M j M

The local stations where I grew up were both closed (before I was born) following Beeching - Pool-in-Wharfedale and Arthington. Pool was on the branch line to Otley which was ripped up but there has been talk for years of re-opening the station at Arthington which is on the Leeds-Harrogate main line. I'm not sure it will ever happen but it makes for a nice local newspaper headline. Arthington station could be reopened Where I live now is near to Apperley Bridge station which is on the Leeds-Bradford Forster Square line and also the Leeds-Skipton (thence Settle/Carlisle) line. The station closed in 1965 and was reopened in December 2015. If I worked in central Bradford or Leeds it would be really useful - and it makes going to Leeds in particular for shopping/nights out easier. Here are some pictures of the first train on re-opening day.

He also says he fired a bow and arrow at V-2 rockets blowing up Sheffield. V-2s never made it to Sheffield, least of all via Goldthorpe, so I suspect he may be a somewhat unreliable witness.

I guess this belongs here.

Tony Collins, the first black English football manager. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/feb/08/tony-collins-football-league-first-black-manager-dies-at-94

This is exciting news. If they call it the Blue Train and put proper sleeping cars on it it would be even better but I suspect that's not the case, initially at least. The Nice route is great in particular because of that long run along the coast from Marseille in the morning - as long as you get a compartment facing the right way anyway.

Dustin Diamond

Stock movement! I remember being well chuffed back in '99 stood on the station at Boulogne-Tintelleries when a five-strong rake of my absolute favourite locos of all time, the SNCF BB67000, all in original blue livery, charged past on a train de machines; but this demonstration of German might, is particularly impressive example.

Now I'm interested. Did you go over to Greece?

Yes, I was looking at that route just the other day - it looks spectacular, as that entire coastline is when seen from the sea. The Seat 61 video, which I guess you may have seen, including the dead horse 2:40 in, shows it in all its glory.

That would be an amazing adventure. Well without the Hull bit. Not convinced I'd want to step foot in Russia until Putin is gone but the trans-Siberian is definitely a bucket list thing. My favourite railway author is the late George Behrend and he wrote a book, Yatakli-Vagon, where he travelled across Europe to Turkey in the 1960s – starting in London, taking the Night Ferry to Paris, the (proper) Orient Express to Vienna, then the Balkan Express and the Istanbul Express to Turkey. About five or six years ago I plotted a way to repeat this journey today but it was really hard to come close without several more steps and more messing around. And the modern lack of night trains was a severe problem, certainly in the early part of the journey: Eurostar in place of the Night Ferry, then instead of the direct Paris-Vienna Orient Express, to preserve the same route you'd have to take a Paris-Munich TGV and then a Munich-Vienna Railjet. So already we've replaced two of the greatest named trains in history with a bunch of, no doubt very efficient, plastic day trains. Still, with the reintroduction of night trains across Europe and lots of spare holiday to use up I might give this another go in the next year or so.

You're saying all birds look the same to you?

Virgin bunged some Premium Economy up there which is where I assume you enjoyed it

As for future travel, well Lufthansa are the obvious choice as they have their new 747-8s which should be around for some time, assuming the aviation market returns to something like normal. Although finding them deployed on a route I actually want to use has been difficult so far (I'm willing to pay a bit more for airplanes I like, e.g. 787 over an a330, but going to entirely different countries I'll only do for ships I'm interested in, not planes). Korean Air are the other major 747-8 passenger operator so and they use them to Heathrow so that might be a fruitful adventure at some point in the future. Certainly the 747 is a much more appealing beast than the ugly a380.

I flew on a couple, -400 types: BA LHR to Narita and back in 1999 and Virgin Gatwick to Orlando and back in 2001. But perhaps my greatest airliner claim, we flew on a United Airlines 747-SP in the early '90s - this, I think, would have been 1993. Not just an -SP but an ex-Pan Am machine as well. They only built 45 of these short-fuselaged beauties but... phwoar, look at this baby

51 years since the first 747 arrived at LHR. Those early 747 flights seem like a blast. According to the book 'Skygods', "Pan Am was, in effect, providing the test beds for the troubled Pratt & Whitney IT9 engine... It had become a daily occurrence: one of the big jets would start out on its overseas journey and then - kabloom! - an engine would stall. The exhaust gas temperature would soar into the red. An orange sheet of flame would erupt like hellfire from the tailpipe, panicking passengers and loosening the bowels of astonished flight engineers".

Imelda Marcos.

I don't believe I ever watched that series, certainly not avidly. Even at age 10 I'd like to think I could tell it wasn't very good - Bonnie Langford certainly didn't seem great. Those Tetraps though, they look like they might have been created from leftover Argonds.

Anti-fog windscreen system on a Russian train.

Played at Gerry Marsden's funeral yesterday.

The Hall of Dead Animals doesn't look like a very comfortable place to spend leisure time.

Ethel Kennedy, RFK's wife.

The theme as original composer Ron Grainger arranged it. Nice 1970s cop show feel to it.

The Christmas special was fine I think, by the standards of these things. I do wish, for all the stories of recent series, they sometimes had more time to breathe. Yes there are season-long story arcs but squeezing an entire storyline into 50 minutes or whatever it is often fails to do justice.