Ball of Confusion

What happened after George Stephenson departed Parkside and some background on one of the key players, Hulton of Hulton.

I first wrote this account in 2017 on the build2understand blog on Silvrback under the *nom de plume* ed3d. This version has not been further updated as yet. The markdown support also varies between platforms so there may be issues that need fixing. Please bear with me.

After the tragic death of Huskisson

Previously we looked at the events leading up to the accident to William Huskisson MP at Parkside during the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in 1830.

We will not follow Stephenson’s furious drive to Eccles with the mortally wounded Huskisson as this has been copiously documented by others. My assumption is that Stephenson had the welfare of his injured passenger paramount in his mind and took Northumbrian, its tender and the band car up the southern track with a minimum of delay.

Instead, we will focus on events back at Parkside. One can imagine the profound shock accompanying the instantaneous shift from an atmosphere of triumph to one of tragedy. Some have commented on the fact that it took 90 minutes to restart the procession and that this reflected the debate as to whether the remainder of the event should be cancelled.

The decision to continue to Manchester

Of course, the decision may have been made much faster than this but the trains still needed to be prepared in the light of the changed circumstances. What we know is that the first two trains drawn by Phoenix and North Star were coupled and collectively pulled the remainder of the ducal train on the adjacent track. However, as we saw previously, Phoenix was a full half-mile beyond Parkside and now had two trains, North Star and Rocket, between it and the ducal carriage.

From a logistical perspective it would have made sense for Stephenson to have taken the ducal train up to North Star before departing with Northumbrian but the decision to continue to Manchester had presumably not been made at that stage. Having the ducal train at the centre of the procession also made sense from the perspective of coordinating subsequent movements. The assistant engineers in charge of each train presumably made their way to Parkside to advise on options and make appropriate arrangements.

It would appear that Wellington and Peel, Home Secretary and a subsequent Prime Minister, were in favour of returning to Liverpool. In addition to concerns over propriety, Wellington was probably aware of the “mixed” reception that likely awaited him. The Directors on the other hand had invested both financially and psychologically in a successful launch and were conscious of the damage that might accrue from cancelling the remainder of the event. Although doubtless shocked by the accident, all would also be aware of the inherent dangers in older forms of transport. Stage-coaches overturned with alarming regularity as they sought to cut journey times and Peel, in fact, was ultimately to die in a fall from a horse. Wellington, of course, had seen much worse carnage during his military career.

The views of local men

The view of the Directors was supported by two locals, the Boroughreeve of Manchester, in 1830 one James Burt (not apparently Mr Sharpe as stated by Rolt and Ferneyhough), and local pit-owner and magistrate William Hulton of Hulton.

As magistrate, Hulton of Hulton had been responsible for the infamous Peterloo Massacre in 1819. Sabre-wielding cavalry were sent to reinforce local yeomanry supporting the arrest of speakers at a political rally in Manchester’s St Peter’s Field. The resulting deaths among members of the crowd led to widespread condemnation in the newspapers and a subsequent clampdown on press freedoms. The meeting was addressing electoral reform and little progress was made by Wellington’s administration subsequently, this being the slightly convoluted cause of Huskinsson’s departure from government two years previously.

Hulton of Hulton was congratulated by the establishment on his stance as magistrate on that fateful day and this may have added weight to his views at Parkside. He did, however, have a conflict of interest which is rarely mentioned, namely that he was the owner of a Stephenson-engineered railway, the Bolton & Leigh, that opened in 1828. This took coal from his pits near Bolton to the canal at Leigh as well as cotton in the reverse direction for the mills. It would later have a junction with the Liverpool & Manchester line and Hulton would also open a coalyard at Crown Street in Liverpool. His views being supported by the Boroughreeve, Wellington reluctantly acquiesced and the engineers could make their arrangements.

Planning train movements

Locke was arguably the senior engineer in Stephenson’s absence albeit that his relationship to the Company was tenuous following his critical report on the tunnel surveying. This had cast George in a poor light with predictable consequences. Thomas Longridge Gooch had acted as Stephenson’s personal assistant but the other Stephensons (both Roberts, one son, one brother of George) would doubtless have spoken for George. My guess, however, is that Locke or Gooch would have worked with Booth to plan movements. While doubtless shocked by the accident, they would have been well aware of the human cost to date of the railway in terms of navvies and railway staff killed and maimed. While Huskisson was doubtless a valued and respected friend, he rarely visited Liverpool and the accident was manifestly not the fault of the company.

The first engines in the procession, Phoenix (Robert Stephenson, son of George) and North Star (Robert Stephenson, younger brother of George), would have been best prepared (in terms of watering, oiling and fuelling) to make an early start with the ducal train. The fact that they were both in the lead and each pulling at least one more carriage than the others suggests that there was also greater confidence in their reliability and capacity compared to the other engines.

