{"id":3480,"date":"2023-12-02T02:30:56","date_gmt":"2023-12-02T02:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/isnt-technology-wonderful\/"},"modified":"2023-12-02T02:30:56","modified_gmt":"2023-12-02T02:30:56","slug":"isnt-technology-wonderful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/isnt-technology-wonderful\/","title":{"rendered":"Isn’t Technology Wonderful?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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How Did We Manage Without It?<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n\n
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In 2023 we are blessed with loads of technology at the front of a bus and in the so-called “back office”. Technology is for ever evolving and the humble ticket machine is now a Sophisticated computer and printer all in one.\n
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How things have changed for the better? Or maybe for the more expensiver?<\/p><\/div>\n\n

\u00a0B\u00a0<\/span>edford\u00a0\u00a0B\u00a0<\/span>us<\/span><\/p>\n

But we did manage without hundreds if points worth of technology. fbb has written previously about his routine journey from Little Billing Church to Northampton Grammar School, often on a duplicate, and regularly Yorks’ Bedford OB, HMS Cumberland. This was one of a significant fleet of that marque.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The driver had a steering wheel, a couple of dials, a gear lever, three foot pedals and a handbrake. Seemples.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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For ticket issuing he had a Bellgraphic machine …\n
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… where you wrote the fare and the stage on a paper ticket which the machine issued, keeping a carbon copy for the driver to reconcile with his cash at the end of his duty. Seemples.<\/p>\n

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Rover tickets? Season tickets? Of course not!<\/span><\/div>\n

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There are many OBs in preservation snd many model versions to enjoy.<\/span><\/div>\n

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Most models are to OO scale (1:76) …\n
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… but Corgi Classics were 1:50.<\/p>\n

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These are available “pre-owned” in various liveries. But the daddy of them all was the Sunstar OB at 1:24 scale – i.e. BIG!<\/p>\n

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The Yelloway model is of a real bus …<\/p>\n

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… and the model’s detail is exquisite. The door slides (manually, operated by passengers in real life – especially fbb if he coul bag the seat) …<\/p>\n

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… and you can see the clock (non working). The driver’s cab door opens …<\/p>\n

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… as does the bonnet to reveal the engine!<\/p>\n

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And here is the driver’ cab seat from which Yorks” Doug would sell the tickets with bag and machine on the floor beside him.<\/p>\n

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Note that the real cab (further above) has had some extra gubbins added; the model is in as-delivered format! Seemples. Oh yes; the roof slides open as well.<\/p><\/span><\/div>\n


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fbb never remembers Doug opening the roof on his way to school.<\/span><\/div>\n

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\u00a0B\u00a0<\/span>ase Tunnel<\/div>\n
In recent years, there has been a bit of a craze in opening tunnels right at the base of mountain ranges. Whereas in times gone by, such long excavations were beyond tunnelling technology and cost, but now, zapping a tunnel through the bottom of a mountain rather than building a line half way up then digging is cost effective. If you want to run high speed trains on straightish track it is the only way to go.<\/span>\n
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The new line provides a high speed link with the Asturias region in the north west of Spain<\/span><\/p>\n

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The mountain range gets in he way meaning that the now-superseded “classic” line is slow and “wiggly” (to use a technical term!).<\/span><\/p>\n

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The line was due to open in 2010 (!!) but geological difficulties and, of course, Covid have led to a massive delay. But it opened with due ceremony on 30th November.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The tunnel is 28 km long.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0B\u00a0<\/span>elief and a\u00a0\u00a0B\u00a0<\/span>ook<\/span><\/div>\n
Belief is a weird word.<\/span><\/div>\n

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There is often debate in the infant school classroom as to whether your mates “Believe in Father Christmas”. It was Cedric Tipler who revealed to a youthful blog author-to-be that “it’s your dad!” No surprise there as the idea of delivering a sack of prezzies down every chimney in the UK, let alone the world; delivering them all from a sleigh hauled by flying reindeer and delivering them all at midnight; all seemed somewhat implausible.<\/span><\/div>\n

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There was also the problem of drinking millions of glasses of milk and eating millions of mince pies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n

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Thomas Nast, an American political cartoonist, who illustrated the poem “It was the Night Before Christmas”, solved the problem of tubby santa and small chimneys.\n
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Santa was a little gnome!<\/p><\/span><\/div>\n


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But that is the trouble with Belief. Whether you believe or not doesn’t change anything<\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n

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“I believe in Father Christmas” or “I don’t believe in Father Christmas” has no effect on whether Father Christmas is real ot not.<\/span><\/div>\n

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“I believe in God” or “I don’t believe\u00a0 in God” has no effect on whether God is real or not.<\/span><\/div>\n

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A committed Christian will rely less on raw belief and more on hard evidence, the evidence of history. Faith<\/span> is very different from Belief<\/span>.<\/span><\/div>\n

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This part of the ABC blog will be following the “book” (<\/span>greek, “biblos” = Bible) to what comes BEFORE<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0CHRIST<\/span><\/span>mas\u00a0<\/span>, what happened\u00a0AT<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0CHRIST<\/span><\/span>mas\u00a0<\/span>, amd what follows AFTER<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0CHRIST<\/span><\/span>mas\u00a0<\/span>.<\/div>\n
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A good Bible is bright, in English that we can all understand and, preferably with lots of pictures!<\/p>\n

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The guy in the silly hat really<\/span>, really<\/span> didn’t like the frogs.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0Next C of A B C blog : Sunday 3rd December\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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How Did We Manage Without It? In 2023 we are blessed with loads of technology at the front of a bus and in the so-called “back office”. Technology is for ever evolving and the humble ticket machine is now a Sophisticated computer and printer all in one. How things have changed for the better? Or maybe for the more expensiver?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3480","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\/3480","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=3480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/redesign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}