Book review: "Mallard: how the 'Blue Streak' broke the world speed record", by Don Hale

For boys of a certain generation, 'Mallard' conjures up images not of a duck floating on a pond, but of a garter-blue locomotive spitting fire and cinders.

On the 3rd July 1938, driver Joseph Duddington and fireman Thomas Bray drove streamlined LNER locomotive Mallard, along with seven coaches, down Stoke Bank towards Peterborough, setting a world speed record for steam locomotives of 126 MPH. It is a record that stands to this day.

It is an oft-told story, and a well-known one. In fact, it is so well known that yet another tome about the record attempt seems scarcely necessary. Thankfully, the author seems to have recognised this, and the attempt is only covered in the last fifth of the book. The remainder mostly concerns the people involved, including the Mallard's designer, Sir Nigel Gresley.

Mallard's record-breaking run really marked the end of the glory years of railway travel. War was approaching, and in fact the run had a lot to do with national and international rivalry. The LNER's great rival, the LMS, had the current British record, set the previous year when Sir William Stanier's streamlined Coronation class locomotive reached 114 MPH.

The international rivalry came from Germany, whose O5 locomotive had reached 124.5 MPH two years earlier. To this day some claim that Germany still holds the record, but those later attempts were not independently verified.

Despite being familiar with the story, I learnt some new things: for instance the famous luxury car maker Bugatti was a friend of Gresley's, and was involved with the design of the streamlining. In fact, Bugatti himself designed streamlined petrol and diesel locomotives for high-speed running. Many enthusiasts paint Gresley and Stanier as great rivals; that may be the case, but they were also firm friends. In fact, Stanier's son introduced Gresley's daughter to her future husband.

Some items are not adequately covered: Stanier's Coronation class were the most powerful British steam locomotives ever made, and many believe a member of the class could have beaten Mallard's record. But unlike the LNER, the LMS did not have a stretch of track suitable for setting the record. Who knows what speed a Coronation could have reached on its way down to Grantham?

But they are minor quibbles. The author has managed to get some relatively fresh and unbiased angles on a famous story, without going into too much technical detail. This thin book was both fascinating and enlightening.

McLevy: an inspiration for Sherlock Holmes?

We recently went for an amble around Wimpole Hall, a stately pile situated just down the road from us in Cambridgeshire. At the end of the walk Şencan dragged me towards the little bookshop situated in a corner of the rather ostentatious stables.

Whilst browsing, I found a hardback book called "The Casebook of a Victorian Detective", published in 1975. This is a selection of stories from a couple of books written by a real-life Edinburgh detective, James McLevy. McLevy served in Edinburgh for thirty years from 1830, and became the city's first detective. He published his books after he retired in the 1860s, and they look back over a career that saw thousands of crimes successfully solved.

As I am interested about writing about Edinburgh in the 1830s, I thought it would be a good book for research purposes So I parted with £3.50 and took it home.

The book contains a series of cases from McLevy's long and illustrious career, and depict an Edinburgh that is very different from today's city. He even has a website at http://jamesmclevy.com. This website features research that shows that some stories are between 80 and 100% accurate - not bad considering he was writing about events that in some cases occurred decades before. But what struck me most were the links between the real-life detective McLevy and his most famous fictional counterpart, Sherlock Holmes.

So what are the links between McLevy and Sherlock Holmes?

• McLevy published his books in the 1860s, whilst Arthur Conan Doyle published the first Sherlock Holmes book "A study in scarlet" in 1887. Therefore McLevy's stories precede Doyle's.
• Arthur Conan Doyle studied at the University of Edinburgh Medical School from 1877, which McLevy had consulted for pathological evidence in some of his cases. McLevy would therefore have been known to people who knew Doyle. It is perfectly possible, indeed likely to my mind, that Doyle was aware of McLevy's work.
• A (criminal) character in one of McLey's stories is called 'Holmes'.
• McLevy sometimes uses deduction in a similar manner to Holmes.
• McLevy is also adept at using disguises to catch his man, as is Holmes.
• The cases are presented as a series of short stories, as are most of the Holmes canon.

What is more, some of the story titles have a certain Holmesian lilt: "The White Coffin" or "The Dead Child's Leg".

I am hardly the first person to discover this connection (indeed, some are mentioned in the book's preface). Whilst Sherlock Holmes is entirely Doyle's brilliant creation, I find it hard to believe that McLevy would not have been a minor influence. After all, how could he not have known about stories written by someone who was connected with the department he was studying in just fifteen years before?

