What the Current Chart would be like based on Retail Sales

 I have argued for some time that the current UK charts done by the Official Charts Company are manufactured to make the charts represent those based on the past, when a single copy sold had the power to effect the chart. But since the introduction of the 12 inch single that has ceased to represent the chart truly. The situation got worse with the introduction of the download and went off the scale with streaming. 

So what has changed. Well back in the early days records were priced all the same just about. So adding up the copies was the easiest way to measure popularity of the records.  But the 12 inch single was more expensive than the standard 7 inch. So the people who bought these was forking out more money than the other people buying 7 inch. When downloads came around the price went down to 99p. But by then 7 inch singles were nearly £4. So now the 7 inch was being underrepresented by the price difference. Even before this happened the price of 7 inch records was being reduced down to encourage high first week sales. With dealers offered deals on the price of records. They could sell so many at reduced price, if they sold so many at full price. This lead to some singles entering at the top of the charts when they were first issued. Due to a very low price. The download did the same. And when iTunes issued singles for just 59p instead, when the Real Chart ended in 2020 it was who was top of the cheap that week. 

Streaming created a bigger problem. To get a representation of the copies sold system, the OCC made it that so many streams equals one download sale. They have had to adjust this level from time to time to keep the same level of copies sold. They also made it impossible for anyone who streams records to actually have enough streams to make one copy or the equivalent download. Which meant if you download a record or purchase a single, you can influence the chart, but if you stream you can't, at least not on your own. The next problem with streaming is that once you have bought a record, you do not need to buy it again. But you never buy a streamed record, it's like renting. You constantly pay. But this means that streamed records sales only slowly die off. Till the public are fed up with it. So to get round this problem after so many weeks the OCC limits the streams of the records and put them at a much lower level. This adjustment generally takes out the record at number one. So very long runs at the top of the charts are reduced.  This adjustment can be reset if the record company request it. Or some special event happens.

There is of course another way to prevent these effects and return the chart to the public chart, not manufactured to fit a copy based system. And that is to count retail sales not copies.  

How: Well you count what the public pay for music. The more money you pay the higher the chart position.  

So a download would be 99p or 59p or whatever price the retailer sells them at.

A 7 inch single would be whatever the price is charged. Some of these can be much higher too. 

The same with the 12 inch single and the CD single etc. 

Streaming is more complex. Most sites charge around £10.99 a month for the service. Trying to work out how many people stream the records per month is complex, but the average family streams 2,000 tracks per month.  Of course the charts company would need to establish how much a typical stream for each site costs.  But based on the monthly cost and 2,000 streams it works out at £0.005495 per stream. Or £0.005p per stream.

With these figures you can use all the streams for each site and add the sales up. Not the number of streams. Then you add on the price of each record, CD, download to the total. 

Such a system would have produced a new number one on the OCC chart this week 

28 February 2025 - 6 March 2025

(1) Kendrick Lamar ~ Not Like Us

36 Oasis ~ Whatever 

The above is the current chart for the OCC

However thanks to the figures supplied by Alan Jones, I can show that under the retail system the number one would change.

The Streams of Kendrick show 2,791,53 on Spotify for the week. Other sites do list them, but Spotify has the most.  The streams thus amount to £13,957.51p  

The OCC says he sold 777 downloads at 0.99p  = £769,23p

Now the Oasis record The OCC says it sold 11465 on 7 inch.  The price is not fixed but the average seems to be £15.95p  So £182,866.75p 

Plus 684 downloads at 99p £677.16p

So you can see that Oasis would have topped the chart instead of being 36! 

Unfortunately the OCC don't reveal the breakdown of the records and only Alan Jones tells you some times, but not all the time. 

Remember these are based on what the public pay. Not on what an artist get in terms of royalties. 

Update 23 March 2025

The Retail Sales system would have the biggest effect on the albums as there are many formats all with varying prices. I can't say for certain, on this week's OCC singles chart, but I don't think they have the correct number one there. I know for certain that the album chart number one would certainly not be top as it has only 89 digital downloads (putting the album at only 17 on the OCC chart) the rest being only streams.  Steven Wilson The Overview would be top for certain, as he sells more (OCC figures) on downloads, CD, Vinyl. Steven topping the vinyl chart with a price of £27. On the download albums, Steven is at two (£11.99). Playboi Carti Music (OCC No 1) might not even be in the top ten based on retail sales. The download sales amount to £978.11p.  The question, of course, is what would it cost to stream an album? My streaming figure for tracks is 0.005p. Would you count each track on an album at that figure?

