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My late Uncle, bit of a lad in his time, suits from a tailor that was new to me, Hector Powe. Anyone recall them?

Elastic sided boots, Farah strides, roll neck shirt at the weekends; three piece suits from Hepworth’s with crossover weskit, tab collar shirts, knitted tie in the week. Boiler suit under the car. I still wear elastic sided boots, but Loakes not Hush Puppies!

Rosefromstaffs and my Capri in 1971. Sorry about the colour, it’s a slide.

I grew up in a Butlers offy until the age of 10ish. Sunday lunchtimes I got half a pint of mild shandy, it put hairs on my chest, none on my head though, all gone. It seems to me that being introduced to alcoholic drinks in that way gives you both a respect for it, but at the same time removes...

Certainly don’t see any reason to disagree with the others. The car with the spare wheel on the back (EKB) is a 1937/40 Ford 8 model 7Y in basic trim. I think that they built some during the war as basic transport for essential users but they mostly got driven into the ground.* The deluxe model...

Thread 414 I wasn’t being snotty, I couldn’t find it!

Being me, I took the thing a year early, and being born in late May wound up at the grammar school at the ripe old age of ten years and three months. Nothing much happened after that.....

There is a noticeable change in the use of the word “shopping” since 1877!

My speculation concerning the maker of the engine driving Dennison’s dynamo comes to nothing. The date is too early for Tangye, and Bellis and Morcom seem to have made steam engines and compressors at that time. I was hoping that the Birmingham manufacturer of watch cases would have an entirely...

1880 - Dennison’s instals a dynamo powered by a gas engine, maybe a Tangye or a Belliss and Morcom? (But that’s just a speculation on my part.) This morning I hear a bloke on the radio saying that all of the current batch of nuclear power stations that generate the electricity for our supergrid...

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?attachments/c07bbf0d-f042-4f53-b426-b54afb27a37f-jpeg.147990/&hash=aff715cc73d3c95f88f4bf780259327c The Dennison watch case. The watch is just a bog-standard Waltham, but keeps good time.

The newest car in Carolina’s picture is the Mk1 Cortina just under the word “Birmingham”. The picture can’t be older than late 1962.

I have a watch in one of their cases. I hope it’s not going to catch fire or give me a shock! Seriously, 50 volts not so bad, 230 - lethal. I wonder if they had trouble with arcs? No doubt it was d.c. as the word dynamo implies, perhaps they stopped the machine before they used the switches.

As I have said before, it seems to me that we just post war kids got the lot. Enough money (just) to be fed and looked after, education and enough steam power about even to be slightly blasé about it. At that time our neighbour’s son was a top-link fireman who worked on the West Coast Main...

It's not the railway so much as the "We're Brunswick Green we can do no wrong" brigade that get under my shirt. In terms of IKB, I think that the most impressive structure he was involved with has to be Maidenhead Bridge. Those superb flat arches, I bet there were some knees knocking when the...

"Miserable looking dirty black freight locos" Oh yes, we had our fair share of them, dragging coal away from the Cannock Chase collieries, and I think Bescot had one piece of rag that was shared around the engine cleaners when HMQ or the divisional manager were about. There were also some...

It seems to me that being a supporter of a railway company is quite akin to being a supporter of a football team. You have your likes and dislikes, probably formed in childhood, and nobody will cause you to deviate from them. While understanding that the GWR did adhere to good engineering and...

I never saw a Bowen-Cooke duck eight lose it, even with a train of Cannock nutty slack!

A wartime Fordson 7V on the left, and a late thirties Leyland, possibly a Cub, on the right. The centre vehicle is another Leyland, I think, but possibly 1920s. There are experts on fire appliance coachwork, but regrettably not me. Trying to decipher the number plate on the right hand machine...

About time for a bit of lunacy, I think.