This is the post excerpt.
Welcome to my blog of unusual things. I don’t know for sure what I’m going to write about but it will be anything I find interesting and want to spend more time looking into. So there will be plenty on history, engineering/transport and mysteries/paranormal. Probably with some other things like zoology thrown in as well…
Today we head back to 1934 and that years Czech Grand Prix, officially called the Masarykuv Okruh, which was held at the fearsome Brno circuit on September 30th. This 29 km (18 mile) long cicuit was held on closed roads and was considered to be demanding and potentially dangerous even back in the perilous days of the 1930’s. The 1934 edition had entries from all the major teams of the era: Mercedes-Benz, Auto Union, Alfa Romeo (entered by Enzo Ferrari), Bugatti and Maserati. Of these it’s the Maserati team which we’ll be focusing on.
Maserati bought two of their new cars, the 6C-34, to Brno. The 6C-34 had a 3.2-litre straight-6 supercharged engine and had made it’s debut at Monza 3 weeks earlier. One of cars was entered by the works team for Tazio Nuvolari, a very experienced and successful driver who is generally considered to be one of the all time greats. The second car was entered as a private entry by a driver with a very different pedigree: Josef Brazdil. Brazdil appears to be a complete novice, he ceratinly had no Grand Prix experience but he might have had some experience of racing at a local level. If so history has not recorded this. Either way he seemed to come out of nowhere and was almost certainly out of his depth driving a fast and powerful Grand Prix car on such a difficult circuit. Quite why the organisers has accepted his entry in these circumstances is unknown. Maybe they liked the idea of a local driver in a competitive car or maybe in an era when safety just wasn’t really thought about they just decided it was up to him to decide if he was up to the task.
Brazdil was a local car mechanic and he had bought the Maserati direct from their Bologna factory. Originally he was down in the entry list as racing an Alfa Romeo, I can find no further details of this car but it suggests that the switch to the Maserati was a late one. What happened shortly before the start of practice point to the finances behind this deal being possibly suspect in some manner. The money had apparently come from Brazdil’s manager who was called Stefan Marcis. Exactly how the pair came into enough money for the Maserati is not known for sure but what is known is that both ended being jailed. Several versions of why and what happened next have been recorded. One version is that Marcis borrowed the money for the Maserati from his fiancee. The pair then broke up after a fight and the angry lady took legal action against Marcis and Brazdil in order to get the money back. The pair couldn’t pay and so ended up in jail. At this point Nuvolari, keen to see the second Maserati race, and Louis Chiron, another top driver, petitioned the local authorities to let Bradzil out of jail in order to race. The agreement being that he would return to jail afterwards. The second version is that the pair were jailed due to some other financial problems which might or might not have any connection to the Maserati. In this version Brazdil was bailed out by a mysterious blond lady who apparently spoke with an American accent. Who she was, or even if she existed, is as unknown as many other aspects of the tale. In truth she probably never existed and it’s more likely that Brazdil was released thanks to his fellow drivers.
Whatever the nature of Brazdil’s inprisonment and release he did get his chance to take part in practice. He and the Maserati duely went out for their first practice lap and then promptly dissapeared. Sadly this strange tale has a tragic ending. Brazdil had crashed on a straight section of circuit when he got two wheels in a ditch at 200 km/h (125 mph). 1930’s Grand Prix circuits were unreconisable compared to those of the 21st century and safety was not part of them. Brno took place on normal roads without barriers or anything else to stop cars hitting whatever was present by the side of the road if they went off course. The car hit a tree which directed it further into the woods where it hit a second one and was sent into a series of somersaults. Safety was not a feature of the Grand Prix cars of the time either and they had no roll bars or even seatbelts. Brazdil was thrown out and died at the scene with his spine being broken.
