King of the Mountains

I’ve been wandering the excellent Peeron website devoted to Lego for a while now, but only recently got around to looking at the scanned catalogues they have. Specifically, the 1985 one.

I was three years old in 1985, and can’t remember much about it beyond a few fragmented mental images of where we lived then, my parents car, and a couple of places we went to regularly. But I do still have all the Lego from then.

Looking through the pages brought it all back. There was the car and caravan, which always puzzled me as one of the Lego chaps had to sit in the caravan while it was being towed due to the cars only having one seat. I was always a bit worried about this as I’d been around caravans from the age of six months and knew that people weren’t allowed to travel in them. They were probably alright providing they avoided the Police station with its helicopter, car, and motorbikes,

There was also the Police van with the working siren and lights, which I still have. The siren had two modes, switched by turning the top of the top hat-like brick.

The breakdown truck was there, but without the annoying problem mine always had of the hook slowly descending if you put any load on it (such as a Police van with a 9v battery inside to power the lights). Likewise there are a significant number of yellow earthmovers which I still have somewhere and the very neat set featuring a car, working jack, and what appears to be a wheel balancing machine.

The other interesting part is to compare it to the current range. There is still a large dump truck, although the modern one is larger and has things like a cab (evidently ROPS has arrived in Legoland). The small digger has larger wheels, but a less impressive engine and scoop. The cement mixer is wider, has a detailed cab, and uses gears to rotate the drum rather than it just being mounted on a swivel.

There are more specialised pieces now, but the sets look much better for it. They’ve transitioned from pure toys to models that happen to be made from Lego. Certainly there’s nothing in the 1985 catalogue to compare with the tower crane I mentioned a while ago.

And yet, some of the modern range just doesn’t compare. The 1985 Lego astronauts have craft that look far more interesting than the current bunch, and no slightly unethical story about going to an alien planet, taking crystals, and bashing the "aliens" when they complain. The old Lego astronauts, one sensed, would have introduced any aliens they met to their robot friend who looked not unlike a post box with arms before offering them a ride on the single-seat jetpack thing. If the chap in the red spacesuit didn’t mind anyway, it was his flying armchair after all.

The 1985 railway wasn’t radio controlled, but it had recognisable models of real trains and included things like remote controlled points, signals, and uncouplers. You could build a decent layout with the older stuff given space and funds. Now the only additional parts you can get are a rather natty station and assorted track. If your parents bought you the high speed train, in other words, all you’ll be able to do is buy armfuls of track and annexe the living room for your railway empire.

Unfortunately I never had the old Lego trains. I did make up for it later when the 9v system turned up.

I think I shall have to go up to the attic and hunt for a six wheeled dump truck tomorrow…

The above gibberish is, allegedly, CB radio at its finest. However, in over a year of owning such a device I have yet to hear anyone I know using the slang.

I was born a bit too late for the great CB craze of the ’80s, so reading about it on the internet is a bit of a history lesson. I bought a radio in order to keep in contact with the rest of the group on off road excursions, and as we only go in small groups we can recognise each other by voice. We’ve never developed strange handles like Rubber Duck or Green Goblin simply because we don’t need them. Plus I’d have a hard time keeping a straight face while sending messages like "Rubber Duck, coming in your back door" which I believe means "I’m catching you up".

The general opinion seems to be that mobile phones have killed CB, along with cheap walkie-talkies using the PMR 446 standard. As the licence fee for CB was repealed a while ago, this leaves those of us adopting it in a very good position. We have an autonomous communications system with no call charges and the ability to make conference calls. We have plenty of free channels due to the fact that there are few other users on the air. Most importantly, while a mobile phone ceases to function in rural areas due to the lack of cells our radios can work quite happily. 

Plus we get to make innuendo about the 9ft whip or the big red Thunderpole. Can’t do that with a mobile phone…

I’ve been wandering ebay a fair bit of late, and have encountered some bizarre trends.

To start with the obvious, those special people who list something by brand, then put "like" and a whole bunch of manufacturers making similar stuff. I’m not even sure it grabs attention. If I want to see something from that manufacturer I’ll search for it, rather than ending up with a set of results stuffed with things I don’t want.

Putting "Rare" in a subject heading doesn’t make it so. However, it might well provoke a bidding war so I can’t say I blame the seller. I do wonder about the individuals who seem happy to pay twice the original price for something that is still readily available new though. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they really don’t care how much over the odds they’ve spent too.