Since Playboi Carti has 30 tracks, that is 0.15p per album. 21,577 (OCC figure) streams at 0.15p comes to £3,236.55p

Is that too much for streaming an album?  Three thousand pounds would soon be beat. 150 vinyl albums at £27 would gross £4,000 sales. 

 

       

The Charts Easy Find PDF Links

 In order you can find the Real Charts in PDF format I am posting the links to the files on here:

Green dates are still to be compiled. Except where indicated. ND - stands for Not Digitised. 

The Real Chart 1948 PDF 

The Real Chart 1949 (sales incomplete) 

John's 1948 Best Sellers Chart  

Real Chart 1950 

Real Chart 1951 

Real Chart 1952

1953

1954

1955

1956

1956

1957

1958

1959

1960 - Being compiled

1961

1962

Real Chart 1963

Real Chart 1964

Real Chart 1965 Full Charts version 1

Real Chart 1966 Full Version 

Real Chart 1967 

Real Chart 1968 

Real Chart 1969

Real Chart 1970

1971 - Being compiled

1972

1973

Real Chart 1974

Real Chart 1975

Real Chart 1976

Real Chart 1977

Real Chart 1978

1979 - Being compiled

The Real Chart 1980 PDF  

The Real Chart 1981 PDF

1982 - compiled ND

1983 - compiled ND

1984 - compiled ND

Real Chart 1985 Full Chart + Best Sellers 

The Real Chart 1986 

Real Chart 1987  

Real Chart 1988

1989 - Being compiled

1990 - compiled ND

Real Chart 1991

1992 - compiled ND

1993 - compiled ND

1994 - compiled ND

1995 - compiled ND

1996 - compiled ND

1997 - compiled ND

1998 - compiled ND

1999 - compiled ND

Real Chart 2000

2001 - compiled ND

2002 - compiled ND

2003 - compiled ND

2004 - compiled ND

2005 - compiled ND

2006 - compiled ND

2007 - compiled ND

2008 - compiled ND

2009 - compiled ND

2010 - compiled ND

REAL CHART 2011 Full year.pdf

Real Chart-2012 Full List including Best Sellers

Real Chart 2013 Full update plus best sellers and drop outs

Real Chart 2014 Full update plus best sellers and drop outs

Real Chart 2015 Full Update - Plus best sellers and drop outs 

Real Chart 2016 Full Update plus best sellers and drop outs 

Real Chart 2017 

Real Chart 2018 

Real Chart 2019  

Real Chart Number Ones 1948 to 2020 Version 1

Making a Model Railway Catch Point in OO

 Making a Catch Point from an Old Point in OO Gauge 

First what is a Catch Point?  Well in real life railways they are a point or switch to derail. You might be thinking that the whole purpose of a railway is to keep the rolling stock on the track. But before wagons were fully braked, they could run down the track and block or hit another train. So Catch Points were added to the start of the siding before it joined the main line, so that any rolling stock running away, could be derailed before it hit the main line. 

In Model railway terms not many companies make them and they are not cheap to buy. The one featured in the following picture is made by Peco. Typically priced between £10 to £15 online, but that does not include postage!  

This one is set not to derail.  They do look better if you weather them, remember the rail to nowhere would be covered in rust, even on the top! Loco's will loose power on the painted rail, but it's going to fall off anyway! See below:

However looking at the real things I discovered that most do NOT have the wooden ramp! 

So how do you make one?  You need a damaged or old point. Needless to say you must have a switch blade of the point that can still be moved. Plus it must be the side of the deflection line. 

You then go to work with a track cutting tool.  The picture below shows you were to cut the track with the cutters using the arrows as a guide. I find the best tool are "snips" which will cut through anything. 

You must also remove the unused point switch blade, plus the remaining rail that takes it to the other track. File away or cut away the where this rail lay. In the case of the completed point (seen below) I have not completely lost the scarring of the sleepers. As this looks it might have indeed been used once, or more, causing the wheels of a wagon to damage the sleepers. Metal on Wood! 

You can also do this to a Hornby point.  I have started on the one below. Hornby point blades do have a circular clip that holds them on, but you can cover this up with a thin balsa piece. I have yet to remove the unused point switch and cut away the remains of where the rail layed. 

