Broithe

I remember a game show where people were invited to update old proverbs. "As mad as a... ...phone-in caller."

It seems to me that points are the issue - flexi-track wouldn't be hugely difficult, really 'simply' a matter of producing a suitable sleeper base and threading rail into it, much as Peco already do. Of course, people would want wooden and concrete sleepers.

Somebody has found the Christmas spirit...

In Stafford, the only recently demolished Bagnall's factory built "Isabel", who stood outside the station entrance for many years, being clambered over by the local urchins. She was eventually subjected to a botched 'restoration', before finally being returned to steam at Amerton Railway, out on the Uttoxeter Road, Part of the old Stafford-Uttoxeter Railway, from near the WCML junction, north of the station, to where it enters an MOD site, is a 'greenway' now and named the Isabel Trail, although she would have struggled on the 4'8½" track...

Named after a potato..?

A Brisfit is nearly five metres wider than a Dr1, though it may be a bit more directionally stable. A lot of us will have made the old Airfix 'Dogfight Double'. I can't find a picture with the Dr1's top wing properly visible, but an idea of the diminutive size of the Fokker in comparison to the Bristol is clear here.

There was a full-length concert on a Waterford train. Featuring a driver on the 'opposite' train joining in a 'dance' section around twenty minutes in.

Richthofen brought down Lt Bird's Pup - you could have recreated that. They seemed to get along OK afterwards, though.

https://www.independent.ie/life/travel/ireland/blue-max-bridge-to-be-a-star-once-again-35925570.html

Oooh! Brandy* and mince pies for those collecting their orders, too? * For those with a designated driver.

A nice view of Heuston. From - https://www.facebook.com/IrlAirCorps/posts/4411789255515330

As someone who lives a couple of miles from the M6 when I'm on the Big Island, the prospect of regularly using the 'Land Bridge' would fill me with horror - the continual roadworks and congestion are bad enough when you don't have time constraints, it must be very frustrating to those with deadlines and driver hours to consider. I was a regular foot passenger from Holyhead, until about 2007, when it just became too difficult, due largely to the trains on the Big Island - journeys just took longer and longer and it ceased to be a viable route. My Heuston/Ballybrophy section was reliable and got slowly faster, but the Stafford Holyhead section grew from two to nearly six hours... And trying to buy the ticket in a UK station was not a task for the fainthearted. For one journey I actually had a hand-written ticket - amazingly, nobody queried it. The computer had refused to believe it existed and it took me a lot of phone calls to get them to do it - "Listen, I'm trying to give you money for a piece of cardboard, just so I can get on a train that's going there anyway!"

The warning signs have changed a few years ago. The old one... ... and the current one.

I thought it might not have gone far... I did a fence for someone and it involved removing an old concrete post that was concreted in. The lump was much bigger than we expected - it was like unearthing the submarine pens at Brest. Even when we had finally got it 'loose', we couldn't get it out of the hole. We ended up by digging a ramp down into the hole, so that we could roll it out - even that was very difficult. I have great respect for those who built the Pyramids.

I'm considering suggesting that he sees if he can get tested for Cabin Fever... And he might see about getting some shorter couplings for those swans.

I was going to ask about the odd location - it seemed very strange to me - as you say, it would have been more useful where a few wagons could be shoved past it. This is a picture of the canal crane in Tullamore a few years back.

This is where it was - were the remains far from that location? https://brownesphotography.photoshelter.com/image/I0000RsjCwu5vggo

I was hoping that they would take the opportunity of their refound 'freedom' to return to proper money - £/s/d. I still have the programme installed in my head and often revert to it in some circumstances. I saw an item at a boot sale - I would have given him two pounds for, at a push. I asked the bloke, who was a good bit older than me "How much for that?" "What's it worth to you?" was his reply. "I'll give you thirty bob", I said, leaving room for manoeuvre. "Oh, no!", he replied, "I want at least fifty pence for it" So, I pretended to reluctantly give him a quarter of what he could have had. I can still work in Fahrenheit and the more common obsolete units that are still in circulation there. Interestingly (perhaps?), I think of the summer in Fahrenheit and the winter in Celsius...

If it's of any interest, this is mine after I disembowelled the box this morning. Totally pristine - wrapped in about twelve feet of bubble wrap.

124 has arrived here - despite the bank wondering why I should be buying such a frivolous item and holding the payment for a while - all sorted now, I hope. I've only looked into the box so far - and found it to be a bit bigger than I was expecting, although I've never seen one in real life - the 'single-ended' style being more of a 'little engine' thing in my head, I suppose. I've never been much of a fan of unboxing videos, but I think I'll investigate before trying to get it out...