john_meffen :: Blog

I was strolling through my local cemetery the other day looking for the graves of old Falkirk Football Club players [as I am wont to do] when I stumbled across an interesting gravestone. 

For many this seems quite unremarkable, a family grave with an added inscription for a son who died while off fighting for his country during the 'Great War' but all is not what it seems. The date and location are too problematic for that.

Now we were all taught about the First World War in school [well at least I was] about how Germany, looking to expand its borders was feeling encircled by the 'Triple Entente' of France, Russia and Great Britain, and backed the Austro-Hungarian Empire in its invasion of Serbia as a means to encourage a war with Russia without involving Britain and France.

We now know that did not happen and a chain of events lead to a large [mainly] European War drawing in Belgium, Italy and the Ottoman Empire, ending [as we are reminded every year] at 11 o'clock on the 11th of November 1918.

Now look at that inscription again -

"who died on Service at Archangel, Russia, 31st October, 1918"

Before the Armistice, fine, two allied combatants, fine. so ......

If you remember your other history, the Russian government was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution, October of 1917 that is [well it was actually in November as the Russians used a different callendar]. Immediately the new Soviet government started negotiating a peace with Germany. In December 1917 the two sides agreed a peace with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and the Soviet Union withdrew from the War.

Not so clear cut a gravestone anymore, the date is nearly a year after the Soviet neutrality. There were no German, Turkish or Austrian troops anywhere near Arkhangelsk throughout the war [the closest agressors were Finnish Nationalist troops who were funded by Germany] but that was very far away.

So how can this be explained. The truth is simple Orwellianism. A re-writing of the details of the 'Great War'. Anti-Bolshevik counter-reactionaries [the White Russians] had rebelled in the Caucasus [funded by Britain], and in order to aid this, on May 23rd 1918 Britain sent an invasion force to Arkhangelsk, soon to be followed by several thousand US troops, with the intention of taking the Russian northern ports of Arkhangelsk & Murmansk, before driving south to Petrograd.

British troops remained in the northern Soviet Union until November of 1919, when they finally withdrew.

As to why it is no longer taught at school, I can not say. But I suspect that some people might think that the invasion [without declaration of war] of a war-weary, but most importantly neutral, country in order to overthrow that country's government might be seen as immoral, bellicose and possibly quite illegal.

This possibly explains why there is discord between the history now taught about the 'First World War' of 1914-18 and those War Memorials which were erected before somebody decided to re-write history. Such as the Falkirk War Memorial, Camelon Road, with a slightly different date.

To some of us this is a bit of a given, but to others not so given. I was reminded to write this post because of a conversation about a former client's site I had with @Scott_McLay [no names, those who know, know]. The client had a HUGE site [and I mean HUGE [no I seriously mean GIGNTOR]], and we were joking about the possible amount of search terms for this one site [...on a Tuesday ... in a leap year … in 2069 … only if dinosaurs have come back] anyway, occasionally goggle would give it a spanking.

The thing was that any natural links would go [naturally] to the home page, so we had to make some deep links. But where to start? Of course, what we did was what the client asked/told us, but it makes me think. I automatically prefer deep links, but when a site is too HUGE it can dilute your efforts, so that you can never effectively target your keywords.

To me, [falkirkirkhistorian.blogspot.co.uk] it means little, I have some fifty-odd deep pages, and my site is not commercial so I don't really care. But I know that e-commerce sites care, and I know that it is important to goggle.

Hmm, if you are still building links to the homepage it had better be a very new site, or you want to find a new job.

John Meffen

Many people in the world of SEO [Search Engine Optimisation] try to come across as if they are good at their job, as if they are clever, as if they have a secret that separates them from the rest of those working away. But it comes down to puting links on the internet [just like Matt Cutts & google told you], okay there is a bit of relevancy, key word research, content and re-writing meta information involved, but that would mean nothing without the links.

The simplest of facts is that the same places to get links are available to everyone [unless you are buying links where some people have more money than others ...], so why the bull***t hierarchy? Yes, there are different techniques, yes, some people have access to better links than others and some people have been doing this longer than others ..... But this is not a difficult job, "puting links on the internet" FFS. There are decisions to be made, about where to put a link, where to point it, which type of link to make, we are adults, we can make such choices on relevant circumstances. But that don't make it hard.

SEOs are horrible cliquey people, they hang about in SEO conferences talking about Google Updates or about Click Through Rates or about Bounce Rates, all the time forgetting that there is nothing special about SEO, YOU PUT LINKS ON THE INTERNET, it is easy … Stop thinking it is special, it is mainly about just getting down to the task : building links.

