Broithe

Technical Drawing was a specific subject in most secondary schools on the Big Island up into the 1980s. I still have all my old stuff, flexicurves, French curves, stencils, adjustable set square, trammels, Rotring pens, etc. I finally got a planimeter a few years ago - always wanted one...

That has the look of a British Thornton style set - although Hellerman used to sell German-made unbranded sets of a very similar type. The clasp fastening, rather than the later 'sliding bar' catches, would imply an earlier date. Sometimes, there was a bit of gold-blocked printing in the centre of the lid lining, with some sort of identification on it, but this often wore off quickly on the satin linings, more so than the 'velvet' ones. I still have my original set, bought for thirty bob in 1971, and a few more, picked up at boot sales...

I blame @murrayec

You did - I thought I was going mad, too - but, it was here.

... from the Air Corps today.

That is not strictly true, of course. They weren't that young.

In the 70s, I used to park my old Honda 400 in the some place every Saturday and then pop round the town to get my few bits and pieces. One day, I arrived back there to discover no bike. Ah, well, it was bound to happen, things were a lot easier to steal back then. It was only a few yards to the cop shop and I had to wait for a couple of people to sort their business out before I could burden the desk sergeant with my situation. As he was filling in the details, I suddenly had to admit that I had remembered where I had really parked it, as my usual spot had been full that morning... At my last school, we had an even-more-obnoxious-than-usual teacher and he had an old white Mini. Someone had the bright idea of playing a trick on him. We got some red poster paint from the art room and a load of us moved his car across the car park and painted it red. I was walking across there at home time and it became clear that he had reported it stolen. He was talking to two coppers in the middle of the car park as I went past - "What was the registration number, Sir?" - "K365RFE, Officer" - Really, Sir? Is that it over there?" I nearly died - I had to walk a good hundred yards before I was out of sight, with the tears nearly rolling down my legs.... When I had a 'real' job, we had a manager who was staggeringly inept - one of his many events was to report his car stolen because he had driven to the canteen in the rain, but it had stopped and was quite sunny when he came out, so he walked back - and couldn't find his car to go home..

Definitely a growing market...

It's worth giving it a good bit of thought - including just how physically large a device you would be prepared to carry about regularly. Some of the smaller mirrorless things are optically excellent these days. A professional that I know speaks highly of the Sony devices.

This is the thing - it's all about you. I got a DSLR with the intention of doing some old-fashioned 'manual' stuff - but I find that use it on auto most of the time. I like the idea that so much more care went into a picture years ago, not just because each one cost a few bob, but because the technology caused you to think more. A lot of what I do know is just 'record' stuff really, and the 'artistry' side doesn't seem to be important enough to me for me to bother - one day...

For years, I just had a 'medium' digital camera, which turned out to be absolutely ideal for certain situations, when I got a 'proper' DSLR, it was definitely less useful in exhibition situations, particularly. So I currently run a full-size DSLR ( which accounts for 80% of the pictures ), a "packet of twenty fags" pocketable camera and now, also, a smart phone, which I only use as a "small bar of chocolate" camera for certain situations. I do keep the 'middle' camera in the car - for when somebody hits it... It's all about what you want to do and what you can spend. I have recently reorganised my pictures into better defined subject areas in the 'main' computer, but have left them in time order in the 'laptop', so that I have a bit of a back-up and two ways of trying to find a particular one. I do a separate back-up every few months - and leave that on another premises.

If there's anyone who was involved with O'Connell Street you may get an answer, if theirs is Magnorail, of course. .

There was a slight oddness earlier, when Latest Posts was only showing the first three letters of each - back to normal now.

See....

The subsidy was only as high as it was at privatisation in '95 as a sweetener for the "buyers". It would have been around a billion otherwise

You could get 'somebody' to knock up a brass one? It looks like it is a close-coupling cam type thing...

On a train from Holyhead once, I had a couple of crews on a transfer in the seats behind me, they were discussing redundant signage that they had spotted and how to access it for removal. There was a sign over a tunnel mouth that was going to involve some abseiling...

Proper hard-core modelling.

Anybody got a drone to check if the dodgy slates are in the right places?

These people will sell you moulds, in many styles, to produce your own sheets. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Cotswold-Stone-Sheet-Mould-Model-Railway-Walling-in-OO-Gauge-CM04/153366955461?hash=item23b56205c5:g:~7MAAOSwJTNbvr3X:rk:1:pf:0

There's no arsenic in polystyrene and burning it properly at high temperatures is relatively safe.. ..but in a 'domestic' situation, it would produce styrene* gas, which will attack your nervous system directly and is definitely worth avoiding. Styrene, like a lot of benzene derivatives, is (possibly) carcinogenic, but definitely toxic. When polymerised into polystyrene and used at 'normal' temperatures, it's probably OK - unless you plan on living for a 1,000 years, something else almost certainly will get you first. Even warming stuff up in the microwave when it's in a Styrofoam container might be best avoided. * It's what the 'burning plastic' smell is.

If it isn't, I've successfully run 'sympathetic' points by driving the distant one mechanically from the driven one. It looks a bit of a bodge, but it ran remarkably reliably. A bit of 'spring' in the connections helps to be sure that the distant one is 'home' before the driven on, but that still has the scope to get 'home' too.

This has been dug up near Omagh station.

This?