Robert the Engine

This is the 0-6-0 saddle tank locomotive, works number 2068, named Robert. It was built in 1933 by the Avonside Engine Company, a builder of industrial locomotives established in Avon Street, Bristol, between 1864 and 1934. It was used at the Lamport Ironstone Mines Railway in Northamptonshire.

"After the railway closed in 1969, Robert worked on a number of heritage railways before being acquired by the London Docklands Development Corporation as an example of a twentieth century industrial steam locomotive and it was displayed at the site of the former Beckton Gas Works, once the largest producer of 'Town Gas' in Europe".

The London Borough of Newham bought Robert in 2000 and they moved the 80-years-old steam-locomotive in front of Stratford Station. Eight years later, it was shunted off to the East Anglian Railway Museum at Chappel and Wakes Colne, near Colchester, where it was cleaned and repainted.

Fetter Lane, c. 1910

Fetter Lane, c. 1910

Walls Ice Cream Vendor, c. 1920

Walls Ice Cream Vendor, c. 1920

The Taste of the Tube

All Londoners are familiar with the London Underground. The delays, the temperature and the smell are the most frequently complains. But there is a 54 years old man, James Wannerton, who has a particular relationship with the Tube and its stations because he is synesthetes.

The synaesthesia, as it is defined by the Oxford dictionary, is a neurological condition in which "the production of a sense impression relating to one sense or part of the body by stimulation of another sense or part of the body".

In other words, James's senses get mixed up and these are some of his experiences.

                  

Tottenham Court Road Station

This picture, taken in Tottenham Court Road Station, represents a small part of one of the 1000 square metres of mosaic designed by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi.