MrWolf

For me the black and white picture looks like some real place back in the 1930s and the colour one is like being able to time travel.

The DVLA seems to have not been all that concerned in the past with Isle of Man registered cars that had been sold off to the mainland. My school metalwork teacher had an ancient Triumph Herald 1200 estate on an IOM plate, displaying a K registration when the last sold here were on a J. (IIRC the island began the letter series a year before us.) It still wore its MAN plate in the late 1980s.

The Cumbrian Railways Association has some very good books available, I'd certainly recommend The Pilling Pig to anyone interested in light railways, especially as it became part of the big four and eventually British Railways. I also have a copy of Lancaster's Line To The Sea. "BOOKS" https://cumbrianrailways.org.uk/books.php

Quite the transformation I would say! Note to self: Must not start another project before getting the others finished.....

I suspect that is more to do with the current style of registration number being rather non memorable rather than your memory breaking down. I remember the registration number of the old bangers my father owned, (Hillman Minx 9080RE, Vauxhall Viva JJV205F, Hillman Avenger NJF750M, Vauxhall Cavalier YVS692S, but once they started putting letters at the front, I was lost.

You've made a great job of some more of those ordinary items that are seldom if ever modelled. The stink pipes were generally painted mid green or a bluish green to blend in with their surroundings.

Today Little Muddle, tomorrow - the world!

It's interesting to see the large oil lamp on the corner of the building too. In the later photo it has disappeared and there's a row of gas lamps beneath the canopy.

That looks suspiciously like a wash house, the washer itself being built into that odd corner. I do like to see models of things that were once very ordinary but now all but extinct. A very nice job you made of it too.

It occurred to me that the shepherd may have been awake all night worrying sheep. 😜

Anaglypta wallpaper, 1887 though!

That's great news, I'd better order some of both and get my builds finished!

I've had fun and games trying to attach fishing line to the Ratio / Peco posts, it seems to not like any type of glue. I've gone with extremely fine copper winding wire and when I can get back to the layout for a few hours I'll post up the results. Otherwise I'll be drilling six holes in over three hundred posts.....🤪

That might be the other way around, she may or may not have been the silent killer I was referring to...

I had one of those Rivarossi locos, mint, boxed and seemingly unused, it came in with some other railway odds and ends to a friend's antique shop. After a check over and a little oil, it ran beautifully on code 100 track. It went back to Italy via eBay for £30+ post as Swindon never had one. It would make an interesting and powerful loco and they do turn up fairly often. I think that the motor would probably run my 6" Colchester lathe.

That would be classed as threats to kill, putting them in fear of harm, use of an offensive weapon and in holding them at sawpoint, unlawful imprisonment. A better idea would have been to have said nothing to the police, armed ourselves with something silent, a couple of rolls of chicken wire and the keys to another friend's fishing boat. ☠️

My inner cynic would suggest that we, the British are not backward looking, the vast majority aren't looking at all, except at what is handed to them. The politicians, academics and oligarchs like that just fine, a compliant, fearful and servile people.

What would be the point of that? If you could even get a drugs marker put on the car, chances are all they'd get is a cannabis warning, or if charged with DUI and banned (if indeed the f'tards have ever held a license) they'll just buy another junker and drive it around until they get pulled again. The most likely result in court is being bound over or maybe a suspended sentence. If you think the police are indifferent to such behaviour, it's largely the fault of the utterly inept justice system. Last year I was helping a friend clear some land behind another friend's house which was so overgrown you could only see one of the three garages on site. We'd replaced the lock on the brick garage to store our tools, but after just four days someone crowbarred the door and stole two Stihl petrol brush cutters and a chainsaw. I called 999 to be told that unless the burglary was in progress I should call 101. An hour later, I got through and was asked if the burglary was in the house? No. The garage. Is the garage attached to the house? No. Then we can't attend. About an hour later we were hacking into the creepers at the back of the next garage and found the items in bin liners hidden between the garages under a large ivy plant. Obviously the thieves were intending on coming back with transport and probably had loot from other outbuildings. I called 101 again to fill them in on what we'd found and ask if they would like to catch the culprits as there had been a spate of burglaries, all they would need to do is keep watch. The answer, as you might have guessed by now was no. So I offered to assist, what if four ex military types secreted themselves nearby that night? I was then sternly told that it would be we who would be in trouble with the law. Exasperated, I suggested that the desk jockey should prepare for mayhem and hung up. We took all our tools home and decided that breaking and entering for the purposes of theft must now be legal, but we missed the press release.

I believe it was the Bauhaus school of design who stated that form should follow function.

Interesting beast and one that could tell today's manufacturers a thing or two about creating a stable mazak casting.

To paraphrase Blazing Saddles: "Don't shoot 'im, you'll just make 'im mad!..."

Likewise, I learned to ride (ish!) when I was twelve, around the school grounds on a knackered orange Vespa Ciao, about as uncool as you can get, followed by various scrap Honda Cubs around the local fields. First road bike was a Puch Sports 50, bought from someone who had dismantled the engine and bu66ered it up. I followed that with a CB100N, (Are there any left?) CG125, a rigid Francis Barnett in trials trim, a 350 "upright" Panther, (Forks modified with Triumph springs and I don't recall seeing another 350.) and the first big bike was a 1960 BSA A10 caff racer with 1958 Rocket engine, a "proper" greaser's bike at last. 😆

Exactly like that! I can't remember if it was that model or more likely an even older B2 that he bought from a fellow apprentice who was heading back to Wales and whose mother would have had a fit if he turned up on a motorcycle, but another tale was of getting the bike running. Father had just returned from a test drive and was making some adjustments when a passer by told him that he had an identical bike in his back garden he'd been meaning to give the scrap man and he was welcome to it. As for butchers getting near motorcycles, it seems far from uncommon. Whoever last worked on the 1953 C11 evidently only possessed an adjustable spanner, a hammer and a chisel. Even the little slotted screw securing the distributor clamp to the crank case has been chiselled to death. I'm replacing the damaged fasteners with better used ones from my stash, even though I'm thinking of moving this one on.

Out for a chug through the countryside today on our motorcycles we found ourselves filtering through traffic and up ahead is a VW Golf with clouds of armpit smelling weed smoke coming out of the windows. Coming into the next town on our round trip we pass a Ford Focus, different car, same problem, both drivers oblivious to what was going on around them. It occurred to me that dropping a grenade into the driver's footwell might wake him up. For about four seconds anyway...

The ETZ is still a good entry level bike and looks like a bike. I rather pity today's teenagers who are faced with a choice of rev and pray plastic scooters. The Achilles heel of MZs was the archaic charging system that was a halfway house between dynamo and alternator and after the end of the GDR rectifiers became hard to find. There were plenty of awful / unrepairable bikes built elsewhere in the 70s and 80s and it was the cost or non availability of parts that got me more interested in old British machines which could be kept going as I really should have been after an RD125LC given my age. There is quite a bit of interest in vintage Japanese bikes, but they suffer from the same problem as British bikes, in than it can cost as much to restore a 125 as a 650 and those costs are far higher with Japanese bikes. I quite agree that badges sell, the names of many of our old makes have survived on paper or been revived to trade on reputation. Otherwise, imitation being the best form of flattery, rivals follow in the footsteps of the famous, Rover gave us the Land Rover, from which we got the first versions of the Mercedes GelandeWagen and the Toyota Land Cruiser.