[PRCo] London ... not Pittsburgh

[Fred Schneider]

This link came from Bill Volkmer....
Yes, I understand it isn't Pittsburgh but it's something in my own blood and some of you might like it just because it's well done ... very well done.   

The Elephant Never Forgets refers to the statue the pachyderm at a coaching inn named the Elephant and Castle in the borough of Southwark, London.   You see the statue of the Elephant as the film begins.

The Elephant Never Forgets was one of the finer professionally done films.   It appeared illicitly on youTube and was removed for a copyright violation apparently because of a complaint by the London Transport Museum.   Now I see that the museum is allowing us to view it at their own web site.  I would have to pull out my own video tape (yup ... old VHS format tape) to see if this is the full length.   But it is a fantastic job.   

Closest I ever came was running the London car that Crich recreated from a chicken coup.   It was an experience.   Understand that I am used to straight air brakes, automatic air, hand brakes but that was my first experience with manually controlled dynamic brakes with a B controller.   I knew how they functioned but I didn't have that ingrained knowledge of each car that says ... "at 20 mph, go to point 4".  I was coming down hill testing each point and the car was gaining speed.   My instructor was a Roman Catholic priest in his other life.   I was expecting to hear him starting to say a few hail Marys before I finally got to the point where I began to retard the car.   His response was ... "You understood the principal so why intervene?"   I guess that takes a pretty strong constitution.   

London has always been one of my favorite cities.   I first visited in 1959 when the Metropolitan line was still running steam to pull subway trains.   The sergeant conducting the excursion from the MSTS vessel couldn't understand why I wanted to escape from the tour he was running and I was working on the principal that read, "For those who understand, no explanation is needed; for those who do not, no explanation is possible."   I rode behind steam on the subway network that year.   Since then I've made another 17 trips to London, all for pleasure.   Some just as brief as "Lets go this weekend for the theater."   

For what it's worth, if any of you ever go to London, I would suggest you do go to the old flower market at Covent Garden and visit the London Transport Museum.   The absolutely nice thing about it is simply said, it is not a railfan museum.   It contains subway cars, trams, buses, trolley buses, hansome cabs, carriages, all modes of transportation.   It is there to educate and not just cater to railfans.   They have rotating exhibits.   I recall one describing London Transport's trials and tribulations in the immediate postwar period that covered all sorts of issues from integration of their work force (their blacks came from home from Jamaica), rebuilding the physical plant and rebuilding London (one third of all the housing was lost in the bombings).   Some of you may remember the Covent Garden Flower Market from the book Pygmalion or the movie My Fair Lady.  Other entertain ... same neighborhood ... St. Martins in the Field Church has a great luncheon and evening concert series.   Yes, I am an Anglophile.   

Now enjoy looking at the last days of London's trams in 1952:   

http://www.ltmcollection.org/films/film/film.html?IXfilm=FLO.0009&_IXSESSION_=kFJcbs6Y34y
 

And another old video of London

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui63-Zjbcvo&feature=related


London Transport Museum    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=df9mwKIh-Xs&feature=related