Which leads us neatly onto the other problem. The "Must have it at all costs" bidder. Great news for the sellers, but downright annoying for the rest of the bidders as they will push prices to insane levels in their desperate efforts to be the winning bidder. I really don’t know what drives them. The rest of us, upon seeing an item rise to a silly price, will simply roll our eyes and think that there’ll be another one along before too long. But on planet crazy bidder something kicks in. I would suggest it’s macho posturing, but there seem to be a fair number of women who do this too. A re-awakening of the old fighting spirit that led our ancestors to prod each other with pointy sticks for the last piece of the kill maybe? I’ve even heard of rare occasions where the crazy bidder has been beaten and the winner has received a bile-filled email for having the nerve to outbid the crazed.

Some people just enjoy winding them up by making sure they pay well over the odds, but as that’s against ebay rules and quite possibly illegal I can’t condone it. If it is an attempt to ensure that nobody else bothers to bid on later auctions then it clearly isn’t working. You can’t intimidate the rest of us by showing that you’re willing to throw your money away.

Some of the best luck I’ve had, however, has been with lots where there are one or two rough items with a pile of decent ones. Nobody seems willing to bid on these, despite the fact that quite often all the unappealing items need is a bit of de-rusting. So for the price of a tin of WD40 and an old toothbrush you can become the sole bidder and snap up ludicrously cheap stuff.   

If you’ve watched any rallying, you’ll know what to expect. Smallish saloon cars and hatchbacks treating the laws of physics as a minor nuisance. But it wasn’t always that way.

In the early 1970s Lancia began working on a purpose-built rally car, rather than starting from a roadgoing vehicle. After much development work the Stratos HF prototype appeared in 1971.

To look at one, you wouldn’t think it a rally car. It has a mid-mounted V6 engine from a Ferrari, only two seats, a gigantic wrap-around windscreen and the wedge shape popularised by first-generation supercars like the Lamborghini Countach. But look a little closer and it begins to make sense.

The wheelbase is far shorter, making the car more nervous at speed than would be normally be desirable. But in the hands of a skilled racer this could be translated into perfect drifts and very precise cornering. Despite the sleek appearance the car was more than solid enough to handle the rough gravel and mud of the average rally stage. It has a wide track, giving better grip and more resistance to roll.

The Group 4 competition version of the Stratos made its debut in 1974, after the requisite number of road-going versions had been built to satisfy the regulations.  Fewer than five hundred would be built in all. Earlier prototypes had been extensively tested in Group 5, where regulations did not require a minimum number of road cars be constructed.

The victories mounted. The 1974, 1975 and 1976 championship wins were unfortunately followed by a Fiat ruling that the firms rally effort would be concentrated on the Fiat 131 Abarth, but it didn’t end there. In private hands the Stratos raced on, winning the 1979 Monte Carlo Rally outright and winning international-level events into 1981. A new generation of enthusiasts was created when the car appeared in various games, starting with Sega Rally and including the Gran Turismo franchise. There are even kits available to build a full size replica. Despite the best efforts of Fiat it just won’t die!

The spectacular foulup surrounding the opening of Terminal Five at Heathrow has been analysed to death, so I’m not going to try. Suffice to say that anyone expecting something that complex to work perfectly first time clearly didn’t play with the right toys as a child.

Instead, I thought I’d share a different approach. Say you wanted to get to France. Le Mans, for the sake of argument. Now, I suspect most of you immediately started looking for cheap flights that will drop you somewhere in the vague vicinity of the 24hr race circuit. But there is an alternative.

It’s called a ferry

Yes, the big floating things that leave from Dover, Portsmouth, etc. They still exist.

With air travel rapidly becoming impossible due to government-sponsored paranoia and fearsome security checks, it’s rapidly becoming an easier bet to go by sea. Compare the two:

I turn up at the port about 45mins before the ship is due to leave, clear passport control with a brief vehicle check and a few questions, collect the bit of card to wedge in the windscreen so I don’t end up on the wrong ship. Next stop, the lines of vehicles awaiting loading.

By this stage the air traveller has probably just about managed to find a parking space, drag their luggage to the terminal building, and is waiting in a mile long queue to be told they have too much of it.

Stage two, loading. I’m waved onto the ship and after a few minutes park in the allotted space. Get out with anything you want during the crossing, lock the car, collect the ticket from the crew member reminding you where you parked, and head up on deck. 

