Agreed,there are plenty of threads here that are of no interest to me so I just ignore them and I've never felt the need to tell everyone why or make sarcastic posts.
Anyhow, as I typed his your lot have just scored a second so looking good for you.
Possibly more surprising is Scotland find themselves top of their group.
I await to see which England turn up!

I think it's rather sad that this thread has been locked (albeit by the OP).

It's sport, for Heaven's sake. We've had discussions here about the World Cup since the forum started!

If you're not interested, don't look at the thread!

Simple,

Now I'll return to watching Australia vs Turkey (and I spelt that wrong, too).

Football fans please feel free to use this thread.

2nd Round.

We've established who I am, where I'm stationed, and my role. Now I'll be showing random pics of fire station life, fireground photos, training, physical fitness, etc...

Feel free to ask any questions.

Sometimes weird things happen.  That car somehow jumped a curb, flipped, and cartwheeled; coming to rest against the house without damaging the house.



The 2021 Great Texas Freeze or Snowmageddon: at this point we fought fire in the coldest recorded conditions  - 0 degrees. Later that night our short-lived record was broken when another fire was fought below zero.

This crazy cold snap caused a cascade of systems to collapse. Most of my city was without power and water for days. People froze to death. Our station had a generator so other stations and some old retirees came and slept on cots and recliners for a few days.




Holidays at the station.




Foreigner came to town!!  It happened to be the singer's birthday.

I laid out a loop of Kato track and slid in one full length of 2% riser foam.

It's finally time to test every loco headed for Black Douglas Vale on the 2% grade I propose. I put a rake of 10 American N Scale wagons behind as a test.

Graham Farish BR Blue Class 40 Sound:

Passed with ease. The Kato powerpack is weak so it only crawled due to the sound demands.

Graham Farish Class 37 Dutch Livery

With ease. My best UK runner. 

Dapol Class 22 BR Blue


This little tank also passed with ease.

Graham Farish LMS 10001BR Black Sound

Because of the sound demands it crept along, but never faltered.

Graham Farish Deltic DP1


This beauty has always been steady. Easy hauling.

Graham Farish Class 20/0 London Transport Maroon Lined

She stalled about half way up with 10 wagons. No problemo. She'll be doing branch line work so I'm still pleased. I'm sure 8-10 British milk wagons will tag along nicely.

I haven't attempted surgery on my dead-in-the-water Union Mills, but if she runs she'll have zero struggle.  I've seen her with more wagons conquer my stupid 4% grade.


I have two steam locos in transit from TMC so I'm a bit more optimistic.  Even if they're reduced to 3,4,5 coaches or 4,5,6 wagons, it'll work on my proposed layout.

 

Thread locked at the request of the OP

if politics is banned on here--lets make phut ball banned also. Boring waste of time.

After the tyre fiasco detailed in the Unhappy Thread

https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=659.msg884696#msg884696

I did a bit of research. I called the two tyre shops that had replaced tyres for me.

The first one looked at their records and said that they had fitted an all weather tyre.

At the second one they printed out the receipt for me and it showed that back in January they had fitted a summer tyre to my car. They accepted full responsibility and a new all weather tyre has been ordered.   

The other good part is that I'd only been driving on the wrong tyre for 4.5 months rather than since last September.

Regards,

John P

So a bit of background.

In July 2024 I got a new car which came with summer tyres, I budgeted for a set of all weather tyres for the colder months and all was well. My plan was to swap the tyres out twice a year and get my money's worth on the summer tyres.

Last Thursday I went to get the all weather tyres swapped out for my summer tyres and when the car was ready I was told that instead of having 4 all weather tyres I had been driving around with 3 all weathers and one summer tyre potentially for the past 9 months.

The tyres are ~ $500 not to mention the risks around driving with mismatched tyres.

      

Over the past 2 years I've had to replace 2 of the all weather tyres due to puncture damage so some detective work was in order.

I needed to find out which eejit had decided that would be fine to put a summer tyre on my car when it's not summer and all the other tyres are all weathers   

Now check out the happy thread 

John P

There are loads of cabinet / under-shelf LED lighting units / kits available.  Have a look round your local DIY store and lighting shop.  Lidl, Aldi etc. have them from time to time. 

Here I've used a pair of Livarno units from Lidl on the lighting rig for my loco depot modules. These are proper sealed units with diffusers, mains powered and daisy-chain-able.  I have another 4 units ready to replace some old reading lights on my main layout's lighting rig.



A fabric pelmet goes around the outside of the rig at shows.

Cheapest and easiest install are the mini LEDs that come on a self adhesive roll.
Can be powered by (almost) any smoothed DC supply and if you use a variable supply can be turned up/down to suit.

Do experiment with the number of strips and different "warmths" I.e. colour tones/casts, and mounting at different angles to see what works best for your location as background conditions can have a noticeable impact.
Our exhibition layouts now generally have 3 or 4 strips including at least one each of a blue tone and a yellow tone all independently variable.