Broithe

A weathering example. Ideal for the "just bury it in the garden over the winter" technique.

Getting fertiliser through UK customs from Ireland will always result in them paying a bit more attention to the consignment... They're probably in a bucket of wet sand in the middle of a car park, awaiting attention.

I remain amazed that this has happened.

I have decided that I'm going to wait for the Irish mainline electric locos now - so that I can buy some food and have the heating back on at the weekends.

The thing is that The Nile, as seen by most people, is made up from the waters of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. So, eau-de-nil should really be light blue, surely?

I accidentally found this tunnel in the UK, where the A51 was straightened in the 1960s, cutting the yard off from most of the adjacent land. The viewpoint is from the resulting 'loop' of the old road. The 'new' road runs across the top, left to right (and vice versa). It's only visible from a very small area and few people will have spotted it - I've gone past many times and only know it's there because, to settle a pointless debate, I googled how many branches of Subway were in the vicinity. That location seemed very unlikely, until I investigated. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.8698612,-2.0918099,3a,90y,77.04h,84.52t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1soVY3Z_7mmFI3E3myGj6_tQ!2e0!5s20110701T000000!7i13312!8i6656 It would certainly be a struggle to operate there today by crossing the main road all the time. There are farm tunnels under the R433, either side of Rathdowney, these days.

The Forth Bridge.

As with all these "forthcoming projects", it can be difficult to remember what livery version you ordered all those months ago.

"Jess Irish Model" turns up this. Fairly cute, but probably a high maintenance device.

Perhaps the original Jess was particularly cute - we need a picture...

This seems as unlikely as RTR Irish model locos did, and still does. And yet, there it is, in 1:1 scale. And no argument about what gauge track to use...

There are some very specific vehicles out there...

If that's a Collins Green Colliery wagon, as it seems to be - it looks newly painted and the mine closed in 1931, I think.

There is limited Street View on there...

When the Mark 4s appear, will these ones be cheaper for not having a speaker fitment?

That is an ecumenical matter, or at least one for the Revenue.

I remember two traders at the boot sale in England talking about another one - during one of the football tournaments, when people started flying flags on sticks held in car windows, he had found some really cheap red/white cross flags and bought a large number, hoping to cash in from the loyal England fans - only to find out that they were Danish flags and they hadn't even qualified. There were Finnish UN troops in Cyprus when I was there, and we often went through their area. You usually saw them on their own, sometimes in pairs, but, even then, they rarely seemed to speak to each other. Very quiet people. Since then, I have believed that, if you can see three Finns at the same time, it means that you are actually in Helsinki.

I think what we're seeing there is that the guide rails prevent the flanges on the slightly narrower Swedish wheelsets from moving sideways far enough for one of the wheels to drop off the wider Finnish rails. There's not a huge difference in the gauges, and by forcing the narrower wheels to run in the centre, they can run on the wider rails, on the outer edges of the narrower gauge wheels. I think it means you can run Swedish wheels on Finnish track, but not Finnish wheels on Swedish track. It reminds me of a real 'sit-com moment' in France in 1990. We were starting a tour of the chateau at Amboise and the guide was the most multilingual person I've ever seen. She was dealing with a barrage of questions in many languages, from all directions and handing out leaflets for the most common ones, English French, Spanish, German, Italian, etc. A chap standing next to me said something totally incomprehensible, on the off-chance that she could speak his language - it was clearly one that she didn't, so he reverted to a heavily accented English question? "Do you have those leaflets in Finnish?" Straining to listen, but not understanding most of it, she realised that the question was in English and guessed what he was asking, based on the word "Finnish" - unfortunately, she actually heard him say "finish" in her head and said - "About forty five minutes." This mystified him, which then mystified her and I started laughing. I nearly had to draw diagrams to explain to them what had actually happened...