Andy Hayter

I think that rather than being a flue - why have arches and rectangular openings in a flue? - it is in fact kiln and flue combined. I have seen (on the box) a similar arrangement where the arch gives access to 4 kilns - 2 on each side and fuel (coal or maybe coke) and limestone or chalk are loaded into the kilns at that level. The height of the flue above is determined by the need for the fire to draw sufficiently to create enough heat to calcine the rock. The lime/cement is then extracted at the lower level (rectangular openings) once the fire has subsided but probably still too hot to touch.. https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailv2&form=SBIHVR&lightschemeovr=1&iss=sbi&q=imgurl:https%3A%2F%2Fcontent-eu.invisioncic.com%2Fy320084%2Fmonthly_2024_03%2Fimage.png.816cb988f73d8e054961bf0c243a27bc.png&pageurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rmweb.co.uk%2Fforums%2Ftopic%2F229-early-risers%2Fpage%2F12876%2F%23comment-5471532&pagetl=Early+Risers.+-+Page+12876+-+Wheeltappers+-+RMweb&imgalt=image.png.816cb988f73d8e054961bf0c243a27bc.png&imgsz=281x479&selectedindex=28&id=https%3A%2F%2Fs0.geograph.org.uk%2Fgeophotos%2F03%2F01%2F72%2F3017244_44f03303_1024x1024.jpg&ccid=fyh1nuQd&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fs0.geograph.org.uk%2Fgeophotos%2F03%2F01%2F72%2F3017244_44f03303_1024x1024.jpg&exph=768&expw=1024&vt=2&simid=607996722171161310&ck=C79CEC83FD0AAB6E3793A7B3D8CAB366&thid=OIP.fyh1nuQd7d51tnjpmlndigHaFj&cdnurl=https%3A%2F%2Fth.bing.com%2Fth%2Fid%2FR.7f28759ee41dedde75b678e99a59dd8a%3Frik%3DQ6Qx%2byyAI8BpLA%26pid%3DImgRaw%26r%3D0&sim=11

I too would recommend pre-wetting. I have done it without and found on drying that it looked as if the ballast had been subject to a series of meteorite strikes, with crater like depressions where some of the drops of glue/water/surfactant had hit the dry surface.

Western Union will do that but I certainly would not recommend it as a way to do business. Too many opportunities for fraud.

Farine - flour Moulin - mill Brasserie - brewery You will tend to get a whole lot of hits of small scale artisan equipment and not full sized industrial units. As Ian has suggested, Minifer offer suitable models.

We seem to have focused heavily on beer; but do we have any evidence that that was the cargo in the barrels? Barrels were widely used for shipping small quantities of all sorts of other goods. China (packed in straw), pots and pans, fish (salted and cured), oil (probably whale not black gold) etc.. the reason for the widespread use of barrels is that they are easily moved in the days before pallets and a fork lift or pallet truck. Tip it slightly and you can twirl it ( with skill) down the street. Put it on its side and you can roll it. I could imagine that as beer barrels became old and perhaps less liquid tight, they might be sold on for the use of non-liquid products. Does this explain the somewhat tatty state of some of these barrels?

Very much less sophisticated but very effective: a town near where I lived in Germany had a main street with 6 or 7 sets of lights for intersections and crossings. The speed limit was 50kph (30mph). They introduced the Grüne Welle (Green wave) Travel at 40kph and you would guarantee that every light would change to green just before you got there. Travel at 50 (still within the limit) and you were guaranteed the lights would still be at red as you got to them. It actually worked and only needed a timing sequence to be effective.

I think there is a problem with the forum indexing at the moment. As well as the lengthy delays, I am directed to the first unread post - except that it frequently is not the first unread post, which may be before where the page lands or after. Yesterday I got a notification that someone had had left a reaction to one of my posts. I was directed to the top of a page; a page on which I had made no posts. Later it had been corrected.

From the local news reports it looks as if this may prove to be a lot more serious than mismanagement.

Indeed. Climbing friends of mine, both of Scots origin, had that exactly happen to them in that area. They had between them around 6 sentences in Scottish Gaelic. So for a couple of minutes they discussed/ The sun was hot today Yes but the bus only runs on Saturdays ................ And suddenly everyone in the pub was talking English.

Today was forecast to be overcast but dry and importantly with overnight temperatures above 5°C. So it seemed a good day to start building steps down the terracing from the upper slopes to the lower slopes. All nicely marked out on the concrete plinth, I had just got the first block seated and level in both directions and the heavens opened. With a wheelbarrow full of mortar, there seemed little choice but to battle on. An hour and a half later and I was p'ssed wet through but had the bottom layer all but complete and an empty wheelbarrow. Retreat to the warmth seemed the honourable thing to do.

Caustic soda https://rainbowrailways.co.uk/product/revolution-tua-tu013a-51ton-caustic-soda-tank-wagon-ici-mond-trl-oo-gauge-oo-tua-004/ Possible route starting points: ICI Runcorn or ICI Wilton

I have given up on visual loading/unloading. It never looks realistic because you cannot scale acceleration under gravity. The same issue as for those who try to use real water to represent a stream flowing.

A question if I may. I like the sequence, all of which makes operational sense, but how do you justify getting 6 empty wagons back into that siding for the next repeat of the sequence? I have the same dilemma with regards full wagons delivering to various spots and somehow departing later still full of coal.