The air traveller has, meanwhile, been asked a selection of intrusive questions and had their luggage searched in a manner suggesting that they are a drug baron. Any liquids will have been taken off them so they have to buy expensive refreshments on board. Most of their luggage has been sent off down a conveyor belt from whence it may or may not return. They’re now being herded in the usual sheep-like manner towards the plane, where they will be seated in conditions resembling those of a veal calf for their journey while breathing recycled air. 

Compare that to sitting on an open deck, breathing fresh sea air with possibly a hint of diesel. You can go inside if you want but it’ll probably be stuffed with whining kids, so I’ll take my chances as it isn’t raining. At least I can escape them, unlike the air traveller who has invariably been seated near a baby that will cry unstoppably for the entire flight.

At the end, I just get back in the car and drive off, maybe via another passport check or a few questions. I’m on the Autoroute heading for Le Mans within minutes. Meanwhile the air traveller is wondering if their luggage will ever turn up and dealing with security checks that J Edgar Hoover would have thought excessive.

My way takes a little longer. But it’s more relaxed, more dignified, and I have my car at the other end, rather than having to drag luggage and rent something. Something of a win I feel. 

I have, in the past, spent many happy hours either in or wandering outside the erstwhile Bristol Industrial Museum. So I’m an industrial archeology nerd. There are worse leanings.

Recently the museum was closed, to be redeveloped as a new "Museum of Bristol". This rang alarm bells, or more fittingly blew whistles. See, the first proposal involved razing their original 1950s-built transit shed to the ground and replacing it with some steel and glass monstrousity. In other words, in the name of museums they intended destroying the sole surviving original warehouse in the City Docks and replacing it with something as lacking in architectural merit as the offices that have sprung up on the other side of the harbour. Thankfully a concerted campaign by enthusiasts saw these plans replaced with ones keeping the original fabric. On my last visit a sizable chunk had disappeared from the middle of the building, it can but be hoped that this is simply a case of replacing unstable concrete.

But this isn’t just about one museum. It can be applied to many.

BIM was almost entirely staffed by volunteers. Overalled men and women who loved the old machinery they demonstrated and who evidently took great delight in displaying their "toys" to the public. Anyone who played with Meccano or Lego Technic as a child surely feels the urge, when confronted with a large and complex piece of machinery, to see if it works like their models did. I know I’d jump at the chance to drive the cranes, boats and trains in their collection, if I lived closer I’d be volunteering there every weekend.

You can somehow tell that a new museum will be stuffed with "interpretation" and trendy exhibits. Nothing too complex to frighten the terminally dim, and heaven forbid the place be full of old stuff that might scare little Wayne and Waynetta away. A place where having power cables slung across from the building to allow the cranes to operate would be unthinkable, as the look of the place is far more important than living exhibits. Those cranes did live, too. They whirred, clunked, and hummed as anyone lucky enough to get a guided tour found out. No electronics, just cunning electro-mechanical engineering of the sort that fell out of favour when celebrity culture hit.

A proper museum, to my mind, is stuffed with interesting old stuff with labels saying what it is. It’s staffed by people who spend the rest of their spare time up to their armpits in rusty machinery and WD-40. It doesn’t need to try to be "relevant" or any of the other buzzwords. People who are interested will seek it out, and with the right calibre of staff anyone wavering will go away enthused. It cannot be anything other than relevant, as without the exhibits contained therein the world as we know it today would not have existed. If the majority of people are more interested in Big Brother than the equipment that enabled their country to export and recover from the last war, then this is surely a damning verdict on modern society rather than any criticism of the museum.

In 1957 a proposal was made by the head of the Netherlands state railway, F.Q. den Hollander to assemble a network of luxury express trains linking European states. The name given to these trains still reeks of glamour: Trans Europ Express.

Initial participants were West Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy and the Netherlands. Later Belgium and Luxembourg would join. There were numerous innovations intended to speed these expresses; passport control (in pre-Schengen Europe passports were still checked at each border crossing) would take place on the move, the trains would use diesel power to avoid problems with differing electrical power supplies, only first class accommodation would be provided and the trains would be of the multiple unit type to avoid time-consuming shunting at terminals. The first services began on 2^nd June 1957.