Professor Joseph Bell taught Doyle at the school, and Bell was himself a student at the school when McLevy was still serving. Given Bell's acute deductive skills are famed as being Doyle's inspiration for Holmes, could Bell himself have learnt some of these from the detective?

That is to take nothing away from Doyle's adept skill. His stories are rich and utterly readable, whilst McLevy's style tends to be rather heavy and proselytising in places. Whilst McLevy's social views were undoubtedly ahead of his time - he believed that only early education could stop criminals, not punishment, and was in favour of the Ragged Schools - he is rather overfond of promoting those beliefs and the nature of crime.

So, was McLevy an inspiration for Sherlock Holmes? We can never know for sure, but given the above links, I would say it is probable.

As an aside, only when I started reading did I realise that I knew the McLevy name - BBC Radio 4 has done a series of adventures loosely based on McLevy's stories. Also, if buying the stories, be aware that new stories have been written using McLevy's character. Whilst these may be excellent, the real voice lies in the original stories from the man himself.

175 years of train construction in Derby

Bombardier have made an interesting infomercial celebrating the 175th year of train construction in Derby. The Derby works is the only place in the UK that railway trains are designed, manufactured and assembled, and has an assured future with construction of London Underground S stock and new trains for the Crossrail route.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TscxKP7FhU

The current works is at a place called Litchurch Lane, which used to be the Midland Railway's carriage and wagon works. The old engine works has been mostly demolished and is now Pride Park, although the original Midland Railway roundhouse in the video above is now a canteen for Derby College.

Hopefully they will continue building trains for another 175 years.

Hustings

Last night we attended a hustings for the local ward elections for South Cambridgeshire District Council, due to be held on Thursday. We had looked at the literature produced by all the candidates and had been unable to come to a decision. When we heard there was a hustings tonight, we decided to go along and get a close look at the candidates.

Bourn ward is a little odd: it is named after one of the villages in the borough, but over the last fifteen years the villages of Bourn, Caxton, Croxton and Eltisley have been utterly outgrown by Cambourne, where the majority of the ward's population now lives. This has led to a situation where the outlying villages can feel swamped by the brash Cambourne.

This has been made worse by the recent news that two extensions to Cambourne have been announced in the local plan, which will essentially double the size of the settlement. Many of the same people who were against the creation of Cambourne twenty years ago are now against (in particular) the Bourn Airfield development of 3,500 homes, which will essentially join up Cambourne and Bourn. There was not much talk of the other Cambourne West development of 1,200 to 1,500 homes.

This made this local election more interesting than usual. One candidate is the leader of  Stop BAD - the group set up to stop the Bourn Airfield development, and he had a number of supporters in the room. There were candidates from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, UKIP and Greens, although the Labour candidate sent his apologies. There were also two independents - the man from Stop BAD and another independent who was supported by a long-standing well-known Cambourne resident.

The hustings were part of the parish council meeting, and was delayed by what turned out to be a seemingly disorganised election of two people to the council. Two of the candidates were also prospective candidates for the ward, and it was interesting that neither of these got a place on the parish council. The two winners were the two who I would have picked, so I was happy with the result.

The room grew increasingly hot and stuffy as the evening drew on, and the prospective councillors said their piece. There was only one female candidate - representing the Greens - and sadly she did not perform as well as I hoped.

For me, the most compelling performer of the night was the UKIP candidate, Lister Wilson, who honestly admitted that it was probably too late to stop either the Bourn Airfield or Cambourne West developments. His message appeared to be that we need to ensure that the developers are properly managed by the various councils to ensure they deliver what they promise, which has not necessarily been the case in Cambourne.

The Conservative candidate was slightly more hopeful of stopping the Bourn Airfield development, but also expressed the fact you have to be realistic. The other candidates all seemed to think the developments could still be stopped despite the publication of the local plan.

After the initial statements came questions from the public and parish councillors. As I expected, most of the questions were about the Bourn Airfield development. Some of these got rather heated, especially against the UKIP and Conservative candidates who seemed to (realistically IMHO) believe it was unlikely that the developments would be able to be stopped. This seemed a shame, as there are far more issues in the area than just the new developments.

Because the atmosphere was getting heated in more than one way, I tried to ask a more positive question: firstly, I explained that we had moved here for three reasons: access to jobs and good housing, but mainly the fact that Cambourne was a good place to live. Given this, I asked what the candidates believed the positive aspects of Cambourne were, and how they would, if elected, take it forward?