Looks like a VTG creation https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PHOTO-JNA-BOGIE-BOX-WAGON-NO-VTG-3422-OF-VTG-EX-CAIB-IN-STORE-AT-MOTOR-RAIL-LOG-/362613585931

OT but not true. I can buy from the South easternmost point in Cyprus to the Northernmost point in Sweden to the westernmost point in Portugal to the southernmost point in Malta and there are no issues for the buyer

While I agree that setting up VAT registered entities in the EU is expensive and storing goods for customers requires a lot of warehouse space and therefore I would not recommend Rails to go down either route, your comment about overseas customers paying the true costs show a lack of appreciation of the issues however. On the costs side Overseas customers have always paid p&p "at cost". Now ask yourself why, if a seller says free delivery to the UK, UK postage and packaging costs are not deducted from the overseas costs. They never are. So that regarding costs but it does not stop there. Some administrations and delivery systems (and I understand that Ireland and Spain are among the worst) make life very difficult and sometimes impossible through bureaucracy and inefficiency. If you look through the buying and sell from / to the EU thread you will find many examples of things going badly or completely wrong. Some administrations seem to have streamlined systems and Australia seems to be a good place to receive your orders. Yes we don't pay UK VAT but we in the EU are required to pay local VAT and the process of doing that means that we have to pay additional administration charges. These can be quite reasonable. They can sometimes be quite horrendous. A £10.50 purchase however has just cost me €35 - so 3 times the purchase price. I have also "enjoyed" poor administration of VAT collection. I received a package (it happened to be from Rails but no criticism of them) where the VAT seemed to be rather higher than I expected and the administration costs were also much higher than I would pay though the local post office. It turned out that the commercial invoice had the costs declared in Euros and the import agent had converted this to euros by applying the pound to euro exchange rate so inflating the purchase cost. I have complained to the agent but received no reply. Even had they admitted the error and recompensed, the time and trouble really is a PITA. Administration costs can be €3 (La Poste online) so why do UPS, DPD, DHL etc; charge many times that.

Yes I was going to make the point that large swathes of France are like the remoter parts of Northern England or much of Scotland. We are very lucky that local postal facilities remain in what would be totally uneconomic places in the UK. This is thanks to local subventions to keep such establishments going and is one reason why our taxes are a bit higher here. I have no objection.

France is a much bigger country than the UK and consequently an alternative to La Poste may well be many kilometres away, whereas even small villages tend to have a post office counter. My own village of 300 souls has a poste office but I have a round trip of 22km to deliver to a UPS drop off point. So that is €3,50 or so petrol cost to counteract any savings in the actual postage cost.

Two thoughts Is the sale through Ebay's Global Shipping Plan? They just fleeced me about the same for delivering 3 sets of 3D printed 00 chimney pots from the UK to France. La Poste encourage people to use one of their standard sized boxes (goes down the sorting lines easily) and often give the impression that there is no option. These are sold at a very nice premium for nice La Poste that is. Guessing at the weight however, this looks like standard package postage: Poids jusqu’à…Tarifs Colissimo Vers zone OM 1 (overseas postage rates) from La Poste's website 500 g 12,65 1 kg 20,00 2 kg 27,25

I don't want to stray from Dymented but to answer the questions: Haltemprice is a real area on the north bank of the Humber just west of Hull*. So no it's not GWR. The station is a tad over 1/2 metre long and the layout around 5.5 m including the fiddle yard. Windows are actually already in place but don't show - Scale Model Scenery and are probably closer to scale thickness. I did say my photo skills lacked a lot! The station is based on but is certainly not a copy of the GNR station at Bardney*** on the original GNR route to the north from Kings X to Doncaster - now called the loop line. * Perhaps better known because it was also the centre of a comedy - The New Statesman - featuring Tory MP Alan B'Stard played by Rik Mayall. Reading the fictitious obituary**, some items seem to have predicted the behaviour of a former PM. ** https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/the_new_statesman/features/alan_bstard_obituary/ *** http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/b/bardney/ Further questions will hopefully be answered when my virtual pen gets around to finishing a thread in the Pre-grouping railways section.

I teased last week about my in the house project. It is taking a lot longer than I expected to firstly write my own thread and secondly finish the model, which is a station building for my Haltemprice Quay layout. So to stop the tease, here are rough shots (photography is not my forte as demonstrated by the lean on both pictures) of the work in progress. Roofing, facias and soffits, rain water goods, chimney pots etc still to do.

But it can be just as easy to make fundamental mistakes in scenic modelling. Perhaps these go unnoticed because while some of us a true experts in the railway, I suspect few of us would claim to be experts in the wider world. This can result in an almost anything goes view of what happens beyond the railway fence. Examples of the above would be: vehicles out of period too many vehicles in periods when motorised transport was much rarer wrong sort of farm animals - no a cow is not just a cow for example and cows were bred and raised for particular regions. out of period advertising wrong sort of road signs or road markings

@southern42 Where has the sun gone? looks like it came here, which is just as well given that yesterdays torrential rain turned to thunder and snow overnight. There is a fair bit of melting to do.

Sadly not illegal @jamie92208. French customs site clearly states that VAT is applicable from the first euro for all imports from outside the EU. The old rules of thirty something euros being exempt was rescinded by the EU a couple of years ago. You are right though that it makes buying small low value items hellishly expensive. One thing that can help is if you ask the seller to include your email address in the commercial invoice. This usually results in an email from La Poste's import department demanding the VAT but with a reduced fee to La Poste.