Member postings for Nigel Graham 2

Mounted an Expedition to the Workshop to move some swarf.

Don't get excited! I'm still quite weak and on crutches, managing one just one when I've other things to lean on or hold. Still, first thing was to fill the bird-feeder: the seed hangs up in the workshop.

Then I did a little bit of very light tidying (not that you'd notice much) and swept the smaller lathe down, having left it a bit scruffy several weeks ago.

About an hour was enough and tottered back indoors for a brew and to sit down. Still, at least I had oily hands for the first time since my knee operation.

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Watching the sparrows' antics made me wonder what they think of us.

Birds, probably, big ones; of a sort. Flightless and commonly changing plumage. Well, all the other animals are either large 4-leggers best avoided or small 6-leggers best eaten. However we are bipedal, and we clearly have wings but rather atrophied ones lacking flight-feathers, suggesting penguin lineage if not plumage. As for that plumage, we tend to thicken it in Winter but moult in Summer - when some do take moulting to extremes!

Very elegant engine indeed! The blued steel and the satin sheen both look right.

Cladding / cleading? I think there was something in Model Engineer about this a while back. I looked in my copy of the BTC Handbook for Locomotive Drivers & Firemen, and that doesn't seem to mention it.

I wonder if "cleading" is a regional dialect version of "cladding" that's somehow found its way around the country with the locomotives and crews?

Ah yes, the satin sheen on exposed steel parts, and general patina, of a well-used, well-loved machine or tool... One of my tap-wrenches is now becoming too worn to be very useful, but years of mine and previous owners' hands as well as predecessors have given it such a sheen and pleasure to feel.

This reminds me of visiting the tiny, 13C church in the French Pyrennean village of Ste. Engrace. The columns' plinths are decorated with stone balls, about tennis size; and I noticed some were black and shiny whereas the rest of the stone retained its limestone creaminess. I realised from their location, those ones had helped all those generations kneel for Communion: the patina from thousands of hands over hundreds of years. (My girlfriend wrote one word in the visitors' book: " Peace ".)

The satisfaction of using any very old functional article - not necessarily a workshop tool - as intended, when and where its use is still legitimate in purely practical terms....

Though including a large carpenter's trammel whose hardwood rule's brass-end fittings look (at very close inspection!), hand-made; or a very useful, neat little adjustable-square with 4" blade. I so wonder of their history.

The scent of clean oil.... The pleasure of using a bench drill, a Meddings so a good one, that was second-hand to me but actually has no lazy-holes in its table!

The neat contrast between 18C interior-decorating elegance and 20C modernity in a former town-house used by the IT training company my employer sent me to.

The slow, very soft, almost inaudible, " whoomp whoomp whoomp " of a large-scale (6"? It was certainly 4", scale) Showmen's Road Locomotive ticking over, though still generating for its canopy lights. (I wonder what would be the common reaction if someone displayed a miniature or indeed full-size SRL without canopy lighting? )

The rhythmic splash-splash-splash of a large water-wheel in a restored mill, while hardly a sound comes from the cast-iron pinions meshing with the hardwood "cogs" of the larger wheels. ("Cog" here is the millwright's term for the teeth, but not the gear as whole.) .....

.... and this lead only slight obliquely to...

"The click of a ratchet". Ah yes...

Just outside Sherborne, Dorset, is a Wessex Water fresh-water treatment-plant alongside its predecessor, a bore-hole pumping-station driven by a water-wheel. This has been restored to demonstration state as central to a local water-supply museum by a Trust which holds occasional public Open Days. (I am not a member, but yes, this is a plug - it's a charming little industrial museum to visit, the sort more conserved than pickled!)

The wheel-driven pumps were replaced in due course by steam-driven ones, in turn eventually displaced by electric of course. The Trust found a similar engine, and installed it with a coal-fired vertical boiler in the original shed. Built by E.S. Hindley & Sons, of Bourton; not very far from Sherborne, this single-cylinder mill-engine is so quiet the only sound is the soft tick-tick of its lubricator ratchet.

On one visit, I saw the volunteers had placed a small hot-air engine on the valve-chest, cheekily using heat escaping through the casting!

The water-wheel, also a Hindley product, had rusted beyond repair. It is on display, and the working wheel is a replica by preservation-engineer Richard 'Turbo' Vincent, fittingly near Bourton and Sherborne. He was also the builder of a replica Hindley Steam-wagon, to commission, and which uses a pair of wheels that are the only known remains of any original Hindley wagon.