Lets get over this nonsense superiority complex, SEO is just another industry, working on the internet instead of the physical world. If you work in this industry [as I said] google has already told you how to do it : make sure your site is error free; have interesting stuff on your site, fix your meta info and …... BUILD SOME LINKS.

If you didn't guess I don't always get along with the rest of the SEO world all of the time....

Over the weekend myself and some friends [@nickduddy, @michaelkebriggs, @SEOzz0r & @me] scooted off to Manchester to Tricky live in concert at the Manchester Academy, heading down on Saturday and back up again on the Sunday.

There is not much I can say of interest about the journey down, we stopped at Gretna Services [meh], and got ready for the long route of the M6 through the North of England. Apart from the Domino Pizza Factory in Cumbria there is a whole load of not much to see on that stretch [at least you get the windfarms on the Scottish leg]. Arriving in Manchester was easy, getting into the bizarrely 70s Picadilly Hotel was convoluted [not helped by the Manchester city centre traffic system] but we got there.

After a beer or two we set off in search of Chinatown for pre-gig dinner [I hear they used to call it pre-theatre]. A bit of umming and awing looking at menus in windows and it was decided that we would go for Red & Hot for a bite. I chose the Gong Bao Chicken with Peanuts, and it was rather spicy, but it would seem nowhere near as hot as the Szechuan Fish that SEOzz0r had as he resembled a chap trying to contain a low level nuclear detonation after a couple of mouthfuls [admittedly it sems he seems to have consumed some whole chillis early on], the other two had Szechuan beef [I think]. It was good fun and we furthered the cause of the Scottish Gweilo cause by miles amongst the Manc Chinatown massive, I think :/

After realising that we actually had no idea where this Academy place was a taxi was in order [guess what? It was right near the University :s], after running the gauntlet of touts and a pint the next quest was to find out how the Hell you actually get in the venue, I think we walked all the way round the building and up several blind alleys before finding the door. Inside the Student Union bar I think I was most taken with the fact that everyone was hooked on watching Dale Winton's somethingorother on the TV rather than, well anything else.

The gig itself was alright [apart from some random rappers who did a tune], it was the album Maxinquaye and luckily most of the record is sung by Martina Topley Bird, because I get the feeling that the copious amounts of "smoking" that Tricky has been up to over the years is starting to take its toll [his mental recall of the lyrics seems to be going]. But he is allowed, he is cool, and seriously has one of the best voices I have ever heard, it is a great record, and it was an event.

After the gig @SEOzz0r was discreetly left behind [chatting with a rather attractive young lady] whilst the rest of us headed back into town for some post-concert refreshment. All I can say is that my idea of relaxation is different from that of @nickduddy & @michaelkebriggs [yes there was a gay bar involved] before shortly retiring to the hotel where me & Duddy talked rubbish for a bit before sleep.

The next morning and the Manc rain had returned in full force, so it was a quick, check that @SEOzz0r had not been sold off into white slavery then offski to get a decent breakfast inside us at the Koffee Pot [Irish Breakfast [real white pudding] #nom] then to try to get back to the Sunshine of Scotland. Having got most of the way home the Duddmobile [now dubbed the Trabant] broke in spectacular fashion on the M6 somewhere in Cumbria, nr Kendal [we were in two cars [Smoking & Non-Smoking]] so an afternoon of waiting about until the AA guy [older Stewart Lee???] finally said nah after two and a half hours, so we detoured to Tebay [yeah where?] all piled into the one remaining car and finally did the final leg home.

It was, all in all, a good weekend [apart from the lack of my fave Manc SEO ....] The Guilty Parties:

Michael Briggs

Nick Duddy

Ian McCartney

John Meffen

This post is not really about anything just prompted by the reportage that my Member of Parliament was allegedly out fighting in a bar in the Houses of Parliament last night.

Nice Tweeting a couple of days ago!

Ok, who's the hardest boxing correspondent in the country? There's only one way to find out.....

— Eric Joyce MP (@ericjoyce) February 20, 2012

Setting a great example.

John Meffen

As everybody knows, my weekends are high-flying, jet-setting, extravagent, international events not far away from those experienced by all the glitterati, no wait, that is somebody else completely, that is somebody who has an interesting life, and is in fact nobody I know .....

