Broithe

A properly balanced engine is not just 'nicer', it is better in every way - the loads on the bearings are lessened, things last longer, and not just because they aren't shaken off. God knows what was going on in the float chamber of a boneshaker bike..? It's not many years ago that a ferry journey was accompanied by the constant jingling of the duty-free bottles - (although it has its current issues) Ulysses is notable for having almost undetectable engine vibration.

Balancing of reciprocating engines is rather more complicated than it looks. On steam locos, nobody ever seems to take much account of the second order vibrations, possibly just relying on the general mass of the machine to reduce those effects. In lighter machinery, particularly motorbikes, there may often be one or two balance shafts running at twice engine speed.

The 'end wheels' just have half of their respective interconnecting rods to cope with, the centre wheel has two halves of the interconnecting rods and about half of the con-rod from the piston imposed on it.

The corruption of the warning data spreads... There seems to have been a heat expansion issue on the Nenagh platform. A train came and went whilst I was there.

Now, you are just fuelling speculation.

Quick open-top conversion in Bradford today - handy in this weather. No injuries.

The two on the right would be clean - they are actually off-duty and are boogieing in a night club.

Do you still have the 'spare' bit from the truncated arch? If so, you could experiment with some diluted ink washes on that?

Boeing are working on it... Still some issues to sort out..

That is my understanding, too - I believe that we've been through this before..

Knocklyon Road? Next to the M50? Somebody who really knows will be along shortly, I'm sure.

Bridge strikes all over the place lately - even Ballybrophy - there's only a couple of very small underbridges that I can think of in the vicinity, but I suppose you could also hit the parapet of an overbridge...

This sort of thing? They could be hot-cutting chisels from the same blacksmith. https://front-step-forge.myshopify.com/products/hot-cut-h-13-tool-steel

Sounds even more plausible.. All I dug up here was some Stafford-Uttoxeter rail, a chair-screw, a pick from a pneumatic drill and the entire back axle (with wheels) from a Bedford CF. Previous owner had dug a pit in the front garden to work on his camper van, then buried the bits that came off...

Sounds very plausible, they'll have needed to crush it up for processing through the kiln - would there have been a source of water-power anywhere nearby? This signal at the old salt sidings has somehow survived until now. There is still some inset rail in the yard beyond the fence. Just visible, between the yellow machine and the bramble. .

Living across from the old Salt Works in Stafford, I do pick up the odd salt wagon.. What is the odd sculpture/totem pole affair in the background here, and on the 203 pictures?

We've all done that after one too many...

I used Holyhead - Dun Laoghaire/Dublin as a train-delivered foot passenger regularly, up to ten years ago. It got steadily more difficult to access the train part here on the Big Island. In the 90s, I could get a train from Stafford at 00:02 to catch the 02:40 boat - with no changes. The last time I looked, I would have had to be at the station for 20:30 to catch the same boat - the timetable changed continuously and there could be two, even three, changes. Coming back here, the train would sit for hours at Holyhead - engine running, lights on and all the doors locked, so you couldn't even get on and settle down. The Waiting Room would also be locked - you just had to hang around a station that looked like a set from a war film, until they deigned to let you on the train. I came to the conclusion that it was deliberate sabotage. The attitude that foot passengers met at Holyhead was little short of open contempt. My rail journey on the Irish side of the water got steadily better, but, on this side, it just got too difficult. Even buying the ticket here was a difficult process, trying to convince people that it really was possible. There's little point in synchronising transport on one side of the sea, if people are going to meet the UK's randomised attitude to everything when they get here.

That was the first use of Hornby's original prototype laser scanner - made from a bicycle lamp and a milk bottle.

Imagine looking at this from the other end of the telescope - imagine being an established manufacturer seeing "four yokels from the back of beyond" produce market-leading quality products almost instantly. It must be quite alarming! It will drive others in the industry in the right direction, in the way that Toyota and Honda did in the 1970s, when they decided to make quality cars.