Broithe

Many years ago, my first real job 'on my own' was to design a new valve system for a circuit breaker for a cement works in Malaysia. They needed to have the phases operable independently, rather than all three at once, which was normal. The mechanisms were hydraulic, powered by a nitrogen accumulator 'spring', to provide the high speed operation necessary. Our previous standard breakers were supposed to have two stored operations in the accumulator, but they couldn't really manage the second one, because of huge losses as the valves operated. I took the opportunity to introduce some small changes to my new valves, to reduce this problem. The valves were made and the bearing and sealing surfaces were ground. The were then to be blasted clean of debris, to keep the hydraulic system clean. The ground surfaces were to be protected during this phase, of course. But, they weren't. This was discovered when the system wouldn't pressurise, as the leakage rate past the rough surfaces was too great. We were always late with everything - usually overdue even before anything was actually built, much less tested successfully. We had a crisis meeting and I was told it had to work by 3pm that day or we would have to default to a bizarrely expensive replacement operation, using stuff that we already made. It was my view that we only needed to get it to pressurise, then a few operations would hammer the seats to seal properly. I considered trying to fit a few more pumps in parallel, to beat the leak, but we just didn't have the time. So, I took off the cap at the accessible end of the valves and beat them with a hammer - in an attempt to get it to seal well enough to pressuring and then hammer the seats with operations. At 1pm, I had it all back together and turned the pump on. The system pumped up! All the way to 320bar, with no apparent leaks. A few quick test operations before the Armageddon Meeting at 3pm and it all worked amazingly well - it had four stored operations from the same accumulator that the standard breakers couldn't really do two from. We only made two of these and they went off to Malaysia and worked faultlessly for decades, which our stuff generally didn't. This got me a reputation for being able to come up with unorthodox, but effective, techniques. Anyway, the point of all this rambling is that, about two months later, as we were shipping the breakers off to the East, it suddenly became apparent to me that I had hit the 'wrong end' of the valve, it was the other, inaccessible end, that was leaking as the pump tried to build up the system pressure. Either the simple shaking of the valves, or the small amount of 'hammer' they got from the spring driving them back onto the seats, was enough to create a seal better than the pump rate could beat, I don't know - but, it worked. We had other things to worry about by then, so I never bothered anybody with that information...

The ship can stop off on the way north to cut down delivery costs. I don't really see a problem here.

It would surely be a simple enough matter to fit the model with dual-gauge track - like where it changes over from 4' 8 1/2" to 5' 3" on the Boyne Viaduct?

I showed it to a German friend and they said "I zinc someone should call a copper!"

I knew someone would chime in with a pun. It is a cymbal of the times, I suppose..?

I sometimes slip in fake ones with younger people, and they rarely ask about them, not happy to admit that something might be outside their vast experience. MFI, RAOC, RATO SNCF, ALS, SKC, etc.

Probably worried that you would forget the first one...

For what it's worth. Come on! Get down with the kids, Dude...

Someone I know was once asked by an elderly, housebound neighbour if she would take something into town for her. Of course, she said yes and took the cardboard box home, to find a suitable carrier bag to make the journey on the bus a bit more convenient. There was a bit of weight in the box, which was in a PC World bag by this time, and, as she walked to the bus stop, a rather dodgy-looking lad offered to "carry it for her". She stated that she was OK, but he persisted, eventually just grabbing the bag and running off with his ill-gotten gains. This posed a bit of a dilemma for my friend, as she didn't want the old lady to know that this had happened, so she continued to the intended recipient and, between them, they concocted a plan to make the whole thing 'look like it had happened properly'. The point of all this is that the contents of the box was not highly-valuable computer goods, as the lad had presumably believed, but was actually the corpse of the old lady's treasured Jack Russell Terrier, destined for cremation. The vet arranged to supply 'plausible-looking ashes' in return and the bereaved owner never knew what had really happened. I've often wished that I was an observer when the great prize was opened...

To a lot of us, that is somewhere between a warning and a threat... It is almost extortion.

I was in a pub once, when the subject of reasonable force/ self-defence came up. The landlord loudly declared that "If they try that here, I will just shoot the miscreants!" The sergeant was sitting next to me, having a quiet pint and suggested "Well, if you do, make sure you ring me before you ring us." And, he didn't actually say "miscreants", of course...

Well, I was up there again today and I did discover quite a few fenceposts that would be handy for anybody starting to relay the track.

I make no recommendation, either way, about this approach.

One of our passing "seagull managers" had been to a proper posh-boy school, where they mainly teach you how to act superior. He liked to use stock Latin phrases, in the knowledge that most others would have to acknowledge his infinite prowess, far beyond a mere mortal. I did a couple of years of Latin and could cope with his level easily enough. In one meeting, he was pressing for us to take a decision that would clear the decks for now, but would cause future failures that he was unable to understand. He lost patience with people trying to explain the reality of what he wanted to do and declared "Alia iacta est!" I made a repost in Latin and gave him a thumbs up and collected my stuff to leave. My boss, sitting next to me, had no idea what was going on, but felt that he didn't know enough to argue with whatever had just happened, because he didn't know what it was. Outside, he demanded "What's going on?" "Don't worry about it - it's all his fault now and recorded in the minutes. We're safe." "What did he say?" "He's decided that we're doing that last daft thing that he suggested, despite what he's been told." "No, the Latin bit - what was that?" "Alia iacta est." "What does that mean?" "The die is cast - it means "I have made the final decision" - it's all his fault now, forget about it!" "What did you say to him?" "Quantun ille canis est in fenestra. But, it's OK, he didn't understand me, but he couldn't admit that." "And what does that mean?" "How much is that doggy in the window..." I can't even remember the bloke's name, but he was on to pastures new a couple of months later - no doubt to spread his slurry over those pastures, too.

One? The packets were generally full of them... In a meeting about one of our many disasters, around 1990, I was asked if I had seen a vaguely relevant programme on the TV the previous night. "No. I don't have a television." This was treated with total disbelief by all present. I had actually stopped having a TV in 1983. "How do you manage without a television?" "I don't need one, Steve. I just come in here five days a week and watch an eight-hour sit-com."