West Somerset Railway General Discussion

Numbers from the ‘reworked’ prairie reworked into a suitable order. No doubt @Aberdare can elucidate.

Robin

 

I said earlier that I expected it had been designed around a content management system. What I thought of saying, but excised but it wasn't exactly relevant, is that it's possible that they have a contract where content changes also have to go through the design/hosting company, but that any web design agency that still expects paying for content changes is effectively running a scam, given that content management systems exist!

A bit of digging suggests that the design firm in question is a small-to-medium sized place who say they offer a "bespoke content management system", probably written in PHP with a MySQL backend database going by their job adverts. Their style of coding is not bad in some respects, and the sites certainly look effective, but under the hood it's a bit old-fashioned, the sort of coding style that was standard about ten years ago but is a bit behind the times now.* That fits with the salaries in the job adverts, to be frank. But, they're a small local agency, they've found a niche, and they are wedged firmly in that niche making the best of it, so good luck to them. Looking at the code, though, there is plenty of evidence that the agency are responsible for design and hosting but the WSR has the power to change their own content.

* My evidence for this: they've designed a responsive layout with a fairly recent version of Twitter Bootstrap, and they're using Cloudflare as their CDN; but they clearly don't believe in front-end frameworks because the most sophisticated thing they're using there is raw JQuery with occasional ajax() calls for a handful of things; nearly everything otherwise is rendered entirely server-side. I suspect their "bespoke CMS" is an internal product they wrote circa 2005 and haven't really updated since.

 

Yep. That’s exactly how it works.

Robin

 

Cut and shut 5193's old numberplate?

 

Seams feasible. Thanks.

 

It's a while since I have seen 9351, but from what I recall the numberplates are clearly "modern" because they say "WSR" where an original would have said "GWR" - which, itself, would have made a cut-and-shut a bit tricky.

Annoyingly, although I thought I had a photo, I can't find it.

 

I think it's more a metaphorical cut and shut when it comes to the numberplate...

 

? Only some of the absorbed locos and RODs had GWR on the cabside plates. Perhaps I have misunderstood your comment?

 

Ah, my mistake, I am not a GWR expert. My memory though was that 9351 definitely did have WSR on hers.

 

Photo from 2011:

Detail at the bottom:

 

Put simply, 9351 is a type considered by Swindon but never built. Converting a prairie tank to mogul has resulted in a 43xx lookalike but with a smaller boiler.
Fortuitously the number 5193 produced a perfect anagram of a 93 series and 51 had not been used. Coincidentally 51 was also the class designation of the 2251 class of 0-6-0.

 

In need of a slight update but this might help https://www.west-somerset-railway.c...y-inspired-2-6-0-9351-class-wsr-mogul-no-9351
Barry

 

Very nice picture Robin.
I'm sure you must get frustrated at times with all the flak that flies around and about the WSR but, hopefully, the corner is being turned and you will all be able to settle down and enjoy what you love about your Railway.

 

No worries. One might also add that transforming 5193 to 9351 would involve transmuting cast iron to brass.

 

Yes, and here we have a problem with all this "new-fangled internet blog stuff!" Never had this sort of frustration when I joined the GWSR in 1981! We all get addicted to blogs because humans, by our very nature, are curious and we want to know what's going on, especially if we are supporting it (even more if we're helping to fund it) so, when a keen blogster decides, for whatever reason, to cease blogging, there's an audience that consequently feels somewhat bereft and frustrated. As a millennial, FS123 will have never known anything other that t'internet but it's integral to all our lives now (well, in the vast majority of cases anyway). Social media can be addictive and can offer instant gratification and instant depression; "how many likes have I got? Crikey, I've been unfriended!" and so on. Personally, I still believe that a good monthly blog is better than an indifferent weekly one.

 

Indeed! Thank you RW for the photo. What a beautiful locomotive! I know it's really 2-6-2T no 5193 in disguise but Mr Churchward had considered a design very like this as part of his standardisation plan. It was not proceeded with after the introduction of the 43xx class.

 

Thank you for those kind words.

And the best bit is that you will be able to come for a ride behind 9351 shortly...

Robin

 

9351 reassembly blog has been updated to show the final stages of the work by the WSRA at Williton before the locomotive was handed over to the WSR plc.

https://www.wsra.org.uk/category/9351-blog/