Switching from Windows 7 to Windows 10

 My computer system was getting a bit old and so I was looking at building a new system. If you are building a computer up from scratch I have found an excellent site called PCPartPicker. This allows you to select the various parts and shows you what is compatible with any parts you select. It also compares the parts prices on websites. It can be used by anyone around the World as it will select the supplies in your region of the World. It's free to join and doesn't cost you anything. There's even a forum that you post questions about your build.  

PC Part Picker

Everything is purchased for the build.  I have gone with an ASUS Z690-A motherboard. The test was carried out, but I hit a problem with the memory modules. I went with the Corsair Vengeance DDR5 32GB. It comes in two 16GB sticks. But the yellow light on the computer board came on, indicating a problem with these. I tried them all in each of the four slots, both together and alone, but no result. Checking around the web showed this was a problem with them and that motherboard. So I purchased two Kingston Fury Beast and fitted them in the suggested slots. Still no result! So I removed one and it worked!! It still wouldn't boot! This time the light came on for a problem with the hard drives. It doesn't tell you which. I suspected one or more of the SATA cables. Four altogether! So I order some more, these came in threes so I ordered two packets. These came during the heatwave. So I wasn't going to mess around with the computer in that! So the operation was put on hold till the following week.  When I made some progress with the device. I did replace the cables, but it made no difference! Looking on-line I found a helpful result. Apparently the green/yellow LED also tells you if you have no operating system installed as it can't boot from that! Also that the direct HDMI connector to the Monitor doesn't show the motherboard system. So I used an adaptor which had the multi pin and one horizontal flat pin to an HDMI connector. And the screen came to life! I quickly was able to establish that all the Hard Drives were working, but it seems some of the fans were in the wrong sockets! So I changed them over. It's not clear which sockets are for fans as some are listed for both the fan and water cooling devices! I was also able to fit the other Kingston in the first black socket and got that to work. 

You can see the new computer in the following photos:

 

The first photo shows the side window with the workings. On the bottom the big box is the Power Supply with all the thick white cables coming from it. Just above you can see the graphics card with the metal cooling on it. Above that with the two white cables can be see the cooling fan of the CPU. To the right is the holder for the disc drive and one of the hard drives. The other two being in a case to the right of the power supply.

The second picture shows the unit in place. The old black computer at the side powered on. The black keyboard is for the old computer, the new one behind is the same type with a dust cover on it. The power bank on the wall has the two supplies for the monitors resting on it. The one to the left is for the new one. At the side of the keyboard is the large calculator I use for adding up sales. Then the A3 scanner with the A4 scanner and some setting up tools sat on top.  

Ongoing.... 

When the brand new Windows 10 Pro DVD was tried, the disc worked and took me to the language selection and then started. Only to be greeted with the message of missing drivers! Searching the net produced little solutions especially from the Microsoft site. There are a couple of YouTube ones, but I had no success with any of them. One video tells you to go to the intel site for a file, but then in the comments points out it has been removed. The chap placed it on Google Drive, but gives no instructions as to what to do next with it. I tried the file anyway and it did nothing! Next I bought a flash drive, costing £18, which supposedly fixes Windows 10 problems. I tried it and still got the same missing driver screen. I tried the repair part of the disc. But the computer hung up. So I had to remove the drive. When I tried it again it didn't do anything! I tried it on my old machine and that treated it as blank storage device! So something must have erased or corrupted the USB stick. So I have finished up with an expensive USB stick! I went to the ASUS website and downloaded any drivers and files from them. I did try them last Sunday and it worked!  So I began the adding of the software that came on discs to the new computer. I had a very old Microsoft Works Suite from 2004, which on the Windows 7 system always needed permission to access things like Word. So I was convinced it wouldn't work at all! But it did and it doesn't ask for permission either. Haven't tried to see if it crashes during operation though.  Page Plus X7 used to do the charts installed and works. The Video editing software that is most uptodate I have works with 10 anyway. Next operation was software from the net. Most of these were free versions so I had no problems with them. Except one - Freecad.  Looking at the blurb on it it was only suitable for Windows 7. No Windows 10 version has been issued. If you have installed the Windows 7 on 10 and it works OK. Let me know in the comments.  There's a number of Apps to still install. I like the Easy Audio Editor software. But you have to download it and they charge you every time you do so. Which is annoying. The main thing to transfer is the bookmarks and logins for the browsers. Which is explained as being simple to transfer, especially by the browser people, but is far from it. One thing you cannot do is link to computers to the same internet connector using a splitter. Either one will connect and the other will not. Some take longer to connect even if the other is shut down. It's like the signal is going to the other computer before getting to the one working first! Since I back up the the files on a portable hard drive(s). It should be easy to transfer them to the new computer. 

