P is for Probably the Best Car-Park Barrier in the World!

Heineken don't do car-park barriers, but if they did . . . I know, we've had something similar before, but nostalgia includes crappy cultural references! I shot this, also in Guildford (see earlier post on dragon's teeth), but a few weeks earlier, only for the shots to turn out so poor (I tend to pass it at dusk each time), I had to go back and re-shoot most of it, a week later!

 

It's a train! About half-action-man scale, so 1:12th/16th, something like that? And it's towing a bunch of flatcars with local wildlife examples! Made out of stainless-steel plate or possibly a bronze-alloy, it's hard to tell as there's no rust, and I'm not a metallurgist!

 

Saddle-tank loco and four flats with an old style guards break-van at the back, I guess this is a sculpture, or 'public art'? I couldn't fine anything about it nearby, but it was getting dark both times, and it's a teeny car-park with about 15 spaces for dog-walkers at the far-end of the now one-way Woodbridge Meadows, and this barrier is almost underneath the real rail-bridge!

 

LBSC 105 is the Fat Controller's locomotive from Thomas the Tank Engine, but it's a red-oxide, not green! The LSWR Bison class had a 105, likewise the class 395's, but they didn't look like this, however the M7's did! So I guess it's a real loco' depiction?

https://www.brdatabase.info/locoqry.php?action=locodata&id=304453077&type=S&loco=105

The break-van, children of a certain age know these go at the back of a goods train, as sure as similarly aged American and Canadian kids know where the Caboose goes, but I wonder how many people under forty even know what this is called, let alone where it goes?

 

The reverse of the goods wagons, showing how the wildlife is done like theatrical scenery! Now, you can get phosphor-bronze sheet-plate, and I wonder if that is what we have here, it looks a bit brassy, but without the verdigris you'd expect with a purer brass or copper, and I've mentioned the lack of rust spots, which even stainless will get eventually, so it's some corrosion-resistant metal, which is also pretty vandal-proof?

Snail, Grebe (crested, great), Dragonfly and Kingfisher.

Fish, Newt (crested, great!) and Otter.

Coot, or Moorhen, I never get them two right!

Bumble Bee and Snake, generic!

Butterfly, Bat, Water Beetle (vicious buggers) and a Water Rat/Vole

I like that even as our entire political class descends into a naval-gazing madness of seeking power for power's sake with absolutely no solutions on offer, someone somewhere is still doing this kind of stuff, for the hell of it!