Lets start all over again, my weekends involve computer games, spreadsheets DVDs and red wine [probably smoke too much as well], so for a change on Saturday afternoon I went out for lunch with my mum. I like to mix it up when I go out to eat, so this time we decided to go to a chinese restaurant roughly in between where we stay. The Taiyuan [sorry site is still 'under construction' give it time] in Weir Street, Falkirk. In between talking too much about absolutely nothing interesting I had Barbequed Pork Ribs and Kon Siu Beef [hot & sweet sauce with peppers & onion] from the set lunch menu [I picked the Kon Siu because I had never heard of it!!] I give it a big #Nom.

My mother had a vegetable satay [:(], but hey, we don't all just choose whatever we have never had. It was moderately well-priced, not cheap, but not I watering, and the staff were very helpful, I definitely enjoyed myself. May even go again some time.....

After that, I returned to my flat to my usual attempts to win the Scottish League with East Stirlingshire/ Domination of Medieval Europe by Scotland/Make a database system that works properly, followed by watching some favourite zombie movies. Sorry to bore you but, hey most of us do have really boring lives.

John Meffen

In this post by referring to PageRank I am not talking about that silly little green bar on your browser, I mean the algorithm that drives google's results: when I refer to the little green bar [or as my best friend Michael Briggs puts it 'Magic Pixie Dust'] I will use TBPR.

Oh, and for the purposes of this post I am not particularly interested in the internet [or even the WWW] but will focus solely upon the google index.

I often think about PageRank [it is a big part of my job], but recently I somewhat stumbled into a new concept for me: that any site with a good enough backlink profile ought theoritically eventually gain the maximum PageRank attainable... Unless PageRank recalibrates itself with every iteration of the algorithm.

I was thinking about the BBC website at the time, and it struck me that the pages which had permanent links on the BBC homepage, and had sitewide links from the whole BBC domain really should be catching up with and equalising with the homepage on their TBPR [given that the BBC has one of the best deep link ratios out there], but we all know that this is not the case.

Then it struck me that if you widen it from the BBC to the whole google index then nearly every half decent linkbuilder could get a link from a page only a couple of steps along the Markov Chain from a TBPR10 page, therefore eventually all these pages must become TBPR10, no? [given my poor understanding of that mathematical model]

Now, I don't know if you have noticed, but this is not happening, not even with some of the oldest domains in the index, sites which have not built upon the strengths of yesteryear have fallen behind [myspace anyone?]. This could, of course, be put down partially to negative signals through lowering of link velocity, but I don't think so [I could be wrong though].

It seems more likely to me that the sites google sees as more important [BBC/CNN/Google/wikipedia] have continued to grow in strength, but since it is impossible grow above a maximum [the theoretical PageRank 10], then google must recalibrate the differences between the sites all the time to maintain the balance between "authority", the "well linked" and the rest.

This has one major problem [if I am correct] and that is that every iteration of the algorithm makes it more and more difficult for new sites to become authority domains, but that is not what this post is about, so.....

PS
Sorry if someone else has written about this [no doubt more clearly than I] but I am yet to read your thoughts.

These are just my thoughts on a subject I am dailly involved with, I am not an expert, just a bloke who works in search marketing

John Meffen

Me and a good friend went to see our beloved Falkirk FC win in the Stirlingshire Cup last week, it was, I can say a great night, yes both clubs played very young teams but I am always of the opinion that games like these are always worth the effort.

Many people have put forward the idea that the Stirlingshire Cup [and other county cups of its type] has run its course, but I say the competition gave Falkirk the opportunity to blood many young players [I posted the entire cup on my other blog, if you want to see], when that would be almost impossible during the regular season.

Anyway, we have been playing in the Stirlingshire Cup since 1882, and I don't see why we shoud quit just because it has become slightly less popular of late, I do believe it is the second oldest cup in the World still played for every year [after the Scottish Cup], but I might be wrong.

Not much else to say just now, so later

John Meffen

Oops I was told to say hi to my mate Marcello who writes a blog about cartoon characters, hey Marcello.

Well, on Sunday, I ticked another couple of things off my theoretical list of things to do [not necessarily before I die, if I do it later I'm not too fussed], Sunday I both went to another place I had never been, and I went to one of the few remaining Scottish League grounds I had not yet visited. I went to Galabank, Annan.

Now I am a sad nerd in many ways, but I am not one of those people who has to go to every ground ever. I would like to go to every ground, but with one proviso: Falkirk FC has to be playing, sorry I don't see the point of Berwick v Montrose [unless you are a Berwick or Montrose fan]. No, I don't have a list [outside of my head] of grounds I have been to, I don't rate grounds out of ten, I don't know the date [or even the season] of when I went where. No, football and new things are just ephemeral pleasures to me, to be done in a moment, not to be collected.

