whart57

I was watching the BBC4 programme Britain's Lost Masterpieces the other night, which covered a couple of landscape paintings. One was eventually attributed to Jan Breughel the Elder's workshop (not his more famous father Pieter) and the other to Thomas Barker of Bath, a notorious early nineteenth century painter of Gainsborough knock-offs. What struck me, particularly in the Breughel, was the handling of figures. These were placed around the canvas in groups that made sense both artistically and in what they were depicted as engaging in. Something we surely aspire to on our layouts, but don't always achieve.

Fourth class was quite common after 1844 due to the Railway Act of that year demanding roofs and windows for third class passengers and many railways having open thirds that they didn't want to scrap. We also tend to think that Britain is a class-bound society, but 19th century Prussia was if anything worse. First class on Prussian trains was intended for the titled aristocracy, the merely wealthy travelled second class. (This was a common distinction on Continental railways and is the reason why, when most went to a two class system around the end of the nineteenth or at the start of the twentieth century, it was second and third class that survived, unlike first and third in the UK). Third class in Prussia was for white collar workers and Fourth Class for manual workers. There was a measure of pragmatism given that fourth class passengers generally travelled in their working clothes which might be none to clean.

I think "buying their place in the league" is a better description than "merging". Though given Stourbridge are likely to drop out of the national leagues this year (they are 13 points adrift at the bottom of National 2 West) it's going to be a long haul back to the Championship from there.

Have you joined this group - https://groups.io/g/3mm-scale-modelling ? It's the place to ask questions and usually get a reply

I was once in Mettingen, a small town in Germany near the Dutch border and happened to be going through the churchyard. There was a small section set aside for the graves of German soldiers killed in WW2. The most notable thing about it was the ages of the men in the graves. They were from 1945 and were either teenagers or men over 40, nothing in between. Likewise in the Battle of Arnhem, taking on the British paras in the bitter fighting around the village of Oosterbeek was a unit made up of teenagers. The German brigade commander complained bitterly to his superiors that putting them into the battle amounted to infanticide. In the last weeks the Germans were even putting boys from the Hitler Youth into the front line. It's been said, with justification, that the country the Nazis harmed most was Germany. Something that should perhaps be mentioned more often today when we have idiots like Putin and Trump running countries.

I never said it wasn't easy, it is merely more time consuming

Setting up Windows differently from what Gates' boys think is good for you is a lot more painful than setting up a Linux machine. I generally find what takes longest is not Linux but setting up the browser security to catch trackers and other little bits of sneakware.

The analogy I would use is the difference between just getting into your car and getting into your car but also not getting into a panic if you have to lift the bonnet to check oil levels, radiator coolant etc.

Well done. Though you only become a Linux nerd when you write instructions on sites like cyberciti

The Germans made the same mistake as Napoleon, namely believing that if the western part of Russia was captured and controlled the Russians would capitulate. Neither Hitler nor Napoleon had any sense of exactly how much lay beyond Moscow, and how far the Russians could keep retreating.

I've been using Linux for over twenty years now, and for most of that time I needed to be able to install and manage my systems at work myself. So I actually like the fact that a terminal window and the command line is a good way to sort out issues. But I understand that a lot of people just want to switch on and use the device. Like my other half. Though she is now using Ubuntu as she got hugely frustrated with Windows and Microsoft's assumption since Windows 7 that everyone with a Home User licence wanted to share their life on social media. I haven't used Windows since Windows 7 either, but that is partly because IBM moved its workforce onto Red Hat Linux about ten years ago. (IBM have since bought Red Hat)

Welcome to the club, though to do this you really need to join the Society. Suitable wheels for 14.2mm gauge finescale, flexible trackbase and rail are hard to get outside the Society and the Finetrax 14.2mm gauge point kits are sold to Society members at a discount. There are also a few leading members who are active in NE, LNER and BR(Eastern Region) things. Regarding minimum radius, I'd advise 36" for the mainline on account of those big Pacifics you are thinking of. That can come down a bit with smaller engines or with diesels. A generous radius also allows coaches to be more closelyo coupled, again the sort of trains you want to run don't want to have Olympic long jump distances between coaches. The curve through a Finetrax B6 point for 14.2mm gauge is about 33" radius and there have been no reports I am aware of of big steamers refusing to go through. 3mm finescale modellers generally use DG couplings or B&B, both are available as 3mm scale etches, as are Sprat and Winkles though these are less commonly used. High level gear boxes and motors are often used, typically the smaller issues, and I have put the smallest inside an 0-6-0T saddle tank. Fitting motors and gear boxes into large mainline locos hasn't been a problem for over thirty years now, not since Mashimas and Tenshodos became available. Can you solder, or are you at least prepared to learn? Good old etched brass is still the favourite for building good quality locos. You say you are a wannabe finescale modeller, and I applaud that. However don't expect to hit the heights with your first effort. If you like making things though then etched brass is a nice way to go. The tedious business of measuring out and cutting out is done for you and you can just enjoy having your model take shape as you go along. 3D printing is another way but this is still maturing, I can't comment on white metal kits, except to say that, as with 4mm scale, the quality is highly variable. I don't like them personally so I never have them on the workbench.

Yugoslavia is an interesting point, one that reaches back to 1914 and still has relevance today. Russia has always sought to control the Balkans through the Serbs. That's why the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914 by Serb nationalists escalated into WW1. It was Russia mobilising to support Serbia against Austria that started the dominoes tumbling. In 1941 German strategy turned to the Soviet Union, and the Balkans were potentially a weak flank. A military coup in Romania brought that country onto Hitler's side and Bulgaria was already sympathetic to fascism. The coup in Yugoslavia turned the major Balkan country ito being potentially hostile to Germany just as Germany was embarking on a major campaign and that had to be dealt with. As did clearing up Mussolini's mess in Albania and Greece.

