Trivia Investigation Team

[NewcastleFalcon]

A brief dalliance

The Crown Inn at Humshaugh is the venue for a lot of car activity from Ferrari/McClaren Owners meets, to Microcar Days, and Tractor days. This unusual three-wheeler/trike appeared at one of its microcar meets.

Yes looks like a plane, but is there more to decipher? The plane has some numbers and letters on it. The black lettering is too fuzzy to properly make out, and google image search cannot bring up any matches for the whole thing.

So what is there I (the roundel) KJ. Black lettering guesswork. SM 530? that was enough to find this

The black lettering turned out to be SM520. Cant find much about the three-wheeler, maybe the chap knocked it up in his garage, but its mocked up to pay homage to the Spitfire. The Spitfire itself the SM520 has some details on it here...

https://www.spitfires.com/sm520

SM520 was built in the Castle Bromwich factory in 1944 as single seat Mark H.F.IXe high level fighter, with firewall construction number CBAF 10164. It was delivered to the RAF on 23 November 1944 at 33 Maintenance Unit at RAF Lyneham but with the European conflict tapering off it was retained in storage until being shipped or flown (they did both) to the South African Air Force (SAAF) in 1948, one of a 136, 80 gifted and the remainder sold by the UK Government for £2000.00 a piece...(and continues...)

Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

...and the decoding of the Squadron/aircraft Code

The first and probably the only ever two seat Spitfire in RAF service was an unofficial conversion of a former tired 4 Squadron SAAF Mk V, ES127 that is thought to have been converted locally in Sicily by 118 Maintenance Unit at Catania. This conversion had the front fuel tank removed and a second wind screen attached that enabled passenger and observer flights to be given. The squadron code markings used for 4 SAAF were 'KJ' and the letter used for this specific aircraft was 'I'. SM520 now wears those same code letters.

...you will see now that SM520 has been repainted, and has acquired the Squadron Code LO-G instead of KJ-I. This was in houour of Nigel Rose who in 1940 was a young Pilot flying Spitfires with 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron which were based at RAF Westhampnett in West Sussex. LO was that Squadron's code.

Neil

[bobins]

...you will see now that SM520 has been repainted, and has acquired the Squadron Code LO-G instead of KJ-I. This was in houour of Nigel Rose who in 1940 was a young Pilot flying Spitfires with 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron which were based at RAF Westhampnett in West Sussex. LO was that Squadron's code.

Neil

Viewers may know it better as Goodwood !

"Upon its closure by the RAF, Westhampnett airfield subsequently became the Goodwood Motor Racing Circuit and Chichester/Goodwood Airport. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Westhampnett


...where you can fly in a two seater Spitfire for a bargain price of just under £3k
https://www.goodwood.com/flying/experie ... xperience/

[mickthemaverick]

Anyone know what the flow rate was for these?

MTMO

[NewcastleFalcon]

Anyone know what the flow rate was for these?

Cant find that, depends on the water pressure of either the mains supply or the supply from the water tanks, and the diameter of the pipes.

This article does have as much detail as I have found on Water Tanks, and Railside Water Cranes/Columns and Troughs. Nothing in it about flow rate. When these Heritage railways have Gala days with more Loco's than usual, they can run into capacity problems with water tanks. Presumably the new Water Tower was over-specced to allow for such things.

Full article here: "The importance of water on steam-operated railways"
https://scrca.foscl.org.uk/importance-w ... d-railways

Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

The Desert boot got and airing on word of the day today. viewtopic.php?p=804574#p804574

This is some trivia fodder all wrapped up in a too long video to keep anyone's attention, so for the record the link is here

(Deliberately not enmbedded.)
https://youtu.be/W0aZif-G-Mk

Clarks are the company who developed the iconic Desert Boot, and have sold it for over 70 years, and continue to sell it to this day, and have/had a strong Somerset connection...appropriate to todays Wordsmith of the day our own CitroJim

Clarks wiki page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarks_(shoe_retailer)

The Desert Boot have been manufactured at Shepton Mallet, small scale production having initially occurred at Street. During the course of time, Whitecross factory in Weston-super-Mare was subcontracted to relieve Shepton factory of the manufacture of the Desert Boot, before the Bushacre factory at Locking Road, Weston-Super-Mare was constructed in 1958. The Desert Boot was manufactured there until the closure of the factory in 2001.

