Broithe

52 minutes ago, commerlad said:

No but I do have 1 of these.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256594570188

Nowhere near as good for your purposes, but I do still have this 'wavy line measure', from the days of paper maps. Quite useful at the time, double sided and with dials in the popular scales, for direct reading.

You did have to be aware that not all the scales ended at a 'round number' for a full revolution, but still far easier than trying to lie a thread along the route and measure that.

1 hour ago, Mol_PMB said:

They look excellent. I have duly ordered a set.

You won't regret it, I'm sure. As I said, I find the grey one suitable for pretty much everything. The rubber of the block is quite hard, almost like a brake block* on a bike, but there is a little 'give'. With all the use it's had, sometimes on fairly filthy stuff, I don't seem to have had any clogging issues. The work that is is subject to seems to cause it to be almost self-cleaning - and I suspect that the small 'softness' does help to avoid material getting stuck on the surface.

It will be interesting to see how you get on. If I just had the old original one and did lose it properly, then I would have to do something about a replacement...

* Typing that has reminded me that yet another use is to polish up aluminium bike rims to stop brake squeal in damp weather. The list of applications is endless, as I suspect you will find over time.

On 23/7/2012 at 10:45 AM, Broithe said:

Garryson 'Garryflex' abrasive-filled rubber blocks.

Similar to track rubbers, of course, but much larger and in various, colour-coded, grades and capable of producing a beautiful, almost polished, finish. I've had mine for over thirty years and I doubt they're even 10% worn yet..

Hard to find, but well worth looking for.

Using my old grey block today, made me remember this thread from pre-history, for some reason.

(In both senses of the words...)

I did take the precaution of getting a new spare set a decade or more ago, but I don't expect to live long enough to actually need it...

The grey block at the front is what I use 99.9% of the time. You can see the result of a quick polish at the pointy end of the chisel blade and the oxidation coating that was there before. Just a few seconds work for a silky-smooth surface.

That grey block was obtained in 1975, I think, so that is the result of fifty year's use on an almost daily basis. It produces a lovely smooth finish on all metals, even really soft stuff.

I only really got the spares because it does have a tendency to get taken to the job and 'put down here for now' and then not found again for a while now and then. I was always frightened of losing it properly. But the new shed arrangement has greatly reduced instances of that and I haven't lost it (much) this year. On occasions, the existence of a sharp square corner is beneficial, so a new one gets used then, as the old one has lost the sharp corners now.

Highly recommended.

1 hour ago, Fran said:

Thanks to @BosKonay for the file, it contains the font and telephone box layouts. I'll be trying to keep the proportions as true as possible. It's good to see the 'P & T' brand too.
Thanks @Signal Post for the welcome and link, I think I have all I need in the file BosKonay has linked too.
Unusual to see the telephone boxes in blue @Mol_PMB, it's good to see how a picture can ignite some good and bad memories  with some of us ending up broke @Broithe. I too spent to much time 'feeding' the phone to prolong conversations. Youngsters aren't aware of how slow, costly and difficult communications were back in the day 

Even living, mostly, on the Big Island, I was fifteen before I ever spoke on a telephone - there was just nobody with a phone to speak to - I had used radios and walkie-talkies long before there was anybody to phone. We all knew how to make a phone call by the age of 8 or 9, but there was just nobody to ring, if you didn't need the cops or an ambulance.

There are some interesting hangovers today, from the old systems. In the old system in Ireland, it was common for the post office to be 1, the guards 2 and the bank(s) 3 (& 4), where the important places had the single-figure phone numbers, before the modern system arrived - particularly with the guards, if they are still in the old building, then the current phone number will often still end in 2, often 102. The AIB in Rathdowney was 3 and is now 46103. The guards were 46102, until they sold the old barracks and moved to more sedate accommodation.

Also, the different keypad layouts of calculators and phones - because 0 on a phone was actually 10, inherited from the days of loop-disconnect dialling - you couldn't dial zero, or the system wouldn't know if you had, or how many times you had dialled it, because you hadn't. This all became superfluous when tone-dialling arrived, but it was too late by then and the keypad layouts were 'in place' forever.

