Broithe

Well, mine has finally travelled the last half mile to here. It was shown as 'delivered' last Monday, but not here, or at any immediate neighbour. I had a vague thought that it could be at another house with a similar address and the same family name - I've had her tax disc before now - I was just about to head up there to enquire and the post van came past with it - result! Anyway, I've had a quick look and am massively impressed by the Start Trek-like 'swoosh' of air as the box lid is slid off - that is some tolerance to achieve with cardboard! It seems as good as others have reported - and better. But, I have been unable to open the cab doors so far, and a search of the "bag of tiny bits" has not turned up a key yet - otherwise, it seems quite good.

Mmm, one every full moon..?

Is that actually a pipe running into the wall-mounted pipe? I wonder if the wall-mounted pipe might be intended as some sort of flue arrangement, to extract the smoke on firing up? Perhaps with some sort of connector which is missing in the picture?

And it has such a lovely Visage, as well.

This post, from a Facebook page that I got roped into, might be of interest - it should be visible to anyone. https://www.facebook.com/groups/109619289726001?multi_permalinks=877520252935897&hoisted_section_header_type=recently_seen Google doesn't find the picture anywhere else.

I've seen it in real life a few times, it is an absolute masterpiece. Exemplary in every respect.

Keep that for a mitigation plea, if you're caught?

Tell her you've signed up for evening classes.

Phew! Very nearly one for the Railway Accident Investigation Unit.

DayGlo has a tendency to fade considerably over time - you could justify almost any variation.

That one's no lightweight - pretty much all-steel, but I don't find the weight a great problem, neither region that I frequent is hugely hilly and the 'robustness' outweighs (hah!) a few missing kg, I think. The GB bike is even more of a 'tank', but it's done a lot of miles over the last 15 years. I bought that off a local bike recycling (hah!) charity, after my original was stolen - from a back garden in the middle of the afternoon. That bike had done around 50,000 miles - I was doing a good 100 a week back then - 5,000+ a year - and I had it over a decade. I only drive about 7,000 a year (in normal times) - and only 2,000 this last year. The success I've had with that bike led me to set up an auto-search on eBay for another - the silver one was on a few times over a year - 'collection only' and always ending when I was heading west - but nobody ever bid on it - then it eventually ended as I was heading back east - so it became mine. A lot of decisions I've made over the last few years, because I thought "that'll be handy one day", have turned out to be of great benefit over the last 18 months.

My bike on the Big Island is kept deliberately scruffy - and it weighs a ton. Bike theft is the main cultural activity in the town. I do use it to access the central area, as driving there is just too traumatic, but I have a technique of popping into a nearby, but out-of-sight, shop for a minute, then returning back past it. My theory is that, if I was going to steal a bike, it seems much safer to do so if you have actually seen the owner leave the scene, and you should then be reasonably safe from him returning unannounced for a while - and you know what he looks like, so you can spot him at a safe distance and escape. I'm fairly sure that I've saved my bike on at least two occasions by using this technique. A friend had his, fairly decent, bike stolen by two lads who spent some time hacksawing through the lock on a Saturday afternoon, about a hundred yards from the police station. He went in to report it and they said they already knew, which surprised him. They actually gave him a copy of the CCTV footage for insurance purposes. You can hear the operative attempting to get someone to 'attend the scene', but he is stuck in traffic two miles away. The bike stand can be seen by standing in the middle of the road outside the police station door. He had cycled across Australia on that bike. He was alone, in the middle of the Outback, slogging up a long hill, when he became aware that a pick-up was trailing him, and not overtaking, as would have been easy, with nobody about. He became more and more alarmed at the possibilities that this might involve. As he finally reached the top of the hill, the pick-up slowly appeared alongside him and the window rolled down - by this time, he was expecting to be shot and his body never discovered - but, the driver merely handed him a cold can and said "I think you'll need that, Mate!"

I've never had a new bike in my life - I've never really thought about that before, but all five have been second-hand in one form or another. Bikes are like comics when we were lads - you were given them, read them and moved them on, but you never knew who had actually originally bought them - somebody must have, I suppose... I had the accidental foresight to pick up a nice bike on eBay and take it west just before the world imploded - it was a Godsend during the 5km exile period. I put some decent lights on and it's ridable in the depths of the night out in the sticks. It did get 'tarmac tyres' and mudguards after that. A 12V lithium battery - about 30 hours capacity - with a motorbike rear light with an LED bulb in , and two LED garden spotlights at the front - better lighting than my first Honda had... I started with a challenge to cover every road in 5km radius, which was rather more of a challenge than I expected - it has subsequently expanded and further coverage is still ongoing. https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1LUwCbC0VkyxJqZkfcmEG_f6lHH5bj-mb&fbclid=IwAR1IvxgwYNWi56lxVdxM88s43DYVcV8FRR9hDa3N1S3w__c15DjkutyUQ9c&ll=52.863334183977614%2C-7.596259200000006&z=11 It's much easier to look around on a pushbike - all the Ballybrophy (hugely important) "bridge surveys" were done by this means and I would never have noticed the 'concrete sleeper gate post' whilst driving. Also, cycling a regular route back on the Big Island has revealed that the ascent of a hill was a good bit easier than it used to seem, after a summer of cycle trips out west.