Clarks announced in July 2017, it was restarting manufacturing Desert Boots, using a new manufacturing unit featuring "robot-assisted" technology, at its headquarters in Street, Somerset. Up to 300,000 pairs a year of desert boots were to be made at the unit, creating up to eighty technical and managerial jobs. However, in January 2019 the company announced that this unit was to be closed, after failing to meet production targets.

Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

When you think about it the W does look very much like an upside down M which is found on the Matchless tanks of the time. I wonder if there is any connection?

Maybe not alink to answer the 'W' Question but I did spot something familiar and coincidental about this Kawasaki Logo on the left...Pashley-esque! with a bit of rotation/flipping.

Bit of more trivia reading here arising out of today's Kawasaki W800 modern retro spot.

From Copycat to Ground Breaking: The history of the Kawasaki W1 & W2
https://oldbikebarn.com/blogs/blog/from ... aki-w1-w2

Kawasaki Merged with Meguro Motorcycles who had the rights to the BSA A7 design to form Kawasaki Motorcycle Co Ltd .

The logo used for Meguro is this shown behind their Meguro 500, based on the BSA A7.



Neil

[mickthemaverick]

There is some information about the history of the 'W' here, but it does not explain why! The hunt goes on!

[mickthemaverick]

And here's another article which covers the birth of the W series but does not actually state why 'W' was chosen. However reading around that article and taking into account Kawasaki's intentions when they launched it, I would suggest that the 'W' may have been intended to represent 'World' which was the market they were aiming at!

[NewcastleFalcon]

Bit of more trivia reading here arising out of today's Kawasaki W800 modern retro spot.

From Copycat to Ground Breaking: The history of the Kawasaki W1 & W2
https://oldbikebarn.com/blogs/blog/from ... aki-w1-w2

And here's another article which covers the birth of the W series but does not actually state why 'W' was chosen. However reading around that article and taking into account Kawasaki's intentions when they launched it, I would suggest that the 'W' may have been intended to represent 'World' which was the market they were aiming at!

Snap great minds think alike! Same article! Yes I think W for world could be valid. Elsewhere the Z series, I have read, convey "Zenith" ie the ultimate of machinnes in their category.

Neil

[CitroJim]

Interesting stuff... I do rather like the Meguro logo... A very 'proper' design...

[NewcastleFalcon]

Another day, another subject arising out of Matt's post here viewtopic.php?p=804943#p804943

-

stippolyte


I thought it was spelt stippo lite (as per the wheels) but seems is with a Y instead!

I'd not realised quite how old it is, 1915 mentioned on the image above, taken from here:

https://sashwindowspecialist.com/blog/h ... dow-glass/

The article linked to has a wealth of information on the history of patterned window glass. We have one bit in not that great condition in the bathroom so to keep it visual here we go...it will be pretty old potentially 150 years.

Small

Large


Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

Rinse it a few times with a bit of colour

Spoiler: show

Neil

[bobins]

I used to watch my father cut glass at work for customers, from memory some of the names of the patterns were.... Flemish (both small and large)?, Hammered, Reeded, Cornflower, Bullseye. Some more might come to me. It was always exciting to see him cut laminated glass that had the plastic sheet beteween the two layers of glass. From memory, first you cut one side and tapped it until it broke, then flipped it and did the other, then used a blowlamp to soften the plastic and try and get a part line between the two sheets to then cut the plastic with a Stanley knife. Cutting circles to fit Ventaxia fans was also good fun

Edit: 'Autumn' was another design ??

[NewcastleFalcon]

Our bathroom glass looks very similar to this... "Muranese" (the first two here)

Victorian Decorative Glass common feature

Neil