In 1974 the network reached its peak, and began to die off. German expresses were renamed “EuroCity” or EC. The TEE name retreated to the realms of the enthusiasts and nostalgia-ridden. And yet, the concept has not died. We are currently seeing electric trainsets built that are able to handle multiple voltages to allow through running into neighbouring countries. The destination boards may no longer say TEE, but anyone who witnessed the original TEE services would not see a huge difference. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bahn’s museum section has an immaculately restored electric loco and a set of matching coaches that operate charters as the TEE Rheingold, much as they would have done originally. It has even attracted the attention of musicians, the German group Kraftwerk titling an album “Trans Europ Express”.

At this point you may be wondering why this is important. There is in fact a very good reason. A network like this offers the best chance of dissuading people from using short-haul air travel and thereby reducing the heavy carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft, to say nothing of the noise pollution and vapour trails caused by aircraft. While a train still uses energy, it requires far less power to keep a TGV at cruising speed than an aircraft. The time taken to cross Europe may be longer, but surely we should consider whether in this age of cheap web-based teleconferencing we really need to travel long distances on a regular basis anyway? If people managed to do business in 1957 with just reliable rail links then we should have no trouble now with the incredible strides in technology since that era. We simply need to move away from the idea that we can travel anywhere in Europe in an hour for comparative pennies before we are forced to by rising oil prices.

So on the 2^nd of June raise a glass to F.Q. den Hollander and the TEE. Their best years have yet to come.

If you grew up during the 1980s, this may be something of a nostalgia trip. If you didn’t encounter a computer until they were all “PCs” with MS Windows (or if your school/parents had a bit more money an Apple) then this will be rather like palaeontology.

I’m talking about the BBC Model B

If you (along with a majority of other computer users) are used to hearing assorted beeps, dramatic chords, and seeing graphical startup screens then the next photo will come as something of a shock. The old BBC just goes “Bduh-Beep” and below some information on the machine shows this:

BASIC
>

To get any further, you’ll need to program it yourself. Professionally written software was available but plenty of people who were either strapped for cash or just curious did produce their own work. One of the first blockbuster game releases, Elite, started like that – two students tinkering with programming in their spare time managed to produce a game that sold rather well.

There’s no hard disk on these things, just onboard memory that is more or less equivalent to the RAM of whatever you’re reading this on now. The Model B had 32K as standard, the Model A (a cheaper version) had 16K. To give an idea of how things have changed, your mobile phone probably has more memory to store photos.

So, if turning it off (and it is a simple off switch – no shutdown in 1981) will wipe out the program that you’ve spent hours working out and typing in, you need somewhere to store it. Essentially there were two ways. You could either use a standard cassette recorder (which the BBC would control, data being stored as assorted squawking noises) or if you felt a bit flush a disk drive was available. The majority of these used the genuinely “floppy” 5.14in disks.

About now you’re probably thinking “So what can it do then?”. Well, the answer would be pretty much everything a new PC can manage. The keyboard is pleasant to use (the BBC insisted on high quality components, so these things are tough), it’ll do word processing, spreadsheets, in fact most of the office tasks you might need. It was even possible to add a network connection to allow multiple machines to access files and printers. This was rather handy in the days when a 67mb hard disk was priced at £700 or so!

And the other inevitable question, why mess about with this old thing?

To me, the BBC Model B was very much a part of my childhood. I used them at school to drive “turtles” using Logo, or attempt the assorted logic problem games (which weren’t so much of a problem if you knew how to access the source code…). The machine that inspired this post was given to me by a friend of the family who was in the process of an attic clearout. It’s had a good clean to remove 24 years of gunge from the keys and case and is now being used to play around with. In the days of the Model B you did have to know what you were doing to get any results, but equally you knew precisely what the machine was up to. Think about it, no spyware, few viruses, no mysterious processes running that you do not understand. To this nostalgia-ridden computing veteran it represents a more innocent age, before the scammers and spammers crawled out from under their rocks. An age when anything seemed possible if you could just figure out how to cram it into the memory, and your computer was unlikely to send your bank details to D’odgy and Co. in Nigeria.

If this has piqued your interest, take a wander around some of the sites I’ve linked to during this entry. There’s a thriving user community for these machines with plenty of advice on their care and maintenance. If you don’t fancy the hardware but want a play with Basic, there are emulators available that will give your PC the abilities of a Model B. See where a lot of programmers got their initial training. These things seem to be fetching ever-increasing prices so don’t hang around.

That said, the budget version of it seems to go for pennies…