A web log, an æthereal scrap-book if you will, with a somewhat vintage flavour. News items, occurrences, experiences, thoughts and opinions related to Victoriana through to Fifties Americana can all be found here.
The service in this instance is a twice-daily run from Gateshead in Tyne & Wear to Chester-le-Street in County Durham, North Yorkshire, as part of a regular scheduled route operated by local bus company Go North East. With the social distancing rules currently in place giving public transport operators major headaches (most bus companies at the moment being forced to run at barely 25% of their normal capacity) Go North East have hit on a wizard wheeze to try and maximise capacity and minimise passenger contact on its busy Number 21 route by wheeling out a 1960s Routemaster from its local heritage fleet in order to help take some of the pressure off the rest of its buses.
The result looks to be a wonderful trip back in time married to a [hopefully] safer method of public travel for the people of Tyneside, who I hope will be able to enjoy and appreciate this little bit of vintage effort to combat the social effects of Covid-19. Whether Go North East will be able to continue with it in light of the direction things seem to be taking again remains to be seen - we can only hope that another lock-down can be averted and that demand for the service continues to be high enough to warrant the ongoing use of this splendid old Routemaster. In any event it is great to see yet another vintage bus being brought back to its original role, especially to aid people in these particularly difficult times, and I am sure it will not be the last time such a story features on here. In the meantime a jolly well done to Go North East and the North-East Bus Preservation Trust and here's wishing many more happy miles for their service 21 Routemaster.
Here I am again, then, saying "What ho!" after another long dry spell at Eclectic Ephemera. I seem to spend half my (few) posts lately apologising for my absence, and can only do so again. I dislike constantly using work as an excuse, since I know so many bloggers who successfully juggle a good working/writing balance - it just seems I'm not one of them! Having said that, it seems that a few of my favourite bloggers have gone quiet as the new year got underway, or have just emerged from the woodwork after months of silence, so perhaps I am not alone after all.
Anyway, enough navel-gazing, for a quite remarkable milestone was reached by this blog at the start of 2015 and it is this that I intend to celebrate in this post (for lack of anything really newsworthy!). Quite appropriately, the start of my sixth year as a vintage blogger saw Eclectic Ephemera pass 400,000 pageviews. Now of course that doesn't mean that 400,000 individual people have viewed this blog - some of those will have been me looking at the thing to see how it's doing (and forgetting to select "Don't track my own pageviews"!) and many, many more were probably spammers, bots, bits and other assorted members of the æthereal interweb - but the majority would have been fellow bloggers, followers and interested parties. You, in other words. And that deserves celebrating. What I thought I'd do to mark the occasion, therefore, is to "run down" (to use the modern parlance) the Top 10 posts from Eclectic Ephemera's 6-year history - a sort of "best of", as it were, chosen by you the readers.
From November 2010, the news that Apley House in Shropshire had been completely restored and was up for sale for the princely sum of £1¾ million. I found it to be of particular interest because it is generally agreed among scholars to be the inspiration behind P.G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle, which was the setting for one of his other book series. With Plum being one of my favourite authors and creator of that arch-chap Bertie Wooster, even though it was not directly related to the Jeeves stories I fancied including it here. Eclectic Ephemera was barely a year old at this point and still evolving into the blog we know today, so at this point the stories I featured were sometimes more wide-ranging than they are today. Still this one had a vintage bent about it and has obviously proved popular, for whatever reason (perhaps the Wodehouse connexion, or just its magnificence as an English stately home).
Jumping forward two years to November 2012, this blog received its second Liebster Blog Award. Having largely given way to other blog awards (probably due to the demise of Google Friends) the Liebster nevertheless contained most of the things we recognise in today's examples. Given to me by Lil of the now defunct Little Lil of London blog, it contained the usual x number of questions about myself to answer and I obviously made a decent fist of it since it is the most popular award-based post on the blog!
November 2010 again and one of my many vintage motoring posts - this time featuring a one-off wood-bodied 1932 Talbot. This car had an interesting history, which is why the story appealed to me (and everybody else too, it seems!), having started out in 1932 as just an ordinary 14/65 saloon before some time in the 1960s acquiring a fantastic roadster body fashioned entirely from boat-grade mahogany! Despite this it was only valued at £20,000 to £30,000, eventually being sold for almost smack dab in the middle at £25,300. As I said at the time, I hope the new owner enjoys varnishing!
February 2012 and number 2 in my personal Style Icon series is obviously number 1 in your books - Mr Cary Grant. Proof of the man's popularity even today, my thoughts on his impeccable dress sense - and more importantly the pictures that illustrate this - have gone towards making this everyone's favourite Style Icon post from a list that included David Niven and Fred Astaire!
