BGLR : First plan of the N project

It has been planned for some time now but I think th N gauge layout project will finally begin in 2020. After all I have the board already (a packing pallet) and all the rolling stock. All I need is some new track and somewhere to place the layout... well maybe by next year the space will be available. I have begun designing the layout, it will be fairly simple but should be interesting.

The Lost Key

There should be more blog posts about typewriters, well here is one anyway. The Lost Key of QWERTY explores a key which had three dots in a vertical line. It appeared on the very earliest commercially successful typewriter, the Remington Number 1, back in 1873 but then vanished on subsequent models and has never been seen since. It certainly isn't on my Brother Deluxe.

Churches (41) : St Mary the Virgin, Rickmansworth

The church of St Mary the Virgin is the parish church of Rickmansworth and also used by the Methodist Church. It is an example of a church completely rebuilt in the nineteenth century so that not much of the original church was left.

The church was built on the site of an earlier church which dated to the late thirteenth century. The church was rebuilt in the 1820s to a fifteenth century style with most of the medieval church pulled down and replaced. The West tower however dates from 1630CE and is a fine example of the Gothic style built from flint and stone.

Derbyshire Places (5) : Ambergate

Ambergate is an example of a settlement that can remain sleepy and unchanged for centuries before new technology in the form of transport links can change it profoundly, even changing the name!

Although the village of Ambergate is situated where the river Amber joins the Derwent it is infact named after a gate on a turnpike road. Until the early nineteenth century the village was known as Toadmoor and was a tiny collection of cottages for many years until the arrival of transport links and change.

Amber Gate was the name of the tollgate on the Nottingham turnpike, the name was adopted by the North Midland Railway when they built Ambergate station in 1840. The Cromford Canal also passed through Ambergate though these days Ambergate marks where the canal "ends" on the stretch from Cromford before coming back to life again near Langley Mill.

The village grew greatly in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, the church of St Anne being built in 1892 for local worshippers who up until then had had to use a variety of different venues for worship, even the pub!

Gone for a Burton

After last week's weather caused last minute change of plan I decided to go to Tanworth-in-Arden this weekend instead. However when I got to Birmingham Moor Street I saw that the train I intended to catch was cancelled and as I didn't want to wait an hour for the next one decided to change my plan again. Instead I went to Burton-upon-Trent, somewhere I have travelled through many times but never stopped at until now.

I had an enjoyable if muddy towpath curtailed walk along the Trent & Mersey Canal and also took some photos in Burton-upon-Trent as well, as can be expected the town is dominated still be breweries. You can see my photos here. Photos of the canal are here.