Literature
Riding the donkou through Japan
When you read about Japanese trains, the first thing that comes to mind is probably the shinkansen, the world’s first bullet train and still a wonder to behold and to ride in. Or you [more…]
Trains
Animals
Larry’s Diary, Week One Hundred and Sixty-One
Monday Good morning folks. It’s a bit grey and chilly this morning which is a pity really as it would have been nice if it had been bright and sunny for the Queen’s funeral. Well, [more…]
Arts
Postcard from Sunny Skeg
The announcement over the two-carriage rattle-trap train’s tannoy told us this we’d reached the terminus and bid us ‘Welcome to sunny Skegness’. Bearing in mind this was December on the East Coast, these wry words [more…]
Computing
Welcome once more to Dingleberry
We return once more to the land of the lost and weary traveller that is Dingleberry, a curious place of indeterminate location, populated entirely by people who wish they were somewhere else but are unable [more…]
Arts
Postcard from Romania – Part Four
Part Three of the Postcard from Romania covered our visits to the indoor and outdoor sections of the terrific Transylvanian Museum of Ethnography (Muzeul Etnografic al Transilvaniei), a jaunt to Satu Mare on the wild [more…]
19th Century
Britain’s Forgotten Railways – The Stainmore Railway – part 1
My grandfather spent his working life as a fireman on the railways and my father, having grown up living next to a busy railway line, was a big railway enthusiast so it’s perhaps not surprising [more…]
Arts
Postcard From November, Part 5
Happy Birthday to Me My birthday is November 4th and as a child my main memory of it was always of my parents laying on a party for my friends who all turned up bearing [more…]
Computing
Dingleberry, Part Two
Part two, How To Drive a (Model) Train Welcome back to the sleepy town of Dingleberry, “somewhere” on the UK rail network, a destination found only by the terminally lost and those who were foolish [more…]
Hobbies
Shunting into Summer
The lighter nights are arriving, the cold finally thawing out – spring is here, even in the north. We last left this story at the point where both main tracks were running and we had [more…]