Happy Hippo

They breached it years ago! How do I know? There's never any money in my account🤣.

My son in Law,who insists on sorting out anything to do with the(his) families cars, has continually neglected to heed the advice of changing the cam belt every 5 years or 75k miles (whichever comes first). It is now over 101K miles At the beginning of last week their Ford Galaxy stopped after the brief sound of four gnomes hammering on little tin drums emanated from the engine bay. The belt had expired, and with it all the valves. I've not heard what's happened to the top of the cylinders, but it is not going to be a cheap repair. I have no sympathy for him.

A friend of mine fought for years for compensation after he got his medical records released. He was eventually given a medical pension, and was able to enjoy it for just over 6 months... Before the cancer killed him.

I think this applies to all service personnel. I'm convinced that armed forces medics have a secret file, which is destroyed when you are discharged. It is a forecast of when and where you are going to start disintegrating, and your retirement is planned by the appropriate personnel branch, to start six months before you start falling to bits. Since the file is destroyed, they then claim that you were fighting fit when you left and that any ailment you subsequently suffer from cannot be attributable to your military service, so you don't get any additional pension or cash payout. Fortunately for me, my arthritis of the left ankle kicked in 18 months before I was due to leave, so when I did leave, I got an additional lump sum. It wasn't much, but I was able to buy a couple of cakes with it!

Since we are back onto one of my other favourite subjects, ie reptiles, here is another nasty little one to be aware of: Atractaspis bibronii: The Stiletto Snake. It mainly lives underground, so it has developed fangs that stick out of the side of it's head, so can strike sideways. It means that it is very dangerous to try and hold one by it's neck as it will just turn it's head slightly and stick one with a single fang. It has a cytotoxic venom for which there is no known antidote. Although not generally fatal it will cause severe swelling blistering pain and necrosis, which can lead to the loss of the bitten digit After the Mozambique Spitting Cobra and the Puff Adder, it is the third most common cause of venomous snake bites in Africa. Nasty little blighter. Makes my duel with the old table saw look like a walk in the park! Enjoy breakfast.

You won't hear anything now PB and I have finished Ninja school. We are like Bristol Beaufighters.

Stafford show is always a must do in my railway exhibition diary. One thing the club does so well is getting very large aisles between the layouts which makes the show far less claustrophobic.

If I wanted his cake, I'd position a satellite in low orbit over Idaho, and use my cake hoover.

If you PM your address to me I will send you some sample lengths of: Code 124 Bullhead Code 124 'Bullhead' Peco Code 143 FB Peco Generally bullhead rail in code 124-131 is as it says on the tin. The exception being Peco Code 124 which has an odd foot and is flat bottomed as Bill says. Peco rail does not fit the like of C&L or Exactoscale chairs as it is too narrow, so flaps around between the jaw and the 'wooden' key .

I can report the zero clearance plate for the mitre saw has been completed. As an after task fit, I will invest in a pair of screw down clamps and fit them to the top of the rear fence. This will allow easy clamping of stop blocks either side of the blade which will allow me to make rapid repetitive cuts. The timber for the pillar drill table has been selected and marked out for my next cutting spree. Being as it's a bank holiday, I'll wait until the neighbours fire up their barbeques and are out in the garden before I start cutting. Well, I only think it fair to repay the courtesy of them mowing their lawns at 1830 on a Saturday evening when I'm sitting out having a quiet drink. The broken F cramp handle has been glued back together and the hollow of the u section casting filled with epoxy glue. I've made two strengthening plates out of brass, and fitted them to the outside of the casting, and I need to wait until everything has gone off hard before drilling and pinning through the whole thing. I'll then solder the pins into place. As usual, it would have been much quicker to throw it away and buy a new one, but this rescue mission saved me from having to revert to gardening duties. I will not be so fortunate this afternoon.

What's new?

Yesterday's lawn feeding exercise was enhanced by the feed spreader, a two wheeled trolley with a cam operated distribution system, deciding not to work. I reverted to hand scattering, which was probably quicker. The trolley was later inspected, and although in the greater scheme of things, it could be fixed by building up the cam profile with plastic card and ABS cement, it won't be. It will join a line of items to be fixed in the garage and if it's not fixed by the end of the year it will be disposed of... In fact, let's make that disposed of when I next go to the recycling centre. The plan for this morning is for some light woodworking in the garage: I want to finish off the zero clearance plate for my mitre saw, and make a start on a better drilling table for my pillar drill.