I hate speaking in public, and I was cringing at how my voice sounded. Fortunately they managed to understand me, and whilst all candidates mentioned 'community', for me the best response was from the Conservative, who mentioned the long-wanted swimming pool in his answer.

All in all it was an interesting (if long) evening, and one that has firmed up my votes for both the Cambourne ward and the simultaneous Euro elections. And no, I'm not saying who'll have the crosses by their names ...

Modern communications and disasters

The tragic sinking of The Sewol yesterday off the coast of South Korea has led to many sad stories, not the least of which are the text messages sent by people - many young - trapped in the ship as it tilted and sank.

Rumours continue that messages are being sent by people still alive within the ship. It is possible for people to be alive as it does not appear to be too deep; pictures show the tip of the bow protruding from the water. One report says that rescuers are pumping air into some parts of the hull to replenish any air pockets.

However, I doubt that many calls or text messages are being sent from within the ship at this time. Water attenuates RF signals rapidly, especially when at an angle to the receiver. It can be as much as a matter of a few inches or feet before the signal is fully attenuated, depending on the conditions. Although the effect is less than salt water, it increases as the signal's frequency increases.

So what might have happened? 

1) The people receiving the text messages may not have noticed them when they were sent, and picked up the phone later when they heard the news to see the message.

2) Text messages are not designed for reliability of data (*). They only display the time they were received at the network centre (called the short message centre). This includes a timezone which many phones do not compensate for, which may give the impression they were sent after the ship sank. In addition, many phones display the time the message was received by the phone, rather than the time in the message from the network centre. If the recipient's phone is switched off, the time displayed for the message would be the time the phone was switched on, not the time it was sent.

3) Finally, hope might make them think it was received after the ship sank even if evidence suggests otherwise.

4) Somehow, the people trapped inside the ship managed to send a signal through the water and to a distant mobile phone base station on the shore.

The first three of these effects will sadly give false hope to many families. But let's hope I'm wrong.

(*)From RFC5724:

In particular, SMS messages between different network operators sometimes take a long time to be delivered (hours or even days) or are not delivered at all, so applications SHOULD NOT make any assumptions about the reliability and performance of SMS message transmission.

Competitive walking

On a few occasions on this blog (and believe me, much more frequently in real life) I have mentioned various types of 'extreme' walks. One thing I don't like is the Olympics walking discipline, where people try to walk as fast as possible. To me, it appears a rather stupid type of movement. If you want to go fast, just run!

Gizmodo has an article about a form of extreme walking from Victorian times that I'd never heard of before: competitive walking. This is not the Olympic-style extreme walking, but instead involved walking vast distances with little rest. Naturally enough, this is much more my cup of tea.

People would walk along a short looper track for six days, excluding the Sabbath, and bunks were provided for them to catch a few hours of much-needed rest. They would often manage over 100 miles a day for all six days. The American races were front-page news, and massively popular spectator sports.

A detailed story can be found on the Planetultramarathon website, and there is also a book:
Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk Was America's Favorite Spectator Sport

I could never hope to be the next Cliff Young, and I find the idea of walking even fifty miles in a day to be rather a tall order. But kudos to those who can, and especially those who did.

Network Rail and delays

It is expected that Network Rail will get a £70 million fine later this year for poor performance. Whilst the men and women on the ground have been doing a sterling job fixing the problems caused by the storms at Dawlish and elsewhere, the organisation as a whole has utterly failed to meet its performance targets.The Telegraph has a very balanced article on the problems.

In a way it is a victim of the railway's success: the network is busier than ever, nearly breaking peace-time records for the number of passengers carried. More trains on the same tracks means that any infrastructure-related problems effect more trains, and the infrastructure gets more wear and tear. In comparison, the performance of the latest generation of trains means that fewer delays are being caused by breakdowns.

Network Rail has to ensure that 92.5% of all trains arrive within five minutes of the scheduled time, or within ten minutes for long-distance trains. During the five year period to 2014, it managed a little under 90%, a large discrepancy.

According to Network Rail's own figures, 60% of all train delays are down to them. In their defence, a third of that 60% are down to factors outside their immediate control, such as trespass, cable theft, or the weather.

This is important politically: it looks likely that Labour are going to call for renationalisation of the railways in their next manifesto, by means of a failure to refranchise the train operators leases when they end. Leaving the wrongs and rights of such a move to one side for a moment, one of the factors fans of renationalisation have been saying is that Network Rail is already in public hands (and thanks to the government removing Brown's awful debt bodge, it is also now on the government's books). If it fails to perform well, it will set back the cause of railway renationalisation.