Liam

While you were wearing that shirt on the right?

Would you like me to open a bottle of Ampleforth ale for you Phil? This sounds like a fantastic event and I’m very keen to help out, maybe with the running of some trains on my home layout. It’s also quite poignant for me as a few years ago I held some ‘open weekends’ with my layout to raise money for charitable causes, and so it would be a pleasure to do the same again.

Indeed, and the 1940s weekend has also been cancelled. A great shame when you consider how much organising goes into it, but it is the right decision.

Do you speak from experience?

Yes, and as quite a lot of factories that produce consumer/non-essential goods will probably be shut there will be less light being emitted from their locations. In addition, with pubs and other night time amusements being shut local councils might have switched off street lights in late night and small hours to help cut down on expenditure.

Around here, the skies are very noticeably clearer, due to the significant drop in road and air traffic as well as factory operations, and normally at night if I look north out of my house I can see the (rather heavy) light pollution of Birmingham but although a small amount of pollution is still there the level has certainly dropped, as the sky is a bit darker. Where possible, we support local businesses; the farm up the road from us has the monopoly on providing us with eggs, we tend to visit a farm shop for our shopping rather than Morrisons all the time (even though Morrisons is nearer), and I also like to support my local brewery, Purity, where possible now that the pubs are shut and they’re probably feeling the pinch. They do home delivery which is an added bonus. I’m also spending more time going for walks in the local area and seeing people (while maintaining social distancing) who live in my area but for whatever reason haven’t interacted with. Who knows, I might just have to give Joe Wicks’ exercise videos a try.

So, the positives I see: 1. I have as much chance of filling the O2 Arena as the Rolling Stones supported by The Beatles and Status Quo. 2. Since the lockdown ‘started’, every Sunday league football club has scored the same number of goals as Barcelona and Real Madrid combined. 3. My social life is as exciting and varied as Leonardo DiCaprio’s. 4. I can lap Silverstone in the same time Lewis Hamilton takes to do it. And that’s just four.

The blue tits, having evicted the coal tits, have now moved in to our nestbox. I’m not sure if they spend the nights in there but I have seen them perching on the entrance hole when it’s quite late. Nest building was in full swing towards the end of last week, and as most of the trees have regained/are regaining their leaves I can’t imagine it will be too long before egg laying time.

Pure Gold for me tonight. One of my favourites and rather quaffable!

Only just had a chance to watch the DVD that came with this issue. The one on this occasion was excellent (not that any of the others are in any way bad ); Hills of the North was stunning, the feature of the V2 at Little Bytham was very good (especially the camera shots, which I thought seemed to mimic the aerial footage taken of Flying Scotsman when storming down the ECML in the 1930s) and the layout for Little Miracles was a very kind gesture.

Same with me - volunteer for the OTB primarily but also Bewdley platform and Bewdley MPD. Due to a busy schedule I had only managed two shifts since the end of November, so I’m really missing the SVR. This ongoing crisis gave me a question - if a preserved railway has a steam loco with a boiler certificate that expires at the end of 2020 (for example), will its certificate be extended by the time the railway was inactive? 4566 springs to mind, as IIRC the expiration date of its boiler certificate was delayed by a few months in 2017 due to the floods that devastated us in 2007.

Still a few bare trees in my corner of Worcestershire.

Marstons Pedigree tonight. Went rather well with some pork. But Morrisons are selling this and EPA for just £1! I have an idea why that might be the case - as Marstons own lots of pubs and hotels, they might be bottling much more than they would normally to make up for their establishments being closed, and they might also be prepared to sell their bottles for a lower price than usual if it means more sales.

Including suitable aromas of course. And maybe a bit of The Wurzels...

No worries.

That’s strange Rob, my photos seem to have ended up in your post! I do notice however that Chris Nevard expanded Brew Street to accommodate the water features. Another one I liked was Brewhouse Quay - you could practically smell the hops and hear the water gushing against the quayside...

Here’s a couple of photos that might help you out:

I know I’m resuscitating this thread after over two years but with not much else on, I had a flick through volume 7 of ‘How to Build a Model Railway’ at the weekend. I saw Brew Street, and I’ve been well and truly bitten by the micro layout bug! There’s a few boards in the garage that aren’t doing anything else, so I might see what I can do with a small baseboard, existing stock, some spare Peco code 75 and a vivid imagination...

Has it been mentioned that the NEC is now also to be used as a makeshift hospital? https://www.itv.com/news/central/2020-03-27/nec-to-become-temporary-hospital-in-fight-against-coronavirus/

Just came across this very sad story. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/29/spanish-flu-survivor-dies-from-coronavirus-aged-108?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0ILhypZwUw3VBCbrvYrwUWszwwGnJKprin6QnmEKA2Df5B98LdQL6L_Is#Echobox=1585493935

All looks good Rob. I’ve been tempted down similar lines after seeing Chris Nevard’s ‘Brew Street’ in volume 7 of How to Build a Model Railway. If it wasn’t for the clearout I did earlier today I probably wouldn’t have unearthed it... I’ve got a few unused boards in the garage so I might well end up building something similar to Brew Street.

My cooking endeavours if nothing else have at least generated interest in this thread...

Perhaps, but as of today Malaysia has 2,320 cases, and 27 death, and when here in the UK we had a similar number of infections the death toll was around 100, so warmer weather, if it doesn’t delay the spread of the virus, may lead it to mutate into a less fatal virus. I’ve used this news article here, and the graph by Peng Wu, a student at Leeds who everyday converts the latest figures from the Department of Health & Social Care into a graph. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/malaysia-new-covid-19-cases-mar-28-12585940 https://mobile.twitter.com/DHSCgovuk/status/1243901924786790400

No officer, I wasn’t drinking while cooking! *hic* Badger haven’t referred to it as a ‘deceptively drinkable ale’ for no reason. But all jokes aside, that wasn’t my best effort; my best so far was this last August. Must admit though that that wasn’t made with Tangle Foot; despite being located literally next door to the brewery, Tesco in Blandford didn’t have any Tangle Foot, so we had to make do with some Golden Champion, which I would enjoy if it wasn’t for that peculiar floral aftertaste.

Tangle Foot for me tonight. But last Monday I baked another Tangle Foot toad in the hole. Here’s the finished product: