A visit to the land of my ancestors

Lets begin the 2018 season of travelling about then. I decided (pretty much at the last minute to be honest) to begin my travels down in Gloucestershire. I went to Stonehouse which is apparently where my great-grand mother lived for awhile. I then had a walk along the Stroudwater Navigation (see separate article) and walked to Stroud which is where my great-great-great-great grandmother Mary lived. Who knows maybe they also walked this canal back then?

You can see my railway photos here.

 

 

The railway stations on the Monopoly board

Surely many games of Monopoly were played over Christmas? On the traditional London board the railway stations are Fenchurch Street, Marylebone, Liverpool Street and Kings Cross. This is quite an unusual selection, why not Euston and Waterloo for example? The answer may be when the British board game manufacturer Waddingtons bought the right to the game from a US company in 1935 they headed down from their headquarters in Leeds to London to look for suitable locations.

All four stations they chose are LNER stations which may be no coincidence. They would have arrived in London at Kings Cross and may have seen signs for the company's other stations (or just stuck with their local company!)

Marylebone

Liverpool Street

Kings Cross

Fenchurch Street

Making models

I did have a blog dedicated to model making (railways and kits) but have decided to stop updating it. Instead i've created a dedicated blog for the model railway and will move posts about making model kits to here. You can see a list of kits made to date here.

The latest kit, Project #080, is a Grumman Martlet. There have been some delays with it due to building difficulties (i'll be honest - i haven't been on vintage form this year with the old glue) and delays in getting the right paint but it should be finished in early 2018.

Back to analogue

I've bought a new watch, and after about twenty years of digital watches (Casio F-91W and variants all the way) i have returned to analogue timepieces. A Swatch to be exact. In the late 1990s i did go through a phase of wearing Swatches but then when i was on holiday in Indonesia in 1999 i had cause to need to go to digital...

The hotel room in Malang i had was a bit strange. The window looked out on a sheer concrete wall, the window was locked i could not see the sky. The wall was also well lit when i arrived in the daytime. So on my first night there, and jet lagged of course, i went to sleep and woke up at 3. But was it 3am or 3pm? It could have been either, i thought maybe it was 3am but i honestly couldn't tell by looking at that wall, it looked exactly the same as it had earlier!

It was 3am but i decided then i needed a digital watch with 24 hour time display so i would not have this problem again. Now nearly twenty years later and with my current Casio watch showing its age (it was going orange) i decided it was time to get a new one... and return to Swatch. With mobile phones now there is no need to worry about the exact time so your watch can be more decorative. I chose the Tetris Swatch. I used to have the Space Invader one which lit up all green, i wished i still had that one too!

Review of 2017 : December

December brings the year to a close, dark days and poor weather curtailing some activities but i still managed a few trips around. I visited some old haunts: Stratford-upon-Avon and Leamington Spa. I also made another of my new style short trips to Blakedown and saw the new West Midlands Trains branding at Snow Hill.

One final big trip of the year was to London for some more rail adventures, including the Croydon Tramlink for the first time and ten new stations visited for my blog. That is it for 2017, well except that i also saw the new Star Wars film and thought it was excellent.

Song of the month was "My mistake" by Nina. Now tomorrow we can start all over again.

Stratford-upon-Avon

Leamington Spa

Blakedown

Mitcham Junction, South London