A press release from Network Rail amused me for the headline grabbing potential, although the press release title was somewhat drier.

Everyday waste could form part of the railway of the future as Network Rail trials a new form of rail sleeper made from recycled plastic.

The trial will see around two tonnes of waste material recycled to form the new sleepers which will replace timber ones along some of the rural lines on the network.

http://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=4176&NewsAreaID=2

I wonder if we could have the sleepers sponsored by Coke bottles?

If you’ve been watching the recent series of TV programs on BBC4 (and some on BBC2) about the ending of steam trains in the country – then you might be interested to learn that this weekend is an excellent one for Londoners to see some working steam trains.

While steam trains do run in London fairly regularly as tourist/heritage trips, the Saturday runs are surprisingly not that common – and this weekend, we have two on the same day. Woo!

The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe will be coming into London and arriving at Kensington Olympia just before midday – while the Clan Line will be departing Victoria mainline station just after midday, heading out of London via Brixton and Wimbledon.

Rather interestingly, according to the timetable, the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe will be heading down to Clapham Junction after leaving its passengers at Kensington, then doing a mini (service?) run in the middle of the afternoon between 3pm and 4pm – before leaving London at 6pm.

I think its a weekend to spend wizzing around South London with my camera and timetable

Details:

Steam train tour – GWR Castle Class, Earl of Mount Edgcumbe

Steam train tour – VSOE Luncheon Excursion

I’m in Germany this morning – or so claims The Internetâ„¢. As it happens, I am sitting inside my usual coffee shop in Canary Wharf and sitting at my usual table (after it was vacated by interlopers) – but the internet is convinced that I am in Germany.

As it happens, this is not a new occurrence and every time I log on to the T-Mobile Wi-Fi service in the UK, all the adverts on websites switch to German. Google is usually better at knowing my real location, but even they sometimes get it wrong and just now tried to bounce me over to the German Google website.

As the location data is based on IP address tables, I could understand some glitches, but it does seem that either T-Mobile UK is routing all its internet traffic via a German proxy, which would be very odd – or they are identifying themselves as German to query systems – which would be equally odd.

However, as a diversion – it could once have been possible for me to be sitting in London – and also be in Germany. Where Cannon Street train station now stands used to be a German enclave between the 13th and 15th centuries. Queen Elizabeth 1 finally rescinded their privileges but the land itself remained the property of the Hanse merchants right up to 1853. It was only eventually sold to make way for the train station.

There is a plaque by the train station commemorating this heritage – and a photo of it (take by myself) is on Wikipedia

So – had the internet been around in the 14th century and I was sat inside the German enclave, then the adverts I am seeing today on my web browser would indeed be correct. But I am not – so they are wrong.

(Oh, and the Y button on my laptop seems to be glitchy this morning – damn)