On the Big Island, I still have an old rotary phone, mostly for the bell sound, but the dial still functions and I use it occasionally - making a mistake at the end of an eleven figure dial-out is almost heart-breaking, after putting all that effort in.

Also, the new codes in the republic are in a rather more useful arrangement than the UK phone code system. In Ireland, you can take a fair guess at where a phone number is from, 05 is the southeast, 05x will be a biggish place, 05xx will be smaller centres. In the UK, the system is (largely) alphabetical, 019xx will probably begin with W, but it could be Weymouth - or Wick - not much use to anybody. In the old days "reverse codes" were almost impossible to obtain - I had a booklet (obtained through Exchange & Mart) in my desk at work and would get a request for "Where is this code?" most days.

It does seem to me that the widespread use of landlines and, even worse, mobile phones, has just made it far more "acceptable" to be disorganised and unreliable. We had to know what we were going to do - and then actually do it - at the appointed time and place!

5 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

I can't help with the name of the font but I can link the question to Irish Railways, both broad and narrow, with this old photo of mine. Note the A and B button box - no dialling, you had to ask the exchange operator to manually connect you.

 

I remember making a call from Ballybrophy in the mid-70s. It didn't even have buttons, just a handle to wind, to ring a bell for attention from the exchange in Rathdowney post office. There then followed a discussion about the potential cost of a call to England - this eventually boiled down to 'How much have you got on you?" and an instruction to leave the cash in the cardboard box under the phone.

1 hour ago, WRENNEIRE said:

7 years ago

Patience is a virtue, if you don't already have all seven.

1 hour ago, Mol_PMB said:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/235956475742

on Buy it Now

NIR?

Did they ever go up there?

13 minutes ago, commerlad said:

Why did I immediately think of Patrick McGoohan

Ah that was it.

 

The left-hand rear seat at Lough Boora appears to be for Number One...

https://www.facebook.com/LoughBooraPark/posts/pfbid02EqmYs2nkpyvF9xCg7CjCaCQB5DtPLvVqjFebSMCQjZyitETvgDTEVfAM3V81n3Rel

Lough Boora Discovery Park - "We are delighted to unveil our first Velo rail bike prototype that we received for testing this week.

7 minutes ago, Horsetan said:

My first calculator was a Sinclair pocket thing, with red 8-digit (not LED, but sort of electroluminescent) display. Cost ten quid from Lasky's, the hi-fi specialists, in Oxford Street in about 1976.

I had (still have somewhere) a Sinclair Scientific.

Reverse Polish logic*, but still a huge advance on slide rules and tables - about £50 at the time, when a £ was a lot bigger than it is now,,,

* Hence there being no = key.

Emerging technologies will always need a development period, before they become normal in the real world. 

Some will fail, and some will become the daily normality.

Anybody not willing to go through that period needs to try not using anything that didn't exist for the whole of their lifetimes - cordless tools, mobile phones, the internet, etc.

Some of us grew up with slide rules, imagine if we were still stuck back there, because early calculators were too expensive and unreliable to bother pursuing...

The first calculator I ever saw cost £32 and was bought by a chap I worked with who came from a well-to-do background. Our gross pay at that time was £17 a week.

Having said that, I wouldn't be a huge fan of hydrogen for personal use in the immediate future, but it does have a place in being a way to store excess night-time electrical energy production for economical use at busier times of the day,

5 minutes ago, LNERW1 said:

Found this while researching for a CBA on the Kilkenny-Portlaoise railway line. A search for "Mountmellick railway station" yielded this. Interesting idea, but in fairness it would likely have closed well outside of living memory, and Lord knows looking for information on it would be like hen's teeth. Interesting read nevertheless and well worth a look.

I once found info on a proposal for a tramway from Rathdowney to Ballybrophy. It made some sense, with Perry's brewery being a significant enterprise at the time, but, of course, it never happened.

One day, I might even find it again...

