Post Office Letter Boxes and Pillar Boxes

The Daily Mail yesterday (9 Jul) printed an article about the British Postal Museum which is apparently near to London's King's Cross Station, though few people know of its existence. Anthony Trollope the novelist, who was employed as a postal surveyor first trialled pillar boxes in Jersey before introducing them to mainland Britain and in the Channel Islands Jersey Post and Guernsey Post are now independent postal services. The pillar and letter boxes still use the mainland's traditional design and whilst Jersey's are the traditional red colour those in Guernsey are blue (with one exception). On recent visits to Guernsey I've photographed some of these and these are shown below.

This is the only pillar box in Guernsey that isn't blue. It's in Union Street, St Peter Port and is the oldest letter box still in use in the British Isles, dating from 1853.

This is another Victorian pillar box, of the more modern design, in Trinity Square, St Peter Port

A Victorian wall mounted letter box

A wall mounted letter box from the reign of King Edward VII

A George V wall mounted letter box. Interestingly there's no 'V' to indicate that it's King George the Fifth, presumably because there was no national postal service during the reigns of the first four King Georges, so there wouldn't have been any confusion about to which of the Georges it related. If that's the case though, why did the ones for Edward VII have a 'VII'?

I didn't come across any King George VI boxes but this one for Queen Elizabeth II is, I think, at L'Erée on the west coast of Guernsey.

The Pallot Steam, Motor & General Museum

During our holiday in Jersey in May this year we visited the Pallot Steam, Motor & General Museum which the advertising brochure says is "An absorbing evocation of times past. There is something to excite the interest of everyone in this fascinating collection of Steam, Motor, Farm and other machinery."

Inside you'll find cars:

Here there's a Morgan Plus 4, Austin Vanden Plas Princess 1100, Riley One-Point-Five, Austin A35, Renault Dauphine, Renault 4CV and Citroen 2CV.

Commercial vehicles:

Three 1920s/30s trucks, an International (green), Dodge (blue) and Chevrolet (red)

Bicycles (Unicycles, Tricycles etc):

Assorted agricultural implements:

Steam locomotives:

1931 Bagnall 0-4-0 saddle tank 'J.T.Daly' which entered service with Horseley Bridge & Thomas Piggot Ltd in Tipton, Staffordshire. In 1969 it was sold to the Foxfield Light Railway and in 1982 was purchased for the Alderney Railway Society. It's been at the Pallot Museum since November 1993.

There's even a church organ:

And a variety of tractors:

An International B-275 and the other's a Ferguson, possibly a TEA

More photographs from the Pallot Museum in the near future.

Speed Cameras - is that all they look for?

The upper part of Stockport Road in Hyde between Dowson Road and Mottram Old Road is mainly used by local traffic - any vehicles travelling between Hyde and Stockport usually take the shorter route along Dowson Road. Along most of this stretch of Stockport Road there's a gentle downhill gradient as you drive towards Hyde town centre and about half-way down, just after a slight left-hand bend in the road, there's a speed camera. Unusually for Tameside the camera is painted yellow, the normal colour being a more inconspicuous dark green - "the corporate colour of Tameside" as a former Leader of the Council jokingly claimed. The gradient of the road is such that as you drop down Stockport Road from the point where it joins Mottram Old Road doing 25 mph and take your foot off the accelerator by the time you pass the camera you're doing 35-40 mph and get a fine and 3 points on your licence. Fair enough, the speed limit's 30 mph and you know what to expect if you exceed that. But look at the two photographs below:

This is the view from behind the camera looking up the gradient

This is the view as you approach the camera from the opposite direction

Look at the car coming towards the camera in the first photograph - it's had to move towards the centre of the road because of the car parked just before the bend (and with two wheels on the pavement). Any car going in the opposite direction would similarly have to move into the centre of the road because of the car parked on the other side of the bend - and this is a common occurrence as there are invariably cars parked on both sides of the road at this point. It's a recipe for disaster, particularly as the road is also a bus route. What I'd like to know is this: when the police prosecute a motorist for exceeding the speed limit do also prosecute any motorists seen on the relevant photograph to be parked in such a dangerous place, or do they just turn a blind eye as they do when they drive past in their police cars?

Friday's Ferrari

In April last year I posted photographs of some of David Piper's Ferraris at the Coys International Historic Festival meeting at Silverstone in 2001. David Piper and his cars have been regular competitors in historic motor racing and below are photographs of some more of his cars, plus one from Nick Mason's Ten Tenths company at the 1999 Coys meeting.

Car number 7 is Nick Mason's 1970 Ferrari 512S (1026), number 81 is David Piper's 1964 Ferrari 275LM (8165) and number 8 is David Piper's 1969 Lola T70 MkIIIB

Nick Mason's 1970 Ferrari 512S

David Piper leaving the pits during practice in his 1964 Ferrari 275LM

Edward Snowden

I've been following the story of Edward Snowden's leaking of information about US and British government classified intelligence programs, his flight to Hong Kong and then to Russia, and his subsequent disappearance from public view together with claims that he is appealing for asylum in a variety of countries. It all reminds me very much of the Monty Python sketch entitled "The Olympic Hide-and-seek Final" (which was apparently first shown in episode 9 of the third series on 14 December 1972).

ERA R5B 'Remus'

There are comprehensive records detailing the history of each of the ERA cars built during the 1930s, and of the few cars subsequently built in the post-war years. This site gives the history of each car and all the owners of each car are listed here.

ERA R5B 'Remus' was originally owned by the White Mouse team of HRH Prince Chula of Siam and driven by his cousin HRH Prince Birabongse, otherwise known as B. Bira. This is the list from the second site linked above showing all the owners of that car:

R5B
H R H Prince Chula 1936 to 1937
A P R Rolt 1937 to 1939
A P R Rolt & St.J R Horsfall 1939 to 1946
I F Connell 1946
P H Bell 1946 to 1951
J D Hamilton & P Fotheringham-Parker 1951
H Sullivan 1951 to 1952
V Thomas 1952 to 1954
K Flint 1954 to 1955
J W Broad 1955 to 1956
W F Moss 1956 to 1959
Hon. Patrick Lindsay 1959 to 1986
A L Lindsay 1986 to 2010
C K McCabe 2010 to date

Here is a photograph of the car at the Richard Seaman Memorial Trophy meeting at Donington Park in May 2001 when it was in the ownership of Ludovic Lindsay.

Edwardian Cars

This is another of the Edwardian (cars built between January 1905 and December 1918) cars seen at the SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2006.

It's a 1905 Lorraine Dietrich CR2 entered by John Brydon and driven in the Edwardian Race by Richard Black.