Broithe

Obviously, IRM will shortly be producing Bord na Mona items, but we may have to wait for (at least) the second wave, before we see this in RTR form.

In the late 60s, I did most of the Thames in a giant two-man fibreglass kayak. It was a real 'lump', but it was OK once you got going and we were going downstream. We had borrowed the vessel, and the name of the owners was emblazoned down both sides - RAF Transport Command - I doubt that we had the Russians worried and I never spotted anybody trying to take covert photos of the internal technology.

This looks plausible? https://transportsofdelight.smugmug.com/RAILWAYS/IRISH-RAILWAYS/MIDLAND-GREAT-WESTERN-RAILWAY/i-P5F4CVZ/

I'm ashamed to say that I've only just got the "OMg" joke... I'm just off to celebrate with a glass of Milk of Magnesia.

Same here - I can go and do a food shop now - and knock the heating back on.

Broken-down Hino?

Any update? It's been over two hours now...

It is noted that the contents of this pipe have not been discussed openly...

I saw this one some years ago, the photo makes it look much brighter than it was - he had really caught the whole dismal aspect beautifully.

When I'm on the Big Island, I live not far from a fairly recently constructed canal facility. It comprises of many boat moorings and a restaurant, farm shop, etc. It is closest to a small village called Aston, which is located on an 'out and back' from the main road, and in forty years of living eight miles away, I've only been to the village twice. Anyway, the canal facility is made much more obvious to passers-by, with signage on the main roads, pointing to it - Aston Marina. I can't go past that sign without thinking that it sounds like one of the most alarming vehicles ever proposed, like a Lotus Cortina, but doing 170mph, with the brakes and handling of a Lidl trolley.

. This reminded me of why I very rarely use that term for super-glue. Our circuit breakers did have a tendency to blow up, but usually for plausibly valid reasons, and generally in a 'safe' manner, with nobody nearby at the time. However, one was blown up in Middlesbrough in the mid-1980s. This time, a chap had been operating it manually and 'off-load' at the time - purely mechanical operations. These were still fairly violent and produced a good amount of noise. After one operation, he heard a 'different' noise, but carried on to find out how many stored operations it had left. But, it wouldn't operate at all, so he stepped back to see what was going on - and fell over the centre interrupter, about a ton, which had fallen twenty feet onto the gravel just behind him (making the 'odd' sound). 'They' got very upset about what was a potentially fatal incident and denied that the operations had been carried out in such a manner that the closing operation had been initiated whilst the opening operation was still happening - this could cause the drive rod to buckle and demolish the whole structure - automatically, this wouldn't happen, but it was possible, if you really tried, to cause it by flipping the manual handle fast enough. This is clearly what happened, but it was denied. So we went through a process of sticking strain gauges all over an identical breaker on the same site and measuring what actually happened when it operated - they refused to allow me to simulate what I knew had been done, so we just ended up showing that it couldn't have blown up at all... Anyway, the point of all this is that they wanted their own strain readings and had a bloke called Jack doing it for them. He hadn't the slightest idea of what he was doing and spent 90% of his time trying to watch and copy us. He had personally discovered super-glue just a few days before the tests began and took every possible opportunity to educate anybody he could trap about the features of it - including what he would reveal its 'correct' name to be - cycroanylate To this day, I have to check myself and practice in my head, before I try saying cyanoacrylate.

Rail travel is generally quite a safe form of transport, but there can still be hidden dangers.

The code is the height of the rail in 1,000ths of an inch. There are adapters to run Code 100 & Code 75 rails into each other. Peco SL-10 joiners will do the job of joining Code 100 lengths together. SL-11 for the insulating joiners.

Stafford 2022 was intended to be in February, as 'usual', but it was moved back to September 24th & 25th when things started looking a bit shaky - but that does mean that I may actually be around for it.

Like a Bring Your Own Bus Replacement Service...

OK, it did survive, it seems. https://ribblesteam.org.uk/exhibits/diesel/english-electric-ee788-1930/

We had a battery shunter where I worked - not sure what happened to it in the end, though.

Fireman's pole from the room above?

There's also these concertina doors still available - not ideal (is anything?) in that they will not give you the full opening when they are, er, open, but they can be useful in some situations.

If I ever need my heart valves doing, I'll be making a booking.

People get blasé after a while - and in many industries there is/was often little genuine quality control of the actual process. And there can develop a sort of bravado about "pushing the edges". People I knew had cause to go to Sellafield and were left with a bit more scepticism than they had before the visits. I worked where we made stuff that ran at 400kV out in the open air - tested up close to 1,000,000 volts and yet some people had a grasp of electrical principles that was little above witchcraft. One chap I worked with would always attach the earth wire to his watch-strap when working on the mains at home - because it was the "safety wire" - I never managed to get him to understand the reality of what was going to happen...

The madness of the cavalier attitude is hard to believe - https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14619830-600-lid-blown-off-dounreays-lethal-secret/ There an attempt to sort it out just about beginning now, but there's little genuine knowledge about what is actually in there. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-48036793

The health issues were known about for many decades before people started living long enough (in large numbers) to be affected by them, before then, something else would usually get you before the 'gestation period' was over. A chap I worked with died from it in the mid-90s - he had spent his first twenty years in the oil industry in the Persian Gulf, then moved into the electrical industry, both heavy users of it, so it was never established where the 'blame' lay. The building we worked in was built in 1917 and regularly modified, with a culture of 'don't ask, don't know' about that sort of thing. And we would be repairing older equipment that often had parts of unknown provenance, Power stations themselves, of course, were awash with it, as were ships, etc. People would recount how they had seen pipes plastered with wet asbestos paste by hand. It can be in the most 'unlikely' things - vinyl floor tiles and lino are a 'good source' of it, in older buildings - usually safe enough, until you start removing them, as it is in many other situations.