transport? In the thread about the open day it has been revelaed that steam engines are among the interests of our company, and I know that Patrick has a penchant for old buses. Well with me, folks, its trams - the Blackpool connection most likely. Jane finds this terribly funny (as indeed does her sister and various others in the family) but funnier still, she maintains, is that the Christmas present I was given two years ago of a DVD called The Story of the British Tram is still on my "playlist".

 

Is there any help available? :lol:

 

Peter

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What is it with organists and transport? In the thread about the open day it has been revelaed that steam engines are among the interests of our company, and I know that Patrick has a penchant for old buses. Well with me, folks, its trams - the Blackpool connection most likely. Jane finds this terribly funny (as indeed does her sister and various others in the family) but funnier still, she maintains, is that the Christmas present I was given two years ago of a DVD called The Story of the British Tram is still on my "playlist".

 

Is there any help available? :lol:

 

Peter

 

There is definitely a connection.

 

In my time I've been Secretary and Chairman of a steam railway, a director of its operating company and a volunteer in various capacities on the operating side. I am currently taking a back seat and merely providing its IT support and acting as secretary of its finance committee. As we often say, there's more to running a steam railway than putting on a uniform and parading about in front of the public.

 

The organ console at Halifax PC is adorned with a photograph of a bus, betraying the transport interests of the good Tordoff.

 

Bishop Eric Tracey was, of course, not only a superb railway photographer, but also the vicar of Halifax before his elevation to the episcopacy, and president of our railway from its inception to his death - on Appleby railway station.

 

For some years I lived in a house overlooking the railway. It was equipped with an extension on the railway's internal telephone system, which was very handy when I was In Charge. These days I have to rely on the wind being in the right direction to hear the Toot! of locomotives running round their trains.

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Guest Barry Oakley
....Victorian industrial architecture, polychrome brickwork, beam engines…..WOW! :P:lol::P

 

 

Canals and narrowboats, particularly old working boats, old windmills and watermills.

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Guest Barry Williams

In our house, when there are low pitched rumblings and high pitched squeaks, I think it is an organ; June thinks it is a steam engine. She is also a superb cook, an excellent organ builder, a superb singer, is keen on church music, is Registrar of the Guild of Church Musicians and has perfect pitch - deadly perfect. June is not for hire!

 

Barry Williams

(Lucky Husband)

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What is it with organists and transport? In the thread about the open day it has been revelaed that steam engines are among the interests of our company, and I know that Patrick has a penchant for old buses. Well with me, folks, its trams - the Blackpool connection most likely. Jane finds this terribly funny (as indeed does her sister and various others in the family) but funnier still, she maintains, is that the Christmas present I was given two years ago of a DVD called The Story of the British Tram is still on my "playlist".

 

Is there any help available? :P

 

Peter

 

 

======================

 

 

He he!

 

We're all certifiable, aren't we?

 

I was just musing (as I do), about the things I've watched, photographed, played with, driven and delighted in........yes...definitely certifiable!

 

How I survived beyond my 21st birthday will forever be a mystery, but I did. I was driving like a lunatic when I was 18, in extremely fast road-rallies on the most potentialy lethal roads in the UK. (Make no mistake, I was seriously fast, and perfected the Scandanavian left-foot braking technique long before anyone else ever used it in the UK).

 

I drove a steam-train up the Worth Valley line when I was 14, and it was still British Rail.....but don't tell anyone, because it was illegal and full of paying passengers. (The next door neighbour was a driver for British Rail, and I hopped onto the footplate at his invitation).

 

I've driven a traction-engine, which frightened me to death.

 

I had an ex-works AJS (500cc single) "TT" motor-bike, which had done the rounds of various race-circuits and road-circuits, and I used to fly on that.

 

I went up in a glider once, but I missed an engine, and didn't like that too much.

 

I've had a passion for trucks ever since I was 5 years of age, and in the school-holidays, my mother would get very worried when I would slope off and disappear into the park when the annual fair arrived. "Don't talk to the gypsies! They steal children!"

