Tal-y-Llyn Railway troubles

Just getting the word out. Not sure how to help, but the Tal-y-Llyn railway on the coast of Wales would seem to be suffering from the slack economy. Word is that the operation lost about 100,000 pounds, roughly $180,000 last year.
The Tal-y-Llin is one of the oldest restored railways in the U.K., but suffers from being some distance off the be beatin track. About halfway between Porthmadog, and Aberystwth Wales, this wonderful little railway is passed by on the way to other destinations.
Check them out at www.talyllin.co.uk.. it’s worth the look, and if you happen to get to the U.K. a trip through Wales is worth the time. You don’t really need a rental car as the train service is good. The only notable gap in transportation, being that the west and north coast railways have no direct connection. If you have the time, one can take the Ffestiniog from Porthmadog to Ffestiniog, and catch the Conwy Valley standard gauge line to the coast.
The Cambrian Coast route stops right at the west end of the Tal-y-Llin railway, a 1/2 block walk to the narrow gauge station and museum.
Anyway here’s the question for you. Any ideas on how to get the word out about the trains of Wales. I know there are sites out there (Great Little Trains of Wales) and other, but their visibility seems low. I’m not in the travel industry, but it seems like that might be the key to helping out these small railways. It would be a shame to lose some of them.

Welsh Highland Golden Spike

Saturday, February 2009 the Welsh Highland and Ffestiniog Railways will be linked in a golden spike ceremony, in Porthmadog, Wales. Actually a golden clip, they do things a little different over there.

Now the work begins for those of us in the U.S.  Time to spread the word, with the world economy going in the tank, it would be a shame for the Welsh railways to fail after all they have done to restore the lines.

I know that not everybody can afford to take off every other year or so, but, for a relatively inexpensive trip Wales works.

Give it a thought. Castles, little trains, mountains,sea,and great people.

I’ve been to London several times (big city) and York (old city) great trains museum there.  But if you would like to visit an area that lets you turn your mental clock back 50 years, it’s got to be Wales, OK Scotland was pretty cool to.

I’m going to work on a trip plan next time I get home, but I’m thinking there’s a loop from Manchester west along the north coast, then south to Aberystwyth (ask Avrila) then back to Manchester.  Train travel is very reasonable, and fast.  If you rent a car, try Avis, avoid National.  Someday I’ll have to tell about the Vaxhaul, $1600 for two weeks (OUCH).

Might be a good year to go if you can afford it. Lots of people are going to stay home and there might be some good deals to be had.

U.S. Customs

So, I get up to a book warehouse in Ontario, Canada today.  No problem getting into Canada, got the books on board and headed back to the border. Yep I got all my forms filled out and filed. What could go wrong?

Well somebody at the brokers office could reverse two letters on the trucks license plate.  Three hours later I left the border office with the full knowledge that during the time those inspectors spent “solving” that problem a couple hundred “farm workers” slipped across the southern border.  But the country is safe from trucks with PR instead of RP on the plate.

Oh, and in all the fuss over the plate, they forgot to run the truck through the scanner.  That didn’t dawn on me until I got down to Eire PA. and I not going back.

We may all be blown up someday, but at least we are safe from typo’s.

70 Challenger

Tempted to add to the title “Dumbest sale I ever made.”

To those who where wondering if this car ever did exist, yes it did.  Maybe it still does, if so, if I ever hit a powerball lottery win, it’s first on my list to find.

This photo, the only one I could find as yet,and was probably taken back in about 1974. Yes I know it’s cracked and faded. Maybe I’ll find some better as I go through my old junk.

For the car folk, it’s a 1970 Challenger 340 with a factory 4 spd.  Many people think it’s a R/T, but while it had the R/T hood and dashboard (150 mph speedo, and tach) R/Ts had big block engines.

Interestingly this Challenger, while it could top 145 mph, came frome the factory with non power drum brakes on all four wheels.

Over the years, it got a rear sway bar, an option I highly recommend, and as you can see, hood pins. It doesn’t show up in this photo, but the hood has two small creases near the center. That was from a run down highway 26 that forced enough air under the hood to bend it slightly. A trip to the Dodge dealer and a set of factory hood pins, set things pretty much back right.

