Engine Punk

Nature has now reclaimed this slate quarry At the Lanlivery Show last year, I bought a book entitled Steam Engines and Waterwheels and this mentioned reports in the Model Engineer during the fifties of a surviving Cornish beam engine in the Dorothea Quarry near Nantlle, in Carnavonshire. From further research on the net, I learned that the old engine was still there and had been restored in the seventies but had fallen on hard times since then, as its location was away from the traditional tourist routes and access was poor. Red rag to a bull this was - charge! Dorothea Quarry is these days a well known diving attraction - although not for me as I'm far from being amphibious . In fact it was when the electric pumping engines were turned off in 1970 that the quarry became flooded. Since 1951, electric pumps unwatered the workings, which went down over a 100 metres, but the old steam engine was kept as a back up and last worked in 1956. At one stage the area was contained ...

At last year's Lanlivery Show, I spotted this magnificent Alvis. It's a 1937 4.3 litre sports saloon with bodywork by Vanden Plas. Only 248 of these cars were built before World war II and every one was in chassis only form. As befits a thoroughbred motor car, each customer had the opportunity to work with a coachbuilder to realise the car they wanted. Some purchasers knew exactly what they wanted, others were content to choose from what the designers had to offer. Each body was bespoke and was haute couture for automobiles, using only the finest materials and workmanship. This sort of coachbuilding didn't happen overnight. The chassis was built in 1937 in Coventry (that place again - see earlier posts about Lea-Francis )but the bodywork wasn't completed at Vanden Plas' Kingsbury factory, in north-west London until January 1938. It was then sent back to the Alvis factory for use as a demonstrator until sale to Brooklands Motors who took delivery in July 1938. The...