ISSUE 3 2011


NEWS ANALYSIS/CLASSIFIEDS Any old iron


Back to Britain, now and fast- forward a few thousand years for some more railway history to FBJ’s editorial base in Purley, south London. One of the town’s few genuinely historic monuments here is the site of the Surrey Iron Railway, the world’s first public line, opened in around 1803. A couple of lengths of rail and sleepers have been railed off in


the local park – lovingly preserved by Croydon Council under several inches of dead leaves


- and I


managed to inveigle my Other Half into taking a short stroll there a couple of Sundays ago. “I suppose they had sad-case train spotters like you even 200 years ago,” she said, a touch tartly I thought, when I showed her what I’d dragged her across town to see.


Caravan club


A Lithuanian entrepreneur believes he has found the answer to a housing shortage in Poland – with a little help from PD Ports. In the current harsh economic climate, many Poles cannot afford bricks and mortar and have been forced to consider alternatives such as caravans. Time was when many British towns and cities had their own permanent caravan site – these were people who lived there 365 days a year, not holidaymakers. The small town in North Wales where I grew up had one – and we were definitely not on the tourist trail. Us kids actually thought


That sinking feeling


‘Ship sinks in harbour’ is not a headline any manager wants to wake up to, but it happened to Transport Malta’s ports chief officer David Bugeja recently. However, shock and disbelief quickly turned to amusement on closer inspection. The port of Valletta in Malta was in the process of handling its first large oil rig. When these huge structures need to be moved around the world,


they travel on a specialised


submersible vessel which draws up alongside the rig; the cargo- carrying part of the vessel is then submerged so that the rig can be floated on to it. The submersible


On the right lines?


The road sign pictured would suggest that either something very strange is going on in south-west London or that there is something equally odd happening in Malta. Actually, it’s the latter. Some years ago, archaeologists uncovered some mysterious rocks covered in parallel scratchings


in different parts of the island, but the largest was in the Dingli area in the north of the island. No one knew what they were; the only thing that could be said with any certainty is that they are thousands of years old. Various theories have been advanced, but the most popular and frequently espoused one is that this was the world’s first railway. No one though has yet explained why the ancients should be in the habit of trundling large heavy objects about on grooved tracks for unknown purposes, nor why they needed quite so many tracks so close to each other.


Having seen the scratchings for myself, I think it’s rather jumping to


conclusions. Perhaps they


just liked carving lines on rocks in those days – it seems as good a way as any of passing a few millennia and probably a lot more interesting than sudoko puzzles. I suppose one of the best things being an archaeologist


about


is that, until they come up with a reliable time machine, no one can conclusively prove you wrong.


No matter, expat Brits quickly dubbed the Dingli lines ‘Clapham Junction’ and the name has stuck ever since.


vessel then fully re-emerges from beneath the water and the whole ensemble goes on its way. So the headline writer was technically right – but omitted to mention that the ‘sunken ship’ was due to re-emerge from beneath the water in around 48 hours. Let’s hope the local reporters are a bit better clued up now that the port’s second such operation is underway.


living in a caravan was rather cool, though no doubt anyone who had to endure a Welsh winter in the badly insulated caravans of the 1960s found that was all too literally true. Anyway, enter Tomas Kučinkas, originally from Vilnius, and who trained as a doctor before launching his lucrative business venture to export second hand British mobile homes to Poland. He buys caravans from suppliers in the north of England and sells them direct to the end user via his yard in Gdansk. The first shipload of 24 caravans left Hull in mid- May.


Striding out


CEVA Logistics may describe themselves as one of the world’s leading supply chain companies, but they are not above helping out at a much more local level. The company helped keep thirst at bay for fundraising walkers in the London Moonwalk, held through the night on 14 and 15 May 2011, with walkers striding out from Hyde Park to raise cash for breast cancer care.


This year’s event saw 15,000 Perverse


A sad and sorry tale reaches us from darkest Kent, where Davies Turner Southern’s former company cashier has just been sent down for three years for systematically defrauding his employer of £250,000 over 10 years, according to local press reports. John Schembri devised a sophisticated system to cover the


Incognito


It’s good to see that the BBC is striving hard to protect companies from becoming embroiled in controversial topics. In the recent Panorama programme on illegal waste exports to Africa (page 3), the editing suite had gone to great


lengths to fuzz out the name of a company whose containers appeared in shot (not that the programme levelled any specific criticisms at any shipping companies). Had they taken out a super-injunction, we wonder? Given the line’s quite


distinctive box colour scheme, we rather doubt that they were fooling anybody. Of course as a responsible newspaper, we must respect their privacy, so we won’t be telling you who they are. (By the way, the programme is available to view on BBC iPlayer.)


theft before he was finally rumbled by the forwarder’s foreign accounts supervisor after a discrepancy. Suspicions were aroused in 2008 by a cheque for only £1,800.


The 43-year old had got into


trouble with loan sharks but Judge Michael Carroll also rapped him for spending around £500 on a Crystal


Palace season ticket which, he said, could not be regarded as one of life’s necessities. “It is not supermarket shopping for five mouths to feed,” he was reported to have said. “It is an absolute luxury.”


I could certainly think of better things to spend £500 on. Like a Charlton season ticket.


power walking women, “and some very courageous men” sporting colourfully decorated bras and walking 26, or 13, miles across London overnight. CEVA organized the distribution of bottled water and fruit at refreshment stations along the route. “We have managed the distribution of refreshments at this event for the past six years,” explains Ceva’s senior general manager, Alan Bell. “It involves distributing 40,000


bottles of water and 100 boxes of fruit to refreshment stations along the route. We also collect the tables, empty bottles and unused fruit afterwards, returning it to Hyde Park. It’s a fantastic event to be involved in, good fun and a great atmosphere.” CEVA also


manages the


kitbag operation for the London Marathon, which involves the safe keeping and reuniting of 35,000 bags with the runners.


Paul McGrath, general manager at Hull Container Terminal operator PD Ports said the entrepreneur was looking for a logistics firm able to handle this delicate freight, and transport it safely by ship to its final destination in Poland, plus dockside space to store them before shipment. He added that the unusual cargo demonstrated PD Ports ability to diversify away from handling bulks and containers, and to take advantage of key sectors in the region. Hull has long been a centre for manufacturing of touring caravans, motor homes and mobile homes.


Actually,


36


the Surrey Iron


Railway was never a great commercial success. Potential freight customers baulked at the high tariffs and the need to invest in specialised equipment (namely carts with the wheels the right distance apart to fit the 3’6” plate rails). Not a bit like today’s modern freight railway, then.


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