 

I don't know where she got this idea from, but one sunny afternoon (they were always sunny in those summers), a frantic mother eventually found me sitting in a gypsy caravan, smelling of diesel and covered in grease, drinking a pot of tea with an oily rag hanging out of my pocket. I had spent a blissful couple of hours cleaning and polishing the rare trucks from the US, and one steam truck built by White of America.

 

Then I got bigger, and cut my teeth driving a Leyland with a Rolls-Royce petrol engine (6 mpg) and a wonderful crash gearbox, and nowadays, I delight in driving the biggest things I can find, such as Scania, Volvo and Leyland-Daf artics.

 

A few very powerful sports cars (1 Ferrari, 2 Porsches, a race-tuned Lotus 7), a couple of race-cars (one with a 7 litre Chevrolet V8 pushing out 540bhp), numerous Go-Karts, various rally-cars, and a collection of my own vehicles with a bit of attitude; all confirm the fact that I am a petrol/diesel head. (To my eternal shame, I set a new lap record in a Go-Kart in Holland, at the ripe old age of 57!)

 

There are, however, two things I have travelled in which I will never, ever, in a milion years, allow myself to be persuaded back into or onto. One was a petrol snow-ski, and the other was to sit, awaiting certain death, alongside an even greater lunatic than I, aboard a powerboat propelled by TWO Lamborghini V12 engines. I have never been so afraid in my life, and the noise was just ear-splitting, even with a helmet on. My idea of fun is not having one's back broken, bouncing aross waves at 100 Knots, with the sound of 1,000 unsilenced BHP screaming away just behind one's head!

 

I'll never ride a horse again either, because apart from being stupid, they bite and kick. They're far too dangerous for me, and it's such a long way to fall.

 

Organs are so TAME by comparison!

 

:lol:

 

MM

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I own part of an ex-BR steam locomotive, I miss very much the London trolleybuses and routemasters, and the double decker trams. I detest the continental single decker Croydon ones.

I visit Blackpool every year just to ride on a tram and listen to the Wurlitzer, but even they, I suspect will eventually dispose of their old double deckers to go continental.

Colin Richell.

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Canals are my job - I'm editor of Waterways World magazine, owner of a modern narrowboat and a share in a 1930s butty - and though I'm not really one for steam engines, I do enjoy poking around old railways, as suggested by this ongoing cartographic project...

 

Certainly, one stereotype of a canal enthusiast is Arran sweaters, real ale and bell-ringing (Lichfield Diocese even had a portable bell-tower at the recent National Waterways Festival, which I thought was rather sweet). I suppose organs are not too far a push from that...

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Guest Barry Williams

I do not do trains (I show interest because my beloved spouse does,) and boats are ok only if seriously power boats that can tow me water skiing, but I do antique aircraft. I agree with Mr Muso that horses are dangerous.

 

Playing the organ in Liverpool Cathedral was far more exciting than any aircraft I have ever flown and that includes some very serious machines. Indeed, playing Liverpool Cathedral organ was the second most stunning experience I have ever had in my life. It even beat the buzz that I get in court when doing advocacy. The sheer musicality of that machine was beyond belief. The grandeur was not of itself impressive. It was the beauty of the tones that transported me. Nearly as good is St Philip's Cosham, where Her Ladyship was christened a year or twenty ago*.

 

http://npor.emma.cam.ac.uk/cgi-bin/Rsearch...ec_index=N01010

 

Perhaps beauty is in the 'eye' of the hearer, but for me musical excitement follows beauty. Few modern organs move me in quite the same way.

 

Barry Williams

 

 

* A distinguished member of this Board played St Philip's Cosham brilliantly for a family funeral. It was almost beyond belief what dramatic effect could be coaxed from so few pipes.

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Lucky man - doing what - ATC?

Yep B)

 

I hope you do a bit more than just watch them. I don't want one coming down on my house, thank you very much! :o;)

As of 2pm on Friday, you won't need to worry any more, but the good residents of Bournemouth and surrounds will! :P

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Canals are my job - I'm editor of Waterways World magazine, owner of a modern narrowboat and a share in a 1930s butty - and though I'm not really one for steam engines, I do enjoy poking around old railways, as suggested by this ongoing cartographic project...

 

I see civilisation stops north of the Humber!

 

John

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