Broithe

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."

My immediate boss was a chap utterly devoid of any sense of humour. One day, in a meeting about the dreadful state of what was coming out of an assembly plant we had in Georgia, USA - as a scheme to avoid import duties by claiming things were "Made in the USA", he made the following outburst. "I think the Americans are all a bunch of cowboys!" This caused some laughter that he failed to understand. An attempt was made to hint at his inadvertent joke - "Actually, John, a lot of them are Indians". More laughter from us and more bemusement from him. He then made more comments about the competence of the workforce, which led us to realise that he thought we had revealed that the workforce were largely from southern Asia. We knew when to give up...

None of this happened within your jurisdiction...

Er... Xerox paper was special, coated stuff until the late 70s. When we got the first plain paper copier, people felt obliged to find out what it would actually do. Me and another chap were experimenting - as our skills increased, we printed both sides of the then-current English £10 note onto a brown paper bag from his lunchtime sandwiches. The outcome was startlingly realistic and would easily have passed in term of visual accuracy and the 'feel', certainly after 10pm in most pubs. We were congratulating ourselves on this achievement when the boss caught us and went weak at the knees over the immense illegality of what we were doing. He was not placated by my assertion that 'this is the only way we'll get decent money out of this place!"

Where I worked, we had a system of tool checks, which you left, sort of the same as library tickets, when you borrowed a special tool or jig from the stores. Being 'office', I wasn't supposed to have any, but I borrowed the odd one off 'the lads' as necessary and, when this became a bit repetitive, it was agreed that I could have two, when six was the general allocation. By this time, in the late 70s, the Plague of Accountants was in full swing and the supply of original stamped blanks was gone and not to be replaced - new checks were just circular discs of plain brass sheet, with a hole to hang them up and stamped with the employee's clock number. This was just applied with individual number stamps, as straight as the stamper could be bothered to do. So, I just made four more - and I couldn't even tell which ones were the forgeries... I still have them somewhere.

Do call in here occasionally, as your time and circumstances allow. One day, the embers may reignite the considerable fire that was burning before. I've been in a (very much smaller) hole for the last few days and achieving something - anything - is usually more helpful than seems reasonable. There are things that need to be done, but achieving something that you want to do is hugely beneficial - whatever it it.

And the postage to the Canaries might be a deal-breaker.

We really should have piggybacked this onto the fuel protests.

I wonder if some unnecessary parts were removed? Possibly for use elsewhere or as spares. I'm not aware of an stl, but there's a good chance that somebody on here has an sti.

Dick does look to have a black chassis in that picture. Is there an official record of the livery details?

The chap next door had a CX in the 80s. I drove it a few times and it seemed a large luxury car at the time. A couple of years ago, I found one parked amongst modern stuff and it looked like a half-scale model. At one point, he nursed a dodgy starter motor a bit too far and it failed totally on his drive. This was a bit of an issue, as it was lying on the floor by that point, with no possibility of getting any sort of jack under it without digging a hole for it. It needed the hydraulics pumping up, to get it up in the air and get the starter out from below - but, it wouldn't start to pump itself up... In the end, we fitted a pulley to an electric drill and pumped the suspension up into the 'maintenance' position, to get at the starter

The conversations in the echoing room add to the atmosphere - almost like station announcements.

I was in an agricultural spares emporium a few months ago and, wandering around, as things were being arranged, I realised that it seemed far warmer than might be expected. Eventually, I spotted the heater - a stainless steel, diesel-fired thing, making the slightest hum. Even coming in from outside an a frosty winter's day, with a 'clean nose', there had been not the slightest detection of "fumes". This became even more remarkable when I realised that there was no exhaust to the outside world, it just vented straight into the building from the heat exchanger/combustion chamber pipe. The exhaust was at about head height and it was possible to stick my nose into the slight draught of warm "air" that emitted from it - still no nasally-detectable "fumes". I looked into it afterwards, as it seemed quite magical to me, but an external exhaust was not deemed necessary, if the building was leaky enough. This was in a converted steel farm building, with a bit of additional insulation - the two chaps working in there, for about six hours before we arrived, showed no adverse symptoms whatsoever.

Hornby have proven the technology for electrically heated live steam engines in 1/76 - it's just a matter of scaling it up to 1:1. Steam DARTs and Luas - it is the way forward.

It goes on everywhere. When I had a 'proper job', I had an old pressure vessel that had been used for development work and became surplus. I saved it from scrapping and it was used for all sorts of work for a good few years after, but it was spotted by a 'seagull manager' who declared it made the place look untidy and must be scrapped. I bet him £10 that we would buy another one within a year. It was just six weeks later when one blew up on site and a spare vessel was urgently needed. For various reasons, including general disorganisation, factory closures and a general history of not paying bills, it took about eight months to get one. I never got the ten quid.

For anybody wanting a small shunting layout. This would be fairly easy to scale down to 1/76 and shove a motor in. Picking up power from the rails would be an issue, but it could be battery powered and radio controlled. The recharging port could be hidden by the tail. The aerial could be hidden in the reins. It wouldn't need to be re-gaugeable for 21mm. Tractive effort could be an issue. It would need to be as heavy as possible, or perhaps magnets in the hooves, and running on a steel sheet hidden by ground cover material? Uncoupling might still need to be manual. It is going to be difficult, though, to sort out a small enough speaker with sufficient bass response. The technology could then move on into cattle, and possibly even sheep. Poultry could be possible eventually, with only two legs to deal with, but fowl and flying birds in general will be a good few years away yet. But, we shouldn't count our chickens before they're hatched (that would be a difficult feature to incorporate). Probably not reasonable to expect this much before 2028.

Send him round here after, I'm only getting the sound.

Perfectly understandable. No bones were broken.

If any of the boxspotters that follow this thread happen to see this one anywhere, then the Gardaí would be interested. It disappeared about a year ago, in Laois, full of donated goods for a project in Africa. I think it's a 30 footer?

It seems OK to me. possibly a tiny bit slower than normal, but very little, if it is.

The only time that I was ever arrested at bayonet-point was when I was innocently watching a civilian Trident do circuits and bumps. I didn't even have a camera. "Secretly", a NATO ally had aircraft there, 'hidden' down the far end - even though everybody knew, of course. I was apprehended by a very twitchy corporal, who presented the only time that I really felt in danger from the dozen or chaps that had me at gunpoint as a teenager. It was mostly a bit of theatre, to reassure the visitors - or should that be theater? But, I wouldn't have let him have anything sharp, much less the potentially noisy thing it was attached to.

Captain Sensible is, of course, still active in the punk and railway worlds.

In my town, of 80,000, in England, we used to have a truly marvellous model shop - everything from Lego to R/C aircraft. It slowly faded from lack of actual purchases and went around 20 years ago. We have two things left - an almost secret wargaming shop that seems to do well enough to stay going, over 30 years now - and a specific railway-only shop, which ticks over nicely enough, it seems, although there's rarely anyone younger than me in it. The railway shop is in premises that were a more general model shop before they moved in from the next town when that closed. I well remember the disappointment of seeing someone, who lived around 300 yards from that shop, buying an item on Amazon for delivery in a few days, when she could have walked there and got the identical item now and for the same price. It was in the window, as she walked past to her house. The shop closed about a year later...

It could be either, depending on the brake arrangement - all that really matters is that the chassis isn't black.