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On a very different metallic " tick ", I can assure you that as also a caver, when you are dangling from a rope with a hundred feet of dark thin air below your tootsies, there is nothing more reassuring than the sharp, metallic " Click " of a karabiner snapping shut on the belay!

I cannot say definitely but from working for a time in a metal-finishing company I can suggest a reason.

Anodising is a controlled oxidation that gives the aluminium a hard but thin and rather porous "skin".

Coloured anodising - at least of the sort we used - involves anodising then immediately treating the metal in a heated dye bath, followed by sealing the dye in. As I recall, that was by immersion in boiling water.

If this is how the alloy sheet you used had been coloured in the same way, it's entirely possible the pieces were from different batches, and for some reason the dye had not been "fixed" adequately on one, causing it to fade over time or perhaps from even the relatively modest heat it finds in service.

I did stress I assume the injector is correctly and well made, but though my remark about "black art" was a bit tongue-in-cheek injectors in general do seem to have a certain reputation.

I expect you have seen the satirical poster about injectors having very wilful minds of their own, sold I think by Walker Midgely on their exhibition stands - I know many who would agree with it!

I think most model-engineers prefer to buy rather try making the things, but why must be a matter of personal choice. For me, though I might be tempted to try it to see if I can, I do not feel able to make one well enough to replace having to buy one.

My main point though was that I think many who blame the injector might be overlooking the rest of its system - an aspect DAG Brown covers well in his book, but which I have not seen so well considered elsewhere.

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I mentioned for example the commercially-made injector on a Ken Swan " Wren ": it needs the water on full, then the steam on full, and rapidly, then easing the water back almost to off. I might unwittingly have solved it in my further remarks from a 1930s book, that the steam: water ratio increases with falling pressure. So, by revering the logic, could the Wren's injector actually have been designed for a higher pressure than the loco's 90psi? Once started, with sensitive water control it will operate down to about 40psi, just.

If so, then is an example of what I mean: don't just jump to conclusions and blaming the device itself!

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Your test boiler: interesting idea, using electric heating. I can see this would lend itself to automatic pressure control from anything up to W.P.

You may recall Ron Jarvis' precious-metal-winning miniatures of various historically-significant engines. He was a fellow-member of my own society, whom he delighted in telling us of the secret of the boiler on his fully-operational Newcomen Engine. The boiler is about the size of an orange - complete with the "orange-peel" forged texture - and as per prototype, has a WP of only 2psi. Ron had to use electric heating to attain this successfully, and joked that with its electronic sensor and microprocessor discreetly hidden in the base, the machine was the world's only 18-Century CNC steam-engine!

It should not be a "black art", no; but over the years I have heard or read of so many people finding injectors so problematical that there must be surely be a lot more to making and fitting them than meets the eye.

They do seem one of those fittings people prefer to buy than try making, along with pressure-gauges. Possibly, DAG brown's book will lift some of the mystique - I have a copy and he does go into detail on the plumbing as well as the injector itself.

As I say though, I suspect there are other, unquantifiable influences at play, making the device work in a much more critical range than it will anyway.

I have a copy of a heat-engine designer's text-book published in the 1930s, and although it does not go into much detail it does say the injector's team demand rises as pressure reduces, and as a pump it is inefficient although that is balanced by it heating the feed-water. The particular injector it describes was a Holden & Brookes lifting type with a single control. It put the steam on before the water, presumably to draw the water up first.

Thank you for the correction, Andrew, but you still make the points that hint the "quality" of the steam is critical. If the steam has lost a lot of energy before it reaches the injector, it's not going to be very useful. The steam cone is convergent so will trade pressure for velocity, but the pressure at its inlet is already lower than the pressure-gauge reads, and if that drop is too great the velocity won't be up to the job.

The point about heat transfer may explain why injectors often seem to gulp steam faster that it's being generated. Even if feeding, the injector might not be heating the water very much at all because the quantity of heat available at the combining-cone is low. So it's not so much a matter of being greedy for steam, then pushing unduly cool water into the boiler. It will naturally have some cooling effect anyway, but I've seen an injector supposedly appropriate for the boiler, commonly drop the boiler pressure so rapidly that it becomes difficult to raise the water-level.

Though quite how you match the two is another matter. Mere physical size of boiler is only one of too many variables involved, and it may well be that with bought-in or owner-designed injectors, it will always be a compromise.

