Broithe

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.

I'm not a fan of heights. My bike ride home from work on the Big Island had about a mile along a straight road, with double yellow lines along it. I would try, and usually succeed, to ride the full length with my tyres within the outer limits of the lines, a path a foot wide. I would generally be able to do it, even on a fairly windy day and with traffic whizzing past. If I attempted that 100' up in the air, I wouldn't get a yard before I was plummeting earthwards. There is a risk/consequence balance, and we all have different biases. Remember how fast everything seemed to happen when you started driving - now, people hardly bother, once they are used to it... You can, especially if you have an element of personal control of the circumstances, acclimatise yourself to most situations, with adequate time to do so. But, it would probably be several lifetimes before I could do this.

I was once roped into replacing a flat roof on the end two garages in a run of eight, they were all owned independently and I could foresee 'awkwardness' from the owner of the third garage, should we provoke future issues for him. I laboured the point about this and the fact that we would have to do a really neat join, where the new roof met the old, over the partition brick wall. I was trying to get out of the whole job, by raising this risk, but I ended up doing it. As I removed the failed roofing felt, it started to become clear that it had been done before, and badly, including replacing the rotten roof sheets, which had rotted again. I was now even more nervous about the joining issue when we reached the existing good roof at the partition. As I carefully peeled back the felt, I could see where the original roof had been cut and the new roof fitted to it. The boards were chipboard and had been rather roughly cut - with a hammer. You could see the individual 'bite' marks as the 'craftsman' had worked his way along. Luckily, our roofing material top sheet was not the usual felt, but stuff that was liberated from the nearby Evode/Bostik factory, basically metre-wide rolls of Flashband, which covered the dodgy joint up very well. No issues were ever reported.

We would need to make sure that the snipers had adequate hearing protection and were located a good distance from anybody reciting James Joyce at the offenders, or we may find that they would change sides.