Engine Punk

The Steam Punk exhibition at the Museum of the History of Science at Oxford was small but perfectly formed. I really enjoyed the show and now many ideas are running round my head - like a steam punk version of Thunderbirds for one. You know - Thunderbird 1 is made out of rivetted bronze, Thunderbird 2 is a supersonic air ship and Thunderbird 3 is like the Nautilus from Walt Disney's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea . This was my favourite, a Stirling hot air engine made by Jos de Vink in Holland. Stirling engines have featured on Engine Punk before ( Nothing but hot air ) but for transport purposes they aren't practical. However, for stationary work they're ideal. All they need is the slightest temperature or pressure difference to get their displacers fluttering. They run at a constant slow speed so could charge up a battery or generate hydrogen for all sorts of interesting uses. And when they look this good, they could be a show piece of your energy efficient home. They...

This is my Ford Sierra XR4x4, parked without concern on a muddy verge at a speed hillclimb last year - well, in a muddy verge for it was so wet. This old car is a bit of a monster - impertinent hot hatches come by but I real them when it comes to Hamburger Hill on the A30. Their little four pot screamers may match my old V6 for power but don't have the torque. They're probably more economic to run though - 28 mpg is good for my monster. But it's a sophisticated monster. With its four-wheel drive, fuel injection, and anti-lock brakes, this 25-year-old car was very sophisticated for its day. Having usurped to be XR4i from the range of performance Fords, the XR4x4 was in turn superseded by the Ford Sierra Cosworth but it wouldn't go away. The XR 4x4 was too useful. It wasn't as highly strung as the Cossie and was a very good tow car. Its engine was relatively lowly stressed and was the ideal powerplant when the car eventually entered the twilight world of the old, f...

The local paper grabbed my attention this week. The headline “Station parking fees are slashed by half” misses the point entirely. 12 months ago there were no parking fees at Liskeard station at all. They were imposed last year by First Great Western. This broke a gentleman’s agreement between the council and the rail operator, where the council re-surfaced the carpark at rate payer’s expense in return for an assurance that parking fees would not be introduced. Now people who refuse to pay these fees by parking on the street are being depicted as anti-social. The council are threatening to paint double yellow lines around the station to “ensure that people park responsibly”. Liskeard rail commuters are trying to do their bit for the environment by using public transport. They do not wish to antagonise people who live around Liskeard station because they travel with them on the train. It is not in their interests to park irresponsibly. But it seems entirely in the interests of First Gre...

Somebody sent me this scan of the Gillie in its original form some time ago and I've just stumbled across it in my archive files on my PC. I think it was from top chap Roger Swift who runs the archives for the Imp Club. It shows the Gillie in its original form and to anyone who has ever restored an Imp some of those panels look strangely familiar, especially those rear wheel arches. That is because they usually live within the Imp bodyshell. The Gillie drew its looks(!) from the structural panels themselves and for pressings that were never designed to be seen the look, well (how can I put this) as if they were never meant to be seen. But of course that was part of the charm of the Gillie. It was a chirpy looking thing and this picture shows it standing tall on its skinny little tyres thanks to the hub reduction gears that lifted its vitals out of the way of rocks. It had a diff lock, too, and Tim Fry, who with Mike Parkes brought the Imp into being, said the Gillie would climb the...