To clarify, by triangular section, an equilateral triangle so giving a 30º negative rake on each cutting edge? (Ignoring any effect given by hollow-grinding.)

This would have a scraping action in brass, of course. I'm not sure if it could cut other metals like bronze.

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Making miniature injectors that do inject seems as much black art as science and engineering, with people reporting very varying results - and assuming equivalent standards of workmanship.

Mr. Brown's book gives several reason why injectors get all upset and sulk, but I wonder if there are sometimes more subtle influences at play which become proportionally more severe inversely to injector size .

Of the obvious factors, he mentions one that can affect any injector whether own-make or bought-in: tiny air-leaks that are by no means obvious. A common one is where a short flexible hose is simply pushed onto the copper pipe.

Another I can suggest, is slight misalignment of the suction-side connections on the injector itself. Commonly these use flat metal-to-metal flanges, but could a tiny angularity there be just enough to draw in air? This would be exacerbated by frequent removal of the injector to clean or descale it, as the copper pipes slowly work-harden and no longer adapt themselves to the injector. One solution there might be to use a connector in which the pipe extends slightly into a counter-bore, and is surrounded by a rubber washer or O-ring.

One I've found in practice, is the cumulative result of over-rich water-treatment in the tank that feeds the injector. Over time it coats the cone and ball-valve surfaces.

Are there though other things at play, where the poor little injector is blamed whether own-made or bought? What of steam pressure and dryness at inlet, for example? Can that be affected, hence affecting the injector, inversely to pipe sizes etc., despite the much shorter pipe from turret to injector on the miniature compared to full-size? One might expect the larger the pipe and turret-height above water, the less the carry-over, and the less atmospheric condenser effect (an area-ratio result), so the hotter and drier the steam stays.

Now, the injector wants the steam to condense almost entirely in the combining-cone, so it can convert as much of the heat as possible into mechanical energy. So does it want the inlet steam to match that in the boiler as far as possible? If half the steam entering the injector is already wet fluff significantly cooler and wetter than what entered the manifold; can we expect the injector to work properly?

What might remove too much energy from the steam, which is already saturated at the manifold? Chilling by the air around the pipe, obviously, but a big factor I expect again to be inverse, is the nature of the steam's route. Sharp bends such as elbows and in valves, are especially frictional.

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One curious effect I have often seen, on a Ken Swan 7-1/4"g version of the Kerr-Stuart 'Wren', is that the commercial injector fitted usually demands the water throttled back almost to 'Off'. In action, the injector seems to want the water full on, steam on very rapidly to full flow, then the water valve ( a standard plumbing ball-valve on the driving-truck/tender) carefully notched back until the device picks up - then left at that setting, almost closed.

Analysing this in the light of the above, a new tender water-hose certainly improved it; but there is a significant difference between ours, and the prototype faithfully reproduced by Ken Swan's drawings. The injector steam-valve was on the dome, disproportionately higher above the water than in standard-gauge. For ground-level portable-track operation, we fitted a manifold in the cab, though that manifold is T-shaped with a column bringing the take-offs (takes-off?) near the dome level. So assuming similar dryness fractions at dome or manifold height, might the steam be "damaged" by the extra bends introducing more wire-drawing, and more metal exposed to the air?. The brake ejector is fed from the same manifold and works well, but perhaps an ejector is less fussy than an injector.

Can anyone suggest other reasons for this odd behaviour?

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To sum up, assuming high-quality workmanship throughout, are injectors often blamed unfairly? They work in a very critical range of conditions, so are easily stopped by external influences of which some are fairly obvious and easily remedied, while others may be much more subtle and difficult to pin down.

Food for thought _ I may be wrong in some of my suggestions, I have not yet tried making an injector; but I have driven miniature locomotives for long enough to think injectors are too easily blamed for not injecting; but when not blamed the real problem is too easy to miss!

Algorithms... algorithms... algorithms.....

A dancing craze invented by a former American politician of no great note?

I hate the word, not for itself but for its abusive and worship by journalists and politicians who like to repeat long words 'cos it makes journalists and politicians sound clever.

We're all engineers - we know where technical terms apply or are valuable; we also spot when non-engineers or non-scientists are using as metaphors, fancy words without comprehending them. (Actually a lot of people now do not even really understand quite ordinary words.)

We also know artificial things are made or written by people; 'ooman beings like thee and me.