The classic [red] AEC Routemaster bus has come to symbolise the city of London, not just for those of us in Britain but more especially for people living around the world for whom this simple, long-lived vehicle is part of their own external view of our capital. Therefore it should perhaps come as little surprise, given the international nature of the internet (and thus, this blog), that the unveiling of its spiritual successor should prove to be so popular. The idea of modern technology meeting classic, tried-and-tested design was much in evidence throughout the story of the NB4L (or New Routemaster, as it has become known) and this has always been the most appealing aspect of things to me, as I hope it has been to all who have followed the journey of the NB4L from drawing board to now, five years later, actually carrying passengers around the streets of London. Having since seen one or two up close I can confirm it more than lives up to the hype and it's been fascinating to see its progress all the way from inception to now.
As if to reinforce its position as "Best Car in the World" this 2011 post about the centenary of Rolls-Royce's mascot, the famous Spirit of Ecstasy, makes it into the top 5. As well the story about the anniversary celebrations featuring myriad Royce models from down the years, I took the opportunity to throw in a bit about some of my favourite examples and it has obviously struck a chord with many people for whom the Rolls-Royce is still the very epitome of luxury motoring.
The third of the Film Friday: Gangsters series that I began back in 2010 with Little Caesar (and which sadly I've rather let slide since) this post focussed on the plot - and, more importantly the fashions - of Howard Hughes' and Howard Hawk's classic 1932 gangster drama Scarface, starring Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak and George Raft. This post has proven to be popular with both vintage film and fashion fans alike, which are who I hoped would be the target audience and which has made me think that maybe it's about time I brought this series back!
This is the most recently-written post to make the top 10, containing a selection of railway-related tunes to celebrate (if that's the word I want!) my first foray back into the world of full-time work and commuting by train. While that job didn't last and I now commute to the latest office by bus, this post really seemed to build up a good head of steam(!) and powered its way into the "most popular" list. I suspect this is just through people searching for the phrase "song train", but then I live in hopes that there are several thousand visitors with a liking for the music of Glenn Miller, Paul Whiteman and Bob Crosby among others!
Proof of the enduring popularity of two of the funniest comic actors to have ever lived, this story regarding the auction of rare photographs of (mainly) Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy proved inordinately popular (again probably just through people Googling "photos of Stan Laurel", I reckon). Including some very rare images dating back to 1897 and showing a young Arthur Stanley Jefferson playing with his siblings these photographs came from a family collection owned by a great-niece of Stan's living in Sunderland, near to North Shields where he grew up. The 54 lots eventually sold for a total of £8,000.
This would certainly be in my top 10 favourite vintage news items that this blog has covered since 2009, so I'm delighted to see it make the number one slot with my readers too. And why should it not? Here is an almost perfect example of traditional, vintage design being married to modern technology and - even better - one that has been an unqualified success for the Morgan Motor Company. For it is now the company's best-selling model, having sold more than 600 in the first few months after it went on sale and over 1,000 in the four years it has been on sale. While that may not sound like much, for a niche manufacturer like Morgan - who still use the same construction methods and work out of the same factory in Malvern, Worcestershire that they have done since the company's inception in 1909 - it is a very big deal. In 2014 a whole raft of updates were applied to the car in response to customer feedback and I see no reason why the 3-wheeler, having taken its rightful place back in the very heart of the Morgan range, should not endure for decades just as the other models have done.
There we have it, then - the 10 most popular Eclectic Ephemera posts from the past 6 years and 400,000 pageviews. I hope you've all enjoyed this little reminiscence as much as I have writing it and I look forward to seeing what the future brings for this blog amid the hope of many more readers and followers to come.
Hooray, hurrah; finally some proper vintage news! Just when I was beginning to worry for this poor little blog too. Everything seems to be about the Olympics at the moment (which is no bad thing and only right). But what a splendid news story to kickstart an otherwise quiet summer.
You may remember a couple of months ago an article about the reopening of the Epping-Ongar heritage railway following several years of restoration. As well as using diesel and electric locomotives - and more recently steam engines too - the Epping-Ongar Railway also runs vintage shuttle buses between the current westernmost terminus of Coopersale and the original terminus of Epping, at least until new track can be laid to allow trains to continue all the way.
Now, however, as well as providing this existing service the AEC Regent R/T's used by the EOR have also started running on an exciting new route for both local residents and visitors alike. Service 396 (the original R/T service in Harlow up until the 1960s) will run thrice-weekly between Harlow bus station and North Weald. Not just another shuttle bus, this route is supported by Harlow District Council which means it is a bona fide service - anyone can buy a standard ticket and travel on a vintage London Transport bus! Even better, a special all-in-one ticket is also available allowing unlimited travel on the 396 (and 339 shuttle) plus the EOR's trains (which also stop at North Weald)! A truly integrated vintage transport system if ever there was one!
