Andy Hayter

The same happened in Germany some 8 years ago where farmers went on Milchstrijk - Milk Strike - and refused to continue to supply until prices went up a few cents. I am less sure about your comments about France. In principle there is 3 times as much land to cover a similar population compared with the UK. Small farms/ small herds probably results more from Napoleonic succession laws. Essentially all children inherit land/property equally. This leads either to joint ownership, or land being split into smaller and smaller parcels.

That would be Mekpak rather than Metpak. Also Butanone, or liquid solvent from Revell, Tamiya and probably others. All a bit different but basically the same action.

I am less than sure about a better value, but I would certainly accept a different value.

or quality of ingredients. When I were but a lad, one of my early vacation jobs was in a canning factory. My first day involved the canning of new potatoes. There was a line with 12 workers selecting out all of the potatoes with blemishes, eyes, black bits etc. My high tech job was to shovel the potatoes out of a water filled vat with a bucket with holes drilled through it. I was amazed at the precision with which the ladies (for the 12 workers were all female) picked out all new potatoes that were not perfect. After lunch the foreman came round and said, "Right that's the Marks and Sparks order finished". 9 of the ladies were re-directed to other work, the potatoes that had been so carefully selected out as not fit, were returned to the vat, and we started all over again. Not only with a lower level of selection (3 versus 12 extracting the crap) but with a reduced standard of feed stock. So even with something very simple (potatoes, salt and water all in a tin), there can be very big differences in quality.

Let's be fair, it takes two to Tango. Someone else must be bidding almost as much. As for this being the Coopercraft thread, perhaps he is one of the potential buyers hoping to fulfil customer orders.

LED developments post the partial and then final banning of filament light bulbs. E cigarettes following the banning of smoking in public places. In this case the scarcity is one of places to indulge.

Looking at it purely from a railway perspective or even a UK railway perspective, what you write makes good sense. However railways do not operate in a vacuum. So many of these green bio-fuels behave much like diesel and have the same problems of particulates and NOx generation. Further Railways are not isolated from the energy market as a whole. Their demands for biofuels will be dwarfed by the demands from the road market. Some years ago someone suggested to me that biofuels would be a long term sustainable solution to Earths transport needs. I did a few calculations and quickly showed that to supply the then current transport fuel requirements for the world you would need an acreage of good to pretty reasonable arable land about 20% bigger than Russia. Then you would need infrastructure to access, store and process the crops, plus storage and maintenance for the machines to do the sowing, growing and harvesting. Even if you could do it (and frankly you would need to do some substantial terraforming of massive tracts of land and find enormous quantities of non-saline water) you would need to maintain the soil in a good sustainable condition. One of the best ways of doing this is to add animal manure. So you probably need the sheep, chickens, goats, pigs and cattle anyway. This is not to completely dish bio-fuels. They should however be seen as part of a solution and not a whole solution. The biggest part is perhaps to see how we can reduce our energy requirements.

It is worth remembering that more and more level crossings are restricted to minor lines where there would be no TGVs or in town centres where there is limited scope to provide an alternative (bridge, underpass etc.). TGVs and road traffic do not mix well.

In support of those who question the efficiency of the Locomotion.com operation, last week I tried to pay the balance of my order on line. This failed because their website thinks my computer blocks cookies - it doesn't. I therefore sent a message via the contact us button with my card and order details. One week later I have no acknowledgement of receipt of that message. I understand that there has been a rush in the run up to the closing date for the model but that level of (dis)service is to say the least poor.

IMHO Hydrogen is not the answer to a maidens prayer. 1. A not insignificant product from the combustion of hydrogen in air is hydrogen peroxide - do we really want that dribbling all over our infrastructure, oxidising nitrogen to NOx etc. So catalytic converters will probably be needed. 2. You talk of a dribble of water from the exhaust, but at the combustion temperatures it is going to be water vapour. Water vapour is a greenhouse gas - in fact worse than CO2.

Glad it was sorted Ron Some time ago I assume Joseph. When I arrived in Germany some 20 odd years ago, it was a decidedly cash driven economy. You could use debit cards (note not credit cards) for things like train or plane tickets or for hotels, but after that it was almost impossible to use plastic except to get cash from the bank. I ended up that with less than 500DM in my pocket (250€ or £230) I would get decidedly twitchy and be looking for the nearest hole in the wall. Oh and the icing on the cake - most shops closed at 14:00 Saturday and would not reopen until 08:00hrs Monday. Very much changed now and most shops accept debit cards although I guess there will always be exceptions.

Not so EJ. From the BoE website: The same is true for Scottish and Northern Ireland banknotes. Seven banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland are authorised to issue banknotes. These notes make up the majority of banknotes in Scotland and Northern Ireland and legislation is in place to ensure that noteholders have a similar level of protection as they would for Bank of England notes. Despite this, Scottish and Northern Ireland banknotes are not classified as legal tender anywhere in the UK. Equally, Bank of England notes are not legal tender in Scotland and Northern Ireland. My highlighting

Does that mean the new stores are going to be called Beechings?

I think you will find that reed beds are actually very efficient (several villages here use them before discharge into the local rivers). The dye works is however another matter - or perhaps madder.

And your second metier should have been quantity surveyor.

I thought that was to show that people living in those towns would get the hump since there would be no trains.

Two clear distinctions between cats and dogs: 1. Dogs have masters, cats have servants. 2. A man brings food to his dog and his cat. The dog thinks, "This creature brings me food, truly he is a god." The cat thinks, "This creature brings me food, truly I am a God." Edit to add: I am a cat owner servant so you know where I sit in the family hierarchy

It is indeed a big book and not one to go through in an evening. It is however very readable. What it is not is a history of railways starting in the late 18th Century and running through to today*. It covers topics and refers backwards and forwards in time to why and how we got where we are. I find it very readable, albeit that the small print means that 10 pages at a time is an absolute limit. For the modeller - and perhaps especially for us pre-groupers - it slips in facts that help put railway operations, methodology and practises into context and for that I am finding it invaluable. It is more a social commentary of what railways have been and are, but that description makes it sound like 'ology gobbledygook and that it is not. * The first chapter starts out describing what a railway journey was like for a passenger in the early 1860s. It talks about Hudson, but does not devote chapters to his antics. It spends much time describing the impact of railways on its workers and also those who lived adjacent to railway, who used railways and who benefited from railways as shareholders or as landowners. PS to add: Mine is paperback as well and the binding is such that befits a 750 page tome - although only 560 pages are text.

I thought I had posted a reply earlier but cannot find it - senility setting in perhaps. I am currently reading the Railways by Simon Bradley - long book but well worth the read - where I had thought I had seen reference to common carrier. If so I cannot find it (senility again?) however he does mention that the 1840 Act of Parliament required railways to publicise their rates for carriage of all goods types. I think tis would be concurrent with becoming common carriers or perhaps slightly afterwards. so this would confirm Hroth's posting last night.

At least many customers have the option of leaving and going to another bank. Those living outside of the UK and who have TSB accounts are basically stuck with them.

I would happily take a couple of those. Excellent work which shows off the benefits of modern technology.

I wanted to click on Like, Agree and Funny but you will have to do with Funny, Bill

Another piece of work from our group well deserving of recognition.

You equally should be proud for that work on Derwent.

The two of you should be very proud indeed with this work.