Broithe

There were other nicknames - Contra-rotating Nissen hut was always a favourite.

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...

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.

Passenger Information System - possibly.

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

The horse was called Pat and actually held a current Safe Pass. Although, obviously, the blanket should have been orange.

Agreed, they need to rein it in.

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.

And a lot of Birr station is still there.

It's a National Monument.

No space for a passing loop on your layout? Just modify the rolling stock slightly...

https://trwilliamson.co.uk/

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.

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?

I wonder if you could use an old 'black' inner tube, cut into thin rings and then snipped into sections to represent each sod? That might be a bit thin for your scale, although a bike inner tube would be about right for 00. It's a long time since I saw a car inner tube, but they should be thicker. Doing it this way would also produce the slight arc that you usually get as the sods dry out. It would be a tedious process, but not too bad, if you're just wanting to produce the visible top layer -but, doing a whole wagon-load would take a while, without some sort of automation of the process. Doing it by hand, though, would produce some of the variation that you would get naturally.

The pictures are all very nice, but we need to hear the squeak as it turns, that's the important part.

I'm just glad there isn't a picture of the photographer's situation...

Lie down on the (ground) floor and look at this with one eye.