Transport – Jack Scott's Blog

Why Thomas The Tank Engine Is Okay

I was recently linked to a story in the NZ Herald entitled “Why Thomas The Tank Engine Is Not Okay“. There were so many factual errors in the article, as well as a general lack of understanding that the fact that Thomas the Tank Engine is a commentary on British Railways’ policies in the 1940s and 1950s, that I could not let it stand.

Trains are sent to the scrapyard if they’re not useful. And we all know what that means – it means they’re executed.
[…]
There are no unions in Sodor, that’s for sure.

First of all, the human equivalent would be firing them (“making them redundant” in the capitalist jargon), not executing them. Secondly, unions don’t exist to prevent useless employees from being fired (except when unions have too much power), they are to prevent good employees from being taken advantage of.

The women trains are actually girl carriages.

Daisy (mentioned in the article) isn’t a carriage, she’s a diesel multiple unit (DMU). There’s a very important difference. In Britain in the 1950’s, DMUs were the future. Daisy is leading the way.

In addition, from a very quick look through the Wikipedia article, there are at least five female locomotives: Molly, Rosie, Belle, Mavis, and Flora. It’s definitely not a 50/50 mix gender-wise, and all of the original “Steam Team” are male, but it’s not zero. It’s just a basic lack of fact checking. Note that I’m not saying there shouldn’t be more female characters – I think there should be – but the article is just plain incorrect.

Either they have no personality (Daisy)…

This was the entire point of Daisy’s character. The Rev. Awdry (I believe) wanted to show diesel railcars as being unimaginative and dull compared to steam engines. This was a direct commentary on British Railways’ campaign to phase out steam engines on British main line railways in favour of diesel and electric propulsion. Steam then, as now, was seen as romantic and full of character compared to diesel. The character ‘Diesel’, the first diesel engine seen in the books, was rude and brash and nobody liked him – again, steam was better than diesel.

Every single character has a flaw in their personality. It’s part of the anthropomorphosis of the trains into people. Henry got bricked into a tunnel because he was too vain. James is rude and arrogant. They are all flawed, just like us.

wnlzm

Traction Engines are AWESOME!

A few weekends ago (on the 19th of July, to be precise) an anniversary celebration of the first traction engine in Tasmania was held. As part of this, five traction engines drove from the Bellerive Oval to the Tasmanian Transport Museum. On the way, they passed by Montagu Bay Primary School, where they stopped to take on fuel and water. I was lucky enough to be there, and to have a camera with me.

Enjoy (I certainly did)!

The Start of a Long ToDo List

BMW E36 318iS — The new (old) BMW after it’s first wash and wax.

Recently I’ve made a heap of changes in my life, one of which has been the car I own and drive. I’ve sold the 2007 Subaru Impreza I bought eighteen months ago with my ex-girlfriend, and bought a 1997 BMW 318iS (an Avus Blue E36 sedan with M44 engine, for the BMW aficionado). This achieved three purposes.

Firstly, I was able to save a bit of money by buying a car a decade older, which I used to pay off some debts. One lesson I’ve learned working for myself is that debt is something to be avoided at all costs, as it crushes the feeling of freedom you would otherwise have.

I also got a more interesting car to drive. Despite having less power (103kW compared to 110kW) and less torque, the BMW is a much better car to drive. Due to the flat cylinder alignment in the Subaru’s engine, it doesn’t produce much of that power lower in the rev ranges, where it is most useful. The BMW’s engine produces more power when you actually need it.

Finally, I have a new hobby. Because the car is a decade older, it has a lot of defects that need repairing. It needs a new roof lining, several body panels need repainting, bits of trim need replacing and the audio system needs an upgrade (I’ve developed an Onslowian response of hitting the head unit to make it pick up channels clearly).

Longer term, I’m also toying with the idea of building a carputer. Given the power and features I want to pack into such a device I’m leaving this until I’m flush with cash. My dream feature list includes such absurdities as shortwave and citizen band radio, GPS navigation, GSM back-to-base alarm system, and management and monitoring of the engine via OBD-II (and BMW’s proprietary extensions to said system). It’s a project that will never be finished, so I’ve decided it’s safer not to start.

Trains in Tasmania

Recently my parents converted an old VHS tape of train videos to DVD. The video tape was an old tape from my parent’s neighbour who spent quite a lot of time making videos of trains. Since the Internet never loses anything, I thought I’d take advantage of the NSA’s backup capabilities to make sure this three-hour gem isn’t lost forever.

The majority of the tape features M and H class steam locomotives, as well as X and Y class diesel-electric locomotives.

As well as uploading to Youtube, I’ve also created a far bigger than necessary torrent of it: here. If there are ever no seeders, poke me via email or IM and I’ll make sure to start seeding it again.

Eight Things I Hate About Living In Hobart

You might also want to read my follow up to this post, Eight Things I Hate About Living In Hobart – Six Years On

Following on from my post about things I love about living in Hobart, here are eight things I hate:

The public transport system. It sucks badly. If you want to go anywhere by bus after 6pm or on a weekend, forget it.
People complaining about the public transport system. People love complaining about Metro (I’m one of them). It smells. It’s always late. It goes nowhere near where you want to go. All this complaining is really bad; what we need to do is all get on the busses and give them the money they need to fix it. At the moment I can (and regularly do) catch a bus and be the only person on it.
Bogans. Individually Bogans are fine. I know quite a few, and they’re lovely people (mostly). It’s just when they get into groups; you start to get the feeling deep inside you that it’s no longer safe and you should leave. It’s not a good thing that The Powers That Be decided to build entire suburbs of public housing, which have now become ghettos.
There’s not very much to do. Assuming you don’t drink alcohol (which I don’t), there’s very few things of great excitement in Hobart (if you have ideas, leave comments please!).
Rubbish TV stations. People on the mainland get Channel 7, Channel 9 and Channel 10, as well as digital radio. We get Southern Cross, WIN TV, and TDT, which are bad impersonations of the mainland stations. I know Tasmania is a small market, but wouldn’t it be cheaper then to copy the stations over exactly as they are on the mainland and just change the evening news bulletin?
Badly surfaced roads. I know this is a complaint pretty much everywhere in the world, but in Hobart’s suburbs it’s getting pretty ridiculous. Neither of the two electorates that Hobart covers (Denison and Franklin) are marginal seats (in fact pretty solidly Labor) so there’s not a lot of money spent pork-barrelling here.
Slow Internet. We’re at the end of the world and there’s only a few Internet cables coming into the state. Add to that the high prices charged by ISPs in Australia generally, and it’s a pretty bad situation. The National Broadband Network (NBN) promises to fix the speeds, but at what cost?
The jokes about two-headed Tasmanians when you travel to the mainland. It’s getting old guys, seriously.