P2 Locomotive Company and related matters

More welcome news from the P2 Team...

https://www.p2steam.com/2020/04/27/2762/

Richard.

 

Great advertisement and ambassador for engineering as a career.

 

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more!

Richard.

 

Quite a step up from designing and making models! Her enthusiasm and commitment certainly shine through.

 

I was impressed when I met her at one of the Roadshows. Very engaged in what she is doing.

 

I tend to find at work (University), that our European and other overseas students are far more engaged in their study than our home-grown counterparts. Some of it will obviously be due to fees being paid, but I think it also speaks volumes for these countries' continued recognition of Heavy Engineering as a primary industry...
Luckily we still have some really good competent Engineering companies left, but the UK's systematic run-down of its once core industries is nothing short of criminal.

Richard.

 

Very true, engineering seems to be far more respected abroad than in our own country. Many countries use the term 'engineer' (Ing) as a title in much the same way as We use Doctor (Dr) Reverend (Rev) or Proffessor (Prof)

 

The Germans respect all their professions in that way. The perception of an engineer in this country is someone wearing a boiler suit with a spanner in his hand

 

And whilst there's nothing wrong with a boiler suit and a spanner, unfortunately it does have a certain image, and there's a strange anomoly over here whereby a Doctor has the title Dr. even when retired, yet a Surgeon has the title Mr.

 

I suspect that distinction (between doctors and surgeons) is long lost in some academic heirarchy. I have a doctorate and also a Masters (MA) and if I gave my full academic title, I could call myself doctor but the MA would take precedence over the DPhil ... (That is, I’m an MA DPhil, not DPhil MA).

In the US the engineer is the one that drives it, not the one that built it, nor the one who designed it. I suspect that goes back to an eighteenth century usage of an engineer as being “one in charge of an engine”.

Tom

 

Many years ago I wrote to a German driver who had given me a footplate ride on an 03 Pacific. He had read an article on Bulleid and didn’t realise that the original and rebuilds were the same locos. I sent him a couple of pictures and the titles of a couple of books.
When he replied his name on his headed note paper was printed as Herr Lokfuhrer Hans Behrmann which I thought was taking professional recognition a bit too far.

 

I was told by a surgeon I used to know that it came from the days when surgery (the amputation of limbs, dental business, all that fun stuff) was generally undertaken by enthusiastic amateurs as it was seen as a matter of brute force rather than knowledge of the intricacies of the body. I believe it was quite common for barbers to double as surgeons, with the tools of the trade being a sharp saw and a bottle of grain spirit as an anaesthetic. Survival of surgery was I believe seen as a matter of luck. Hence surgeons are still Mr as they were never qualified. Obviously that's changed now, but the surgeons I've met take a rather grimly humourous view of the history of their profession, and I suspect that's why "Mr" survived.

 

Isn’t it consultants in any of the medical disciplines who are called Mr not just surgeons?

 

I thought it was just surgeons, but I've never actually looked it up so I'm entirely prepared to consider that I may be wrong.

 

That's my understanding too. A strange sort of inverted snobbery!

 

I have my late father's Registration in the Medical Register. He qualified MRCS and LRCP (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons and Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians) in 1948. Most of his professional life was as an Army doctor, but for the brief period that he spent in his parent's practice, and after he retired from the Army, he was Doctor. I suspect that such dual qualification is (or was) customary.
Pat

 

Agree with Sheff, that young lady is a good advert for engineering.
Pat

 

AFAIK all consultants are styled Mr, whatever their specialism. Also Dentists.

 

My dentist is definitely not a Mr - she is a Mrs