Broithe

I did notice some very pale tarmac last night and forgot to get a picture going past this morning, but Street View does it well enough. That is the actual tarmac surface, not a layer of debris, and not much darker than the concrete,

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.8555049,-7.5848455,3a,56y,186.43h,50.68t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s8a5CdK72i8-DsGJ5bKnp9w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D8a5CdK72i8-DsGJ5bKnp9w%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D186.42561092700657%26pitch%3D39.31964564632779%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205410&entry=ttu

21 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

As far as Ireland was concerned, WAAY more!

The pothole situation has basically reversed. I spend time in Laois and Staffordshire, within a few hundred yards of the same latitude and a mere 220 miles apart. I hear people in Laois moan about the roads and try to explain the state of things to the east - and I realise that I sound like I'm making it up.

My house there is on a secondary main road into a town of 70,000 people. Every time it rains, the road floods like this.

It's been doing this, at an increasing rate, since 1980. It probably blocks the road about 25 to 30 times a year now. The flood in that picture was there for six days.

The potholes are legendary, all over the road network. Driving on roads that you don't have experience of, in the dark or in wet weather, is fraught with danger - you can easily end up hitting a big one.

The half-finished ring-road round the town (started in 1935) has had unnecessary 'temporary' traffic lights on it, that will stop you every time, since July 2017 - 24hours a day, permanently.

Driving in the Republic gives one a great sense of relief, not foreboding...

Interestingly, (well, if you have little else going on at some point), it can be informative to spend some time looking at various random samples of tarmac as you go about your daily rituals. The variations in colour can be surprising, at times it can even be almost a light grey, and no two pieces, laid at different times, will ever be the same colour, or even remotely similar.

The wear of the tyre runs and the scuffing of the surface at bends and junctions, particularly from three-axle trailers, can also be worthy of note.

It's just a matter of compromise and getting the wheel/track spacings to be compatible.

11 minutes ago, Galteemore said:

Others have…the Shackleton was often described as "a hundred thousand rivets flying in close formation."

There were other nicknames -

Contra-rotating Nissen hut was always a favourite.

1 hour ago, Darius43 said:

Got a Shackleton in my model aircraft collection - 1:48 scale MR3 built from the Sanger vac form kit.

Perhaps a diorama with a runway level crossing is in order - would need to be in O gauge though…

Cheers

Darius

I have an 'Eastern Express' 1/72 kit here - one day....

The Shackleton was odd, in that it got steadily better-looking as time and the modification moved on.

Ah, the Shackleton. They made a lovely noise.

There were many incidents with them over the long years of service, but few other aircraft have ever had the ignominy of being written off because of a rat infestation.

https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/157361

The factory where I worked had been built in WW1 and was rather 'rustic' in construction. With many roller-shutter doors, it was really not feasible to restrict access for the many lodgers we had.

We had a blackbird in the Development Workshop. He didn't really cause much difficulty for people and was surreptitiously fed by a few. He could recognise everybody and judge their opinion of him. Barry, mentioned elsewhere, was one of the the few who wasn't in favour of him and this caused the bird to respond in kind, deliberately irritating him by gliding down from the crane rails, just behind his line of sight, then swerving to flash by, just in front of his face, causing Barry to display great agitation. I can remember people spotting the bird positioning himself for this, and adjusting their positions, so that the correct flightpath was available.

On another occasion, I saw "one of the bird's friends", with his feet up on the bench, reading a newspaper at dinner-time. His foot was itching and he occasionally moved it to scratch the itch - but, it wasn't itching, it was the blackbird removing his shoelaces for nesting material, merely stepping back as each 'scratching session' occurred.

The bird rarely bothered to go outside, although occasionally strolling through the door onto a grassy area, in hope of a few slugs or worms. This was a reasonable tactic, as we also had a kestrel nesting in a hole through the corrugated wall of the next building...

On 26/9/2021 at 2:04 PM, Andreas Weniger said:

So briefly about me. I come from Germany, in the very south on the Swiss border. Married, 2 grown-up children, house, cars, ....  Click

Well, I finally got around to looking through the stuff on the link in the first post here.

I strongly suggest that others do the same - there is tremendous stuff in there.

You can get fake birds of prey to scare the pigeons away.

The effect wears off fairly quickly, though.

This 'owl' had been there for about three weeks.

16 minutes ago, Wexford70 said:

PIS?

 

Passenger Information System - possibly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

30 minutes ago, Horsetan said:

That was a mad one. Think the horse may have been a commuter in a previous life; he even waited behind the yellow line.

The horse was called Pat and actually held a current Safe Pass.

Although, obviously, the blanket should have been orange.

56 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

Too much horsing around here, lads, get things back on track, neigh bother!

Agreed, they need to rein it in.

39 minutes ago, Horsetan said:

It looks like you'd have to demolish the houses/offices built at right-angles to the platform across the trackbed, plus reinstate a few bridges along the route to Roscrea.

Only one end of the building is in the way and the roads are generally fairly minor, a few level crossings would do - it wouldn't be a hugely frequent service schedule.

4 hours ago, Horsetan said:

If we're including long closed routes, I wouldn't mind seeing Newport, Mulrany, and Achill Sound open for railway business again.

And a lot of Birr station is still there.

49 minutes ago, Gabhal Luimnigh said:

It's a great layout, fair dues lad  

It's a National Monument.

No space for a passing loop on your layout?

Just modify the rolling stock slightly...

10 minutes ago, Galteemore said:

Try T R Williamson website - they do a range of railway reds with RAL codes - sorry can’t post web links for some reason. 

https://trwilliamson.co.uk/

39 minutes ago, derek said:

Brilliant! Jesus, what goes on in your mind? 

It's best not to know what's going on in there - anyway, I reckon he got the idea off the web.

Flocking marvellous!

I see they've moved the road sideways to go round that big pothole, rather than fill it in.

31 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

This is going over my head.

How can you pay VAT on postage if there's no VAT on postage?

I have seen that written here on the forum several times, that there's no VAT on postage.

The UK did the same when there was a £15 threshold before you were hit for import costs. I paid £14.90, including p&p, for a CD from Japan. By the time it arrived, a change in the exchange rate made the 'official' total £15.03. This meant that I was hit for £3.00 and another £8.00 for the privilege of paying it. At total of £11 extra when I had paid actually less than the threshold for the item, including postage.

Captain Canary.

Consultation survey is available here.

https://www.irishrail.ie/en-ie/news/Timetable-Consultation-2024?