15 October update - Managed to transfer the bookmarks, but attempts to put them on the browser bar at the top, didn't work and I finished up with three sets of the same bookmarks in folders marked "imported". The passwords were easy to transfer, but you have to do it separately.  I have noticed a display problem too. Where the screen looks like you get on a TV when a 4:3 aspect is made to fit a wide setting.  The text also is not as sharp as the LG monitor too. Both of these problems were answered by the fact that the Samsung monitor has a lower resolution than my LG!  I tried the LG on the new computer. It did look a lot better, it was even possible to connect them both and switch between screens!  I discovered that the best way to transfer the bookmarks to the browser was to find the place they are located select them all and then copy them. Then open up the browser folder where they would sit and past them there. They then appear! There was an old set of bookmarks, but I couldn't copy them to the USB stick at all. I couldn't get Firefox to export that individual set of bookmarks, it simply transferred the lot! I am going to try copying the original bookmark file and see if that will work on the new system. There's is one more issue to solve. The number generator for the PayPal system.  These issues are stopping any complete transfer to the new computer. So work and even doing this blog is still on the old system. 

29 October update. The original bookmark file did copy to the browser. So that is set. And I did sort out the generator for PayPal.  The last thing now was to copy all the old files from the back up disc to the new computer. This take about five hours! 

5 November update - two problems happened. First on Thursday the Canon scanner was acting up. I eventually got the problem solved by going to the Canon website installing the software for Windows 10. The next issue was the Authy App, which produces a code for signing in to PayPal. It produced the code alright, but the site didn't recognise it! I contacted both PayPal and the Authy App sites, but that produced no results. So I started up the old computer, log on to PayPal and used the Authy App to sign in and then took 2 party authentication off. When I signed in it asked for a phone number added the landline and it produced numbers on the computer which I had to use on the phone. That solved the problem. I have deleted the app from my new computer. I reckon if I wanted it to work, that I would need to delete the Authy account. Then create a new one, adding all the devices again. I would need to delete it from the old computer of course!

Got this message also from Authy Support:

My name is Jairo and I'm a Support Engineer here at Twilio. We pride ourselves on delivering a great customer experience but I understand the app on the new desktop did not work, I want to ensure your questions/concerns have been addressed.
Please note that the reason why the new desktop the codes displayed there didn't work on your account, is because your old device it's unsynced from your Authy account, therefore any new device won't sync the token seen in your old device. I strongly recommend enabling backups in your old device and make sure the codes displayed in your old device is also seen in your new device, to make sure both are synced.  
 
Please take a look at the below article to understand how Backups works and enable this feature.
 
What if I Don't Backup my Authy Account?

. 

Enlargement of a map to a big size and printing it?

 This is a problem I need help with. As some of you are aware I want to build a model railway of the Sheffield Victoria and Nunnery area in OO/HO gauge (4 mm Scale).  To do this I have to make the railway board about 10 feet wide and 70 feet long.  Where to house this is another problem, that I won't go into in this post. Now to get it as accurate as possible, I have got a map from the Ordinance Survey which covers the section. However the map I have is only 11.5 inches longs (29 cm) and 1.5 inches (3.3 cm) wide when printed to an A4 Sheet. Now if the map was scaled up to the 4 mm scale it would come out at the 10 feet (275 cm) wide requirement and I think the length would be 70 feet (2133.6 cm) about.  The problem is that I don't have the ability to enlarge the map to that size, or print it off.  I have tried scaling the image to that size without success. What happens is that the original image has space around it and it scales the space - not the image. Also because there is a curve section making the image look like a sock, I can't using the software I have cut the image away from the space. Or at least when I do the saved imaged still has space around it.  So that is my problem! 

Obviously I don't expect the image to be printed on to a massive sheet of paper 70 x 10 feet!  I was thinking that it could be printed on some of the larger sheets of paper A3 upwards in sections. 

