I must apologise for not being around for the last few weeks.
Firstly, my wife lost her father at the end of October and this took the bulk of our time since then. Secondly, I have swapped my nice little MacBook Air for a 21.5″ iMac. This is a fantastic computer with one problem – it is impossible to add any extra memory to the machine without ungluing the screen (that’s right – there screen is glued on and you can’t open up the computer without breaking the glue) and removing almost the whole of the innards! When I have all of my programs running, the memory is practically full and everything starts slowing down. Not good. I am trying to convince myself that I don’t need to go to the 27″ iMac (which has user accessed memory chips) as it is quite a bit dearer. watch this space.
OK, so what has been happening over the last three weeks. I have have been following and photographing the activity and am going to have a massive update in the blog entry.
Firstly, we go back to 10th November for one of my regular sunsets.
I like the way that the cranes are silhouetted against the sky. More on the cranes later.
Just to show how the weather can change, we now move to the next morning – 11th November. Now this was very misty. There was some confusion in the house regarding the arrival of Suntis this morning. Normally, Suntis comes in to the port on Sunday, moves through the lock at high tide – normally in the early morning – to be ready to unload on Eagle Wharf over Monday and Tuesday, catching the next high tide and off back to Holland, etc. This time, we awoke to find that Suntis was being unloaded on Griffin Wharf, over by the sand and gravel dock. It was very misty so it isn’t too clear but you can see the usual arrangement of protective wood piles.
Later in the day, I got a slightly clearer image:
The work carried on until Tuesday morning (when the mist had cleared).
This enabled Suntis to leave as soon as she was empty. What I don’t know is where Anglo-Norden took the cargo as nothing was coming and going in the warehouse next to us. Maybe someone can enlighten me? Also, will this be the future pattern or was it a one off?
Going back to the mist on Monday, I was interested in the activity across from Griffin Wharf on the railway line. Now, it has become a regular thing to see a EWS Class 66 come in there with a long line of gravel wagons, fill up in two moves and take the resulting train away.
You can see it here, having filled up one tranche, it is now filling up the second. It then puts the two together and off it goes. More on this later.
Next up, we had Victor appear on the hammerhead opposite us. It sat there for a while, tested its Christmas Lights and then moved off again. Unfortunately, due to various hospital appointments, I miss quite a lot of activity so didn’t see it go.
Now, we have Dan Antion’s favourite topic – Cranes. Firstly, one of the cranes at the large apartment development on the other side of the New Cut has gone leaving just two standing.
This lack of cranes has been compensated by the arrival of a new crane at the site of the new tide barrier.
Just so long as we keep our crane count up!
The mystery is (and I could do with some help here) who moved the two static cranes opposite us? Did they move in the big wind we had or have they been moved by ABP action. As it was, they were both parallel to the dockside but now point into the water of the Wet Dock. I am sorry for the glare on the left but I will get a better photo.
As you can see, they have been turned! Answers on a postcard please – smile.
Back to the train. Over the last week or so, there have been some wagons left on the track by the Sand and Gravel dock. This image was taken this morning. Unfortunately, I have yet to see what the loco does when It arrives as this little lot is a different set from the ones that were left last week. I must try and see what is going on. I have no idea why the pattern has been broken, though.
A regular visitor arrived today – good old HMC Searcher.
Lastly, it was play time for Firemen today. The Suffolk Fire Brigade has obviously got a new toy and brought it down to the dock for a test drive.
This vehicle look brand new. They were playing around doing some raising and lowering. Then the best part of the toy got tested!
It was playtime because I caught one of the standing firemen doing the same as me – taking some photos for his photo stream.
Did I say lastly – well not quite. There is a new arrival in the Wet Dock – you can see it in the background on the image above. This is the Allen Gardiner. I did get a much better image as it arrived and turned into its berth – but I had left the memory card out of the camera!
This is a floating restaurant and was, until recently, plying Durban Harbour in South Africa. It has been shipped by freighter to Rotterdam and then sailed over to here. It is intended to become a floating restaurant that plus the Orwell. For a lot more details check out the Tour Smart page.
That’s about all for now. I will try and get back to regular postings again very soon. If you do have any further information about anything on the blog, please post a comment for all to see.
Thanks for listening.
David