I'm essentially in the same position - mine is fourteen now, but running beautifully. In that time, it has had both front callipers stick, a pair of rear dampers and a ball-joint - plus three sidelight bulbs. I don't do a lot of miles, in fact this car has only ever once gone over 250miles/400km in a 24 hour period once in all that time and it almost always ends up back at home, so an EV range would be generally OK for me. Plus, having had a motorbike in the days when most garages were shut at night and weekends, range anxiety is not a great fear for me.

There may be people who 'go EV' for 'green' reasons, whether they are true or not, but I suspect most people do it for essentially economic reasons. 'Liquid fuels' are likely to get steadily more expensive and, on the Big Island at least, 'clean air' zones are proliferating, making driving in the larger cities a steadily more complicated business, if you want to avoid a fine for being spotted by a camera and not paying the charge, if you even know there is one. There will only be more and more of this. Older vehicles will be steadily charged more, by various means, whether we like it or not. The pressure will steadily increase, though, for some people, the threshold may still be a long way away. It's a matter of considering where you are in the whole scheme of things. Less transport is a very significant thing, if you can do it. When I started work in the 70s, few people really needed to drive to work, most were within three miles - I know few now who don't need transport to get to their workplace and, in the UK, there is great pressure to end the 'work from home' fashion. It was always my mission statement that I was not going to 'pay money to go to work', but that would be seen as odd now. As for the 'throw-away society', I live near The Tip when I'm on the Big Island and, when I go there, I almost need a blindfold, or I would be hurling myself into the skips on rescue missions. The sheer scale of what is flung away is startling. When I had a proper job, I had a (completely unofficial) twice-daily skip visit - the stuff I rescued was remarkable - people would actually come to me and ask if I had rescued things that they now wanted again, sometimes just days later. The maddest thing I ever came across was doing a few trade shows at G-Mex in Manchester. An old railway station with about two acres of floor. Twice a week it would be carpeted in two colours, stands and aisles. At the end of each use, after the weekend show or the mid-week show, it was all pulled up and skipped, and two new different colours went down for the next lay-out. I'm still using some of the grey carpet that I got from that skip - "Take it all!", is what I was told when I asked if I could have some.

I, and possibly a good few others. like to see the fiddle yard for many reasons, not least of which is the opportunity to see all (or most) of the stock that is available, if not actually in use on the scenic section at the time. Also, the various arrangements that people use for interchanging stock can also be a great interest, some can be quite ingenious, keeping the size down, but not suitable for the 'real' part of the layout. In an exhibition setting, a passing viewer may get a better sense of the whole possibilities of the layout than he might by a watching few minutes operation via the scenic section. having seen other stock in the yard, he may make a point of passing by later, in order to catch it in use. However, it is your layout.

In the days when I was still using trains on the Big Island, "events" were fairly regular, especially in the evenings and at weekends. It was my practice to consult calendars of sports fixtures for some guidance on the risks, but mistakes could still happen. On a few occasions, coppers did eventually intervene, but always "locals" from wherever we happened to be. With the advent of mobile phones, it should be a lot easier to arrange interventions - in the old days, you had to rely on the train staff to do it, and their general policy seemed to be to avoid escalating matters by intervening. Despite living near a WCML station for forty years, I've never seen a BTP officer on a train - in fact, I've only ever seen two, and they seemed to be in the station simply because a foreign dignitary was arriving to see his son at a nearby helicopter training establishment.

The Flying Banana.

And the language difficulties...

Ireland is reasonably well-placed for wind energy - lots of empty space and wind - and much less reluctance about onshore wind than in the UK. Currently running at 68% 'renewable' over the last 24 hours. http://smartgriddashboard.eirgrid.com/#roi Most of that 'renewable' will be wind. It's also noticeable that there is a far higher proportion of solar-powered road signs in Ireland than in the UK, where most electrified signs are mains-powered, even new ones*. There's lots of potential to wean off fossil fuels as technology changes. There will always be the "it's not 100% reliable, therefore there's no point doing any of it" brigade, but we have the An-225 going over today - a hundred years ago, it was "all broomsticks and teacloths and you would never get me in one of them"... * I was painting a fence for someone only a few years ago and there was a School Crossing sign nearby, mains powered, with flashing amber lights for the appropriate times of day. I was amazed to see that the timing was not automated, but a bloke drove round all the signs in a battered old Fiesta and turned them on and off individually - if he remembered... This also involved stopping and blocking the traffic at each of the lights during the peak flow times of each day. I imagine that it still goes on like that - madness. Technology steadily improves all the time - back in the 80s, a cordless tool was hardly worth the bother - these days, I rarely plug a mains one in, unless I'm doing something 'serious'.

On its way again. https://www.flightradar24.com/ADB3982/29a6920e

All Scales Matter.

The whole thing is a multi-faceted problem. A significant factor in the 'industrialised' corruption is the way some nation's financial sectors facilitate it, whilst ringing their hands.