So can it actually be scaled up to that size and then printed out in sections?  

If you can help or you are a commercial printer get in touch below. 

The image is below. As for the costs, I have a figure that I could stretch to at the present time, but I don't want to encourage someone to offer to do it at that price, when it could be done for less by posting it. I do know it won't be cheap. 

Update 28 June

I have imported the map into Templot. This is free software that allows you to scale maps to model railway sizes. It was really set up to allow you to build your own track and make your plans to construct the layout. Now it does take a lot of figuring out to work it. And though I was able to get the map into the software, if it was printed out at the 4 mm scale each piece of A4 paper would have a very block effect on the map so you would see the individual pixels of the drawing and not a solid line or shape. 

The way around this I have discovered is to simply enlarge the map slightly so it keeps the detail, but use the blue square grid of the software that divides the map into 1 foot square sections. From that you can transpose the detail onto the model railway baseboard by dividing the board into one foot square sections that correspond to the map.  This way you can see where each part of the map takes up the space. So a building can be marked off in the square it sits and measured up. 

  The above map shows the scaling down each side and more details of the surrounding area, which I won't be using. The blue lines are the tracks that you have to put in to get the map to print out in the software. 

The next map is a cut down version of the other map. It would have to a couple of feet on the upper end of Victoria Station to take in the Wicker bridge. But it looses a foot on the Woodbourne Bridge end. This makes the whole thing about 76 foot long! 

You can see a more detail section on the map below. 

This is a larger scale map and dates to 1970. Ignore the red balloon and the green track TL001.  As you can see the yellow track from the software matches the distance of the map track.  The blue squares stand out more, the the map also had grid reference squares which show as grey black lines. 

The scaling of these maps helped to find the kink in the track starting position. Up to that point from Woodbourne Bridge the boards would be standard width boards. I have yet to decided on the width of the layout. I think I could get away with an 8 foot width. As I would have to have a strip down the side to get more in. Most plywood sheets come in fixed sizes, so an 8 x 4 foot, if they were laid along the straight section, that would use up 14 boards. I think that would be better than having them laid along the section in two's, thus avoid creating a join along the middle of the layout. As the layout is full of different levels. The plywood could be as little as 5 mm thick. Since no track will actually be at that level.  The final kink section would take another 5 boards.    

 

Am I That Good Looking?

 Looking at dating sites

A couple of weeks ago I was checking my spam box to see if something important had slipped through. Especially as I switched from BT Mail to G-Mail a few years ago. And though the former e-mail address are redirected from the inbox on BT Mail, the ones marked spam by BT are not and sent just to the spam box. So I saw one that looked like someone I knew was trying to contact me. Of course it turned out to a web site link to a dating site called MyDates. Not only that it created an account there using my e-mail address. Giving me the generic age of 42. Now I have never used a dating site before so I thought I would give it a go. So I corrected my age and uploaded the photo I used at the start of my Shakespeare video. Plus some details which to be honest I thought would put them off me.  But nothing did. Within a short time I was snowballed with women from all over Yorkshire and some further a field. 

I was only on the site a few weeks and in that time over 140 women and put a "like" on me. One even said she went all "weak in the knees" at my picture.  They were aged between 31 and 65. So what went wrong. Was I really that good looking to women? I couldn't tell from the site. The problem is that in order to talk to others you have to have "coins" and one message costs 50 coins. The good thing is you can send very long messages. But I guess that most uses use mobile phones and thus do not send ages on a monologue to send.  This site is quite generous when it comes to the coins, it starts you with so many free coins and allows a wheel to get free coins, one free spin a day otherwise a gamble of 25 coins! Even so an expensive call to make. I did pay for some more coins, about £10 worth, just to see if it could go anywhere with some of the women. But when I ran out I gave up. The profiles of the women were basic. Most had not filled in the about me section. I suspect that again that would be down to the mobile phone thing. Which also explains why everyone is always on line. Some people have said this is due to the operators of the site have paid staff working for them and even if this is the case, which I seriously doubt, they would need a call centre of staff to deal with it. Automated sometimes, but some replies I got back were too detailed to be fake. I also knew that it is common to use a fake picture, something got from another site. So I download every picture of the women I was interested in and put them on a search engine. I found only a few fake ones. Mostly from the Yandex image search. Ironically the Google search found nothing, since it's so security conscious these days, that it also protects the people scamming you.  Microsoft's Bing search is brother chip to it. Recently Yandex has tightened it's search criteria giving you a more bland image search. It used to have three settings, one which was totally safe. The site doesn't even have that option now.  One woman I thought was to good to be true, turned out not to be from Yorkshire, but was from Prague. (See picture)

I put this to her and she ignored me. Giving out more messages of love. 

