PatB

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.

I was using "run-in" in a metaphorical rather than a literal sense here. Compared to engines in everyday service prior to 1968 Tornado will have had a very pampered ten years or so. As for limping a single cylinder loco home, I hope it didn't stop on dead centre at any point. The railroad Esperanto would have flowed even more freely .

From memory, in school chemistry lessons we used copper sulphate solution as the electrolyte. You should be able to get it from a garden centre, at least as Bordeaux Mixture if not straight. Also, make sure the lead is properly clean. It develops an oxide layer very quickly which, I would imagine, will inhibit current flow.

And then Triang saw it and thought "What a good idea".

The British motor industry didn't exactly help itself. It made an awful lot of rubbish and often did so very badly indeed. Ultimately the things it did well failed to pay the bills. Sad but not a huge surprise.

Petrol prices here in WA swing wildly and can change by 20c overnight. It's on a weekly cycle and we're told it's due to overseas factors. Strange, then, that the peaks seem to coincide with days when demand will be highest. Thursdays generally, which for most people is still pay/pension/dole day, so folk who've been stretching a tank until they can afford to fill up will be stung. Diesel is much more stable. There may be a correlation with private user demand being much lower, offering less opportunity for gouging. On the bright side we still only pay in cents what UK users pay in pence. Doesn't stop folk whingeing incessantly as they pour another thankful into their V8 Falcadore or bloated 4x4 before sitting in a stationary traffic queue on the freeway for an hour or two.

Trouble with compressed air is that you then have to deal with an enormous and complex pressure system and still have to seal the slot (unless you use a pod in a totally enclosed tube), with all the associated issues of losses and safety.

Given the amazing properties available from modern polymer materials, yes, I think it could. However, you'd still have the problem of how to deal with pointwork and the limitation presented by having a maximum suction available of ~15 psi, thus limiting tractive effort for any practical size of vacuum tube. Given that you'd need to drive the vac pumps with something - realistically electric motors - you might as well wire the line and drive the trains with electric motors rather than interposing an awkward to accommodate, limited and potentially complex and unreliable pneumatic system. Of course, on a small scale, pneumatic tubes have been very successful for short distance load carrying in offices and shops.

Brunel's record suggests that he was much more a civil engineer than mechanical. He also appears to have been enormously bold and ambitious, which is great when you're right but can result in rather embarrassing results when you're not. I still maintain that the Atmospheric, although ultimately a failure, probably looked more sensible c1840 than it does now with the benefit of hindsight.

In several years of commuting by motorcycle into and out of Perth I've seen all of the following in use by drivers at least once. Mobile phones in huge numbers obviously - voice, text and internet - newspapers, laptops, bowls of cereal, full blown suitcase sized makeup cases, paperback books (remarkably intellectual for WA I thought ), mini TVs (back before the ubiquity of digital devices), large "herbal" cigarettes and doubtless a few more inappropriate driving aids which I've since forgotten.

If we're allowed to nominate 12" to 1' fantasy projects, I'd have Tasmania's 3'6" gauge system. It's pretty run down and truncated and so should be fairly cheap, but some of it is gloriously scenic. The line along the north-west coast. for example, is wonderful. I rather like the elderly diesel fleet too.

Probably not. Some people simply hate their children, apparently .

We've got those in Western Australia too, although they're more for nicking mobile phone users than catching speeders. They're not too hard to spot, though, because, although the bikes are unmarked, the riders are in full, bulky Police issue hi-viz and white helmets, which would be unusual for private individuals, at least on the types of bikes used. I'm fascinated by the fact that the Police in your area still apparently ride Triumph Speed Twins with Avon fairings though .

Given the limited mileage covered, though, by steam loco standards she'll be barely run-in I would have thought.

Indeed it is, and very successfully too. Just not in Oz. The options here are epoxy or resorcinol. I'm not sure what we do about vintage aircraft built before the ban. Regular inspections I assume.

