Y and I have been down to the midlands for the weekend to meet some friends. Spent part of Saturday afternoon at Snibston Discovery Park (it is on the site of an old colliery) and did the 'colliery buildings' tour with a ex miner who should be on the stage. His commentary for one and a half hours was an absolute hoot - kept us all in fits of laughter. I am sure he is making a greater contribution to society now than he ever did as a miner!

After the tour I took a look around part of the rest of the exhibits and found a system for producing John Scott Russell's wave! If you take a look at the attached images you will see that they have a system with weights and pulleys for pulling different hull designs along a series of troughs. In the first image you will see a conventional hull design almost at the end of the pull from the rope as the weight has fallen to the bottom of the tube. The wave that the hull created is in front of the hull and it bounced back and travelled back up the trough as a perfect solitary wave. See the second image of it as it has turned the corner and is going up a second straight. (The trough is painted wood). The third image shows the whole wave creating assembly with the old colliery winding gear in the background. (Paul this looks like the almost the perfect system for illustrating the wave - you could improve it by having the hull stop short of the end of the trough and the wave would carry on to the end - the pulley gear could be located at a point along the trough instead of at the end).

I think that if you are ever in the area you would enjoy a visit to the site. It is not far from junction 22 on the M1. The telephone number is 01530 510851 and I have a leaflet if you want more information.

Best wishes,
Z