3 minutes ago, DJ Dangerous said:

EBay.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/drdaysjunc is a decent chap to deal with, if he has what you want.

Mostly UK stuff, of course, but occasional IRM/Murphy items and Accurascale.

On 5/2/2025 at 1:07 AM, jhb171achill said:

I blame Elon.

If he gets caught up in some sort of scandal, will it be called Elongate?

If so, it could go on for a long time.

This group might entertain the weathering gurus. People have started 'distressing' full-size vehicles.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2169392473338447

When I had a real job, our products had earth straps made from copper strip, about 25 x 5mm, sometimes 5+ metres long. If exported to certain parts of the world, this copper would often be gone in a few days. We used to leave a sheet of steel outside and scrape the rust off it every few days, collecting it in pepper shakers 'liberated' from the canteen. When we had enough, the copper would be varnished and the powdered rust shaken over it. It was surprisingly realistic, making it look like a virtually worthless rusty steel strap.

7 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

I keep looking at those last packs of grey corrugated wagons, and wondering whether I really want to move another 12 (or 24) buffers...

Of course you do.

What else would you be doing..?

23 hours ago, RANGERMOUSE said:

I saw this sale was on yesterday afternoon. Ordered a couple of bits last night. They arrived to my dad's house (I work abroad) this morning. The money hasn't even left my bank account yet. Great service

I ordered at around the same time as you, aiming to bias the arrival to post-midday today, due to my non-attendance schedule here. Seeing your post, I found no evidence of an attempt yesterday and then got an email last night suggesting that today was the real target. This was handy as I was in and out all day yesterday, but could schedule my single one-hour absence today myself, so I did that quite early on, as I generally don't see many non-An Post deliveries round here before noon.

Obviously, I only really needed beets, but I wanted the magnestites as an example of what must surely be the prettiest RTR rolling stock ever produced.

They've just arrived now, as I was topping up my reserves in the house and the 'how to find me in the shed' map on the front door turned out not to be necessary.
 

I've promised myself the magnestites a few times in the past, but logistics have always got in the way - the real box is here now and the virtual box is finally ticked.

I, also, still 'have' the money, for now...

https://abbeyleixbog.wordpress.com/2016/05/13/a-railway-ran-through-it-2/

https://www.laoistoday.ie/2019/09/14/campaign-underway-to-re-open-laois-train-station/

And Eiretrains has pictures of many locations.

http://eiretrains.com/Photo_Gallery/Railway Stations A/Attanagh/IrishRailwayStations.html

My mother's people originated in Waterford and journeys down there involved a pony and trap from Rathdowney to Attanagh, rather than Abbeyliex. Whilst Abbeyliex seems rather nearer on modern roads, Attanagh is actually only a few hundred metres further and there would have presumably also been a lower cost for the tickets from there.

On 30/11/2024 at 7:36 PM, Broithe said:

When it became compulsory for the local paper in Stafford to 'illustrate' every story with a picture, however unnecessary and futile it was, I used to keep a record of the more pointless ones.

Two of the stories  were about issues at the station - one was about problems with the taxi rank and the other was about a track failure at the northern end of the station and the associated disruption it caused.

The articles were accompanied by a picture of a taxi rank and one of trackwork at the end of some station platforms.

The taxi rank was clearly not Stafford, as it was indoor, and a bit of work established that it was a picture from Edinburgh Waverley.

The trackwork was clearly Southern region, with its clearly visible third rail.

The point about all this rambling is that their editorial office was on the first floor of a building overlooking both the taxi rank and the northern end of the platforms - for some reason, it must have seemed more like 'journalism' to use ludicrously inappropriate pictures. Or they had a very impressive telephoto lens...
 

My favourite one, though, was a story about a bloke taking a court case over a claim for industrial deafness - illustrated by a generic picture of a random ear.

At least it was a human ear.