I have that one. Connected directly to my bladder... Don't ask what the S is for

That, is wishful thinking.

What do you think we used the murky canal feeder for?

When my late father in law was serving in the RA(TA) during WWII, one of his fellow gunners named Sid, was Jewish. Sid was quite aggrieved that he couldn't indulge in the tinned bacon/pork that was a staple of combat rations. He saw the Rabbi, and explained he was being short changed in the rationing department, so the Rabbi, quite sensibly, gave Sid an immediate, written dispensation, which permitted him to eat all pork products. When he was demobilized at the end of the war, Sid conveniently held onto his written dispensation!

Me! I want a Heljan 7 mm scale Class B tanker with Esso Branding: In fact wait until they arrive and automatically get discounted and you can get me a pair. This would guarantee the Ferry Lane Branch would get built, so both Danemouth and br2975 would be very pleased with you. (The line on which it would be based actually ran between the house I was born in and the gasworks mentioned by Brian earlier.)

What about getting bacon butties made?

Our Grandfathers may well have known each other, as my Grandfather, who during the day was driving fuel tankers around, was a 'firewatcher' and was often over at the gasworks. Fortunately, for the rest of the family, one night when he was not on duty, as he had been on a late shift, a raid started and an incendiary bomb came through the roof of the house and started a fire on the half landing. The family were all hiding 'under the stairs' directly below the fire. My grandfather picked up the incendiary bomb with his bare hands and dropped it into a bucket of sand. Despite being burned, he then ensured the small blaze that had started was extinguished. If he had not heard the incendiary come through the roof and hitting the floor of the landing, then the house, and possibly most of the terrace, would have gone up in flames. When the house was being refurbished in the early 70's, the builders exposed the place the incendiary had ignited and asked about how all the charring of the timbers in the staircase has occured.

My younger granddaughter adores 'Bluey', and is in North Wales today for the Bluey stage show. I've not seen 'Mr Inbetween' apart from a few clips on Youtube, and having seeing those, it is a series I'd like to watch. I have seen 'Deadloch' and thoroughly enjoyed it, appreciating it was an enormous p*ss take on all the Northern hemisphere police dramas. On the US TV scene I enjoyed both 'Person of Interest' and 'Justified'.

Of course, in the modern armed forces that would have been pounced on as institutionalised bullying or the like.

Probably🤣 I've already being trying to think up a couple of catch phrases, perhaps like Jack Lord had in the original Hawaii 5-0 TV series. 'Book 'em Danno' he used to say. I was thinking more along the lines of: 'Kill 'em Bear!'

Not in the slightest. Just see us as modelled as a combination of Gene Hunt and Jack Regan. However, I'd more than likely have the build of Charlie Barlow

I very much enjoyed BBC's Ghosts. When I watched the US version it was garbage when compared to the original.

The plan for this morning's Trayne Klubb session was to carry out a practice loading of the car to see if PN could be loaded with an additional cassette table. This would then allow us to dispense with the 'hutch', and allow proper through running of freight and passenger trains at any exhibitions we can attend. Success was the order of the day, so the cassette table(s) we have in store, can be used as originally intended. The plan is to make a 300 mm bolt on extension as we did for the main table last year, which will give a symmetrical cassette table arrangement once more. Of course, this leaves the other two cassette table, which were made redundant when the 'L' shape storage area(s) were abandoned due to lack of space in the car. Current thinking is that we could build an 8' x 2' freight only through yard, possibly called Ferry Lane*, and use this as an alternative to PN between the other extant cassette tables. In the typical never waste stuff attitude, this could absorb all the old track from the original Splott West Sidings, which is up in the garage roof, still sitting on the remains of the original baseboards. No signals required and manually operated pointwork being the order of the day, Theoretically it would also be possible to reduce the cassette tables back to 4' long: All they would need would be different length front screens, which are just a couple of pieces of 5.5 mm ply. It could also even drop to a terminal arrangement just using one cassette table. The only downside to this is the amount of optional hardware such as legs and screening boards which have to be both made and stored when not in use. The new bandsaw arrived just before Nyda got home, so the box was already in the garage, and since Gordon wanted an empty box, the only evidence of the latest purchase is the bandsaw sitting insignificantly on a bench in the corner. I have tried it out and it works, so my little Proxxon bandsaw will no longer be overworked, and can have a much gentler existence. *Some time ago, Brian (br2975) provided me with a very suitable track plan which I'm trying to modify slightly, to incorporate a suitable murky canal feeder.