The crash did not seem to have any obvious cause. An investigation found that the car had not suffered any kind of mechanical failure which might have caused it to vear of course. Also since there were no tyre marks on the road Brazdil apparently didn’t hit the brakes hard in order to avoid an impact of any kind. At the time these factors led some to say that Brazdil had crashed on purpose in order to commit suicide, presumably due to the financial problems which had landed him in jail. But in reality the crash probably wasn’t actually that unexplainable. Had it happened to an experienced Grand Prix driver then the lack of an obvious cause would indeed have been a puzzle. But Brazdil was far from one and was probably badly out of his depth. What is worth noting is the location of the crash, which was in the section between Zebetin and Ostrovacice. This is roughly half way around the lap which means that Bradzil had successfully negotiated around 15 km (9 miles) before disaster hit. Maybe Brazdil started off very carefully but by the half way point of the lap he’d started to gain confidence. Perhaps at that point he started to speed up and his lack of experience had caused him to lose control of the Maserati in a way that would never have happened to a more experienced driver. Conceivably he might have run too close to the side of the road, suffered wheelspin on loose stones and not been able to react before this caused to him to vear further off into the ditch. In truth a driver without the experience to properly handle a car as fast and powerful as the Maserati could have gotten himself into trouble in lots of different ways. On a dangerous circuit like Brno disaster was very likely in those circumstances. Whatever happened Brazdil’s Grand Prix career was very short, tragic and so weird it could never happen today. He remains one of the more bizarre figures in the sports history.
Ghosts are not just limited to people or even living things. Sometimes ghosts of inamimate objects are seen, heard or otherwise witnessed and ghost vehicles are fairly commonly reported. Eye witnesses also suggest that ghosts are not always immediatly obvious as such. Some sightings only being realised as not being real people (or animals, objects etc) when it becomes clear that this is impossible for some reason either at the time or later. Combine these two ideas and you come up with the story of the supposed ghost Deltic.
Before we get to the story lets give a quick bit of background to what we are talking about. Deltics are diesel-electric locomotives. Officially called the Class 55 by British Railways they are named Deltic after their engines. Built by Napier and originally used in marine applications they were 18-cylinder engines with the cylinders arranged in an unusual triangler shape. From this the name Deltic comes from the triangle shaped greek letter delta. The Deltic locomotive had two of these engines producing at total of 3300 bhp. Being diesel-electrics these engines then drove electric generators which actually moved the wheels. These locomotives were built in 1961-1962 and were the most powerful diesel locomotives in britain at the time. They were the first British diesels to have a true performance advantage over the last generation of steam express locomotives and perhaps can be seen as being the final proof that diesels could surpass steam traction. They were very popular being fast, powerful and cleaner for passangers then the old steam locos. Diesels are rarely seen as being as charismatic as steam locos and this is very understandable in my opinion. The Deltics are at least a possible exception. They have a following that far outstrips most of their fellow diesels and are one of the few of the type to come close to steam locos in this regard. By the late 1970’s the Deltics were themselves being replaced by the Class 43 HST, better known as the InterCity 125. BR class numbers don’t simply start at class 1 and go up, by the way, it’s arranged by type and subtype with some numbers being left out for later use. That’s why class 55 was replaced by lower numbered class 43. Anyway, the Deltics were all withdrawn between January 1980 and January 1982. Of the twenty-two built six complete locomotives were preserved (plus two cabs from other locomotives) with the rest all being scrapped by early 1983. It’s the very first to be scrapped that we turn to now.
Like a lot of ghost stories exact details on the ghost Deltic are not plentiful. However the basic idea at least seems to be fairly consistant. Two railway enthusiasts (can’t find any report of their actual names…) were in New Barnet, North London, in September 1980 (again no exact date…). They heard the distinctive, but by then very rare, roar of a Deltic locomotive. This promptly appeared and then continued on it’s way into the Hadley Wood South tunnel. Being enthusiasts in the prescence of an unusual and interesting locomotive they noted it’s number. This was 55020, a Deltic named Nimbus. The thing is by this point Nimbus didn’t exist anymore. As I said above it was the very first Deltic to be scrapped and had been broken up in Doncaster in January of that year. The unknown enthusiasts were reportedly aware of this at the time of the sighting as they were said to be shocked by the sight. The story was recorded in the Deltic preservation societies journal (as I said Deltics were very popular) called “the Deltic Deadline” published shortly after the alleged sighting. I have also seen a report that the sighting happened at Derby in 1992. This can’t be true if the sighting was recorded back in 1980 however. Also by 1992 it is just about possible that one of the suviving Deltics had been teprorarily renumbered and renamed as 55020 Nimbus for a particular trip. This is something that does sometimes happen with preserved locomotives taking on the identity of a no longer existing class mate for specific reasons, usually to commerate a particlar anniversary of a place of association. Since the Derby 1992 date seems in the minority of reports I’m going to ignore it. By the way the renumbering idea would not work for 1980 since BR would not have renumbered a still in service locomotive working on the main line. So what did the witnesses see?
