Broithe

Maybe it hasn't backfired after all..? https://www.rte.ie/news/newslens/2024/0209/1431328-match-tower/

Time for a Celebration?

Sweet!

Cricket.

Hardly a worthy workbench item, but does anybody have a Timpo Prairie Rocket? I got roped into 'fixing' one and each step of the process takes a long time - it's been a couple of months to get this far, I only finally got to see the actual problem today. All I've had delivered is the motorised tender, in a non-functional form. I've got it apart without busting anything. The motor seemed to be dead, with no circuit through it at all, even when I could get straight onto the motor terminals. The motor is a bit 'special', in that the mounting requires this actual motor, using the shape of the case to fit and hold it. On a hunch, suspecting that it just hadn't run for many years and the commutator was merely oxidised, I gave it a 'robust manual spin' to polish it up a bit and did get an occasional circuit then - so I persevered and was then able to get it to run and clean itself properly. I've cleaned the carpet fluff from the gears and it runs OK now. Anyway, the real point is that the tender does not have rear, unpowered, bogie in place. I'm guessing that the two bogie wagons that are part of the set will use a compatible 'dead' bogie and thus I could cannibalise one from there - but, the wagons are 60 miles away and two to three weeks from arriving here. It would be nice to know if my suggestion of this temporary fix is likely to work, before another month passes and I get to see the wagons.

Change the password on the phone and try that on the desktop..?

Apart from the fatality and the injuries, this one was an interesting case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Stafford_rail_crash The chaos of the immediate response and the madness of trying to negotiate the responsibilities through the maze of privatised owners and service providers were (hopefully) salutary lessons. The chap who lived in the house that the 86 hit was a friend of a friend. He had been out earlier to clear off a load of kids kicking a football against his wall - he heard the thud of the loco hitting the outside skin of his cavity wall and went out to tell them off again, only to find "a railway engine, with a bloke still in it". The legal cases went on for years and were never really resolved completely.

Numbers comes into it. There's a lot of people on the Big Island, but as potential volunteers and as potential visitors. Living in both places, I know more people in Ireland actually involved in heritage activities of various kinds than in I do in England. There are cultural issues, too, railways just aren't 'as important' to people in Ireland It's a matter of what is possible and viable. If people aren't interested as volunteers or visitors, than so be it, unfortunately perhaps...

There shouldn't be much carbon available, mostly just some from the lubrication. CO and CO₂ emissions should be fairly low, surely? The carbon in the air will be mostly CO₂ already.

If she went out, leaving you unsupervised, then she only has herself to blame. In fact, it's all her fault.

Or Melbourne (not Derbyshire)?

I found this sticking out of a spoil heap after some work at the Quakers' Bridge level crossing on the Nenagh branch a couple of years ago.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/narrowgauge/posts/24987831507468875/

Neat work. It's not easy to re-gauge those to 5'3".

I remember dealing with some French students in Stafford in the 90s. Asked for their general impression of the area, they had a chat amongst themselves and, overwhelmed by the amount of brickwork everywhere, the answer was "It is very brown".

Further - on the way to Iceland... This just popped up for me. I've not seen it before, but others probably have. 1911, apparently. I thought Guinness used to have a smokier taste years ago...

Top left corner - edge of the known world.

HS2 is Hydrogen Sulphide - the smell of rotten eggs - and few things are more rotten than HS2... Last time I worked out the cost on the declared amounts at the time, it was around £1,000 per centimetre, barely enough space to write my name on my bit.

It was going to be, but Brexit killed it.

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/clare/index5.shtml Filming for a Shell advert - on the Stour Valley Line, as it was closed on Sundays.

Rough ground, tyre tracks, stored machinery, a heap of ballast, sleepers, odd off-cuts of rail, track panels, a little shed for the lads,...

Permanent way yard?

Good move! "There's no point keeping stuff that you can't find".