Is it a giant turd? Is it Superman? No, it’s a train! Made entirely from bricks!

See, seriously. A train made from bricks, and all in the name of art apparently.

The brainchild of sculptor David Mach, the brick train cost around £760,000, contains 185,000 bricks and took 34 brickies a total of 21 weeks to build. Modeled on the 1938 record-setting “Mallard” steam train, the art work is presumably supposed to pay some sort of homage to Darlington’s rich railway heritage, but nevertheless caused controversy when it was unveiled in 1997.

Would any of you keen sightseers like to comment about what you think the artist was on, er… I mean, what the artist’s intentions were, when he decided to make this?

Here’s some more info, and a ground-level photo.

Thanks to Alex McGlashan.

This weekend, I was lucky enough to see the only flying Avro Vulcan in existence, yet Murphy’s Law dictated that my camera should under no circumstances work. So, whilst this post was to be interjected with marvelous self-made photography, it will instead attempt to use the imagery that Google provides.

Thankfully, you have been gamely notifying us of all the Vulcans you could find, and we have built up quite a collection. There are currently less than 20 survivors, mostly in the UK.

Firstly, at Southend Airport, the Avro XL426 was the 44th of the 88 delta-wing bombers that were built, and this one entered service in August, 1962.

Since 1986, this model has been taken under the wing of the Vulcan Restoration Trust, who dutifully care for the old bird, and occasionally taxi her up and down the runway to stretch her legs. According to submitter Mark, the best view is to be had from the train line that runs right beside the airport.

The XM603 sits rather forlorn at Woodford Airfield, near Manchester, the once gleaming paint tinting to a lifeless green hune.

Information on this one seems difficult to come by, but message board chatter from 2006 suggested that the relic was to be broken down to parts. In fact, her death only served to make others stronger, including the XH558! This photograph shows her final resting place.

Once the United Kingdom’s main deterrant against Cold War threat, armed with nuclear and, presumably, nerve pinch weaponry, the XL391 stands guard at Blackpool airport¹.

It was bought in 2004 on eBay for £15,102, but when the buyer realised he would have to pay another £20,000 to move it anywhere, they abandoned it where it was, sniff, scrapped in 2006.

If you live in the United States, there is one at Castle Air Museum in California, a roofed one at the Air and Space Museum in Nebraska² and finally one snuggled up next to a B-52 at Barksdale AFB, which also shows just how deceptively huge they are:

If you want to see the Vulcan flying, and happen to live near an airshow, there’s still a chance this year!

Thanks: Eddy Rhead, Adam Sadler, Steve Wrona, Tim and Mark

Way back in the 1910s and 20s, before radar had become a useful technology, Britain needed a way to try and detect incoming enemy aircraft. The solution was to build enormous concrete “listening ears” around the south coast of Britain, whose purpose was literally to “hear further”.

The most famous examples of these “acoustic mirrors” are the three at the former Royal Air Force base of Denge. The largest is more-or-less just a 60 m long curved wall.

The smaller two mirrors however, more closely resemble large satellite dishes on pedestals.

Believe it or not, the “listening ears” did actually work, although they were rather prone to error, due to it being difficult to hear the difference between incoming aircraft and passing boats.

As aircraft got faster, using the dishes as a warning system became much less practical, and when radar eventually matured, the huge listening ears were permanently discontinued.

Lots more information and ground level pictures on Andrew’s sound mirror page.

Thanks to jono.

It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. It’ll probably last about a week.

Lindisfarne is a tidal island, off the north-east coast of England, which thanks to having been home to a monastery since the 7th century AD, is also known as Holy Island.

The causeway that connects Lindisfarne to the mainland is flooded twice a day by the tide (you can see the tidemark on this section of the road), so drivers must be careful about when they start to cross. Refuge places are provided for the cars should they become stranded by quickly rising water.

Before the advent of cars those wishing to reach the monastery would have had to cross the sands on foot at low tide. Known as Pilgrim’s Way, we can see the markers that still define that path today, as well as small refuge boxes for those who choose a foolish time to attempt the walk.

Here’s the second refuge box on the Pilgrim’s Way, but following the markers along there are no people to be seen, probably because a large section of the path is under water.

Where the Pilgrim’s way finally meets land we find a nice modern-day maze of, er… something, and just south of here we finally come across the ancient ruins of the island’s monastery.

To the east of the monastery, we can also see the small Lindisfarne Castle and the old castle limekilns, which are in the care of the National Trust and open to visitors.

