Engine Punk

The camera can lie - this is actually the scene of chaos outside Plymouth railway station this afternoon. All those people standing outside are First Great Western's displaced persons and the British Transport Police policeman was looking more necessary as the confused crowd grew. Well, the end of the world didn't happen and a lot of people are standing around now looking very foolish and at a bit of a loose end. Yes, I'm looking at you First Great Western because you cancelled the 15:12 to Liskeard. Like many other travellers, I knew the world wasn't going to end - not really. I'd finished work art midday today and gone into Plymouth city centre for a very good meal at Lorenzo's tapas bar with some workmates and chumrades and decided to get the 15:12 home to avoid the rush that had been predicted (accurately as it turned out). Consequently, instead of avoiding the rush, I became a part of it. The next train to Liskeard was the 15:57. It was packed wit...

The Liskeard to Looe branch line recently hosted No.93 the reconstructed steam railcar and one of my mates came down from Birmingham to ride on it. The atmosphere on the Looe platform at Liskeard was really good with preserved buses and stalls selling interesting stuff. The weather wasn't bad either although we did experience slight precipitation as the railcar pulled into the station. The engine section was reconstructed out of nothing The previous weekend the railcar hadn't even made it to Liskeard. This was no fault of its own. The diesel pulling it from Bodmin "failed" and when another one was drafted in at short notice that "failed", too. The organisers made the most of this "learning point", however, and for the next event brought it over on the Saturday night. That would have allowed them all night to scour the west country to find a working diesel if it all went frogs. Of course, there were no problems and services began as schedul...

The TreeVee hails from Sweden and is inspired by the Morgan Aero and Ariel Atom. Photo Per-Gunnar Björck I 've described a few contemporary Vintage Things before now, like the Toniq R (VT No. 21) , and here's another. Following my earlier post about the RIP Special (VT No. 112) , Per-Gunnar Bj ö rck e-mailed me about his Morgan inspired three-wheeler that exemplifies what I like to call "rolling sculpture". Per-Gunnar worked for Saab with powertrain and vehicle concept development for over 30 years and his ambition was to make and design something to professional automotive engineering standards despite working in a humble home garage. It goes as well as it looks, too. Photo Per-Gunnar Björck O bviously, it helps if you know what you are doing and have a clear focus of what you want as a final product.   "The actual starting point was when I fell of my Ducati Monster and felt that I needed more than two wheels to keep upright. I also...