L is for Last One For Now!

 I know it's not everyone's cup-of-tea, but I find this stuff fascinating, and there's plenty still in the queue, both from Alderney and closer to home, but this is the final part of the recent visit to Hazeley Heath and the cable-testing station of the Royal Engineers and their antecedents.

This is the building or structure the winding mechanism/s was/were housed in, it was far more substantial, but all the reclaimable steel and reusable elements are long-gone now, leaving the two outer walls, some floor mounting stuff and a protective plate.

 

There's enough roadway in front of the structure for flat-towing tests, as well as the extreme tests allowed for by dragging things up the ramp we looked at last time! The top of the ramp is in the far distance in both shots, in-line with the structure and roadway.

 

This was apparently the mounting for the main winch/winding engine, presumably bolted to the two rails with a drip-tray between them to collect all the gunk which tends to find its way out of such machinery!

 

Beyond it is what looks like an inspection-pit, all filled in, but the blurb suggests another machine mounting, so I assume someone has dug it and found it to be not deep-enough for inspecting things?

In front of them is this, which probably mounted a pulley to carry the cable a bit higher over to the ramp, where a similar pulley, and its mounting have long-since been removed.  Also, there may be a secondary function of preventing whip-lashing broken-cables from damaging the machinery?

 

Heavy steel RSJ remnants hint at a heavy-duty, or over-engineered roof/shelter, designed again, or primarily, to protect the machinery and operators/observers from snapping cables, rather than enemy action, having been probably build long before the Second World War?

 

I gave them a quick tug, and they are set-fast in the landscape, whether they are old telephone cables or the old three-phase power-supply . . . Your guess is as good as mine!

 

I either read somewhere, or heard as hearsay from some MOD-procurement chaps or BAE Systems bod's, that how it works with these things, is that you decide you want a 50-ton main battle tank, for instance, you give the job to Vickers Engineering, and if you’re happy with the prototypes, order, say 250, with ten driver-training versions, plus a number of recovery variants . . . and cables (etcetera!).

Those cables then get rated at 55-tons, by the Royal Armoured Corps, who will have to use them, the MOD-wallah's up in Whitehall, agree to 55, and add another 5-ton rating to be safe, that gets sent to Vickers, who tender-out the contract, because they've now got 260 tanks to build and some recovery vehicles to design, and can't be arsed to start twisting wire hawsers! They add 5-tons capacity to the contract!

GKN take the wire twisting gig, and add an extra 5-tons 'just to be safe', before their hawser and cable division plait another few tones of capability into the finished cables! You end up with a steel-rope, which is specifically designed to be carried by 50-ton vehicles, but which can recover 70-ton vehicles from sticky mud! All that early work seems to have been done behind a little village in rural Hampshire, in the 1930's and 1940's!

F is for Frog . . . Man!

This weirdness joined the stash a few weeks ago, and on one level I wish it hadn't, it's a kilo or more of cold clammy stretch-rubber I just don't need, but on another level it's actually a quite interesting find, despite being a pretty hideous thing!

 

This is how I saw him, and thought, "Oh, a rubber jiggler man-frog thing, better have that?", even though it was a pit pricy at a fiver. However, when I picked the parcel up from the Old House, the box was so heavy I thought Peter or Chris had sent me something without telling me (they both have, sent lovely things, in the last ten days!), but took it home and unwrapped it.

It WAS a rubber jiggler, and it WAS that stretchy, silicon-rubber, clammy stuff which gets covered in pet hairs, dust and some sticky substrate/exudate, so this shot is 'after cleaning', but the bugger was huge, and I should have guessed-so from the knicker-elastic used in place of the thin black elastic thread, the giant spiders and King Kong's of my youth used to get!

See! Mahoosive lump of rubber! But, marked AAA and dated 1968, the year AAA are believed to have been set up. Previously known for their animals, a lot subcontracted to other brands, I think this is the first/earliest [part-] human figure I've seen by them, and from the colours of both polymer and paint, we can probably assume, with some safety, that they are responsible for a lot of the similar rubber-jigglers found in gum-ball capsule machines, including some of the Lik Be (LB) copies, such as those we saw here.

 

Indeed, that A-mark (link post) may be a Tripple-A variant, they are known to have used single A's as well as triples, but it doesn't explain the 'S' and other letter (?) on my LB robot/aliens? So, on one level it is what it is, a piece of ephemeral shite from the 1960's, but on another, a useful connector of other parts in the whole-story, either though the clues, or the more empirical bits!

The elastic is perished and will need replacing, which will entail stretching the new stuff to maximum, to match the non-elastic remain's measurements, then cutting, and glueing to the end of the old one, so it can be pulled through a hidden bar of rubber or tunnel set into the rubber jiggler.

B is for Brain Fog

As I said the other day, we used to play out on the heath, all day! Mum would fill our water-bottles with orange squash, I had Dad's old Palestine one, with the tan, strappy-cage holder, and my brother had the green US Vietnam one with the two poppers at the neck (the SAS used them in the jungle), and a couple of cold sausage sandwiches, and we'd go off and play 'Army men' all day, ranging for miles and sometimes meeting other kids, sometimes having a 1000-acres to ourselves, if we avoided the Gypsy camps!

One of my childhood memories was finding a tank-testing inclined ramp, in fact, I remember two, side by side, about 30º and 40º each, but what has now been opened-up and left on display, is A) nothing like my memory, and B) somewhere else!

And while it may be that the others are somewhere else, on the more private land a few-hundred yards to the east, hidden in the undergrowth, I suspect that my memory of this (below) has become conflated with various pictures of similar ramps in tank or AFV books?