Well, the casein glue they were stuck with was dairy product based ad so rather attractive to adhesive munching microbes. I believe this was the motivation for the development of acid catalysed urea formaldehyde adhesives, which were much more durable. They do degrade in heat and humidity but take longer to weaken dangerously. They're banned in Australia for aircraft construction for this reason, but still permitted in the US. Mind you, the US allow all sorts of stuff on an "at your own risk" basis that other jurisdictions see fit to regulate, so I'm not sure if that tells us much .

The hotel walkway collapse was a result, IIRC, of inadequate design by engineers who should have known better, not architects/stylists with ideas above their station. I could be wrong, though. The book I have which goes into some depth on the failure of the suspension system is in a box somewhere so I'm relying on an increasingly unreliable memory. And that's from an engineer who's had his share of headaches trying to make the pretty pictures of architects actually work in reality.

Seems to work for me, going to Occre's railway kits page. I've had a bit more of a poke around Occre's site and some time on Google. Looking more closely at the tender drive unit, It looks as if it might be quite prominent under the fairly open tender chassis. Also, because these are really designed as, primarily, wooden static kits I can see them requiring a few mods if they are to be used as real working models. Replacement of dowel axles with steel rod, adding brass bearings and checking the fabricated wooden wheels for truth. I'd be interested to know what the Adler's tyres are made of and whether they're cast or turned. Nonetheless, I still think these could make a useful basis for some economical models. Even devising a complete drive system and upgrading the running gear a bit shouldn't be beyond human wit or cost the earth. Such locos don't need to be particularly powerful or robust because, let's face it, the prototypes weren't either. If they can haul three or four 4-wheelers reliably, should they really be expected to do much more?

In Australia it's known as Pommy Rash .

Indeed. Many of those whose achievements we now celebrate and whose works we attempt to preserve were guilty of acts we would now regard as incomprehensible historical, cultural and/or environmental vandalism on a staggering scale. Funny old world ain't it?.

No, it's not just you. Whilst I regard myself as broadly sympathetic to many of the aims of much of the Right-Onosphere, I find many of its individual members and their views and attitudes at least as unappealing or cringingly embarrassing as those of their apparent polar opposites.

Nothing wrong in principle with glueing stuff together. Ask any Mosquito pilot. However, it's got to be done properly, with a suitable adhesive used in accordance with its manufacturer's instructions, and attaching to an appropriate substrate. In the case of the shelf in the OP, for example, glueing a wooden shelf to a robust wooden structure should be fine, if done properly. However, glueing it to a plastered wall (or worse, a painted one) means that the structure would be reliant not just on the adhesive, but on the bonds between plaster and masonry and between paint and plaster, along with the tensile strength of the plaster itself. None of these can be relied on, especially in tension.

Those who fancy having a go at modelling the early railway scene in a large scale may be interested in this.

Prompted by a post in the Railway Modelling on a Limited Income Facebook group I went on a search for Occre Models. and found these kits. I found the Adler and the Rocket particularly interesting, along with the Adler's associated coaches. They tick a lot of boxes for me. Large scale, early prototypes with a claimed simple build and not staggeringly expensive, even when you add in the optional tender-drive kit to make them go. Combined with well ballasted LGB track (or homebuilt) they open up the possibility of a Gauge 1 layout in a space and at a cost that would not be considered generous, even for 00. Ok, Adler was a German (but British built) prototype, but, apart from the headlamps I can't see why it wouldn't pass for a generic British 2-2-2 of the period. Ditto the coaches. Rocket is a bit specialised but I can't see that it would be beyond fairly modest skill to bash it into a reasonable Northumbrian representation. Add some scratchbuilt wagons, or maybe some adapted large-scale narrow-gauge kits in suitably antedeluvian style and you could have some historical fun. I managed to find a Youtube video of a build of one of the American 4-4-0s and the quality and design looked excellent, particularly for the price. So how come I haven't heard about these before? Given the daft prices that the less convincing (IMHO) Bachmann H0 De Witt Clinton and Norris models seem to be reaching these days, I'd say, on the face of it, that they provide some interesting opportunities and great value.