However, they (and hence the other five trains on the northern line) would have had to reverse by up to half a mile to return to Parkside, a time-consuming activity that might explain some of the 90 minute delay (which would also include getting errant passengers onboard and updating them).

Whether the watering etc of the later arriving trains had been completed at this stage is unclear. However, the combined train at the front would have been making much slower progress than hitherto so there was every likelihood that they would catch-up.

Onwards to Manchester

The progress to Manchester was a slower and significantly more sedate affair. Northumbrian was encountered at Eccles. Having already been to Manchester to collect surgeons and, more significantly, the materials and instruments required for an amputation (which never happened), it had returned and it now resumed its lead role with the ducal train.

Approximate timings for lead trains:

Departure Edge Hill: 11:00 Arrival Parkside: 12:00 Departure Parkside: 13:30 Arrival Manchester: 15:30

The ducal train would depart Manchester just after 16:30. For the remaining passengers, however, the most arduous part of the journey was still to come as we will see in Part 3.

Have now created separate blogs for the Auvers and Liverpool & Manchester Railway content. Possible I might also create blogs for OpenSim musing and general Liverpool history content while keeping this one as a more general journal. That would make up the quota of five.

Getting to grips with moving blogs from sites that don’t support export. One good reason to be here. Have settled, at least for the time being, on the excellent Tufte theme. Also need to rejig this blog to move the Auvers content to its own blog. This will remain as a personal blog.

OK, so with cross-posting to Mastodon set-up, the default is to cross-post even when the option is hidden, ie you have to reveal and untick the option. Also, need to consider (i) whether I need to have a general blog in addition to the history ones, (ii) whether the general one becomes my Fediverse account and I drop Mastodon per se. I have no particular interest in federating beyond there but at what level do I have a choice if I don’t run my own instance (I currently have Threads blocked and would likely do the same with BlueSky). Questions, questions…

Masters of the Air on AppleTV+ is as visually impressive and vicariously experiential as any Spielberg/Hanks production of this genre. The twin leads, Buck & Bucky, are engaging and credible though occasionally it feels like the narrative is ticking boxes in a rather cursory fashion. The aerial combat sequences are in equal measures kinetic and horrific but cover so many bases that individual events sometimes lose their significance. The series has three more episodes after today’s and I’m pretty sure I’ll stick with it.📺

Enjoyed Criminal Record on AppleTV+. Leads Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo both excellent. Plot development a little slow at times but just enough by way of clever twists to keep one’s interest. 📺

Ah, so date finally announced for release of Napoleon on Apple TV+, namely 1st March. 📽📺

Today I learned that micro.blog uses emoji instead of hashtags and that Windows will popup a selector if you type Windows button+full-stop. You can select an emoji at the top of the Discover page.

I normally use Kayaker Magic’s product on the Kitely Market for terraforming in OpenSim but for some reason I couldn’t get it delivered on Wolf Territories Grid. I intend my presence there to be very light touch so decided I would improvise instead by making a large linkset of thin 1 m diameter cylinders. All that was then needed was a little piece of code placed in the root that iterated across the terraforming linkset (TL) and set terrain height at each cylinder’s location via the appropriate OSSL command. So by orienting the TL as desired I could with a single touch create flat surfaces on the horizontal or at an incline. In theory I could even edit the height of each prim and get more sophisticated effects.

However, one thing I wanted in particular was to be able to create paths that have shallow terraformed depressions to which textured prims could be added in the depression later. A simpler approach was to use colour to denote prims where terraforming was required. I used a short touch to toggle between white and green. The height increment or decrement from the prim height is a constant value defined as a float in the object’s description field. A long touch then terraforms according to the pattern. You can, of course, restore the colour en masse via the texture option in the build menu. The example below used a value of -0.25 in the description field.

To terraform on a larger scale I created a linkset of thin box prims, each the size of the TL with the TL in the root. Each prim was oriented as desired as part of the linkset and then a piece of code used to rez the TL and have it move between each prim and adopt the orientation before terraforming locally and moving onto the next position.

I’m fairly rubbish at terraforming so looking forward to seeing if this rather basic but functional approach helps.

