{"id":3242,"date":"2023-10-07T01:30:32","date_gmt":"2023-10-07T01:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/saturday-variety-11\/"},"modified":"2023-10-07T01:30:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-07T01:30:32","slug":"saturday-variety-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/saturday-variety-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Variety"},"content":{"rendered":"

Break The Glass Ceiling :\u00a0<\/span>NOT The Glass Floor!<\/span><\/p>\n

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After this week’s English Open Snooker, the circus moves on to China, specifically to Wuhan. Assuming you have travelled there for the snooker, you may just find time to explore the City’s newest tourist attraction.<\/div>\n
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Say hello to the Optics Valley Sky Rail!\n
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and yes, the cars do have a “glass floor” – more accurately a glass panel in the floor.<\/p>\n

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fbb is not at all sure that he would want to look down!<\/p>\n

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Want to see some more – of course you do!<\/p>\n

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More Trams In Zion City<\/span><\/div>\n
Zion is one of the lowly hills on which Jerusalem is built. The name later became a euphemism for the whole city and, in Christian culture, Zion morphed into a name for the eternal Golden City, the heaven of the Bible book of Revelation.<\/div>\n
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Jerusalem is to have yet another new tram lone.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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The new BLUE line(s) will join he existing red and green services.<\/div>\n
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Trams are big …<\/p>\n

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… and can look somewhat unreal set against more traditional Jerusalem infrastructure.<\/div>\n
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Happier Happenings For McGill<\/span><\/div>\n
Despite failure in West Lothian, McGill’s is pressing on with service developments and upgrades elsewhere in its now huge network.<\/div>\n
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Under its predessor’s tutelage, the X10 and X10A between Stiring and Glasgow via Blafron …\n
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… seemed only to be served by tired and elderly First Bus vehicles.<\/p>\n

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The timetable has not changed greatly …<\/p>\n

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… but the presentation has taken a notable leap forward.<\/p>\n

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Note the CitiSwift brand.<\/p><\/div>\n

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It is also telling to see what operations boss Alex Hortnby says about printed material.\n
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So, so different from the non-print stupidity of most of First Bus and Stagecoach.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Well done McGill’s.<\/div>\n
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Daft Route Numbers : Posh Coaches<\/span>\n
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Readers will doubtless remember the new Newbury and District service from Basingstoke to Heathrow Terminal 5. Weirdly, the route number changes at Frimley to confuse us all and muck up “official” journey planners.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The service started with cast-off deckers from the former Green Line routes …\n
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… but passengers were promised posh coaches.<\/p><\/div>\n

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And. lo and behold, the first two have been delivered and will be on the road “soon”.\n
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fbb would always prefer a double decker, you can see so much more from the obligatory top deck front seats!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Septuagenarian’s Silly Signal Box.<\/span><\/div>\n
Attempt Two<\/span>\n
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The messy obliteration of the arched windows was wholly unsatisfactory, so another example of the work of Fred Fudge and Bill Bodge was urgently needed.<\/p><\/div>\n

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In the end fbb added a new piece of stonework to cover the mess. Painted white and with mortar added there was something of a match.\n
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The observant modeller, however, will cry foul! The stones are bigger and do not match the original. Does that matter? It is possible (but highly unlikely) that the architect of Peterville Quarry Junction Signal Box exercised his weird design skills by using different sized blocks.<\/p><\/div>\n

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But the overriding principles of Fudge and Bodge call for a more crafty solution. Can fbb draw the eyes of the crowds flocking to see the layout (crowds?) away from one bodge by offering them a more entertaining alternative bodge?<\/div>\n
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The answer came to the old bloke in one of his frequent periods of wakefulness whilst snuggling bed-wise at fbb mansions.<\/div>\n
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Window boxes!\n
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As an example, the above set is produced by Noch and will cost nearly \u00a31 a window box (plus post and packing).\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n

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It was then that fbb had his jackpot idea.<\/div>\n
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More tomorrow.<\/div>\n
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McGill’s, A P.S.<\/span>\n
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After last Thursday’s bye-election debacle, fbb thinks that Scotland’s First Minister will have a bit more to fill his agile brain than the problems of a few bus services in West Lothian.<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u00a0Next Variety blog : Sunday 8th October\u00a0<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Break The Glass Ceiling :\u00a0NOT The Glass Floor! After this week’s English Open Snooker, the circus moves on to China, specifically to Wuhan. Assuming you have travelled there for the snooker, you may just find time to explore the City’s newest tourist attraction. Say hello to the Optics Valley Sky Rail! and yes, the cars do have a “glass floor”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camcab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}