The London Horse Drawn Tram

Looking back over the years at a few visits to Caister Castle in Norfolk.

This was taken in 1981. From somewhere the castle - they have a large motor museum - had acquired a London horse drawn tramcar. In fairly poor condition, it had been severely chopped about with the driver's platform removed along with the brakes and the entire top deck folded flat with a tarpaulin over it. It looked as though someone had saved it from disappearing altogether by using it as a shed...

Every bit of paint had worn away and the woodwork was in a state of distress. It needed a lot of work to restore it.

The next time I remember seeing it was ten years later in 1991. A superb restoration job had been done on it. The driver's platform, controls and staircase had been replaced and the top deck had been opened up. The woodwork had been restored and the whole given a brilliant paint job of red and cream with gold striping over the red.

A few weeks ago we were back in Norfolk and we visited the castle again. The motor museum has grown in size but I wanted to see the tram to see how it had fared after another twenty odd years had gone by.

It is now housed under shelter, which is good. It looks as though it could do with a tidy up - years spent out in the open never does anything to help the brightness of red paint whether on a tramcar, a motor car, or a house! It has to be expensive to try to maintain anything of this age in anything like good condition and Caister has a massive collection of cars, a Welsh mining locomotive and, let's not forget, a 15th century moated castle with a 100 foot tower that is still sturdy enough for visitors to climb.

Big Ben The Pinball

Here's an entry to tie together a couple of previous themes.

We've had a few entries, with more to come, of our 1995 London Trip and I also mentioned helping the Pinball Owners' Association put together a pinball convention in the same year. This Big Ben pinball links them nicely as the photo was taken at the convention and features the famous clock tower in London. It is, of course, the bell that tolls the hour that is Big Ben, not the tower itself, which is St Stephen's Tower.

The pinball was from the pre-electronic days of pinball, so is a 1970s game and was in tip top condition having had a repaint and an excellent restoration. Sound effects were provided by a triple chime bar, sounding a bit like a doorbell but with different musical notes for the 1000s, 100s, and 10s reels. In fact later that year when we were restoring our own Lucky Ace pinball of 1976, we replaced the missing chime mechanism with a standard "Avon Calling" doorbell chime bars!

Coin Slot Machines Index