Whether you believe in ghosts or not, let alone those of large diesel-electrics, is up to you. Personally I’m open to the idea of ghosts in some form or another but in this case there are other explanations. Firstly lets think about the idea that Nimbus actually still existed in September 1980 for some reason. It’s unlikely that it wasn’t scrapped at all since photographs of it mostly dismantled do exist. But maybe the dates are wrong and it was actually scrapped later. I guess it’s possible that the scrapping date has been accidently recorded incorrectly as things like this can happen. But maybe it was not an accident, I have read about the idea that the goverment used it for a secret project to develop a nuclear powered locomotive. It was this secret project that was sighted back in 1980…
This I simply do not buy at all. Even if there was nuclear powered locomotive project taking place then would the goverment test this secret project in full public view? Also why use a locomotive that has officially been scrapped and still have it’s identification numbers and/or name recognisably in place. The whole point of the story is that it was noticed that the locomotive should not have been there, so again not a good thing for a secret project. Anyway the witnesses supposedly heard those distinctive engines so lets forget this idea. Can conspiracy theorists please sit down again.
It’s much more likely that the story is just simply not true, either due to a mistake on the part of the witnesses or flat out fabrication. As I said above exact details of names and dates are not complete which tends to indicate an unreliable story. Maybe the sighting actually took place earlier and they did see Nimbus before it was scrapped. Or since some Deltics were still in service in 1980 maybe the witnesses misidentified the exact loco. Enthusiasts are generally pretty exact about this since that’s essentially the point of what they do. In case you haven’t realised I’m saying enthusiast as it’s a nicer term then train spotter, not all railway enthusiasts are neccessarily train spotters though. Some just like railways but don’t write down numbers. These guys were probably spotters. Still they could have misread the number of a locomotive especially if it was moving quickly or they just didn’t see the number well. Perhaps this misremembering or misidentification was then embellished to say they were shocked at the time at seeing a locmotive they knew to be scrapped. Or it could all just be made up completely, plenty of ghost stories are. It seems a kind of nerdy story to make up but remember this was reported by the Deltic preservation story who would very much be into this kind of thing. Perhaps someone not attached to the society reported it to them as joke and they fell for it. Or maybe they just reported it even though they didn’t really believe it.
There is one final solution however and this is probably the correct one. It appears that the society made the story up. They did so in order to highlight the fact that the locomotives they loved were starting to be destroyed and that it was important to preserve some before they were all gone. I guess the resurrection of Nimbus was a metaphor for how some Deltics could have a second life as preserved locos. The story even has a name attached to it “A trick of the light?”. It was written as a clear spoof and never really meant to be taken seriously. Somehow when it got reproduced later on it got turned into a story that actually happened and not just a metaphor. This explains why the story was reported essentially immediatly after it was supposed to have happened.
So sadly it looks like this sighting never really happened. When I decided to write this post I didn’t actually know I’d find that out. It’s a bit dissapointing, but a lot of these stories tend to end up the same way, especially the ones with sketchy details. I’ll probably write about other paranormal events in the future and I’m sure a lot will end up with similar explanations. Not all do though. The preservation of six Deltics did happen however so if the ghost story did play a part in this, no matter how tiny, then it’s worth some 21st century internet confusion and debate. Forget the ghost Deltic, go see one of the real ones instead.
