Malcolm 0-6-0

15 hours ago, DonB said:

I thought that a pub as ancient as the Unicorn seems to be would not have a cellar but have the smaller sizes barrels on a shelf / stand behind the counter and glasses/ tankards filled directly from the barrel. I didn't know Kevin had worked for Whitbread.... I was "teaching granny to suck eggs". My knowledge comes from having two aunts as well as my father all licensees in post-war England. 

 

A fine heritage if I may say 

57 minutes ago, KNP said:

Thanks

 

if I have read your comment correctly you are talking about the alleyway that leads behind the station to Cathcott Field.

is it this one?

 

 

That's it, and that pic shows it's not as narrow as it looks in the first pic.

Looks splendid, excellent job as usual - carry on.  

6 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

 

 

Appear to have caught her road testing an early Zimmer frame ....... 

On 23/05/2021 at 03:32, KNP said:

Front area well underway

Road matching well.

Grass, weeds, shrubs to front of brick building added and blended in adjoining alleyway.

Sieved sand to sides of porch with PVA glue flooded on, Roof Dirt wash applied now need to dry so I can what colour/shade it ends up!!!

Paving added.

 

 

 

There is a small triangular patch of ground between the brick wall of the building next to the pub and the railing on the edge of the platform - would that exist in real life or would either the owner of the building colonised it or the railway?

BTW nice job with pub.

30 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

 

The future's bright, the future's Orange?

 

 

 

Further proof that evolution can be reversed - that's Trump in  10 years.

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

He certainly did. His collection included a number of Whistlers. 

He collected canaries? 

Just to add to the previous mention of Golden Orb Spiders, this is one -

9 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Spiders in cars .... 

 

In the Caribbean where I lived, there was nothing that could actually kill you, but a few things that could seriously ruin your day.

 

Tarantulas I had a great affection for.  They used to live in holes in the bank at the back of the house. In the day you'd just see their legs at the mouth of the holes; like most UK spiders, they come out to hunt at night.  They are rather shy and retiring, not the slightest bit aggressive to humans, and you'd have to work really quite hard to get bitten by one.

 

There were some long-legged bright orange b8ggers, though, that were really territorial and aggressive and they were bl00dy fast. leaping in great bounds right at you. They scared the bejeezus out of me.

 

One day, while driving so Ford SIV (which handled on the hairpin mountain roads like an ocean liner handles on hairpin mountain roads) when one of these orange b*ggers shot at high velocity out of the blower and pinged around the car.

 

How I didn't crash, I'll never know, but we've never exited a car faster than we did that day! 

Reminds me of one day when I was doing archaeological surveys out the back of beyond. It was late in the year and the local grasshoppers were all hatching. These are really big, not your average garden variety. My driver/field hand was fresh out jail and covered in prison tats. Actually not a bad bloke, just trying to go straight.

Anyway we're belting down this very rough track when all of a sudden he takes both hands of the wheel and starts slapping himself and screaming "get it off me get it off me!!!". The 'it' was one of these huge grasshoppers which had flown in the window. I had three choices, grab the wheel, fall about laughing or try and locate the grass hopper. So I grabbed the wheel while this great tough looking ex con frantically finds the offending bug. Turns out he was afraid of grass hoppers. 

The other big spider I like are the Golden Orb spiders. Another harmless breed but with their colouring and size quite dangerous looking. They used to create these vast webs in the scrub and sit right in the middle waiting for dinner. The web itself is very strong and when you walk into one it's a hell of an effort to get it off, let alone worry about where the owner has scuttled off to. 

On 05/05/2021 at 06:44, monkeysarefun said:

 

See also the  Funnel Web Spider, Red Back Spider,  Blue Ringed Octopus and Mount Buggery.

Speaking of Australian spiders meet Mavis, she's a Huntsman or in this case a Huntswoman spider. Great things to have around the house a they keep a lot of pests away. Quite timid creatures like most spiders actually, but when they do come in they just wander around and clean up the corners.

20 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Ah but weren't the Scots in Ireland at the time of the Roman occupation*? Or was it the Irish in Scotland? Either way, it was Picts who were on the wrong/right (delete to taste) side of the Wall. Then, or a little later, Strathclyde was Welsh. 

 

*Busy people, the Romans. Always needing to do something to keep themselves (and, especially, other people) occupied. NB It was climate change and pandemic disease that did for the Roman Empire.

I was joking - there's no need to be a pedant. Good grief.

16 hours ago, MrWolf said:

Wasn't that train due in 1961 though?

I heard that when nationalisation came that train had to be repainted en route ... 

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

In the UK, many seem to feel that on the strength of a single vaccine dose for the middle-aged and none for the younger, we should all, as of right, be able to fly off to other countries regardless of their third waves, car-crash vaccine programmes (well done, EU Commission for vindicated BREXIT in the minds of our Vaccine Nationalists) or new variants, some of which are potentially vaccine resistant. Sitting in little tin tubes with 100s of others from Feck-Knows-Where and then queuing in airports for hours with no effective way of dividing green and red zone passengers, and milling about in holiday destinations in countries with far higher transmission rates than the UK is, IMHO, irresponsible to say the least.

 

I agree with Annie, people should be clearly told that this is selfish and irresponsible but, of course, Boris-keep-the-beach-open-despite-the-shark-attacks-Johnson will want to see the travel and air industries recover.  Actually, he probably doesn't give a feck about them, but wants to be Mr Popular by letting people have their planet-killing overseas holidays, which, apparently, no one can live without these days. Bah bl00dy humbug, I say!

 

I think people shouldn't be so damn impatient and should write off travel in 2021 and wait until next year. 

 

We are so not out of the woods yet.