I told one about my system of looking at picture of people (see the Strange But True page of this blog). You would expect some kind of reaction.   I got "have you ever smoked in bed after sex?" 

I added to my profile to visit my blog site to get to know me. But not one mentioned it or visited my blog. After the site I tried the dating site Match. But I soon discovered that in order to message or even see the people who liked your profile you had to pay a fee!  The only thing I got was lot's of profiles, but you could only answer yes or no to them, never maybe, before moving on to the next profile. Every day I got e-mails of these, but no actual contact from women. So I quit. 

Next was another website owned by the MyDates people called Flirt or something like it. Again coin based, more profiles, but less free coins and no wheel to get more. I got an interesting woman called Caroline, who did react to my question about pictures, which freaked her out a bit, but didn't put her off. She even said that I was a blogger!  

Again loads of women, though nearly all where not "my type" to put it mildly.  With both of these sites if you looked at a person's profile, you often got them messaging you back, saying what was up. This was because the notification system would send you a message every time someone saw you profile or liked you, not just who sent you a message. Another indication was if you looked at a profile, that someone would look at yours and not then do anything about it. Clearly they were put off and thus at least a real person.  I first paid another £10 for coins, but when this ran out I went to get some more at that price only to find that the minimum was now £24. So that was that.  I went on two more sites, both very naughty ones. Called Extreme Chat and MILF room. These are sex chat sites. However NOT one of the pictures there are the women behind the profiles. For Yandex showed them all to be porn stars. Or sex pictures off the net. I noticed that even a fully clothed women had the logo of a porn site on it (hamster). 

I have to say that some of the women from the dating sites, did pass the picture test. I told a couple of them that too. One I asked her to try my picture using the same technique. But she thought this was strange. However that's me! 

I have to say that if these sites are true I would have hundreds of women chasing me. And in my entire life I have not found that to be true. Even when I worked alongside many women. So I will leave readers to decide how good looking my profile picture is or was. 

As for me I have done with the dating sites. I did try a completely free dating site. The same sort of profile. Not one message, about five visitors, three of which had no profile picture!  I looked at another site, but by the look of it profiles are not removed, even though by the look of it the first contact was over 10 years in some cases! And the number of women on the site was small in number, compared to men and many were very restrictive into what they were looking for in men. It is called Love Awake, but I think it would be a waste of time joining it. 

There was one last thing one woman called Nikki who said was from Doncaster on one of the sites, that I picked up on just before my coins ran out. So I wasn't able to get back in touch. It was the site wanting lots more money for coins.  I suddenly had visions or my imagination running wild with me, of her being in my house. I sought of saw her sat aside me once while watching TV. I have had these before. Nothing comes of it, but this is what she looked like anyway just in case she does find this site. 

Just a footnote to add. The other day I was checking the MyDates link and seeing if it had deleted my profile. Of course the dam thing signed me up again. So I thought I would see what will happen if I put my picture on and added something to the profile to say that I was back on. I was also given 200 coins enough for four free messages. So that's what I did. I visited each one of the women that had "liked" my profile and waited to see what they would say. The strangest thing then happened, first I got messages from the same saying I was new on here. And not one of the women recognised me. Not even the one that went weak at the knees over my picture. So the entire lot seemed to have no memory of me or the conversations we had. So using my 200 coins up I contacted four of them, telling them that. Including the "weak in the knees" woman, saying that she had lost her mind. She replied thanking me for the compliment!!! And that she would go out with an older man. In fact none of the replies got acknowledge that I had been on before, even though it was in my profile. Some members that had not contacted me previously also message me after being on, saying I was "new".  By the way the Prague woman has now moved to Sheffield.  I can't help but think that the entire lot were paid operators by the Dutch company that operates the site. Where they get the profile pictures from is anyone's guess. Maybe they are from former people that have used the site, quit after forking out some cash. It strikes me that there are just too many women on the site. Plus I noticed a lot of names that were all the same. For example lots of Isabells.  I noticed to a lack of more common names such as Carol and Susan.  When I was being message they always used the profile name. The site for example picked graham.appleyard.  They would quote that too. If I was responding to the person I would have said Graham, or Mr Appleyard.   One last thing the online reviews of the site are dreadful and I am surprised that the firm hasn't being prosecuted under the law. Those profile pictures must belong to real people and they are taking 1000's of them from somewhere.  I have since deleted the account again. So you shouldn't be able to see my picture there. If you were to look. If you do go there and see my picture (the one above) let me know and will take action about it.  