There's not much point me complaining like that, if the railway companies are going to do this sort of thing themselves.

https://www.facebook.com/LondonNorthwesternRailway/posts/pfbid031NgmhT2whtNc79Jjha3ELBufnsWDgiBSFBprRjRDoEf92x8fsLQvZYbzU4mJbuGvl

40 minutes ago, Kevin Sweeney said:

I was at a party on Friday night and cycled home at about 3 am. It was a beautiful starry night and the night sky was amazing to see with no light pollution.

I walked home a couple of hours before that. A minute or so into the kilometre that it takes to get home, I was engulfed in a veritable blizzard. It was of such theatrical proportions that several of the local Brazilian community felt obliged to video the event. It only lasted about fifteen minutes, but if it had gone on for a few hours, it would have been a significant thing, probably surpassing the wind event in people's minds here. We still had the aftermath of it into the afternoon of Saturday, with any hard surfaces being very entertaining to travel over.

55 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

We’re in a modern house, so 100% electric and no open fire or oil or gas heating.

Whilst I can see why there is a push in that direction, especially for urban housing, I do like the idea of "multiple sources". Power cuts in urban areas will generally be fixed more quickly.

I have the (wood-fired) stove in the shed - and an open fire in the house, this is little used and I will fit an inset stove one day, which might see a bit more use from it.

Oil-fired Stanley in the kitchen for heating the house, although that does require the electrical supply for it to burn.

Gas cookers in the house and shed, from LPG bottles, plus a few camping burners, if things get really desperate.

A 'mains failure' light in the shed and in the house - it's fairly dark here, if everything goes* on a dark night.

A few torches scattered around.

I'm very close to the local substation and, for historical reasons, the spur that I'm on actually only supplies here and one other house, which I can't see clearly from here. Occasionally in the past, it was only just the two of us, but the offending item was eventually replaced and we've had no issue since then.

* A year ago next week, I fitted a motor-driven timer for the light in the hall, this is calibrated to turn the light on at sunset, and a cam alters the time to automatically follow the variations of the sunset through the course of the year. This is still operating bang on time, so I know there has been no power cut in that time, even for a few minutes when I've not been here. In fact, I think it is at least four years since the power last went off, apart from when the meter was changed.

Post-Éowyn scenery for those who are doing modern-image Scottish layouts.

1 hour ago, Mike 84C said:

We have an AEC set at our club which runs/ran on Bantry. I found it rather fragile and have had to do repairs to one of the bogies. In fairness its construction is maybe too light for club use and the "fat finger brigade" I do feel the overall look is fine and the front/windows area is better than a cut and shut BR version. Until "another manufacturer" comes up with the goods, Silverfox it is.

I thought I had seen that in Sleaford, but I wasn't sure and was waiting for confirmation. I remember thinking that it did look quite nice.

I've  survived pretty much completely unscathed. Not even a blip with the electricity. No damage as such, but the windows are covered in sand.

It's still fairly windy, with occasional really gusty minutes, so I'll leave the precautions in place for now.

Power off all around the area here, but a lot seem to be coming back on quite quickly. 

A great number of trees down on roads in the area and very little traffic passing by. I've only been out of the gate to look up and down the road, to see if there is anything to be aware of.

I've contacted the (even more) elderly neighbours, to see if anything is needed, but they're all in much the same boat as me, so all is well here.

Thursday is my standard shopping day, so I'm stocked up for a week+. 

I've got the shed nice and warm, in case I need it as a lifeboat. The house is oil heated, but having a tank of oil is little use if the electricity to run the burner drops out.

Cooking is bottled gas in the house and the shed, so I'll be OK, as long as the roofs stay on.

I always keep a few gallons of water straight from the pipe, but there is a large tank in the roof for bulk supplies, if the storage bottles run out.

The practice run before Christmas was handy, a lot of the 'battened down' stuff from that is still in place, having not been needed since.

I'm well inland and in a fairly sheltered location - I had no effects in the last big storm, but this one looks a bit more violent still.

The wheelbarrows are upside down, with blocks on, and the outside worktable has been demolished and placed in a sheltered spot.

My nice new drain in the road has a small mud dam, which forms a large puddle. I'll go out now and clear that, while the rain is stopped.

All I've got left to do then is worry...