Strange thing to say for a dedicated Falkirk FC Historian, but I compartmentalise the old stuff and the now [I historianise about things so removed from the games I enjoy [and so often suffer] that they are almost two different sports to me] Anyway Galabank was nice [I have always liked grounds like this from the first time I went to an away match at Brechin][I would call it unpretentious but don't want to sound patronising]. The officials seemed genuinely happy to have the Bairns at their ground, the Social Club was friendly in a way you don't see in the upper echelons of Scottish Football anymore. The size of the ground seems no larger than a town the size of Annan would need [it may be difficult to expand if the club finds success [but don't start me on the stupidity of the minimum seating rules of the SPL]] and it was all in all a good game of football.

Don't get me wrong, I have been to Camp Nou, I appreciate huge stadia, but Barcelona the city deserves, and demands that kind of stadium, no one could argue that anywhere in Scotland needs stadia such as that.

On the field of play Falkirk, even with our inexperienced team, dominated the first half [full time players against part timers & amateurs .....] scoring thrice [Mark Millar and Farid el Allegui [2]], In the second half Falkirk attacked less and let Annan more into the match [yet no second half goals were scored] so it ended 3-0 to God's own children. I am getting increasingly worried about 'Big Farid' I think that is now 14 goals this season: if he doesn't stop scoring someone else will nick him and we will have to go find a youth to replace his goals [which although youth has served Falkirk FC well, cannot be relied on forever].

Also, on the way back from the match, we stopped off at the big "generic supermarket" in Lockerbie: another one ticked of the list [that is new place, not supermarket [they already have several in Falkirk, with, seemingly, another coming in Camelon.]]

John Meffen

I don't eat out in my home town of Falkirk very often, because frankly, I have a flat where I can eat for much, much cheaper. But there are times when I have to, generally because I am going to meet my mum, and to be honest my flat is not the kind of place I would entertain my Mum. So on Sunday since I hadn't seen her in a while me and my Mum met somewhat in between where we live and went to Falkirk's fantastic noodle bar Sumo.

I must say, that I absolutely love noodles, I seriously don't know what the human race did before the invention of noodles, and I don't just mean great noodles like the Chicken Yakisoba I had on Sunday, and they were great... I even mean your common or garden SuperNoodles. They just seem to be the perfect food. Oh and the waitresses are cute too.

Thanks to Urbanspoon for pointing this Noodle Bar out to the World

Urbanspoon Rocks

Yesterday, [Tue 20th Sept 2011] I was off to Glasgow, seeing some of the events for SMW proudly sponsored by them kids I used to work for Equator (Scotland), it was interesting enough, can't say I learned all that much, but I don't think these things are for that [nobody will give away fantastic secrets] it is still a bit of a general get together.

One of the main reasons that I didn't get all that much was because Ian McCartney's talk on blogging was fully booked out and i was too lazy to sign up weeks ago, the other problem being that the Skypark [where much of it was held] is a bit like a fully enclosed world of its own, making it very difficult to get about if you don't know where you are going.

I missed @martinwjordan's talk on Social Media and SEO because I couldn't organise myself properly if I had unlimited time to do so, which is a shame because he gave me a shout out.

Later I watched @Jamesjefferson's talk which was very interesting on ways to catch the popular imagination, now that traditional media and advertising no longer have the same place as they once did.

However best was Garry' interesting talk about black hat techniques in twitter, which although nobody should copy, I like him believe that black hatters and spammers can teach the rest of us a few tricks, they push the boundaries, and show what can and can not be done to get a bit of a competitive edge out there.

And of course it was great to see @MrAMcDonald and some other well kent faces while I was about.

There are plenty of events for people interested in the world of Social Media, check out the schedule, both at the Equator site, and at the  main SMW site. 

2011 has been a year of turmoil for that behemoth of search engines: google. For those who are not involved in the world of SEO [or searchengineology as I like to put it [glibly]], very little will have changed, yes for the sharp-eyed, google now has a black task bar across the top of the page, but for those of us that the changes in google affects [seriously] our jobs, it is as if google has changed greatly.

