Aerial Photos

Another note on this subject... In LfV there is one poor aerial photo of the site credited to the US Army. There are surely a whole load more aerial photos around of the site given the richness of military targets.

Railway Society

There is a railway society in Sutton Coldfield. It seems to be more about modelling but this does seem to be backed up by a deep knowledge of railway history.

Mr Joseph Firbank

"Mr Firbank used, however, to say that, of all his contracts, this one [Walsall and Water Orton] gave him the most trouble and anxiety, on account of the vexatious and unnecessary interference of the Engineer - not one of the Midland Company's permanent officials - and his assistants, who, instead of doing all in their power to assist him in his labours - as other chief and resident engineers did - took every occasion to make suggestions, which were totally unnecessary, and added very heavily to the cost of the works. This conduct ultimately led to litigation, but, unfortunately, a clause in the specification appointed the Engineer sole arbitrator, without appeal from his decisions."

A sentence or two then describes Firbank's 'defeat' in court and he is criticised by the judges for signing such a claused contract before ending the entry with: "...a compromise arranged, which, if it did not give him his due, fully cleared him in the eyes of the Midland Directors, whose good opinion he valued very highly." The chief engineer on the line was, as we know, J Addison and the resident engineer was J Keen.

Firbank had previously had problems with co-workers and after a particularly bad partnership in the 1840s never worked in partnership again. His career was helped by the recommendation of renowned engineer Charles Liddell.

He was highly respected as an engineer and hard-worker, and had "sturdy independence and reliability. He would rise early, even before 5am, and be in his bed by 9pm. He thought more of his fellow workers if they adhered to the same lifestyle."

More 1st BPO

What was the structure that the photographer of the last one (184248) was standing on to get the height? Today it looks as though that something has been removed from here or is it from where the rail compound/yard is? Has part of the complex already been 'lost'?

Themes

Like the simplicity of this and how it allows for 'incremental build' - it gives us some stability so that we don't get bogged down in all the possibilities but does let a lot of stuff hover about until we need it. Imagine wormholes between the columns allowing for fetid seepages to pass to and fro.

The core is:

land
railway
postal

But these build so that it is more like:

land
land | railway
land | railway | postal

i.e. that the previous element is still there and we are building not just erasing. Obviously the previous state has been altered but its importance (and presence) remains in the physical and narrative sense.

Firbank trouble?

Like the idea of the landscape cancelled and then the idea of the switch of usage (in the case of the landscape) from commercial to residential.

Have almost finished Firbank's story. In very simple terms the Sutton Park Line was one of his worst projects and he ended up in court (not his fault it would seem). He started off in the pits in Co. Durham at the age of seven and then improved himself and gained great respect for his honesty and hard work.

'The Aesthetics of Decay'

"Displaced from familiarity and order, in the ruin, we encounter a place of desolation marked by ambiguity and indeterminacy. ...the ruin comes to be experienced, not as a temporally emplaced, but as haunted. The marginalizing of urban ruins has not meant that their history has ceased. Instead, we confront a place that intrudes upon the seamless present, disordering the unmarked line of time by invoking a spectral plane of uncanniness. Yet the persistence of the ruin is not a persistence of substantiality. The ruin is not the same as its previous (active) incarnation. Now, an altered place emerges, which retains the shadow of its old self, but simultaneously radically destabilizes that presence."

[Dylan Trigg: 'The Aesthetics of Decay' p.131]