What is there now is more of an architectural channel, with various features and a steepness of around 45º, rather than the two flat roadways I remember? It could be slightly shallower, but as we'll see in a second, I don't think so, if it is, it's no less than 40º.

 

There is a bog at the bottom, now, it's ironic, but you wouldn't build a military testing facility in a bog, near a bog, if you are testing towing (as they were, according to the historians who've done the blurb on the info-sign), maybe, but not 'in' a bog, so the fact that there is a bog there now, or that a nearby bog has extended back to the ramp, is almost certainly an unforeseen consequence of building a ramp there in the first place, and channelling a lot of water straight down the hill!

 

There are signs of a metal slider type thing running along the tops of the two raised 'rails', obviously someone back in the 1950/60's removed the bulk of the metalwork for scrap (probably the Gypseys?), but they cut either side of the sections anchored into the concrete. And you can see, if I'm standing vaguely level, and holding the camera naturally, it's about 45º

Here's one that has been pulled out, or weathered-out at some point, so you can get some idea of how deep the anchors went, it's filled with dirt now, mostly sandy, so weathered concreate running down the slope and filling any holes it finds!

This was lying in the channel where some kids probably pulled it out of the bog, or found it in the undergrowth, it's a solid chink of steel with a blunt-point at one end and might be another kind of anchor, for either the hawsers under test, or the test weights/vehicles?

Life will find a way, and eventually even the pyramids will be no more.

In the central grove are these equidistant holes, which I suspect formed a ladder of scaffold-sized bars, which might have made climbing up or down the ramp more easy, or may have been for fixing anchors or stops to prevent the test-item running back down the ramp uncontrollably if/when the hawser failed?

BMSS is for British Model Soldier Show!

As I mentioned earlier, I popped-over to the BMSS (Society!) show in Reading on Saturday, for support really, I wasn't buying, and while I got there a bit late, the entry-fee was collected against future show organising, and I took a few shots of the competition entries while I was there.

Junior effort, I couldn't have done something this good at 9

I know, because I tried!

Old School!

This was beautiful!

Fantasy, winged witches!

Beautifully executed fun!

Tommy Atkins, 'Dusty' Miller and 'Snowy' White!

These might be Airfix Multipose?

Cold! General Winter!

Northamptonshire's BMSS branch table.

 

Aldershot's table, I think there had been a modelling/painting display, but it was getting toward home-time. They used to organise their own show, in February, but it went the way of all flesh some time ago, one of my first big-purchases was from that show back in 1991 when it was still held in Fleet Library, or the adjoining Hartington centre, if I recall correctly?

You wouldn't want it up you, Captain Mainwaring!

You really wouldn't want it up you!

The Oxford branch, I was tickled by the St Trinian's flats

I can't find them on Google, but definitely fun!

Despite knowing Reading all my life, and managing to find the venue (and a free, legal car parking space) without trouble, I managed to take the wrong exit off the roundabout, going home, and got lost in a town-centre I no longer recognise, before taking the wrong road out of town (Early/Mortimer, not Swallowfield/Heckfield!), a road I also barely recognised!

The amount of development, in just the last fifteen or twenty years is staggering, the flight of industry, the population explosion (nationwide - 10-million, since the Tories came to power, most of it 'legal' migration), makes you realise how insignificant your 60/80-years here, actually are. When I was born in '64, Reading was already in the midst of a major post-war development boom, with new factories springing-up everywhere, but they've all gone, replaced by housing, and the centre has been rebuilt three-times?

Yet, once you get out of the city-proper, the old lanes have hardly changed at all in my whole lifetime, the same daftly tight-bends, narrow passing and overhanging foliage seem timeless, as you pootle through the old villages and hamlets, but a lot of the pubs are boarded-up or already converted to homes, as are most of the village shops!

The point this slightly-sad reminiscing is getting to, is that the show is best described as quiet, gentile, unhurried, and one wonders how many more there may be, from the heady days of filling the Royal National, so next year, try to get over if you missed it this year, like parents, pets or a favourite T-shirt (yes, I just listed them together!), you'll miss it when it's gone.

T is for Tank Tracks

I popped over to the BMSS show on Saturday to pick up a few things including a tub of bits for the Blog from Adrian, two days after a brilliant parcel from Chris Smith dropped-in, so lots in the queue, and I've been bumped into looking out all the Motorcycle stuff for a round-up or two!

 

Coming on the heels of the dragons teeth post, and on the way back from Reading, I thought I'd stop on Hazeley Heath and look at the tracks they dug out of the undergrowth/bog a few years ago, we used to play around there as kids, but it's changed a great deal, and memory failed me at one point, but they are subsequent posts, this is the tracks!

 

Apparently the above is Valentine Tank track, the area was used to test towing cables by the REME, previously probably the Ordnance Corps, or an offshoot of the Royal Engineers MVEE testing facilities at Deepcut/Chobham, up the road (A3), or the vehicle testing site at Rushmoor, across the way, between Fleet and Aldershot?

While this hasn't been ID'd, but I think it's a Vickers Medium Mk.1's tracks from the 1920's, also used on early Mk.2's before the ones with the plates that have a double-cross cut in them, was used. The site was in use for testing, since before the First World War, so interwar track is quite possible. It's so heavy and so rusted, I couldn't lift it to see the underside of even one link.

 

The information board is also tracked, and while seemingly cobbled together from recovered parts (there was half a Sherman turret sticking out of the bog at one point), with [possibly!] three Churchill road wheels and two Valentine return rollers?

 

But the tracks are very thin, they almost look imaginary, however, up close, have both age and casting marks, so a small carrier or one of the late 1930's cruisers? Obviously, the diamond-plate fabricated 'hull' is a modern fancy.