Yep, it's not unusual to see nearly sixty points scored in a France-Italy game, just that usually fifty are scored by the French.

Linux Lite is good, but it might also be worth considering Lubuntu. Ubuntu is probably the best supported Linux distro for general home use and Lubuntu is a spin off from that, which means most Ubuntu support is also applicable to it. I've played with a few lightweight distros myself, I don't like laptops normally so I keep an old discarded one (by my daughter) to take with me to libraries or other places where I can't lug my desktop. I find the likes of Mint, Puppy, Antix etc are OK until you hit an issue. Then the weakness of online support hits you.

If you want error messages then running vlc in verbose mode is better, for example vlc -vv /dev/sr0 You can also see what vlc has as its default dvd drive by going to Tools >> Preferences and opening the Input/Codecs tab You can also check whether /dev/dvd is defined by the system and which hardware device it points at by opening a terminal window and typing in ls -l /dev/dvd The response will be something like this: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 3 Feb 5 11:49 /dev/dvd -> sr0

The thing to love about Linux is that the answer will be somewhere. You just need to find it. The first thing I have found is that VLC doesn't have a log file unless you specify it. I found these instructions on how to do that: Open menu Tools > Preferences Set at the bottom "Show settings" to "All" Click on the left Advanced > Logger Check "Log to file" and set the log file in "Log filename" Click Save Restart VLC for it to have effect. That didn't work for me, possibly because vlc is running as a snap. However I did find this workaround. Open a terminal window and on the command line type vlc -vv. That will make vlc run in verbose mode - actually very verbose mode. Everything that would have been logged in a file is now on screen. Normally I'd pipe that to a file but there is some permissions error, again probably due to snap, which I haven't sorted. If you want me to delve further I will, but try those things first

I have just tried it on my Linux machine (A Dell Inspiron desktop running Ubuntu 20.04) and VLC Mediaplayer works as you suggest you want it to, though just putting a DVD in doesn't immediately cause it to start. That suggests to me that in principle VLC should work on your machine. So lets start by comparing versions. My VLC is 3.0.18 Ventinari To start a DVD I either have to key in Ctrl-D or click Media >> Open Disk. That brings up a pop up menu with some details on it but a Play button at the bottom. Clicking on Play starts the DVD and brings up its menu from where you can do the usual things like Scene Selection, set subtitles and play the DVD. My disk device is /dev/sr0. On Linux the /dev directory is a virtual directory where all hardware devices are registered during start up. Unix systems like Linux do everything through files so there has to be a directory. That should be a few things to check, but it may be better to continue the conversation through the message system.

One factor often overlooked is that in Josef Stalin, the Nazis faced a leader as ruthless, inhumane and careless of suffering as they were themselves. Not democratic politicians as they had in the summer of 1940. The leaders of France, the Low Countries, Denmark and Norway were all unwilling to sacrifice their people in a lost cause. Had Britain actually faced the reality of the German army street fighting their way through south and east London and no help coming from elsewhere then Churchill might not have capitulated himself, but he is likely to have been realistic enough to resign and let someone else do the unpleasant task of hanging out the white flag. Stalin on the other hand was quite prepared to sacrifice the inhabitants of Leningrad, Stalingrad and Moscow to their sieges, and if Russians starved while resisting, then Stalin would use his KGB bullies to keep them loyal.

If your frontline fighter was the Brewster Buffalo then it would be. There were maybe half a dozen Hurricane equipped squadrons in the Far East, split between the RAF, the Australian airforce and the Dutch airforce based in the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia). Nothing better.

That is the post-1945 perspective. Two months after the Battle of Britain Roosevelt would promise the American voters that he wouldn't involve the USA in a European war, and from the German point of view, the West was neutralised. France was defeated and occupied and while Britain could still be a nuisance, Germany didn't have to fear Britain opening up a second front. Things looked different in late 1940 and the Soviet Union was always Hitler's target.

The scale of German losses in the Battles for France and the Low Countries should not be overlooked either. Over 1500 planes were lost, making it about a third of the Luftwaffe front line strength. The RAF lost about 900 planes, but the bulk were light bombers like the Fairey Battle or Bristol Blenheim, and few Spitfires were deployed to France.

Yes. Without taking anything away from the brave RAF pilots, there were three factors that meant the BoB was an almost impossible task for the Luftwaffe. The first and most obvious one is that the German planes had to cross the Channel or the North Sea limiting the time their best fighters could be in action over England. Not only did the Luftwaffe have to cross the sea, so would any ground troops, meaning that the RAF's fighter airfields were not threatened by ground attack. Only Manston, by far the most easterly RAF base, was put out of action and some RAF bases were simply out of reach for the German air force. The advantage of having a wide moat was enhanced with the invention and deployment of radar. The British High Command knew when and where the attacks were coming from and get planes up into the air to intercept them The final advantage was that Britain had had more time to prepare. The Germans were still dealing with French resistance for some weeks after the RAF had effectively withdrawn from France, so by the time it was Britain's turn, the RAF had closed the gap in numbers of planes. Yes the Luftwaffe did put more planes into the BoB, but the numbers of fighters on each side were more balanced.

That does re-emphasise the importance of the Rolls-Royce Merlin. Those "secondary theatres" meant against the Italians or the Japanese. The airframes of the best Italian and Japanese fighters were up to the standard of the Spitfire or Bf109, but their power plants were inferior to the Merlin and the German Daimler-Benz job, allowing the Hurricane, with a better power plant, to compete.

Aaarrrgh! Just what you need when you stumble on the train early in the morning ......