Elsewhere on the island there are monuments, some spectacular sections of coastline, lots of sand, and there’s even a lake for all you recursion junkies.

There’s more about the long history of Lindisfarne at Wikipedia, or have a look at this PDF of the island’s sights.

See also the previously featured Mont Saint Michel tidal island.

Especially for Spamboy.

Tinsley Viaduct is a two-tier road bridge in Sheffield, England; the first of its kind in the UK. It carries the M1 motorway over a 1033 metre section of the Don Valley, and is one of Sheffield’s most prominent landmarks. Sadly there’s not much to see from our viewpoint.

Fortunately for us however, the Tinsley Viaduct runs right past the Tinsley Towers, a fantastic pair of defunct cooling towers. Due to their extremely close proximity to the viaduct, they were left standing when the power plant they served was demolished in the 70s.

As it happens, “extremely close” is a bit of an understatement - the nearest tower stands only 12 metres from the M1!

Actually, “stood” is the correct term I’m afraid.

Following years of strengthening work to the viaduct (and presumably advances in demolition technology), the towers were finally brought down¹ in the early hours of Sunday the 24th August. You can watch a video of the spectacular destruction of the towers over at the BBC.

Thanks to Radio 2 and the ever informative Jonathan Rawle.

In the heart of the English countryside, running right down the middle of a field, is a densely packed residential street!

The Live Search Maps images of the same area shows the resident’s cars parked on the street - not many cars though, perhaps there are still properties for sale?

Things aren’t aren’t always as the seem however… zoom in a little closer and you can see that most of the houses only have a front half! Still, it seems like a nice area, so maybe you could forgive the lack of a a couple of rooms for the chance to own a home in such an idyllic location?

You should probably be aware however that if you were to move here, then there’s a fairly high chance that your car would be destroyed in a controlled explosion, as this fake street is in fact a top-secret international bomb-disposal training centre, known as “The Felix Centre”.

The name stems from the idea that bomb disposal experts must have 9 lives (like Felix the Cat) - the term having been first used to describe 321 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company, a division of the British Army who dealt with suspect packages in Northern Ireland.

The full story and aerial photos can be found at Alan Turnbull’s Secret Bases site.

For more like this, see our post from last year: Fake City (US Secret Service Training Facility).

At 6:45am this morning local time, fire fighters were called to a massive blaze taking place at the Weston-super-Mare Grand Pier.

Ironically, the fire service were having difficulty getting enough water to put out the blaze. As you can see in the above image, the pavilion is 800 metres out to sea, and to make matters worse, the tide was out when the fire began.

The pier was first opened in 1904, and was reopened in April this year after a massive revamp. As we’ve seen before it seems to be a tragically frequent occurrence that one of these historic structures burns down, and in fact the Grand Pier previously burnt down in 1930.

Now that the fire has been brought under control, it looks like the pavilion has been completely destroyed, but that the iron foundations of the structure are still standing. Hopefully for Weston-super-Mare someone will undertake the task of restoring the pier to its former glory.

Read more and watch a video at the BBC, see this gallery of pictures or read the pier’s Wikipedia page.

Rounding off our totally unplanned week of obscure towers is… Alton Towers, which is very obscure, being that it’s actually a theme park.

Located in the grounds of a former stately home in Staffordshire, England, Alton Towers opened as a theme park in 1980, and in 2007 it attracted 2.4 million visitors - making it the most visited theme park in the UK.

Alton Towers has a good history of fairly ground-breaking roller coasters, and they currently have 8 in total, including Air - the world’s first B&M flying roller coaster.

Nemesis was Europe’s first inverted roller coaster (Wikipedia).

Probably the best known to this day is Oblivion, the world’s first vertical drop roller coaster (Wikipedia), which opened in 1998 amidst a huge publicity campaign here in the UK. The coaster features a 55m near-vertical drop into a huge dark hole in the ground (ground-level pic).

Of course when I personally went to Alton Towers the first time (all the way back in 1986), the biggest name ride was the Corkscrew (Wikipedia). It’s the park’s oldest coaster, and sadly seems to be reaching the end of its lifespan - it looks likely to be replaced soon. You can clearly see where it gets its name in this image.

Alton Towers is open March to November, and given that the UK has some spectacular weather right now I imagine this weekend will see the 2 km² (500 acre) grounds full to bursting with people queuing for the 125 different rides.

More about Alton Towers, as ever, at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Andrew Senter and Andrew Checkley.