St Andrew's Church, North Weald Bassett
North Weald itself is a lovely spot, the location of North Weald Airfield (made famous during the Second World War) & Museum amongst other things where there is a huge market and car boot fair held every Saturday as well as frequent air shows and classic car & bus rallies. I haven't been for a while but with this latest development at the EOR I may just have to see about getting over there again. Harlow can be quite pleasant too, I'm told, although I've never been there and being a New Town it has little history to it.
Only just this weekend I was thinking how it would be a wizard wheeze to run a vintage bus route to subsidise local services and blow me down if somebody hasn't come along and done it! Currently the 396 Harlow-North Weald is only planned to run for one month, 'til the 1st September, on a trial basis. Let us hope it proves such a success that Harlow Council and the EOR make a regular service out of it. In the meantime I'm off to look at decommissioned AECs again - anyone fancy chipping in?
OK, so maybe this will be my last post before Christmas. Trust me to find something blogworthy right at the last minute! No good waiting 'til after the 25th either, seeing as how the subject occurs on the day itself. But what a wonderful story to go out on, after all - a real example of Christmas spirit, and with an important message.
The members of the Keighley Bus Museum Trust in West Yorkshire are to be thoroughly applauded for their marvellously selfless idea of running some of their old Routemasters around the town on Christmas Day so that the locals can visits friends and relatives without having to worry about having a drink or three. The whole enterprise is touching, even more so as it also serves the nearby hospital. West Yorkshire Police have rightly got behind the scheme and I am very pleased to see them do so.
It is only a pity that such festive cheer and generosity of spirit is not more widespread and that there are not vintage buses up and down the country to take people around their local area over Christmas. It is a novel, charming and, if the article is anything to go by, successful endeavour that deserves to continue. Well done to everyone concerned!
One of the ten most popular posts ever on Eclectic Ephemera was when I blogged back in November 2010 about the new "Routemaster" double-decker bus. Obviously it must have been a popular search item, and rightly so!
Now I'm pleased to say that my favourite motoring periodical, Autocar, has tested one for its special bumber Christmas issue, giving you some idea of what the thing is like to drive. With the New Bus for London, or NBfL (come on chaps & ladies, we can think of a better name than that, surely?!) due to start passenger service on the 20th February 2012 this is the first full test of the vehicle by an independent party (albeit with tongue slightly in cheek) and it seems Autocar like it. That makes two of us!
And it just gets better on the inside. As the 21st Century successor to the iconic Routemaster the poor old NBfL has a lot to live up to and while the outside is quite reminiscent of the old AECs, especially from the rear, the interior was always going be a challenge. But the designers have come up trumps in my opinion with the wonderfully russet London Transport red setting off the cork resin on the stairs splendidly. Plus, as the article says, real thought and aestheticism has been put in to the cabin lights, the windows and the roof-lining. After all, this isn't any old double-decker, y'know - this is a London bus! (For now, although makers Wrightbus may be able to sell the design elsewhere both at home and abroad - wouldn't that be something?). OK, perhaps the seat fabric is a little bit kaleidoscopic but overall it's delightful to see such care and appreciation going into a public service vehicle for a change. Perhaps it bodes well for the future of public transport design.
So come the New Year those bendy whatsits will be on the way out, to be replaced by this topping new omnibus for a new generation (albeit with some lovely old-fashioned touches). Yet another example of modern technologies working in harmony with traditional design. All aboard, tickets please!
A few months ago I blogged the news that the winning design for the new London Routemaster bus had been chosen and now I'm pleased to see that a full-size mock-up has been built prior to the vehicle's introduction in 2012. I think it looks even better in the metal (well, wood really for this model - although it wouldn't be a bad idea to feature some in the interior, eh what?) but then to be frank after those godawful bendy monstrosities anything's an improvement. Still, my high hopes for this 21st Century Routemaster have been given another boost from reading this story.
Say what you like about Mayor Boris Johnson's politics and persona, but I'm heartened to note that he can see the real benefits of combining nostalgia with modern technology, reusing and perhaps improving on tried-and-tested features and taking them into the 2010s and beyond. I look forward to two years from now when - barring delays - I will able to travel around London on these new buses. That's not something I could ever say about the previous Routemaster "replacements"!
Since they were first announced in July 2008 I've been following with interest the plans for a new London bus design to replace the current crop of anodyne double-deckers and unloved bendy buses and pick up the mantle left by the iconic Routemaster.
The winning design has now been chosen and I am pleased to say I rather like it. Modern, forward-thinking, but with just the right amount of retro design cues and useful features from buses of old. The charmingly-curved "beetle back" is present, complete with an open platform so once again passengers can hop on off easily. There are in fact three sets of doors and two staircases, so access should not be a problem. A fuel-efficient hybrid drive train and a bright, airy interior complete the attractive picture. More detail here.
If all goes to plan the first of these new buses should be on the roads of London in time for the 2012 Olympics, giving us a new symbol for London and Great Britain in the 21st Century.
