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The second TXE4 to be installed in Birmingham was Central. STC designed TXE4 and as was the practice in those days the design was passed over to the other major contactors, Plessey and GEC, to permit competitive tendering after the intial batch. STC used a lot of aluminium extrusions in their...

The milk float has a Leicester registration number. Dane Street Leicester

Common Lane, Sheldon always struck me as a strange place, unfinished in a way. (Didn't it lack pavements for some time?) Unusual flat roofs too. Somehow that fitted with the name as rural streets sometimes just fade away at the edges.

I have changed to SSDs now on two Win 10 laptops (one started as Win 7) and found the process straightforward. I must say I was surprised, as Microsoft has put obstacles in the way with XP etc. if you ever changed major hardware. components.

There must be a whole class of user now for who the operating system is of no importance, rather does it run a 'modern' browser. Against that are other users who do 'stuff' which requires extra hardware like scanners, cameras, graphic tablets or music keyboards, each with their specialist...

As an aside, in more recent times the idea of 'cancer clusters' comes up, usually blamed on power lines, mobile phone, nuclear power plants etc. However this is an old idea that pre-dates these modern devices. People would talk of 'cancer houses'. From Harmsworth's Universal Encyclopedia...

From Radiation Vol. 4 No. 4 1925 "EPITHELIOMA of the lip comprises, on the whole, about 2 per cent of all reported cases of malignancy, and —in conjunction with neoplastic growths in other parts of the body—its incidence is undoubtedly becoming more common, the frequency of its occurrence being...

See 'Birmingham-back-to-backs'

I think that only applied if there were no other schools with the 3 mile zone, something that my parents didn't work out until I had been offered a place. The generosity of the City was really that of the rate and taxpayers!

I bought the LDS 1881 Census on CD-ROMs when it first came out, (the distribution centre was in Birmingham!). At that time my tree had perhaps a thousand or so names, all individually checked out. Someone in the office asked if he could borrow it 'to check out a few relatives' and thinking he...

I'm no fan of Ancestry. They shouldn't be providing services for the likes of National Archives. If we have to pay for data then the Scottish model is far better. Ancestry tries to draw people in by deliberately setting wide search parameters, John Smythe, Canterbury, 1789 somehow brings up Jane...

Here is an example of an Outline Descendant Report

As with all writing you need to consider the audience, what mesage you are trying to convey and of course, for non-fiction, what information you have. I think some sort of genealogy program is pretty much essential for keeping track of your family and most of them can output data in various...

Perhaps an error in transcription but the calorimeter was devised by Sir Charles Boys F.R.S. Always facinating to read about how people did their jobs, especially those involving science and technology.

Why sawdust dealers? Sawdust was still being used to sprinkle on the floors of butcher shops in the 1960s. Anywhere where there was likely to be spillages, such as pubs, would use it as it soaked up liquids and unpleasant things like blood and spit. Again in the 1960s, no school caretaker...

The Severn Tunnel continues to throw up problems. As part of the electrification programme the rail bed had to be lowered and ballasting methods done away with. Similarly they couldn't use an overhead wire which would get pushed up by the train so had to put in a rigid rail instead. Even that...

I attended a technical presentation by HS2 a few years ago - if memory serves the locomotive power requirement was 60% more - it shocked me at the time. Tunnel costs can nominally be written off against the whole project and the whole lifetime but that windgage loss hits every train, making the...

If and when Phase 2 goes ahead I hope they won't be doing as much tunnelling as imposed on HS2 by objectors to Phase 1. Not only does tunelling cost a lot it adds a permanent overhead to running the railway as the power needed to drive a train through a tunnel is significantly higher than along...

When the site of The Arden Oak in Sheldon was waste ground it was criss-crossed with many trails between the clumps of bushes. There was one group of bushes that formed a small ring, creating a miniature clearing in the middle. One day we were surprised to find a small group of men in our...

When the new shopping parade was built in Sheldon, on the north side of Coventry Road, from Coalway Avenue, there was virtually unrestricted access to the building site, or at least to its brick piles. Some of us hollowed out one pile right next to Coalway Avenue and used a site notice board as...