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Air
* A Raildate contributor supplied this additional info about the "New York Concorde":
You may not believe it, but I once “owned” this aircraft!
Let me explain.
I was BA Executive Vice President North Atlantic, resident in NYC, and paying US taxes. For some reason, the US authorities wanted one of BA’s seven Concordes to be registered to a US resident, although this was long after the arrangement between BA and Braniff on IAD-DFW had ended. The BA US counsel asked me to take a £1 coin into the office, and as the senior BA executive in North America I duly signed the papers to be the registered owner of G- BOAD. I never got my money back when I left the US or BA, and I cannot find anybody now either to explain why or to substantiate the story…..but it is true.
It now resides on the Hudson at the western end of 47th Street…..we used to reside at the eastern end of same. “My” Concorde at the end of my street……you could not make it up!
Bus
Marine
Thank you to this week's contributors.
An operational Class 52 Western meets heritage steam. Where is it?
This small town is still blessed with an operational railway terminus. Where is it?
Answer: Swanage, Dorset. Congratulations are due to the following for their correct answers: Jeremy Harrison, Simon Wass, Colin Penfold, Dave Goodyear, Richard Maund, Andrew Treves, John Grimley, Andy Foster, John Lacy, Tony Harker, Tony Parsons, Pter Tisdale, Paul Hopper.
Swanage is the main town on the "Isle" of Purbeck. It was grew as a port for shipping locally quarried Portland stone, but was also an early pleasure resort. A tramway was laid from the piers to assist handling stone as far as a quayside factory (the heritage centre today), but was never connected to the main line. John Mowlem (1788 – 1868) was a local stonemason and benefactor who founded the eponymous construction company.
Now terminus of the Swanage Railway, the line from Wareham was one of the last BR closures, ending on 1st January 1972. Around half the route was retained to serve the Kimmeridge/Wytch Farm oil field around Corfe Castle - still Britain's largest onshore producer - but the Swanage end was quickly threatened. Effective action enabled the situation to be retrieved, and the beginnings of this great visitor attraction started coming back to life in 1979.
One of Britain's top bus journeys is the open-top No.50 "Purbeck Breezer" between Swanage and Bournemouth. The bus takes the Sandbanks ferry across the mouth of Poole Harbour, and a £2 ticket is good value. The service has been known to fall apart in mid-summer traffic jams, but usually the bus overtakes the whole ferry queue to get on first.
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© Matthew Shaw 2024