Sold the Challenger about nine years ago to raise the funds for my first Freightliner. Probably a good move, but to this day I wish there had been some other way to do that.

Well ya gota love it.

So last week I get a load of tea to take to Calgary. Leave Portland, Saturday morning with plenty of time for a Monday delivery. Get to the border about midnight Saturday. It turns out someone somewhere didn’t do the customs paper work right, oh and it can’t be fixed until Monday.

OK. 25 degrees out, I’m on the Idaho, British Columbia border, and it going to be a day and a half before anybody can look at the problem.  Sounds like some desk jockey should be buying some fuel.

As you might imagine I’m not real happy.

66 Valiant

A couple people have asked about the Valiant, so here it is.

Still in need of some work, there are a couple bad spots on the rear floor area, and it’s kind of trapped behind Robert’s 66 Charger at this point. But as time permits, I think we’re going to try to modify the fuel injection from a mid 70s Volvo to fit the slant six.

Also considering:

Seats from a Chrysler Sebring Convertible, get good seats and shoulder straps that way.

Super Six (2 barrel carb) set from a 76 Aspen, also has a much larger exhaust.

Going to have 100/1000ths cut from the head. Big boost in compression.

Electronic ignition. This ones easy from a wrecking yard, we have done this before.

Front and rear anti sway bars. These are on the shelf, just got to bolt them on.

Power disc brakes. Anybody that has worked with an older car knows how important this is.

Battery is being moved to the trunk, and a cold air intake goes in the old battery location.

Finally, since this is going to be a daily driver, air conditioning.

We will see how it all goes, but my intention is to keep this a budget project. Also we’re going to take notes and photos of the progress.  Much of what we’re going to do is Valiant/Dart specific, but might be of note to those thinking about the same idea with a Nova/Falcon or any other 60s compact.

My feeling is that in an age of $100,000 plus Challengers,  Mustangs,  and  Camaros, those of us that have to stick to some kind of a budget will be turning to the Dart,  Nova,  Falcon class of car.

This particular Valiant was purchased from the Kidney Car people, and cost $300. Hope to keep the project to under $2,000 including the car.  OK maybe when I’m done, I let a good paint job take me over that, but the idea is to do as much from U-Pull-It wrecking yards, as is possible.

Comments and ideas are most welcome, we all have a lot to learn.

Welsh Highland Update 3.0

Latest news is that  the Welsh Highland will begin service to the public over the entire route in July 2009.

Might be worth planning some vacation time for late summer or early fall. The dollar is quite strong against the pound right now, and airfares have dropped to levels we haven’t seen in a year.

If you are thinking about a day or two in Porthmadog, the Oakeley Arms, about 5 miles from Porthmadog in Maentwrog, is worth a look.  A delightful hotel with a Pub/Restaurant in the building.  And old building with many odd hallways, and stairs, it’s easy to get lost on your way to your room.  When we checked in last year, the desk clerk had some time finding our rooms.  Oh the food in the pub is first rate, and priced for a budget.

For those on a tight budget, a Travel Lodge has opened in Porthmadog.  The rates are on a par with U.S. motels.

Remember to stop by Spooners in the Ffestiniog station at Porthmadog and have an ale with “The Princess”

B-29 “Boxcar”

Boxcar

Just another photo from the Wright Patterson museum.
For those of you that don’t know. This is the aircraft that dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan, pretty much ending World War Two.
As with most of my aircraft photos, if you should like the huge file to print from, just let me know. Their free.

Got a little bit of snow.

December 24th.

Bit more snow than we have had in the Portland area for awhile.  The Van on the left is the $175 Dodge mentioned in an earlier post.  The snow drift on the right is our 93 Dodge Intrepid.

Took this Christmas Eve, looks like I might be able to get the Intrepid out today (Friday).

After sitting in The Dalles, Oregon,  Saturday night, Sunday, and Monday morning. I finally gave up and drove back to Biggs Junction, then south on 97 to Madras, then over Mt. Hood to Portland.  Talked to a State Policeman that told me it was open, but he didn’t want everybody to try it. I used to run Portland to Prineville every day, so I’m used to Mt. Hood in winter.  What the State Police didn’t want was a bunch of trucks from the Midwest to take a try at the mountain. That would have been a mess.