 

Once restrictions are lifted, I'll probably take the kids on walks along the Wall.    

 

 

Which brings to mind the famous quote “What have the Romans ever done for us?”.

Umm kept the Scots out? 

5 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

Jeez, how could I have forgotten how much great stuff we have here! No wonder we are one of the few countries not  clamouring to get overseas holidays happening ASAP again.

 

 You failed to mention everyone's favourite sea side holiday destination Intercourse Island in Western Australia .... 

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Ah, but have they?

To be honest, in some cases, I really hope not 

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 

It would be a bit unreasonable to write off the whole Society on the basis of one unsatisfactory interaction - or indeed for the Society to write off one member ditto.

Oh I wouldn't dream of that .... 

But some people can be a tad over "enthusiastic" .....  

In any case, in coming up to 3/4 of a century on the planet I have, I think, managed to upset either intentionally or quite unintentionally many "well meaning" people, Thankfully I've got inured to this failing of mine. Which is a good thing because otherwise I'd feel terrible. 

Our host is a big boy, I'm positive he'll cope.

That's another rather nice bit of modelling - always a pleasure to see.

10 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

I dont even know what a GERS is but they do sound a bit up themselves.

"a bit" hmmm... 

12 hours ago, Schooner said:

Better to be present with ten men than absent with ten thousand, said a bloke who knew a bit about Effingham*:

 

 

 

Aaah yes I recall that -  c. 1400, it's the only recorded contemporary image of the fabled takeover of the GWR by Tamerlane. He was seeking a better dividend on his shares it it said....  

6 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

That was the case in Australia (or at least NSW) until the '70's I think. There is a ring of towns about 40km from Sydney that would face an onslaught each  Sunday when city folk would descend for  a beer and a fight then drive back blotto.

Same in Victoria up to the early 70s IIRC. It also helped to increase the incidents of drunk driving on Sundays. Clearly the wowsers had not anticipated the horseless carriage...

1 hour ago, Northroader said:

Watergate Hotel was fully booked up by NBC,

Not the Watergate Hotel (nudge nudge) 

Did ye meet a fella boi the name of Nixon?

Here in Australia we've had a similar scandal but one that is the reverse of the British case. 

A couple of years ago Australia Post (a statutory body) appointed a new CEO, a woman with considerable business skills Christine Holgate. She replaced a CEO who earned several millions in performance bonuses by cutting services and thus "saving" money.

The new CEO was searching to expand PO business (operated by franchisees) and hit on the lamentable fact that our banks are closing branches all over the place. This is a damned nuisance for a lot of people because Australia is a very big place, and country towns were losing local banks which resulted in people having to travel long distances to access banks for business or withdrawals etc. So Ms Holgate decided that as most Post Offices had rudimentary banking facilities due to a tie in with the Commonwealth Bank (another former government owned body) this portion of their business could be expanded so that Post Offices in now bank less towns could become local substitutes. It was, and is, a great idea and the franchisees supported it as did the general public.

However this expanded role required a specialist Post Office team to negotiate with the banks and set in place the expanded facilities. They did their job exceptionally well and as a result earned the right to performance bonuses (there were four members of this team) not exceeding $105,000 each. Seems high but the amount of business the new process brought in plus the convenience for locals who had been deprived of access to banks was inestimable. All round an excellent job.

However instead of paying out the bonus in cash to the the team the CEO actually asked them what they would prefer in the way of recognition. Surprisingly the team came back with a reply along the lines of "they were just doing their job" . So Ms Holgate decided that they deserved something and each of the four were presented with Cartier watches at a small fraction of the cost that would have been incurred if it had been a cash payment. So far so good, then the press got hold of it and the value of these Cartier watches began to inflate with each retelling of the tale. Our idiotic Prime Minister (Scotty from Marketing)  then got up in the Parliament and demanded her resignation in terms which implied that she, and the negotiating team, were basically a bunch of crooks, blah blah blah etc. He publicly demanded her resignation.

Finally this year there was a Senate enquiry into the matter and she came out of it the absolute and well deserved winner as she should have been. She quietly pointed out the facts of the matter, and the way in which the Board of the Post Office had succumbed to this politically induced fit of public hysteria. So far our idiotic PM has refused to apologise for his very public political crucifixion of her, nor has she been reinstated. Yet she has done the country a great service in maintaining banking facilities in many towns where banks had been summarily closed without any consideration for local needs, and at an overall cost far less than she had been authorised to spend.

Our conservative government has for years been bleeding our publicly owned business like the Post Office and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation of funds so that they can find excuses to privatize them. The Australia Post saga is just part of that agenda. 

12 hours ago, KNP said:

Some people might be wondering what has become of The Unicorn....

in a nutshell - thatching

This has been challenging to say the least, luckily I started on the back roof and it has been replaced twice now.

After many experiments I appear to be on the right, if not unusual path...... more about that another day when I am satisfied it looks right.

Here is a sneak look down the street, no where near finished but looking better than it did.

 

 

 

Nice work, and it comes at just the right moment because I was about to ask -

"'ere Kevin, where's bluudy thatch eh? eh?, I dunno all talk and no thatction!!!"

But happily I was forestalled 

3 hours ago, KNP said:

 

 

 

 

It really has gone beyond the term "renovator's delight" hasn't it.....  

16 hours ago, KNP said:

Here is a loco........

basking (am I allowed to use that?) in the light of a passing UFO.......! - next line of postings!

 

 

 

And the Lord said unto Fireman Ernie "Stop skiving and get that bloody fire going!!!"

1 minute ago, Mick Bonwick said:

 

 

 

 

 

How very silly you all are. You'll soon be telling us that you play with trains, I'll be bound.

Depends upon where those trains are bound for ...