An algoritms is nothing more than a calculating routine within a computer programme - and yes I do refuse the use the American spelling for the latter. On its own it is useless: just a string of code characters, or in the computer, of 1s and 0s, representing a string of algebra.

The algorithm and its host programme were designed written by people - even if the programme can adapt its own calculations to suit some change. And that programme was designed to perform a set of tasks within a system designed and run by people.

Don't blame the poor little "Algorithm". Blame the people - who include ivory-tower'd economists and insurers with the initiative of a gnu - who designed and operate the system, then the programme!

What we can blame is the "algorithm" being used blindly: "The computer says 'A = F' therefore A must equal F " when in reality A could be anything from B to P. That is the way of the system-using people using the system to avoid responsibility, intelligence and initiative. And such an abrogation does not need a computer programme: the database with its "algorithms" is a just a tool to make life easier for the abrogant.

The accuracy of your grinder for surface and cylindrical grinding would depend a lot on the rigidity and alignments of the mounting-arrangements, but with the wheel dressed I'd have thought it would be possible to grind to one or two tenths of a thou., and enough for bearing and press fits.

Accuracy in cylindrical grinding might be easier than in surface grinding, but the work would have to be supported and rotated between centres. An area for experimenting anyway.

Regarding scaling down the injectors, I am not a hydrodynamicist but I wonder if the problem is not the body size, just the cone sizes and the cross-sectional areas of the water-ways. I'd look at the dimensions of the ball-valve carefully too, for lift as well as annular area.

Also, does the surface finish within the cones matter? Would the smaller cutters need a lapped rather that simply ground finish?

I've no problem either with being charged. After all you don't obtain anything from the shops for free! The charges are for sewerage as well as fresh water, and having a meter means I buy only the water I use.

The overflows from my three water-butts, one filled from the workshop roof, keep two ponds topped up and fresh. I've also fitted one with a micro-bore irrigation system for plants along the rain-shadow of the boundary wall.

I have wondered about running a low-volume dribble from the roof down-spout to the toilet-cistern, as much to reduce scaling as consumption, as I live in a hard-water area.

Tried the Trial version of Alibre Atom again, but it knows I have had it before, and won't play. It doesn't tell you till it's all loaded though, and you try to run it!

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So, re-visited the training CD bundled with my copy of TurboCAD. Previously I could not make its first exercise work but now realised it was probably for an older edition of TC. This time I succeeded, though still with some odd problems.

Also discovered to my great surprise that although it says "2D CAD" in big letters all over the labels, its exercises actually advance to 3D modelling.

I do like that tool-grinder set-up.

Ideal for making D-bits and engraving-cutters, too.

Looks as if would not take much to adapt, by suitable interchangeable brackets etc, to a simple surface- and cylindrical- grinder.

One suggestion I'd make is using thin rubber sheet to make covers for the slide-ways. Garden pond liner off-cuts perhaps: having given my resident frogs a nice comfy home I used some of the surplus butyl liner for a cover to replace that missing from my (2nd-hand) Myford milling-machine.

If I understand his book aright, DAG Brown suggests fitting a miniature loco with two injectors: the usual fairly large one for rapid filling, and a smaller one in place of the axle-pump.

I agree entirely wit the nonsense put out by the Press, very few of whose journalists comprehend anything the least bit technical, nor basic statistics.

However I think you may be worrying needlessly about back-flow from homes. Open water-tanks have always had their inlets above water-level and overflow; and though the cold water taps are fed directly from the mains (to be potable), you'd have to do something very strange and deliberate for water to go back through them.

An ordinary house just does not need a non-return valve on its normal plumbing, but does by law on outside taps because there is no control on what might be fed by hose-pipes. I don't know if washing-machines have such valves built-in, as well as the controlled valve, but their inlets are normally through the detergent-drawer, well above the water-level.

Businesses have to comply with tighter laws because they are more likely to install systems that might siphon back into the mains. Even the top-feed into a huge open fresh-water tank I looked after, needed a non-return valve although the outlet from its ordinary ball-valve was several inches above the water-line - and I believe that too came via a roof-tank so the check-valve was there to suit law not reality.

The difficulties you cite with antibiotics etc are those of contaminating the sewers, not the fresh supplies.

Thank you Robjon, for your support & encouragement! Imperial knees - I like it!

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By 'eck this site's log-in is so obtuse! I'd posted on the thread about acids, and the result was all my efforts to open this thread to reply kept putting me back there. I had to close the lot right back to the Desktop to make it work properly.