This was the end of a 7 week trip. One new tire, and a heater fan that broke in South Dakota, on a 5 degree night. Not bad for what was going to be a ten day out and back.

Why the auto industry bailout shouldn’t happen, but must.

Really I’m very much apposed to spending taxpayer money on mismanaged ventures, but to the extent that the government has caused some of Detroit’s problems, it is fair that that same government help out.

Rewind to the  70s and the first of the C.A.F.E. standards.  At the time the “Big Three” wanted a 1 or 2 mile per gallon break for Station Wagons.  The then popular family car had form drag problems, and got a little worse mileage than its sedan counterpart.  Well the Feds sort of said “No”, and the Station Wagon pretty much went away.  Of course people still needed to carry kids, dogs, and groceries around.  This led to two wonderful trends: The Mini Van, and the SUV.

The Mini Van not a totally bad idea, usually based on a front drive passenger car chassis, they did a fare job of filling in for the now rare Wagon. Problem was that people were used to being able to hook an Airstream trailer to the wagon, and heading for the hills, once in a while.  Here the Mini Van fell short.

Enter the SUV.  In the 50s these would have been: The Dodge Power Wagon, and the Chevrolet Carry All.  Both great vehicles at what they did.  But what they did was carry loggers to work.  I guess somebody was at their Dodge or Chevy dealer looking for something to carry his family, and tow the boat, looked in the back lot at the line of phone company trucks, and thus was born the SUV.  In those days anything with a gross weight of over 6,100 pounds had a different set of rules, so it was easy to built a family “car” on a Pickup truck  chassis.  Course now your talking 9 miles per gallon instead of the 18 the old Chrysler Town and Country got, but it will get the job done.

Fast forward to the present:  So here we sit, while gas prices are down, for the time being. A perfect storm of bad calls, frozen credit, and regulation has brought G.M. , Ford, and Chrysler to their knees.

Our wonderful government caused much of this, and they need to step up and help fix it.  The “Big Three” and their unions need to take a step back as well.  Paying some guy three times the national average to play cards, on the chance that a position might open on the line, is ridiculous.

Here I will speak about Chrysler, since I now their products better than those of the other two companies.

Dumb mistake #1. Dropping the Magnum Wagon, come on guys, you owned that market. A good driving, roomy car that was close to 30 MPG on the hi-way. Oh lets not forget that you made them for Europe with a Turbo-Diesel, and over there they get 44 MPG hi-way. Hopefully the sheet metal molds for the Magnum are sitting around somewhere, and with the right management we can see this great car again.

Dumb mistake #2. Never brought out the Sedan Delivery version of the PT Cruiser.  I saw the prototype once and it was a neat little car, and was much looked forward to.  Never happened.

Dumb mistake #3. OK the Feds helped on this one.  We build in this country Sebring Convertibles with a 2 liter Turbo-Diesel, and 6 speed manual transmission.  They get 51 MPG hi-way, but we cant have them here. Seems they don’t meet the California standards by 3% on a parts per million base.  Never mind that the little 2 liter motor puts out half the total exhaust of most cars.

Oh yes and as a note: In the U.K. you can buy a four door Jeep SUV that gets 34 MPG.  Don’t know a lot about this one but like the Magnum Wagon, and the Sebring convert, the Jeep is built here and shipped over there.

Also, while in England last time, I rented a Vauxhall Vectra Wagon.  About the size on a Volvo 145 Wagon from the 70s. The little wagon did a very good job for us, and we got about 40 MPG the two weeks we had it.  I could be wrong on this, but I think Vauxhall is G.M. in the U.K.  It would be nice if they could bring that neat little wagon over here.

So.  Well I guess the Feds need to step in and prevent the full meltdown of the economy that will happen if the Big Three close their doors.  But they also need to step back and let Chrysler, Ford, and G.M. bring some of the great European platforms here.

One can’t help but wonder: A 290 horse V-6 Turbo-Diesel in a base model Challenger.  With the Challenger being 5 to 6 hundred pounds lighter than the Magnum, and having better aerodynamics, we could see a Challenger Coupe getting hi-way mileage in the high 40s, and I for one would line up for that.