Broithe

Even living, mostly, on the Big Island, I was fifteen before I ever spoke on a telephone - there was just nobody with a phone to speak to - I had used radios and walkie-talkies long before there was anybody to phone. We all knew how to make a phone call by the age of 8 or 9, but there was just nobody to ring, if you didn't need the cops or an ambulance. There are some interesting hangovers today, from the old systems. In the old system in Ireland, it was common for the post office to be 1, the guards 2 and the bank(s) 3 (& 4), where the important places had the single-figure phone numbers, before the modern system arrived - particularly with the guards, if they are still in the old building, then the current phone number will often still end in 2, often 102. The AIB in Rathdowney was 3 and is now 46103. The guards were 46102, until they sold the old barracks and moved to more sedate accommodation. Also, the different keypad layouts of calculators and phones - because 0 on a phone was actually 10, inherited from the days of loop-disconnect dialling - you couldn't dial zero, or the system wouldn't know if you had, or how many times you had dialled it, because you hadn't. This all became superfluous when tone-dialling arrived, but it was too late by then and the keypad layouts were 'in place' forever. On the Big Island, I still have an old rotary phone, mostly for the bell sound, but the dial still functions and I use it occasionally - making a mistake at the end of an eleven figure dial-out is almost heart-breaking, after putting all that effort in. Also, the new codes in the republic are in a rather more useful arrangement than the UK phone code system. In Ireland, you can take a fair guess at where a phone number is from, 05 is the southeast, 05x will be a biggish place, 05xx will be smaller centres. In the UK, the system is (largely) alphabetical, 019xx will probably begin with W, but it could be Weymouth - or Wick - not much use to anybody. In the old days "reverse codes" were almost impossible to obtain - I had a booklet (obtained through Exchange & Mart) in my desk at work and would get a request for "Where is this code?" most days. It does seem to me that the widespread use of landlines and, even worse, mobile phones, has just made it far more "acceptable" to be disorganised and unreliable. We had to know what we were going to do - and then actually do it - at the appointed time and place!

I remember making a call from Ballybrophy in the mid-70s. It didn't even have buttons, just a handle to wind, to ring a bell for attention from the exchange in Rathdowney post office. There then followed a discussion about the potential cost of a call to England - this eventually boiled down to 'How much have you got on you?" and an instruction to leave the cash in the cardboard box under the phone.

Patience is a virtue, if you don't already have all seven.

NIR? Did they ever go up there?

The left-hand rear seat at Lough Boora appears to be for Number One...

https://www.facebook.com/LoughBooraPark/posts/pfbid02EqmYs2nkpyvF9xCg7CjCaCQB5DtPLvVqjFebSMCQjZyitETvgDTEVfAM3V81n3Rel Lough Boora Discovery Park - "We are delighted to unveil our first Velo rail bike prototype that we received for testing this week. We hope to be finished construction and up and running in the coming months." IRM will find it hard to motorise the model...

I had (still have somewhere) a Sinclair Scientific. Reverse Polish logic*, but still a huge advance on slide rules and tables - about £50 at the time, when a £ was a lot bigger than it is now,,, * Hence there being no = key.

Emerging technologies will always need a development period, before they become normal in the real world. Some will fail, and some will become the daily normality. Anybody not willing to go through that period needs to try not using anything that didn't exist for the whole of their lifetimes - cordless tools, mobile phones, the internet, etc. Some of us grew up with slide rules, imagine if we were still stuck back there, because early calculators were too expensive and unreliable to bother pursuing... The first calculator I ever saw cost £32 and was bought by a chap I worked with who came from a well-to-do background. Our gross pay at that time was £17 a week. Having said that, I wouldn't be a huge fan of hydrogen for personal use in the immediate future, but it does have a place in being a way to store excess night-time electrical energy production for economical use at busier times of the day,

I once found info on a proposal for a tramway from Rathdowney to Ballybrophy. It made some sense, with Perry's brewery being a significant enterprise at the time, but, of course, it never happened. One day, I might even find it again...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/drdaysjunc is a decent chap to deal with, if he has what you want. Mostly UK stuff, of course, but occasional IRM/Murphy items and Accurascale.

If he gets caught up in some sort of scandal, will it be called Elongate? If so, it could go on for a long time.

This group might entertain the weathering gurus. People have started 'distressing' full-size vehicles. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2169392473338447 When I had a real job, our products had earth straps made from copper strip, about 25 x 5mm, sometimes 5+ metres long. If exported to certain parts of the world, this copper would often be gone in a few days. We used to leave a sheet of steel outside and scrape the rust off it every few days, collecting it in pepper shakers 'liberated' from the canteen. When we had enough, the copper would be varnished and the powdered rust shaken over it. It was surprisingly realistic, making it look like a virtually worthless rusty steel strap.

Of course you do. What else would you be doing..?