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Anyway, yes, I am being very cautious. I can walk reasonable distances now, still on crutches, slowly and carefully.

Our physio- " terrorists " are not that bad at all. They don't force things along but assess your progress, select a menu of exercises and teach you them, then leave you to exercise at your own pace though to recommended frequency, at home for a few weeks before seeing you again.

I was there for the first session a week ago but the phsyiotherapist spotted potential complications and consulted a doctor - up-shot was a thrombosis scan (clear) but also antibiotics for an infection.

Driving? I asked last year, after the first op; and was surprised that the doctors and even more surprisingly, the insurers were quite sanguine about, telling me to leave driving until I was confident I could press the brake-pedal in an emergency stop. One doctor suggested simply sitting in the car in its parking-place, and trying it. Last year I had the operation in March, made a few short local journeys in quiet times in mid-June, and was able to attend the MSRVS Rally in Tewkesbury - I live in Weymouth so about 150 miles each way, but I visited the Rally on Sunday and stayed there overnight, helping the lighter duties in clearing the site. (As an MSRVS member.)

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As for Caving and Geology -

Well, I was caving again gently from last August to the weekend before the operation this May, involved in a particular exploration project; but I'll never be able to do the sort of caving-trips I could years ago. And yes, I have worn knee-pads for that, for years, though most progress underground is by walking, not crawling. Geology-club field-trips have largely been out for a long time because Geology makes big steep hills and boulder-covered beaches.

Still, whilst convalescing I've written a couple of articles for my caving club's Journal, one on a related geological topic, so at least I've done some office-chair caving and geology!

Office-chair model-engineering too, still trying to teach myself TurboCAD, including using it in designing the steering-box for my 4"-scale steam-wagon I should have completed years ago. I'm certainly not yet up to standing at a milling-machine, or even at the drawing-board that dominates the dining-room. My only trips to the workshop so far have been to fetch the bird-seed to feed the ravening hordes of sparrows. It's amusing watching their antics - especially the two yesterday trying to make more sparrows!

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Meanwhile the garden is becoming very Latinate, to the point the "lawn" will need the electric mower when I am fit enough to use it; but the rain has topped up the ponds via water-butt overflows, so the resident frogs are happy.

No chemicals other than proper drain-cleaners should be put down the drain - and anyway alkalis are better then acids for clearing the fat that shouldn't be down there either.

The councils in the UK do indeed have proper collection-points for bulky refuse, old oil and paint etc., but whether they can handle strong acids is another matter. Sulphuric acid is not a common household material, so the council yards can't really be expected to be able to take them.

It might be possible to find a garage or industrial premises able to dispose of them for you along with their hazardous chemical waste, though they might charge for the service, and they must by law ensure all their waste materials are recorded and collected by companies accredited and licensed for the purpose. This could mean you'd have to submit the appropriate legal safety documents with the material, but that would be a matter for whoever collects it from you to decide.

(The Council yards don't do that for household chemicals - presumably their system is designed so the burden does not fall unfairly on the private individual, which anyway would make the whole thing ridiculously complicated.)

One point though, Paul, the drains don't go directly to sea outfalls but to treatment-plants that decompose the solids and leave the water pure enough for such discharge (though it's still rich in germs). So adding chemicals is still bad because it can damage the biological action in the sewage works.

The calcium sulphate resulting from using limestone as a neutraliser is quite benign stuff. It occurs in Nature as the rock, gypsum. If disposing of it in the garden, I'd dig it into a fairly wide area of soil.

(I say "benign" aware anyone in Ripon would not be inclined to think it so....)

At the moment, still recovering from having new knee bearings, (me, not the milling-machine!), the get-up-and-go has gone. It's probably lost in the rapidly-growing thicket that passeth for a lawn / neighbourhood's cats' station of ease.

Still, managed a little more battling with TurboCAD to design my seam-wagon's steering gearbox. The rest is all made - though ball-joints are not quite prototypical.

I believe they were used on cars of the time (1908) but the advertising photos suggests the Hindley wagon used rather crude universal-joints for the drag-link. I did make that pattern, driven by a temporary worm-and-wheel from some salvaged something-or-other, but it introduced a lot of free-play and I replaced it a new drag-link using commercial ball-joints of appropriate size. (I've not thrown away the clevises. Barely use, they might come in handy...)

Looking at my drawing so far, the 3"dia wheel and 1.3" dia worm makes the gearbox look disproportionately wide, and I began to think I'd made an expensive mistake until memory kicked in....