Where to start, there was first the famous [well to us anyway] Panda update [originally called 'farmer update' but lets gloss over that], this was quite simply a change in the way google calculated the importance of websites with a lot of duplicate and [quite simply] rubish content on them, there are a lot of article bins out there who were willing to allow almost anything to be added to their site as it gave google a lot of text to crawl and at the same time gave them revenue via advertising. Later google deprecated google translate: no good reason was given, however I suspect it was due to many people auto-translating pieces of text from english, into **** and back into English [or perhaps into another language before back to English] in order to change the text enough to avoid duplicate content issues [google was never that stupid that it worked anyway, but at least this might limit the amount of rubbish on the web], at the same time as translate, google announced the deprecation of google blogsearch, again no reason was given, I personally thought it was rubbish [picking up too many websites [ie not blogs] probably because of pings from sites made with WordPress].

The other month google released google+ [allegedly its answer to the rise of social networking sites], factually it is the fastest growing social network ever [of course, facebook was limited to students of certain Universities during its formative years], although google+ is only available by invitation, google+ this means it is only open to anybody who happens to know somebody else. But here it is, Google+ started at roughly the time the arrangement between google and twitter [to allow people's tweets be included in google's little used real-time search facility] ended, soon after, surprise, surprise google shut down real-time search. Of course now people can independently add their own tweetfeed to their google+ account, relieving google of the necessity of dealing directly with the opposition.

The other week, without warning, google deleted the entire google directory [no reason given] and announced the closing of google labs: google labs may not have been great but it allowed people to experiment and refine ideas, and it allowed google users to play with those ideas and give their thoughts.

And within a second of google having its own social network, there is now a chrome extension [available from google, but it must be said not made by them] which allows you to tweet and share on facebook [I think that is the verb] direct from google+ without ever having to leave google.com. This is the crux: google is the most visited domain on the internet, but by its very nature users do not stay there, now people can stay enjoying the tweets & facebook shares, you see it is all about google ads......

Lenzie is a bit of a mythical place to me, I mean, I have never been wholly convinced that it really exists. To me Lenzie is just a name on the train to Glasgow, it goes like something like - This is the train to Glasgow: calling at Croy, Lenzie, Bishopbriggs and terminating at Glasgow Queen Street.

For no good reason I have been in Croy, and I have been in Bishopbriggs but I have never had the occasion to turn up in the [mythical] town [village? I really don't know] of Lenzie, I don't know if there is anything there, I have never met anybody from the place, it is just an occasional stop on the way to Glasgow [that I often don't even notice as I'm stuck in a book].

This is important to me as one of my favourite programmes on the radio is the fantastic Fags, Mags & Bags on Radio 4 & 4extra, and too often the continuity anouncers state that it is set in Glasgow, which for me [and I hope for the writers too] completely misses the point of setting it in Lenzie. Glasgow [lets face it] comes with a lot of baggage, but even most people in Scotland [never mind the whole UK] will think of Lenzie rarely, so will have few preconceptions, except that it is another of those countless Central Belt towns [perhaps with a slight west-coast slant] that all sort of merge into one another.

So come on BBC, please pay attention to the writers, they possibly thought for a while about the setting, and some of the listening public [well me anyway] will listen to the programme in a completely different way with Lenzie in mind in place of [insert random Glasgow district here].

Sorry, sometimes I just go off on random streams of thought.

John Meffen

I know this isn’t the sort of thing I usually write about, but the prize for this competition is too good to miss out on – an all-inclusive trip to Cuba! I don’t know who I’d take [don’t suppose my mother would be up for such a trip …] but definitely worth a shot anyway. So I’m blogging for a chance to win a trip to Cuba with On the Beach! Check out their competition at the On the Beach blog. This blog will be on the topic of saving money on holiday.

1. Airline charges – some airlines charge £5 or more per person for a single journey [so there and back … cheeky] if you use a standard debit or credit card. These charges can be easily avoided by using a Visa Electric debit card or a prepaid Mastercard.
2. Buying essentials – if you’re travelling in the Eurozone make sure to buy before you fly. Most essential items are cheaper in the UK than anywhere else in the world apart from the US so try not to forget anything [although if you want to buy speedos, apparently it’s cheaper in Germany.]
3. Sun tan lotion – stock up before you fly and don’t feel that just because a particular brand is more expensive that you’ll be better protected. The amount of protection you can get from some supermarket own brand lotions ranks alongside more expensive brands.
4. Food and drink at the airport – either pack a lunch before you head for the airport or buy food and drink at the airport duty free. Don’t buy your food or drink on the plane as with a captive audience many unscrupulous airlines will inflate their prices [and the portions are usually pathetic too.]
5. School holidays – avoid travelling when British schools are on holiday and also check when the school holidays for your destination of choice are too. Peak season tends to end when the kids go back to school, so if you travel afterwards you’ll find accommodation rates are a lot cheaper.