I ordered at around the same time as you, aiming to bias the arrival to post-midday today, due to my non-attendance schedule here. Seeing your post, I found no evidence of an attempt yesterday and then got an email last night suggesting that today was the real target. This was handy as I was in and out all day yesterday, but could schedule my single one-hour absence today myself, so I did that quite early on, as I generally don't see many non-An Post deliveries round here before noon. Obviously, I only really needed beets, but I wanted the magnestites as an example of what must surely be the prettiest RTR rolling stock ever produced. They've just arrived now, as I was topping up my reserves in the house and the 'how to find me in the shed' map on the front door turned out not to be necessary. I've promised myself the magnestites a few times in the past, but logistics have always got in the way - the real box is here now and the virtual box is finally ticked. I, also, still 'have' the money, for now...

https://abbeyleixbog.wordpress.com/2016/05/13/a-railway-ran-through-it-2/ https://www.laoistoday.ie/2019/09/14/campaign-underway-to-re-open-laois-train-station/ And Eiretrains has pictures of many locations. http://eiretrains.com/Photo_Gallery/Railway Stations A/Attanagh/IrishRailwayStations.html My mother's people originated in Waterford and journeys down there involved a pony and trap from Rathdowney to Attanagh, rather than Abbeyliex. Whilst Abbeyliex seems rather nearer on modern roads, Attanagh is actually only a few hundred metres further and there would have presumably also been a lower cost for the tickets from there.

There's not much point me complaining like that, if the railway companies are going to do this sort of thing themselves. https://www.facebook.com/LondonNorthwesternRailway/posts/pfbid031NgmhT2whtNc79Jjha3ELBufnsWDgiBSFBprRjRDoEf92x8fsLQvZYbzU4mJbuGvl

I walked home a couple of hours before that. A minute or so into the kilometre that it takes to get home, I was engulfed in a veritable blizzard. It was of such theatrical proportions that several of the local Brazilian community felt obliged to video the event. It only lasted about fifteen minutes, but if it had gone on for a few hours, it would have been a significant thing, probably surpassing the wind event in people's minds here. We still had the aftermath of it into the afternoon of Saturday, with any hard surfaces being very entertaining to travel over.

Whilst I can see why there is a push in that direction, especially for urban housing, I do like the idea of "multiple sources". Power cuts in urban areas will generally be fixed more quickly. I have the (wood-fired) stove in the shed - and an open fire in the house, this is little used and I will fit an inset stove one day, which might see a bit more use from it. Oil-fired Stanley in the kitchen for heating the house, although that does require the electrical supply for it to burn. Gas cookers in the house and shed, from LPG bottles, plus a few camping burners, if things get really desperate. A 'mains failure' light in the shed and in the house - it's fairly dark here, if everything goes* on a dark night. A few torches scattered around. I'm very close to the local substation and, for historical reasons, the spur that I'm on actually only supplies here and one other house, which I can't see clearly from here. Occasionally in the past, it was only just the two of us, but the offending item was eventually replaced and we've had no issue since then. * A year ago next week, I fitted a motor-driven timer for the light in the hall, this is calibrated to turn the light on at sunset, and a cam alters the time to automatically follow the variations of the sunset through the course of the year. This is still operating bang on time, so I know there has been no power cut in that time, even for a few minutes when I've not been here. In fact, I think it is at least four years since the power last went off, apart from when the meter was changed.

Post-Éowyn scenery for those who are doing modern-image Scottish layouts.

I thought I had seen that in Sleaford, but I wasn't sure and was waiting for confirmation. I remember thinking that it did look quite nice.

I've survived pretty much completely unscathed. Not even a blip with the electricity. No damage as such, but the windows are covered in sand. It's still fairly windy, with occasional really gusty minutes, so I'll leave the precautions in place for now. Power off all around the area here, but a lot seem to be coming back on quite quickly. A great number of trees down on roads in the area and very little traffic passing by. I've only been out of the gate to look up and down the road, to see if there is anything to be aware of. I've contacted the (even more) elderly neighbours, to see if anything is needed, but they're all in much the same boat as me, so all is well here.

Thursday is my standard shopping day, so I'm stocked up for a week+. I've got the shed nice and warm, in case I need it as a lifeboat. The house is oil heated, but having a tank of oil is little use if the electricity to run the burner drops out. Cooking is bottled gas in the house and the shed, so I'll be OK, as long as the roofs stay on. I always keep a few gallons of water straight from the pipe, but there is a large tank in the roof for bulk supplies, if the storage bottles run out. The practice run before Christmas was handy, a lot of the 'battened down' stuff from that is still in place, having not been needed since. I'm well inland and in a fairly sheltered location - I had no effects in the last big storm, but this one looks a bit more violent still. The wheelbarrows are upside down, with blocks on, and the outside worktable has been demolished and placed in a sheltered spot. My nice new drain in the road has a small mud dam, which forms a large puddle. I'll go out now and clear that, while the rain is stopped. All I've got left to do then is worry...

And less addictive...

Putting an 'E' in your whiskey is frowned upon by some people in uniform - and it ruins the effect, if you're taking it as a nightcap. Years ago, on the Big Island, there used to be 'E' stamps, for letters to the rest of the EU and a few other places. If you bought them, rather than stamps with the price on, then they were still usable after the price went up, as it did regularly did, so I used to get batches and keep a few in stock. One day, having bought some with a payment process that was hugely complicated, I realised, an hour later, than I didn't have the stamps, having, I presumed, left them on the counter in all the unnecessary confusion. So, I called in on my way back and got in the inevitable queue. By the time my turn at the counter came, there was a queue behind me, as well. I asked the woman behind the counter "Did I drop those Es in here this morning?" Unbeknownst to me, the chap behind me in the queue was an off-duty copper, so things got even more complicated then - eventually, I did go home with my stamps...

Well, this is not the picture I was referring to above, but it does show a (presumably) earlier tower, still there after the 'new' one was constructed. https://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000305110 And it was round... The date given is 1960. The picture I think I remember may show the same tower there on its own, but in virtually a silhouette view, so maybe I just surmised that it was rectangular...