Many early vehicles used worm-and-sector steering, but the sectors were probably made to that shape. However, I once worked for DEK Screen-Printing Machines, whose high-precision products could be used for anything from trade-marks and instruction-labels, to p.c.b. masks. One of these machines used a large-diameter sector gear made by cutting a stock wheel. Careful thought suggested, if it were good enough for DEK...

Now the wheel I've ordered, for a Fowler TE, has a large-diameter boss on one face, and keyway-ed bore of nearly 1". I'm not yet fit enough to exhume the poor wagon from accumulated "stuff" and measure things, but I doubt the drop-arm swings more than about 60 - 70º lock-to-lock, if that. There is enough meat on the Fowler wheel to make it into two semi-circular sectors that can be screwed to flanges, using suitable registers and key, thus greatly slimming the space needed.

The unused half? Cut a keyway in that and store it carefully as a spare.

Now to wind up TurboCAD and investigate...

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DEK thrives now as part of ASM, but using the original name as a trade-mark. It concentrates on very high-precision machines that link to others from elsewhere to form assembly-lines mass-producing circuit-boards for computers, portable-telephones etc. These machines are naturally now all-NC driven.

The word "DEK" never stood for anything: the original proprietor, whose prototypes labelled oil-drums and the like, had the vision to invent a snappy name easy to pronounce and of no meaning, in any known language!

My own society (Weymouth & D.M.E.S.) was privileged to have a guided tour of ASM one evening a few months ago, among the club's Winter activities.

I realise that is so, PGK, but the nub of the problem lies in your last paragraph.

So many have come, or been forced, to accept all the services they need are fewer and more scattered, and is not just for bureaucratic convenience. It also the result of heavy commercial convenience and its synthetic "now-we-all" policy by vicious-circle.

It means so many people have no choice but to drive, possibly fair distances, to shop, to work, to find a bank or post-office, attend a hospital, for their children's schools, etc. etc.

So towns and villages lose their own services; so the residents have to use their cars. Consequently, bus companies cannot afford these routes because too few people use them; everything becomes diffuse and isolating. Whilst it is up to individuals to form their own social circles their chances are slimmed because there are now far fewer local shops, pubs, schools, libraries, banks, etc. fulfilling their everyday needs. (The banks are a case in point - "everyone uses internet banking they bleat" - yes, part of the banks' policy to close branches.)

You say we make unecessary social journeys - well, in other words let's all stay at home? That's not isolating?

Anyway, members of a specialist forum like this cannot criticise anyone else's social lives, given we like to travel to club meetings and tracks, exhibitions, rallies and so on. Just as others like to travel to play sports, visit theatres, go fishing or hill-walking or whatever. (And in my case caving - the hills or caves you wish to visit, or the football matches you want to watch, may a hundred miles or more away, though the sports grounds might still be in public transport reach.)

The TV and Internet are no substitute if you want a pursuit or social life your locality does not support. Yes, if we can afford an electric or more remotely, hydrogen-fuelled car, we can still drive to the nearest supermarket maybe only 20 miles away; to work assuming we have found employment, to the doctor, dentist or hospital if one exists anywhere near.

Whether we'd have any reason to travel anywhere else is another matter because I think one effect of all these environmental policies will be the slow destruction of vast swathes of the country's cultural and social activities, save perhaps for commercial arts and sports events within cities.

For anyone else, certainly outside of major towns, I see no guarantee whatsoever that their lives won't become limited to a very parochial existence with limited interest and social lives; leaving home only for the necessary shopping. They'd be lucky even to have a pub in which to reminisce to each other about once being able to go hill-walking, watch sports matches, rally miniature steam-engines...

In other words, back to at least the situation you cite of 60 years ago. In fact worse when even the "item or two of shopping" is now miles away, thanks to the supermarkets deliberately destroying the local shops just as officialdom is destroying local public services; the former also for profit, but both to suit centralising planned by remote spread-sheet jockeys and commercial estate-agents.

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it's all very well saying what people did 60 years ago, but what they could have done, or had to do then, is now no longer possible for many people; and there is no political will or wish to repair that damage.

Frances-

That is rather unworthy, and certainly not what I either meant or implied.

I was commenting on styles of living, not numbers of the living.

Bob -

Yes, I think many do say that but it's politically a very sensitive area so politicians tend to ignore it. The People Republic of China tried limiting its own population expansion but subsequently realised that policy brought serious problems of its own.