Is it the Titanic or the Olympic at the bottom of the sea?

Is it the Titanic or the Olympic at the bottom of the sea?  

I came across these photos today which pose and interesting question. Back in 1912 the Titanic struck an iceberg and sunk to the bottom of the sea. In 1985 it was found and images were taken of it. However some of the images do not match the actual photos taken at the time of the ship. Clearly something is wrong. The photo's do however match the sister ship of the Titanic, that of the Olympic! 

So which sunk? 

There are several differences between the two ships mostly around the names and the portholes. Here is a comparison between the two ships:

As you can see the Titanic has larger windows. Also note the rectangler hole on the Olympic just below the curve of the structure. Not present on the Titanic. 

Now have a look at the wreck pictures and comparisons with that. 

 As you can see the windows on the wreck do NOT match the Titanic, but do match the Olympic! 

And the hole is present too! 

Why would it be?  Well the theory, branded one of those conspiracy theories of course, is that the two ships had be switched. With some quick alterations such as changing the name of the ships. This was due to the Olympic being so badly damaged, but still capable of sailing, after a collision with a UK warship. Apparently the Olympic ship would have been worth only the scrap value. So it was decided to have it meet with an accident at sea and claim on the insurance. But since the insurance companies would not ensure a ship that had already been in accidents (there were more than one).  It was renamed the Titanic on it's maiden voyage!  

This isn't anything new of course. There's even a TV documentary about it. But even if you think the insurance thing is nonsense. That doesn't take away the evidence that the wreck does not match the images of the real Titanic. 

Remember the Olympic was launched before the Titanic.   

Footnote:

There is a book on the subject by Steve Hall and Bruce Beveridge which looks at the evidence. I haven't had the book long so I haven't read all the details, but the conclusion basically is that it is the Titanic on the seabed. However the book has flaws in it. Despite extensive use of photographs nearly all of them are from the time of the ships. The actual wreck pictures you can count on one hand. I suspect the reason behind this is down to the fees charged for more recent pictures. Therefore a lot of the comparisons are between the contemporary images. Though they talk about putting things in laymen's terms, the photos describe the deck details and then equipment on them, which the laymen doesn't know. In several images which are in black and white, they point out "brown" fixtures, which reminded me of the guy on TV describing a snooker match to black and white viewers saying "the black ball is next to the pink". 

So far I have not seen any reference to the rectangler window being unique to the Olympic or the Titanic. The book mentions James Cameron's exploration of the wreck, with High Definition cameras, but of course none of the images are shown. Saying state rooms for certain people that were only on the Titanic. However a lot of the work is based around details such as ventilation systems being different on the two ships. 

The book lacks several things, including an index. However they have included large sections on the life of the other White Star Line ships, which are nothing to do with the two ships. 

It points out that both ships were under-insured, so there was no reason to fraud. But even so setting sail with a damaged ship, would cause any insurance company to not pay anything out at all if anything then happened to the ship, especially if it turned out that the ship sailing was supposed to be brand new!  And as far as I know they did a payout for the accident. 

For me the story either falls flat or not on the Thomas Andrews issue. Being the designer of the two ships Andrews would have known the difference between them. So if the ships were switched he would have known. And therefore had to be in on the plot. Question for me would be what was the designer doing on the ship? Was it common practice for the designer of the ship to sail all the way on the maiden voyage of a ship? 

It does open up his character a bit more. For in the stories of him, he is seen as a kind helpful man doing his best to see passengers get off the boat and giving advice to those stuck on it after the boats are gone. One of the few men onboard who knew how to survive, but yet doesn't. Eyewitness say he made no attempt to escape and for a man with a wife and children seems odd to me. However this can be accounted for by two reasons. First that he really felt himself to blame for not making the Titanic able to survive the disaster and knowing that nearly all the people on board were going to die. And the second reason being guilt for his part in the fraud and switch.