Reposted with a better example and then code (no error handling, use at your own peril and back up terrain first)

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llListen(99, "", NULL_KEY, "");//used with rezzer
    }
    
    listen(integer c, string name, key id, string msg)//used with rezzer
    {
        if (c == 99)
        {
            list l = llParseString2List(msg, ["/"],[]);
            llSetRegionPos(llList2Vector(l, 0));
            llSetRot(llList2Rot(l, 1));
            integer i;
            for (i = 0; i < llGetNumberOfPrims(); i++)
            {
                list l = llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(i, [PRIM_POSITION]);
                vector v = llList2Vector(l, 0);
                osSetTerrainHeight((integer)v.x, (integer)v.y, v.z);
            }
        }
    }
            
    
    touch_start(integer n)
    {
        llResetTime();
    }    
            

    touch_end(integer n)
    {
        if (llGetTime() <= 1.0)//short touch
        {        
            llOwnerSay("setting color");
            //get link number touched
            integer i = llDetectedLinkNumber(0);
            list color = llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(i, [PRIM_COLOR, 0]);
            vector col = llList2Vector(color, 0);
            if (col == <0,1,0>)
            {
                llSetLinkColor(i, <1,1,1>, 0);
            }
            else
            {
                llSetLinkColor(i, <0,1,0>, 0);
            }
        }
        else //long touch
        {
            llOwnerSay("terraforming");//use height of prim or value in desc for green prims only
            if (llStringLength(llGetObjectDesc()) == 0)//use prim height
            {
                integer i;
                for (i = 0; i < llGetNumberOfPrims(); i++)
                {
                    list l = llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(i, [PRIM_POSITION]);
                    vector v = llList2Vector(l, 0);
                    osSetTerrainHeight((integer)v.x, (integer)v.y, v.z);
                } 
            }
            else//use prim height modified by desc value in z, else ignore
            {
                integer i;
                float inc = (float)llGetObjectDesc(); 
                for (i = 0; i < llGetNumberOfPrims(); i++)
                {
                    list color = llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(i, [PRIM_COLOR, 0]);
                    vector col = llList2Vector(color, 0);
                    if (col == <0,1,0>)
                    {                    
                        list l = llGetLinkPrimitiveParams(i, [PRIM_POSITION]);
                        vector v = llList2Vector(l, 0);
                        osSetTerrainHeight((integer)v.x, (integer)v.y, v.z + inc);
                    }
                } 
            }  
            llOwnerSay("done");            
        }            
    }    
}

This foxed me for a while as I was expecting some kind of unique user-post id. The format of links to micro.blog posts is vrsimility.micro.blog/YYYY/MM/DD/first-three-words.html where first three words refers to the title. This is used for internal as well as external links, i.e. there are no equivalents of wiki-style links. Presumably there is no equivalent for tweet-style posts lacking titles.

I’m increasingly using low poly assets from Luma Genie to populate my builds. They’re not a patch on custom-made mesh (as per Encantada plants, for example) but they’re available quickly unless you want a hi-res version and generally you can get something that approximates your need. The downside is that objects created separately like tables and chairs are unlikely to match.

I did try looking for freebies on Wolf Territories Grid but the link that automatically appears in Firestorm takes you to a spot that doesn’t have much (if anything) of that ilk. Likely it’s gone elsewhere and I should check the Welcome area for links (see below for update). I’m fairly sure there’s commercial mesh available inworld but it means yet another digital currency which I’d rather avoid. So Genie it (mostly) is.

The grid owner appears to endorse such methods as they have made a video demonstrating an alternative source, Meshly. This appears to have a more conventional experience compared to the minimalistic but highly effective Genie, somewhat akin to NightCafe which I have used for images.

As far as textures are concerned, I’m currently mostly using the OpenSim Library although there are plenty of websites I could use, plus textures licensed for export from Kitely. Leonardo.ai is another possibility as is the forthcoming withpoly.com.

Of course, I’m operating at the freebie tier where possible and may have to think again when monetisation inevitably intrudes.

Update: Inworld assets, including freebies, via the website

We were given a DVD for Christmas called Loving Vincent. This chronicles an investigation into the two months artist Vincent Van Gogh spent in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise prior to his untimely death. It follows one of several less conventional theories as to how the artist met his end but is most notable for its beautiful rotoscope-style integration of the story with the many paintings dating to that summer of 1890.

My interest piqued, I found that there had recently been an exhibition at the Musee d’Orsay on this subject and I bought the handsome volume that accompanied it. This locates some of the paintings onto a period map of Auvers so it became possible to consider doing an OpenSim build on the topic. This is not a novel idea; there is already an excellent build of part of Arles in much the same vein on the Littlefield grid and for all I know someone may have recreated Auvers as well. Doing my own build, however, is an interesting challenge and an excellent opportunity to explore the environment that attracted so many painters, not just Vincent.

Accordingly, I have acquired an inexpensive 1km x 1km sim on the Wolf Territories Grid (WTG), half of which will be devoted to virtual Auvers. I have been resident on a number of grids over the years and they all tend to have their own idiosyncracies and that is often part of their charm. So I look forward to exploring WTG and what it has to offer in terms of developing this new build while tentatively blogging my progress here on micro.blog, another platform new to me.