With a flying boat and a Lockheed Constellation in the distance.
Saturday, January 31, 2015
fly to the Far East by B.O.A.C., late 1940s
With a flying boat and a Lockheed Constellation in the distance.
beautiful bodies by Fiberfab, 1967
Presumably the girl in the bikini wasn't one of them. "Fiberfab was a kit car manufacturer founded by Warren "Bud" Goodwin in 1964. Goodwin's earlier company, Sports Car Engineering had manufactured Microplas Mistral bodies under licence and sold them as the Spyder. Fiberfab started building street rod parts and body panels for Mustangs before moving on to kit cars. It was sold in 1983 to Classic Motor Carriages." (wikipedia)
bus in Valkenburg, Netherlands, greeting card
Strange things coming off the roof, a man running with burst braces and his pants coming down... It looks like a good time is being had by all.
Valkenburg is in the narrow sliver of territory in the south of the Netherlands between Belgium and Germany.
Friday, January 30, 2015
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Breda-built Italian electric locomotive propaganda poster, 1941
Depicting a E636 class articulated Bo-Bo-Bo type electric dating from 1940. Another poster with a fascist purpose.
Southern Pacific SD-45 heading a freight train at Lakeside, Utah, 1987
On the Great Salt Lake causeway, another six units behind the lead; one seems to be in the short-lived SP-SF pre-merger scheme and another in Rio Grande livery. This is now part of the Union Pacific system.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
vessels in Bangor, Ireland, poster, 1900s
The reference to "Ireland's premier watering place" is intriguing - did it have the country's highest concentration of pubs?
'Silver Meteors' in Florida postcard, 1939
The engines were E4's. The landscape is quite flat and the views tend to consist of trees. This still runs as an Amtrak service. More here
'Victoria' on Auckland's Waitemata Harbour, circa 1900
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Dubai is officially the world's busiest airport
The 2015 projections for traffic at Dubai International forecast 79 million passengers.
symbolic boxcar at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Today marks 70 years since the Soviet Red Army reached the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland which was the largest and best known established by the Nazis during WW2, and probably the best documented as most of both Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau) remains. There was also a third camp called Monowitz which was part of the IG Farben chemical works.
Most of those who arrived at Birkenau did so in a cattle car like that shown. Boxcars were often used by the Germans for their own troops too, but the difference was the soldiers weren't packed in like sardines and did not have to remain in them for sometimes days as the railway lines were very crowded during the war - and often the target of Allied bombing.
The Nazis blew up the gas chambers before they left, but for the mini-series War and Remembrance from the late 1980s, the producers rebuilt one from the original plans; they demolished it again after filming.
Russian car crash simulator 2015
As can be seen, written in Denglish. We don't know if this is a real product or just a joke.
Turkish train captured by the British in WW1
The location is not given but it will be in the Middle East, not Turkey.
Monday, January 26, 2015
life in Australia 50 years ago
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| A 1950s Vauxhall, a Commer van, and of course a Chrysler Valiant taxi. The director also deliberately framed the two metal rubbish bins - standard in A/NZ at the time - in this shot... |
From an historic transport viewpoint, you get to see quite a few street scenes, as you would expect, where British vehicles were plentiful though not quite as dominant as they were in NZ, as well as a trip on a harbour ferry and a brief scene of a red single deck electric train at Punchbowl station.
26 January - Australia Day
So here is a theme of Kings: King Street in Sydney, 1929, King Street in Melbourne circa 1960 with two generations of electric trains - Tait and Harris (see the book Railway Electrification in Australia and New Zealand) - and trams on King William Street in Adelaide in the early 20th century.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Dutch 1000 class electric locomotive poster, 1948
"Greater speed, more comfort" - for the passengers, one assumes. This was a class of 10 units which had an unusual (1A)'+Bo+(A1)' axle configuration, and the one depicted is now preserved.
boat people - an Australian headache for nearly four decades
The phenomenon of boat loads of asylum seekers on tightly packed, unseaworthy vessels from Indonesia and Malaysia (in particular) arriving on Australia's coast began after the end of the Vietnam war. At the time the majority of Australians were tolerant of them, but as the numbers since the late 1980s have never shown any sign of diminishing and their origin has expanded to include countries that are predominately Muslim, the vast majority of Australians now just want them sent back to where they come from. In the 2013 general election, Tony Abbot made stopping them a prime election issue, including by the use of drones. According to what the government claims, only one such boat reached the Australian mainland last year.
And what do these Muslims do when they are granted immigrant status? Well, it seems a significant number spend their time complaining about the absence of the repression in Australia that led them to seek 'asylum' from where they came... On Saturday about 800 of them rallied in Lakemba, Sydney, against free speech in Australia.
NSW CPH gasoline rail motor from 1923
Another of the delightfully quaint items of Australian motive power was this rail motor class which had wood bodies and roof mounted radiators. A total of 37 were built and 22 of them still exist.
"As built, the normal seating capacity was 45, 21 in 1st class and 24 in 2nd (or economy) class. A further seven could be accommodated on the flap seats provided in the guard's compartment. An additional feature of these cars were the prized seats either side of the driver (the drivers cab being centrally located in the middle of the carriage, there was one passenger seat located either side of the cab, looking directly ahead)." More
cars outside the former Blenheim Post Office, 1940s
Including a Vauxhall or two. The pic shows the Cleghorn Memorial Rotunda in the Market Place on the left which is still there. As a bit of trivia, the Blenheim Post Office experienced a heist of $51,000 in 1968, the present day equivalent of $867,000 and the biggest such robbery in NZ history.
from Nice to Digne by Renault autorail poster, France
The Renaults were introduced in 1935, and this poster showing Touët sur Var dates from not long after this. The villages perchés are a feature of the rugged hinterland of Provence.
DSB regional diesel railcar, 1978
The MR class was introduced in 1978, most built by Uerdingen in Germany. More were built in the 1980s by Scandia like this one dating from 1984. They were supplemented by almost identical powered cars classified as MRD and built by Scandia in the 1980s, coupled with the Uerdingens.
Specifications (per power car):
Engine: 12 cylinder Deutz diesel
Output: 237 kW (318 hp),
Transmission: hydraulic
Speed: 120 km/h (75 mph)
Brakes: air brake and magnetic track brake.
Length: 22,3 metres (73 ft)
Weight: 35 tons
Seats: 64 (second class)
Units built: 98
Length: 22,3 metres (73 ft)
Weight: 35 tons
Seats: 64 (second class)
Units built: 98
Saturday, January 24, 2015
Nicaragua diesel-electric switcher, 1956
With a train of bulldozers on flatcars. This looks like a General Motors Diesel NF210 model for cape gauge from that year.