Regularity

Is the 2mm Association rail bullhead or flat bottom? Here is a table from the Fasttracks website:

Ah, but as Lao-Tzu put it, the best leaders “lead” from behind, and the people think they have done things by themselves. This is not the same as following, but I think our leader - and many others - don’t understand this. Or maybe they do, but prefer populism as long as it keeps them in power? Poo-tin, on the other hand, is not so much a gentle director as a brutal dictator, and like all such people, started off by promising to help/save the people from some (often imagined) threat.

I think we can safely say that: Ukraine has a long and complicated history, much of it not as an independent nation; The people of Ukraine have a strong national identity which they largely wish to preserve; The Russian invasion is frankly wrong; We have no idea why it has happened; and finally This is actually rather complicated and very few - if any - of us really understand what’s going on. On the other hand, when the USSR invaded Hungary in 1956, President Eisenhower basically said, “We support the Hungarian people,” but did nothing, because he knew that in the long run, the Soviet Union would be bankrupted by the arms race, so the Hungarian people would eventually become free of the Soviet Yoke. He, and “The West” then did nothing else, which was great news as long as you weren’t in the bloc covered by the Warsaw Pact. This time, whilst it is true that “The West” is still playing the long game, it has mobilised everything except military force against the Russian government, which is a significant step forward. Unless you are Ukrainian. In which case, not so good.

In the spirit of the famous translation into Welsh of an English language road sign, Google (not Google translate) informs me that this means: “It looks like there aren't many great matches for your search” Which is helpful to somebody, somewhere. maybe.

That being the point: fundamentally, it’s dominated by the 5 permanent members, none of whom are prepared to be subjected to a fair international law that prevents them (the five) from pursuing their own interests. Rhetorical questions aren’t always effective, are they?

This one is useful, but I think these switches are now motor operated: Evidence of a once larger opening for rodding there, too.

In pattern, if not the details. In 1938 (Czechoslovakia) the League of Nations failed to act. Where is the UN this time? Why can’t a sovereign nation which is a fully fledged member of the UN ask for the protection of UN badged forces against an aggressive neighbour?

Yeah, I got that. I just didn’t find it so: it perpetuates an unsubstantiated myth, which would still be the case if it was funny.

Lots of things and people are famous, but that doesn’t mean that it is true or even factual: Crete is famous as being the home of the labyrinth that held the Minotaur. There is a difference between myth and legend: Webb Compounds having driving wheels spinning in the opposite direction to each other is firmly in the former camp. It is theoretically possible for a loco reversing onto a train to stop in the perfect position to prevent the slip-eccentric from being able to reset when the engine starts off, and this could cause a problem for the exhaust steam passages from the HP cylinders, in which case use of a crowbar to try move the wheel set off exact dead centre might be one way of sorting out the problem, but just putting a pilot loco on the front of the train and pulling it forward a few feet would deal with it more easily. This whole business about Webb compounds is basically propaganda put around after he had moved on: the fact is that for many years the Teutonics performed superbly and gave a very good return on the investment made in them. As trains became heavier and locos needed to become larger, Webb demonstrated (IMO) that like many loco engineers, he was really good at getting the best out of his generation of steam locos (his 2-4-0s and 2-2-2-0s were simply great), but it took a new broom to cope with the demands for heavier and faster trains: Web’s eight-coupled goods engines, and the Bill Baileys, were simply underboilered. The same is true all over the place: Dean wasn’t really up to the demands of the new century, which required the new thinking brought in by Churchward. Drummond’ some 4-6-0s on the LSWR were pretty awful, and his last design - a reversion to the 4-4-0 - was at least as good as them, but they were meant to be better. Robinson knew that he didn’t have the necessary skills/experience to take the newly formed LNER forward, but had seen what Greeley was capable of (and that the latter was open minded enough to make changes, such as increasing the valve travel, when a better way was demonstrated). Railway enthusiasts can be just as gossipy as any other group of people, but if facts are available - as they are in this case - to refute false rumours, why perpetuate myths and misinformation, especially as the reality is more than interesting enough to not need fabrication.

Not that old wives’ story again…

That was, ultimately, my point: there is nothing really comparable without some very hard work, and Vlad is lying through his teeth with his self-justification.

Yes, but the angles were newcomers, who (genetically) interbred with the locals, but very much imposed their own culture. For the analogy to work, England would have been re-settled/conquered by the Welsh and become once again Brythonic, invaded by “Vikings”, risen to dominance, annexed Wales in all but name as a British kingdom/republic, had that controlling entity collapse in on itself, and become a fully sovereign nation state once again, only for its larger neighbour to start encroaching on the borders, annexing Pembrokeshire for the deep water port, creating a “need” for a coastal corridor, and claiming all along to have been the original founder of a greater Brythonic entity… The point is, it might be called Ukraine and not Russia, but the Rus people were well established in Kiev long before what is now called Russia even started to be.

Etc. Doesn’t really work as an analogy, as Kievan Rus was well established when Moscow was a tiny village, despite what Vlad says.

Hmm. One bar makes you smaller, and one bar makes you tall; But the chocolate mother gave you, don’t do nothing at all…

Thanks, Annie. All I could find, too! I think there may have been some swapping about, though.

Does anyone know of any pictures of these without the condensing apparatus, but with cabs, as deployed in (West) Wales in the early Edwardian era?

I think I had worked that out, Jim…

Not very secret is it? I mean,?it’s got a website and everything!

Aha, so your question is really, “Which should I build first?” To which the stock answer is, the easiest one. But I say, you build the one you want most, as you will have more motivation to succeed. Well, as long as the desire is about 2:1 or stronger in favour of one over the other.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy a better class of misery.

Psychopharmacology is a lot more complicated than that, and very much still in its infancy as a medical science. As a body of scientific knowledge, we understand quite a lot about the basic mechanism of brain chemistry, and also from the other perspective about how various regions of the brain are more specialised than others, and indeed about the interconnections between them all. Is the bits in the middle that we don’t really know, because it’s so ****ing complicated: overall chemical levels can be sort of addressed with medication, but they are not specific - a bit like the amount of aspirin (or whatever) that you take is so much more than gets used by the body, because it diffuses throughout the whole system, but is only required in a localised area. I understand your cynicism: a blanket approach of “take these pills” isn’t very useful as a general approach, but actually, many modern meds are surprisingly effective at altering overall levels of brain chemistry, as I can personally vouch for. Unfortunately, it turned out that the medication was very effective at treating a symptom, but not the underlying cause, which had simply gone undiagnosed for over 50 years. Treating that, whilst reducing the treatment for the symptoms, is somewhat complicated, but this isn’t the place. Good friends do help, though!

Whichever you want. This isn’t where you live your life by polling…

Ah yes, as we have already seen with India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea…

“The red ones are harmful for you, I believe.” - (A) Pathetic Shark, Viz, circa 1989…

Not quite as bad as it might look: as well as the approach road rising, the main road drops.