PatB

When you think about it, if someone proposed Punch and Judy as kids' entertainment now, they'd be locked up. It has given rise to some excellent fictional interpretations though, such as Ben Aaranovitch's Rivers of London, an aside in Jasper Fforde's The Fourth Bear, and the very amusing (for those with a certain sense of humour) low-budget British, post-Hammer horror flick Funnyman.

I can see why there's outrage. Meddling in local government politics is exclusively reserved for our own homegrown property developers/speculators. Bl%%*y foreigners, coming over here and taking our scams .

That was Do It All weren't it? Cheapest cement in Bristol as I recall, at 3.25 a 50 kg bag .

Unless the film's been subject to some serious overcranking (it doesn't look like it, or not much anyway) it looks as if the train isn't hanging about.

I've always thought it telling that the first lleylandi in Britain were discovwred on the South Coast in the 1940s IIRC. I think we can safely assume that they were the advance guard for Operation Sealion and have done a highly successful job of establishing a bridgehead .

Presumably if you live in a town like that you get used to the disruption caused by trains and end up as accepting it as just the way things are.

I often find myself amazed at how uninterested salespeople can be in selling stuff, and it's not just EVs. When we bought our Scudo we went to both Perth dealerships and asked for a test drive. One seemed flabbergasted at the concept and very grudgingly allowed me to pilot their demonstrator 100 m up the road with the salesman in the passenger seat. The other threw us the keys, said "It's got a full tank, take it away and do what you want with it. Just get it back before we close at 6", so we did. No guesses as to who we bought from.

If all you want to do is have trains circulating at more or less constant speed, old H&M resistance controllers bought cheap will do the job reliably for not much money. If you want to be able to shunt and fiddle at low speeds, the Gaugemaster or Morley options will do it much better but will cost quite a lot more. If you want reasonable performance for pennies, buy a soldering iron, some strip board and a handful of electronic components, find one of the many circuit diagrams available on the Web (including in this forum) and have some fun and education building your own.

Perhaps not, although, again, I don't see the rental market as necessarily remaining in a state of stasis for the rest of time. As part of an overall transport system the rental industry will almost certainly change as the system as a whole changes. Even as things stand now, though, depending on the difference between an individual's typical use and their most demanding use, there may still be savings to be made by buying for the former and renting for the latter, even if the rental companies price gouge at times of peak demand. Again, it may not be a solution for everybody, but it might be interesting for people to look at the numbers for their own case and see. That big engine, all that extra luggage space, the extra gubbins involved in a 4WD system, etc. etc. all have a cost which adds up considerably over time. Maybe it's not worth paying that cost when not using what it's buying.

OT, but I find myself rather intrigued by the subset of boaties who do their (generally non-competitive) nautical stuff on the cheap(er). A Google search on "Phil Bolger" will turn up references to all sorts of unconventional vessels and links which can be followed to various eccentrics who use alternative approaches to various problems. As an example, the Chinese Junk Rig is reputed to offer a means of obtaining reasonable sailing performance without the need for the super high grade (and therefore expensive) materials and fittings required for a conventional rig. I should point out that I've no practical experience of such things. I just enjoy seeing people with the gumption to try doing things differently. To come back within spitting distance of the topic, though, as has been pointed out upthread, high performance IC vehicles tend to be an expensive recreational choice already. However, plenty of people of modest means still seem to make the sacrifices necessary in order to own one. My own experience has been with motorcycles where, at one stage, my desire to run powerful Japanese fours resulted in my getting most of my nutrition from the returned tray trollies in the university canteen, because almost my entire meagre income, after rent, was going on insurance, petrol, chains and tyres. An extreme example, perhaps, but an illustration that even as the IC vehicle becomes more and more expensive to run, those who really really want one will find a way to do so. Those less motivated will find something else on which to lavish their attentions. Sometimes we just can't afford to do the things we'd like. 'Twas ever thus.

Well, as far as I can see, this has indeed been the case within Australia for at least a couple of decades. Many Bunnings stores in WA still bear on spikes the heads of defeated enemies the three balls on sticks motif from Hardware House who had the temerity to challenge the behemoth a decade or more ago. Pity the rest of the world didn't see them as the unstoppable force they seem to see themselves as being .

It will help if we, as a society, can lose the idea that we must own a vehicle capable of undertaking our most demanding task, even if we only do that task once or twice a year. Here in Western Australia, for example, most vehicles spend their lives operating in an area approximately 100 miles by 30 miles, with road conditions significantly better than those in most UK cities. Yes, it gets a bit hot sometimes but it's otherwise a fairly undemanding driving environment. In spite of this we all tell ourselves and the world that we're a state of huge distances and harsh conditions so we really really need all those V8 Toyota Land cruisers that spend most of their time stationary within 25 miles of Perth's GPO. In reality, most of us could do the majority of our motoring quite adequately in a Kia Picanto (or EV equivalent) and put the savings towards hiring a suitable vehicle for the annual trip up the coast/across the Nullabor. From some of the posts above, the same mentality (or a variation thereof) seems to exist in the UK too. There is also a strong tendency to assume that both EV technology and the electrical distribution system will remain in their 2018 state indefinitely. That seems to be a rather heroic assumption, given the rate and nature of technological change for at least the last 200 years. I agree that EVs are not yet the solution for everyone. For some they may never be, or at least not within an easily foreseeable time. But they already have the capability to be practical for many more than currently use them, and the capability and affordability will only increase with time. Bear in mind that it's only a decade or so since the ghastly G-Wiz was being flogged to a naive public. Practical and available EVs have come an awfully long way since then.

I also wondered if the magnet could be cannibalised out of it.

From memory, the 4-wheel tankers which delivered to our local village (Shell IIRC) garage in the mid-70s were Mk1 Ford D-Series based. I think similar tankers also dealt with domestic heating oil deliveries in the area. I'm casting a dodgy memory back 45 years now though .

I believe the manual/auto ratio in Oz is of the order of 15/85 (if I remember a recent radio programme correctly) and moving rapidly auto wards. I like manuals but, TBH, I've more or less given up trying to enjoy driving cars and will make do with something that simply isn't actively unpleasant.

I'm reminded again of a story I've told before on RMWeb, where the official loco portrait of a class I've forgotten now (but I think was Scottish) showed a peculiar pipe fitting apparently emerging from the tender top, against a white/pale grey sky. As alleged by the author of the magazine article accompanying the copy of the photo that I saw, a number of models had been built using this picture as a reference, all faithfully incorporating the pipe fitting thingummy on the tender. Somebody then realised that the thingummy was, in fact, a ventilator on the roof of a horsebox standing behind the loco, which the photographer who made the original print had failed to block out with a paper mask, as they had the rest of the background .

Funnily enough, I just had a Mainline 45 apart for cleaning and servicing yesterday. Not having fiddled with Mainline before I was struck by how light the brush springs were compared to the ones in Lima pancakes, for example. I would think that Hornby springs, fully compressed, will be applying far too much pressure. At the very least they probably need a bit of pruning.

Yep. Plenty of atmosphere on show there all right .

Indeed it should, and in my experience in private industry this has been the case. However, my experience as a public servant suggests that, when it comes to government policy, a screaming headline trumps any two properly conducted studies in the eyes of any minister I've served under .

I'm not sure I'd describe a Chevy Corvair as exotica, even if it is the convertible . The Porsche 356 is nice though. Good to see than an Austin A40 Mk2 made it across the Channel too.

I'll have a go but I haven't really got the hang of the screen on this new phone so can't promise it'll work. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=722896121241839&id=100005643739093

True. However there is also the opposite attitude (and I would emphasise that I am not suggesting that it is on display here; my experience of it is in other fields) whereby as soon as something has the label "safety" applied it cannot be argued against on any grounds, often including other safety aspects which might arise as an unintended consequence. It can be equally unhelpful in arriving at a compromise position which adequately addresses both sides' concerns.

Not plastic, but Occre do a couple of mixed media static loco kits that might fit the bill for you.

Until Birnam Wood is come to Dunsinane, at which point it's probably not going to end well for the defenders .

Works the same here in Oz. The town of Northam, 50 km east of me, had major traffic problems as it was on the main highway to the Eastern States. Heavy traffic across two rather forage old bridges, 100 ton Road trains along the main street, including a couple of tight 90 degree turns, and generally a horrible place to be. However, local businesses appeared to be thriving from the passing trade. Then some major investment saw the highway upgraded and the town bypassed. Virtually overnight the place seemed to shut down. It's come back a bit now, but there was a very lean decade or so in the interim.