Spare a thought

[jimmy55]

Poor old Peter Williamson was on local radio this morning facing the dilemma of whether to move all his machines in the face of the worst tidal predictions for Great Yarmouth tonight since 1953. High tide 10pm tonight.......I hope it passes without incident. Not an easy way to make a living.

[clubconsoles]

I Sincerely hope Pete doesn't get flooded, I was in his arcade just last week taking pictures of his Buckley Crane as I am restoring one.
He has all his model cars and figures from the village all lined up on Newspaper on the floor of his Vintage arcade.
It would probably take half the day to clear out the model stuff before he even started moving the machines!
Lets' all keep our fingers crossed it doesn't come to this!

[slotalot]

Yes, let's hope the weather men have got it wrong for all the right reasons this time. I also hope Peter's model village and arcade stay safe tonight, but let us also keep our fingers crossed that we don't lose any more of our Victorian piers.

[badpenny]

I thought we only lost Victorian Piers once current owners wanted to radically change them and/or British Heritage slapped a restriction order on them.

[slotalot]

Just a few photos of last night's storms/floods. Not sure how the model village got on?? Anyone know??
[url]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... towns.html[/url]

[jimmy55]

I've been listening all morning but no news. Sealife which is at the same level on the prom suffered damage so I only hope he managed to get some of the items off site. Cromer pier has suffered badly at the land end, but seems to be repairable, mainly boards etc. I'll keep listening

[jingle]

I looked at the new premises been built on the front
In new Brighton for my arcade,
There are some good bars and restaurants there
And it's having a bit of a boom
And there was an empty unit
Lucky I changed my mind
It was 3 ft under water thee other day

[jonesthegarage]

.... but let us also keep our fingers crossed that we don't lose any more of our Victorian piers.

£1m damage as storms devastate North Pier

The devastated owners of one of Blackpool’s oldest landmarks today told how they are facing a £1m repair bill as they recover from one of the worst storms to hit the resort in years.

[slotalot]

This is not good, I was on that very same pier only a few months ago, and they were busy painting and restoring parts of it then. Just hope they manage to get it all up and running again soon.

[jimmy55]

I received an e-mail from Peter at Merrivale today ....good news indeed.

Dear Jim
Thank you very much for your kind email, Yes we are all intact and dry ,we were very lucky the water stopped about a foot away ,thanks to the wind changing direction a little, many other people in the next village were not so lucky.
Please pass on my thanks to all the lads on penny slot and I wish you all a happy Christmas
Yours
Peter Williamson
Merrivale Model Village
Great Yarmouth

I had a walk along Cromer seafront this afternoon and took some pictures. Amazingly the Victorian engineering did very well in comparison with the recently built beach huts etc. Two terraces of huts were just completely missing ....literally nothing left only a footprint. The pier looked remarkably intact.
Pictures can be seen here ... [url]http://www.flickr.com/photos/vt500/sets ... 453462934/[/url]

[slotalot]

Nice photos Jim, The Victorians knew a little bit about engineering and building things to last

[arrgee]

The Victorians knew a little bit about engineering and building things to last

Quite true Stuart but if we built to the same section sizes today it would not get through the current Building Regulations!

I have been working in the architectural business for over 45 years and in that time sizes such as standard timber sections have changed very little, even when metrication came in they just changed the imperial sizes into the metric equivalent, the good old 'six by two' became 150 x 50mm. A couple of years back a new Eurocode was introduced for determining timber sizes and guess what, the old tried and tested sizes are now no longer able to span the same distances they have for a century or more so the next size up has to be used - 'empirical' knowledge is obviously an anathema to our continental cousins. I am no ludite but change for change sake is costing this country money.

The arguement of 'timber years ago was better seasoned' does not wash with structural sections as the timber is strength tested at the factory when cut (C16, C24 ) however, I have to say that today we do have a much better safety record than in years gone by thanks to legislation, Brunel actually boasted after one of his projects that he only lost 60 men!!! compares favourably with the 50 lives lost during the building of the 3 gorges dam on the Yangtze river in China 10 years ago.