One of the buildings at Dickinson’s (Station Road, Blackrod) has been ablaze this evening sending a large plume of black smoke across Bolton. At the height of the fire, Greater Manchester Fire Service had eight fire appliances and two aerial platforms in attendance with the support of two appliances from neighbouring Lancashire Fire Service.
Back in 1999, I bought a Canon IXUS L-1 APS camera in New York. Unfortunately, it only had eight films through it before I moved on to the Digital IXUS. While I’ve been scanning my old 35mm negs and slides using a Nikon Coolscan IV, I haven’t been able to scan these eight APS films without Nikon’s APS adapter. Even when the adapter was available, it did not make sense to spend £150 for the sake of eight films.
Recently, I was searching eBay for any cheap APS scanners when I came across an advert for Karmaan who were offering to scan APS films for £3.95 each and also post-process them to remove the grain inherent in APS film, so for the sake of £35 (with P&P) I got them all scanned, one of which is shown below.
I would recommend Karmaan’s service to anyone needing their APS films scanning. More of these APS scans are on Flickr.
While going through some older photos, I came across this one that I had taken in the Science Museum of two calculators I remember from my childhood.
The Sinclair model on the left was the first calculator I ever saw as my Dad had one. It had an LED display and the buttons made a distinctive ‘click’. It had a while plastic hard case which flipped open. The other, the Casio FX-80, was ‘almost’ the calculator I used throughout secondary school (mine was an FX-81).
It certainly makes you feel older when you see things like this in a museum.
LMS Princess Class 4-6-2 No. 6201, Princess Elizabeth passed through Rainhill this morning with the North Wales Coast Express from Liverpool Lime Street to Holyhead, 180 years after the Rainhill Trials were held on the same stretch of line.
6233, Duchess of Sutherland passed by Horwich this morning with the Cumbrian Mountain Express, the first ever Duchess to work north from Bolton to Chorley. The steps to the right of the picture indicate the site of Horwich Fork signal box.
It returned later on, passing through Blackrod Station in the evening:
These 
