Thermite Be Giants @ThermiteBeGiants@aus.social

Here’s a challenge: the Maldon Vintage Machinery Museum has a collection of roughly 10,000 engineering drawings from Thompson’s Foundry, a Castlemaine-based heavy engineering firm established in 1875 that built everything from steam locomotives to mining machinery to power station components.
The volunteers at this small museum would like to digitise these drawings for posterity at some stage. Any ideas on how to go about it?

Changing trains in Newport on the way home and I can still smell the smoke from the steam train that passed through earlier

One thing that is nice about visiting the Western Suburbs is that you very occasionally get to see a steam train leaving Newport Workshops 🚂

I watched an episode of The Repair Shop on ABC iView this evening and I feel like I’m 80 years old because I enjoyed watching it.

...So the fireman signs on for his shift. Driver asks him if he bought a kettle. He says yes and fills his kettle up.
A couple hours in, the driver asks him to put the kettle on as their tea break is coming up. Fireman puts the kettle in the firebox.
10 minutes later and they can't hear the kettle whistling - it should''ve boiled by now.
Fireman opens the firebox and discovers that his *aluminium* camping kettle has melted into a puddle on top of the coals.
The driver loses his shit.

Speaking of kettles...
One of my favourite stories from the dying days of Victorian Railways steam comes from a bloke who was a trainee fireman. His rostered driver for an upcoming shift was a bit of a gruff bloke who insisted that the fireman had to bring a kettle and make the tea for both of them. The young trainee had recently moved out and didn't have a suitable kettle yet, so he went into town and bought a camping kettle...

NSW Steam Locomotive 3801 had its repaired boiler finally pass its hydrostatic test!
https://www.thnsw.com.au/post/3801-update-july-2019
Also, it's awesome that the engineering joint repairing the boiler tested it with water warmed up by a steam traction engine because of course they had one lying around...

the tramoji still looks like ass on Amaroq with dark mode, but I need to respect the Pareto Principle and accept that I'm not going to do get trapped doing that last 20%

graphic design is my passion

@koosli @aussocialadmin ding ding!

They Might Be Giants' "Birdhouse In Your Soul" is actually about your personal relationship with Twitter.
This is absolutely an original thought.

Let me get this straight: the Melbourne Tram network and Sydney ‘light rail’ networks have incompatible loading gauges, is that correct? Same thing with Canberra and (ugh) Newcastle?

#introductions
Hi! I’m going to talk mostly about trains and particularly Australian heritage railways on here. I’m involved in the latter field as an active volunteer - I’m not going to name where but it’ll be pretty easy to figure it out.

Back on I also discussed political and especially energy stuff. I’m basically burned out on that stuff but I have been known to rise to bait on it.

While I'm on the subject of industrial heritage, the fact that neither the Morwell Briquette Factory/Power Station nor anything at Hazelwood Power Station got preserved is near-criminal. Industrial heritage outside of rail (and rail-adjacent industries) doesn't seem to get much of a look-in these days 😕