Broithe

In order to secure my bonus points, I ventured out again. At +5 minutes, I was becoming sceptical - then I thought I could hear a train in the distance and the appropriate signals went green. Then the lights appeared as it came round Killasmeestia. The ambient lighting in the station is much stronger these day and I was hoping for a better view from the opposite platform. The passage through the station was at much higher speed than this morning's journey down attained there. So, this was the sum total of my pictures. Don't bother sending on my bonus points - well, not until you've converted them to euros...

Bang on time!

A chap I was at college with recalled going for an interview as smartly dressed as was possible, on a train full of posh, pinstriped businessmen. By the time they got to the destination, the steam-cleaning process made it look like nobody was even wearing their own clothes.

I worked, not on railway stuff much, for a factory that had been English Electric, before the merger* with GEC. We still had some old EE stuff on the go afterwards, both new production and repair/maintenance work. It was very clear that the old stuff was hugely better, both in terms of function and reliability, if a touch more expensive at the purchase stage. The GEC stuff, of the new order, was unreliable and untrustworthy, living largely off the 'buy British' policy of the main market and what were essentially subsidised export sales via 'foreign aid'. It was like building Corollas and Metros alongside each other. All dead and gone now, of course. * "Anschluss" was the preferred term...

Lord Rothschild was known for his team of zebras, although he seems to have a courtesy horse here, as the fourth zebra might be in for servicing...

This might be on it? I suddenly remembered seeing this lot around 1977, I think.

There was one of these up along the Welsh coast earlier today. https://windracers.com/drones/

https://www.irishrail.ie/en-ie/news/public-consultation-ecripp?fbclid=IwY2xjawGaOBlleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWTmDFs2qg5QDb-3cIqzbpAmCl7c2nEPTsaKoFk7aRwzgVVMkCR06UoNwQ_aem_wnLiOCFodtHsvDOP67V3pQ

I went to ten schools with a wide variety of social stratification. Whilst most generalisations will have exceptions, of course, I found a distinct tendency for the posher lads to be dodgier, perhaps from a feeling of being less vulnerable to authority. The extremes of variations in the girls was much less, to the point of being largely negligible. I do think your surroundings have some effect, in both directions - the results can perhaps be steered a bit by yourself, but you can only work with what you have available. My father had moved up to Dublin from Laois, finding work as a barman - then he took it into his head to join the RAF - we went to Scotland, then three years in Malta, with my first year of school there, then to the Cotswolds, like living in a picture on the top of a biscuit tin. Around England from there, then, most important of all, three years in Cyprus as a teenager - that made me what I am. Downhill from there, though - back to Lincolnshire - like being put into an induced coma... After that, I accidentally went to an excellent college and worked in a factory that was like being in a sit-com* all day. If we'd stayed in Dublin, I would be somebody else altogether. I often wonder about that. At the poshest school I went to, pretty much the only lad I trusted for my year there was, like me, sent by the council, and the school put up with us, or they didn't get the subsidy money that we brought them. We were required to state what our fathers worked at. They weren't hugely happy with my father not being an officer, but they actually refused to record his father as 'farm labourer', glossing over it by describing him as a 'farmer', which looked so much better. *If you can find any episodes of The Gaffer, with Bill Maynard, it is a wonderful caricature of the state of British industry in the 1980s.

I limit myself to this gossip column...

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/HORNBY-PLC-4004724/news/Hornby-sells-loss-making-Oxford-Diecast-brand-for-GBP1-4-million-48270708/

It's a 100 μF, which seems small to keep things alive for long.

Have IRM scanned it? Is there a programme for production of the model yet?

Let's be fair here. If any of us were having to expose our tender end to particularly inclement weather, we would probably get a bit distracted, too.

Of course, cats can be useful in railway modelling, particularly if you have a large rural layout.

@DJ Dangerous has paid for them...

I have one in the garage somewhere. I may find it during my current domestic archaeology process.

Out of interest, I Googled 'railway hatchet' and saw quite a few hatchety things, all different, under that description. Some had initials stamped on them that corresponded to initials used by railway companies. Whether that connection was real or not, though, I couldn't say. I did work with a chap called Steve Smith, who used to stamp all his own tools with his initials. I expect them to start turning up for sale as WW2 memorabilia... It does seem possible, though, that railways could have carried such devices, for improving entry/exit of vehicles in the event of crashes, etc. It certainly was the case on aircraft, where you could chop your way in, or out, through the skin, if the door mechanisms were out of action.

Spain... This could take a while to sort out.

It's unusual in that the Sunday services are the busy ones, with Christmas and Easter often being standing room only. The onboard catering is not the best. A bit of dry bread is about all you can hope for.

It isn't an 'either or' situation. RTR and DIY can coexist - and feed off each other. There are lots of things that you can do for yourself, or you can opt for a provided solution. I built a car once. It was quite good and I didn't mind doing it, but it's not really a viable solution for most people who just want personal transport. They can look around and select one of the many variations that people produce and offer for sale to them. In the Irish railway world, the big issue, for me, was plausible-looking motive power. Once that appeared, rolling stock to drag behind them could be bodged up by yourself, until even better things emerged as result of the increased market the "good locos" had created. Sometimes, the market will just not support a product, however good you might think it is - and vice versa. I accidentally bought some glass saucepans in the 1980s. Really good things, with handles that reliably click on and off, making storage much more compact and meaning that they can be used in a microwave, plus a gas or electric hob, oven, even in the freezer. They were around for a couple of years, but never really caught on, despite the sheer practicality of the system. I've picked up a few extra items from the range since then - and keep expecting it to reappear, as housing becomes steadily more 'compact', but the experiment seems to have been deemed a failure, however good I think the result was. I recently found a 'forty year old brand new coat' on eBay, to supplement the one I bought new at the time, as it nears the end of its useful life. It is exactly what I want, but the market seemed to prefer things that were not quite right for me. Etc.

I went to school in Hereford for a year, just down the road from the Hereford United ground, but it was just before he started playing in goal for them, so I probably never even saw him.

One can only assume that their rail system has fourteen stations.

They did have a plan to build a combined class, in co-operation with the Greek Orthodox church. They were planned to be manufactured by Metropolitan Vicars. Note to moderators - It wasn't me that started this talk about religion!

Apparently, in terms of length of track per square kilometre of territory, the Vatican has by far the densest rail network of any of the world's states.