Joseph_Pestell

#298 - Oh, that's mine. I don't think that it's any secret on here that I am a past Labour Parliamentary candidate from the time that TB was leader. And I am still, currently, a Labour Party member. So I was deliberately careful in how I phrased my post. Whether on the Left or the Right, there is always some internal stress between doing what one would want to do and what one has to do to be electable. But is it worth being elected if, to cite Norman Lamont, one is "in office but not in power"? One can not do anything at all without being in office but the compromises grate. It's probably why Labour does better, as a Party, in opposition than in power. People of principle don't like compromise.

From an idea floated in the "for those interested in old cars" thread. It seems that there are plenty of us on RMWeb who are interested in old buses (even if we were not bus spotters as such). Quite a few of us, such as Coachmann, even had a career in buses. Several own or have owned vintage buses. Others have an interest in buses, even if only to make sure that we have the right model crossing the bridge on our layout. For myself, I have always been much more a trains and trams man. But for many years, I was a member of the Norbury & South London Transport Club where there was a strong bus following and I used to regularly go to see the May Brighton run and other local rallies such as Cobham Museum Open Day. In my childhood, I explored much of London and surrounding areas on Red and Green Rover tickets. So I still have great affection for some of the rarer LT vehicles of the 60s and 70s: FRM 1, RFs, RLHs,.....

Is he doing dog agility?

Great idea. I don't think that I have seen an opera house on a model railway (although I would be surprised if a German modeller has not done it). Some of our spa towns (Buxton, Harrogate) were quite well known for opera and had small opera houses. I can't remember which HO kit manufacturer did that Baden Hbf station but I think that could be a good basis.

You are, I think, confusing cause and effect. I can find much to criticise about both Blair and Brown. But the "mess" that we inherited after them was not of their making. It was mainly the US banks, aided and abetted by banks in the UK that were insufficiently regulated. Perhaps Blair and Brown should have been harder with UK banks, but you can imagine how well that would have played with Conservatives and their allies in the UK media. Had we had a Conservative govt at the time, the consequences of the 2008 crash may have been far more severe. Indeed, I believe that they would have been but we can't live history twice so we will never know for certain. This morning, all the news is about a "leak" of Labour's draft manifesto which will, according to the Conservatives, "take Britain back to the 70s". The economic circumstances of Britain in the 1970s were created, logically, by the Government in power for the first part of the decade. That was a Labour Government of course! Must have been. Well no, actually, from 1970 (when Heath won with a lesser share of the vote than Wilson) to 1974, the Government was Conservative and the Chancellor, Antony Barber.

I know that Spanish grammar is complicated but......perhaps something is lost in translation.

All of these modern flush units are c**p. Last only a few years at best where the old stuff might last for a hundred years. This looks to me as though the cable operating the unit has come loose one end or the other so the flush mech is not seating back down onto the outflow pipe.

I'm not sure whether we should be all that bothered if Cornwall were to declare UDI so long as that is the will of a majority of the people living there. In the US, no one seems too sure whether it is constitutionally possible for a state to withdraw. Some Californians are certainly considering it.

I have never had very strong views on fox hunting. I can see two sides to the argument having lost a lot of hens but not liking animal cruelty. And, in my view, it's not just cruel to the foxes. Hounds are sometimes kept in pretty poor conditions and a large number of horses sustain serious injuries. But when a group of pro-hunt protesters dragged dead cows through the streets of Brighton, I became rather anti-hunting on the grounds that the people who do it, whatever their class background, are not very nice.

Amazing. I was thinking only this morning (after looking at the Rapido bus scan thread) that we should have a thread for old buses on RMWeb.

Why stop at steel wings? I agree that replacing steel with GRP is bound to affect resale value. But a friend of mine had an Alfetta GTV (he may still have it) which had a complete replacement GRP body. Simply magnificent and valuable in its own right as a rarity.

BMW who visited us last weekend did not impress me very much. Got his car completely bogged down in our newly laid gravel driveway and even managed to remove some of the scalpings layer below the gravel. Had to pull him out with my 15-year-old Maverick.

My cousin had a 305 Estate when he was running a taxi business. Amazing car which just went on and on.......

As OP says, they are only doing what the aviation industry has done for a long time. I doubt whether there is a big demand for such units but it certainly addresses the issue of having a lot of trains that are only used during weekday rush-hours. If the fact that the trains are largely paid for by passenger use means that out-of-hours freight use can be done cheaply, it's worth a try. Parcels is an ever-growing business as we all shop on t'internet. But where would such trains be loaded and unloaded? Most modern stations no longer have good access for the road vehicles that would be needed and the whole operation has to be mechanised as much as possible (robot BRUTEs?) to cut down on manpower costs.

The French Presidential election is not held under PR.

This, IMHO, shows what a waste of time it was for the LibDems to be in that coalition.

Given most people's view of politics, I think that the Rubbish Party could be very successful. Still time to get candidates registered for 8 June.

Interesting, certainly. But what a terrible bodge up!

I take the opposite view. It is so unrewarding to be a local government member at the moment struggling with all these budget cuts. Much better to leave it to the people who have caused the difficulty.

I don't know any bookmaking firm worth £250B. They won't be able to pay you out if it happens.

Another layout worth looking at on here for its track plan is West Kirby. Quite similar to what you are trying to achieve.

As regards height, I am working on the idea of legs that work like those on an ironing board to be able to adjust height. If I am feeling really clever, I might try to do it with triangular legs (one of the triangles inverted) which should give maximum stability on uneven floors. The potential difficulty, of course, is that as the layout gets higher it could be unstable especially if narrow. Iain's idea of booster legs to put on a standard exhibition table gets around this neatly.

Likewise here. Not that it would make any difference to the result anyway.

Apart from an obvious demand for 4mm and 2mm scale, a Lionheart/Dapol version of this would go so well with their B sets.

Hope to get there on Sunday.