I never thought much ever happened in Falkirk [in fact I know that little does], but since venturing out into this little world I have been surprised about how many of my fellow bairns are out there.

For a while I have been trying to depose another John Meffen who was top of google for my ego surf, he had a big head start, as he had written a book, and was on Amazon etc, I think my facebook is just about beating him now :). But I have another competition with a fellow Bairn, my Falkirk FC Blog and Scott McLay's Blog are going to see who can top google blogs for generic Falkirk terms, I think I'll win because by nature I have to mention the club several times in every post [and I get more natural links] but he is good at what he does.

We'll see, but remember there are more than just the two of us out there. 

As is wont, I took my mother out for luncheon on Sunday, I had intended to take her out to the new Thai resteraunt but, for some reason they don't open on a Sunday until half five, so instead we headed off to La Banca, the Tapas restaurant in Vicar's Street.

To be honest, I really shouldn't have done so [but I just love sausage], I had the Chorizo Frito al Vino [Chorizo lightly fried in a red wine sauce] I could feel the myocardial infarction coming, it was gloriously rich. My mother had the Morcilla [Morcilla is a North-Eastern Spanish version of black pudding, but soooooo much better], and for such rich food the only way known to man to break it down is the old vino tinto [as recommended by the 'mediterrainian diet']. The mother said the Shiraz is better than the Tempranillo, but that was her opinion, I didn't try the Shiraz, still I don't get why there was no rioja on the wine list [I love rioja].

So after the meal we got a bottle of wine and chatted about this and that, nice atmosphere, good food, I would heartily recommend it, just it would probably be better if you have something more varied than just chorizo and wine, for your own good. John Meffen

Well, I have left my current post, and shall be transfering my services to another company, me doing much the same thing [I think]. I must admit to a great deal of trepidation, but I cannot say that I regret it. At first I wondered a lot about whether I was doing the right thing, but eventually it made sense. To say the least it was made obvious to me during my period of notice, backing up my perceptions after another colleague was, somewhat, stung [could have used a bad word] on his last day.

I don't know yet if I will like my new place [I know that there are better coffee places in the immediate vicinity], the few people I have met from there seem nice enough ... I don't know [really] what the expectations will be, it seems that a certain level of skivery is the done thing at my last place, which [of course] attracts me, but I don't think that will be allowed anymore ...

I'm up for it all the same, serious SEO interests me greatly, SEO as a second thought irritates me, simplistic SEO simply infuriates me [link building is not the be all and end all of SEO], ah well, I suppose it was a square peg/round hole thing.

Of course, now I have three weeks to twiddle my thumbs, gaze at my navel, XXXX with my XXXX, if I had any sense I would go to the library and get on with my book, but I might just get drunk [no, I still have a week of my train pass left, I think I will be visiting the Mitchell a couple of times, never mind the splendour of Falkirk Library]

So, all in all, I am glad to get out of where I was, it just ought to have been quicker, for the benefit of all three parties.

John

I have just read a book [well pamphlet would be a better description] about something very close to my life. It was called "This Magnificent Line" by Allan P. McLean and it was a history of the Edinburgh-Glasgow Glasgow-Edinburgh main line [the one that goes through Falkirk High that is]. It is close to my life because every working day of my life I trudge up that hill [well actually sometimes I can't be bothered and get a slower train from Falkirk Grahamston] and get on this 'thing' that is more than 150 years old now at least [the line is if not the infrastructure] #fingerscrossed.

Falkirk High Station A while back. 

© Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland; SC677885. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk. 

Don't think I'm some kind of trainspotter, I am sad in many ways, but not that way, I just like something about railways [not trains!]. There is very little I like in the world other than finding out that this or that is actually a dismantled railway [I can remember the joy when I found the overgrown mound of grass that was at one point the platform at Blackbraes Station [a mineral railway, but a railway all the same]], anyway, to get to the point, there were photographs in the book, and I can get nostalgic at times, so I thought I'd check this site for old pictures of Falkirk railway stuff [or is that pictures of old Falkirk railway stuff [*shrug*]].

Blackbraes when it was a thriving metropolis [sic]

© Falkirk Museums. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk.

A railway station for California [the proper California, that is] who'd have thunk it?

John