BR60103

...Said "There's nowt for it but stummick pump." They hadn't a stummick pump 'andy, But Pa did the best that he could With a bicycle pump as he'd borrowed, But that weren't a ha'porth of good. Marriott Edgar Jubilee Sov'rin

I will defend that the plays weren't written by Shakespeare but by somebody else with the same name.

I have an idea that Lionel used to be paid to put company names (e.g. oil companies) on rolling stock. Very common story that they got Santa Fe, New York Central, and General Motors to each put up half the cost of the tooling for the F3 locomotive. (Appeared as only SF and NYC for the first few years.)

We have "community" mailboxes. Today there was no mail in ours despite 3 visits. It may have had to do with this: Guelph Post Office

Another link. Steve Munro is one of the transit fans in Toronto. Toronto has tried to convert King St to a transit (streetcar) mall by making car traffic turn right at every cross street. Problems due mainly to insufficient enforcement, but see the traffic signals a bit down the post. Toronto

Reported in our newspaper today that places in the Middle East are interfering with GPS as a defensive measure. (hope this can be read)

I did most of the computer work for our income tax today. I'll have to sort out the e-filing tomorrow or next week. Last year the tax department first obsoleted all our passwords after a ??? and then went on strike for a few weeks each side of the deadline. So I sent it in on paper. My program offers "pension splitting" for couples to try to reduce the tax. If I give $.06 to my wife, the tax will come down by $.02. Any larger amount and it will come up again.

I got into the habit of consistently lowering the seat when we had a couple of lively cats and I was afraid that one of them might have an unintended bath.

The battle of Fort McHenry was in 1814, during the War of 1812. (I see I was beaten to it)

I've suggested following a layout plan, but in a smaller scale. Keeping the lengths but bringing the track separations down to scale. You don't want to reduce the 13.5" pinch point any farther. One of my early layouts was an OO plan rendered in N.

Dayle is feeling a little sore in the side and is having trouble pulling the handle on our LaZboy sofa. So we went out this morning and bought 2 chairs with push button controls. Delivery was estimated next week, possibly this week, and clerk put a note on it. Phone call this afternoon --- between 9 and 10 tomorrow morning. And they will take away the old one. As we left, I pulled out of the parking space and the car said "Shift into P". I did this a couple of times, then Dayle said "maybe there's a door open" Mine was.

I haven't seen that one but, then, I don't watch hockey games.

Just threaten to have his figgins toasted. (T. Pratchett, Guards Guards)

Brian: for control of your point I acquired a collection of switches that may have been for the phone company. They are toggle switches with open contacts. There is a DPDT switch on each side. With the toggle upright both contacts are set inwards. Pushing it to one side, one set of contacts goes outwards; the reverse for the other direction. You could use this on your 3-way to control Tortoise or equivalent motors. (I use mine as interlocking on a double junction.)

I often wondered if our French/German teacher ran through the school's paper allotment all by himself. Class started with a verb chart -- conjugate a given verb in all the known tenses. The texts we were given for reading were accompanied by all sorts of notes on the vocabulary and I forget what else. I remember my father in the 50s making duplicates on a little device that had a gelatin surface with the info on it and paper had to be pressed onto it.