Ships come in a lot of variety of sizes and shapes depending on their role and the time period they come from. However, one thing the vast majority have in common is some basics of their hull shape (I’m talking about monohulls here, so not catarmarans, trimarans etc). They are longer then they are wide with a bow that is in some way pointed. Generally ships designed to move faster have these traits more emphasised and many warships tend to fall into this category. A slow warship tends to equal a dead warship. There are some exceptions however and in the 1870s Russia built a couple of warships which were very different. Their names were the Novgorod and Vitse-admiral Popov and they had round hulls, properly round too, from above they were completely circular. No-one has tried this since and it’s often claimed they were utter disasters but the reality is a little less clear cut.
Most warships need to be fast but actually some don’t. When people think of warships they tend to think of battleships and other ships designed to move through open water and cover long distances. The Novgorods are sometimes called round battleships but they were nothing of the sort. They were coastal defence ships so had no need for speed. What they needed to do was move into position, often in shallow water, be able to fire accurately and destroy their targets without being destroyed themselves. The round hull was a way to allow them to have a shallow draft and still carry big guns as it gave maximum displacement for the draft. The wide beam would make for a stable gun platform allowing more accurate fire. They also sat low in the water making them a more difficult target to hit. Their twin guns were mounted right in the middle of their hulls on a rotating turret with a 35 degree traverse. The Novgorods could cover a wide area without moving and the round hull kept them stable while firing. These qualities were all good for ships which were essentially redeployable fortifications which needed to hit hard and stay afloat.
The Novgorod was built between 1871 and 1874 with the Popov built between 1872 and 1876. The two shared the same unique design features but were not sisters ships since the Popov was a larger and more heavily armed vessel. The Novgorod was smaller at 2500 tons with a length (and of course width) of 101 feet. The Popov was 3600 tons and 126 feet. Main armament were twin guns of 11-inches (Novgorod) and 12-inches (Popov) respectably. Armour being 12 inches (Novgorod) and 16 inches (Popov) thick. They saw relatively limited combat but were both deployed in the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878 where they were assigned to defend Odessa on the Black Sea. Both survived into the 20th century being decommissioned in 1903. The Novgorod being used as a store ship while attempts to sell the Popov to Bulgaria fell through. Both were scrapped in 1911.
Essentially by a combination of some genuine problems with the design and then at least some exaggeration of how badly this affected them. The Novgorods hull created plenty of drag so they were slow, the Novgorod’s top speed was 6.5 knots and the Popovs 7.5 knots. This is pretty damn slow and was notably slower than they were designed to be. Like all ships which sit low in the water they were restricted to calm waters to prevent swamping. Given their intended role these two qualities were not too much of a problem however. The biggest problem the Novgorods had was their maneuverability and controllability. The problem with a round hull is that it can spin around on its central axis as it has nothing to create any resistance rotationally. In order to make the design work the Novgorods needed a way to control this free rotational movement. Unfortunately they had rudders and propellers which were simply too undersized to control them correctly. When they fired their twin guns this would inevitably result in rotational movement as the forces of the two guns would never be exactly equal. Consequently, after each salvo the ships would have to control this then get back into position before they could fire again. Given their small rudders and propellers this took some time and gave them a much slower firing rate than was desirable. Even mildly choppy waters caused them to struggle due to their difficulties on steering. Exactly how badly the Novgorods were affected by these problems is not easy to discern. Some sources suggest that it was so bad that they would whirl around and around ever time they tried to turn or fire or do anything at all making them as good as useless. Other sources suggest that their rotations could be stopped by reversing the engines on one side meaning it could be controlled even if it did still cause problems.
The Novgorod service in Odessa was fairly limited and their role in the war was minor. None the less accounts of their time there do suggest that they were successful in this service despite their problems. Presumably then were not the hopeless whirling jokes they are sometimes portrayed as and were able to fulfill their role at least reasonably adequetely. No more ships of their design were ever planned by Russia or anyone else however. The disadvantages of their design, especially their handling, seem to have outweighed their good attributes and the Novgorods had no advantage over ships of more conventional design. Plus their layout could not be transferred to other ship types and even at best could be seen as a very specialised niche design with noticeable limitations. Overall they can be seen as being a mostly unsuccessful experiment or at least a dead end. They might not have been a complete and total failure but they had no real future either.
Some unusual things. 