A bumper week!

Bumper week this week. Issue 251 arrived on Monday (here in regional Australia) and issue 252 turned up on Friday. Who knows what goes on with the vagaries of international shipping? Maybe the carrier pigeon thought the mis-labelled issue 252 was a very late issue 251 and got a move on?

A great issue it is too. Pleased to see another Drummond M-type article. They seem to be the most popularly enduring lathe of all. Roller bearing conversion, now there's food for thought. Mmmm....

Edited By Hopper on 10/03/2017 10:50:49

> Drummond M-type

I sometimes seem to come across more m-type owners than S7/ML7 owners

Neil

Yes it's amazing how many seem to be still in use. Considering their age, they certainly seem to have lasted well. Must have used some good cast iron back in those days.

I received ME 4553 on Wednesday, and 4554 on Friday. Now, I suppose, I'll get nothing for a month. Deliveries of magazines have become erratic since Australia Post downgraded its services last year. Mostly they just take longer. I now have no idea even in which week I can expect the next issue.

Yet they (Australia Post) were paying their last CEO $5.6 million a year to create this shambles!

It's always interesting to watch tracking on parcels coming from UK or USA take a few days from dispatch of order to Sydney, then a few weeks to get the rest of the way. The closer it gets to home, the slower it seems to travel. Can take a week from arriving in my town to getting on to my front porch.

Hopper, I know the problem about snail pace postage, got a family member in Townsville, and until resently another in Adelaide, and postage between those two can be up to a fortnight, mind you it's a fair way for the postie on his bike, or does he walk.

Ian S C

Hopper says: The closer it gets to home, the slower it seems to travel.

He is right, and I suggest that this is true whatever the system you use to transmit goods or messages.

Even in the 'good old days' the steam train would bring the post at perhaps 40 mph, to the nearest town station. It would then be taken to the village post office by horse and cart - 10 mph max. From there the postman would walk to your door at 2 mph or less, delivering other stuff en route.

Such is life

Cheers, Tim

Nowadays the mail is sorted at millions of packets per hour, jetted up to our end of the country, re-sorted locally to go out on final delivery by a bloke on a bike and its not any quicker.

Thats true, it just costs more. A price rise for stamps shortly!

Clive

In Victorian London you copuld post a letter inviting someone to dinner that evening, and get a reply in good time.

Progess, eh?

Neil

Awesome! I vaguely remember Holmes sending notes to Watson at a similar rate of knots. These days, Australia Post is talking about cutting delivery back to two or three days a week instead of every day Mon to Fri. Only a government-run postal operation could be losing money in the middle of an internet shopping boom that has spawned a whole new industry delivering the goods.

Readers in Australia certainly appear to get a raw deal from their internal postal service but things are not that much better here in UK, if I send a first class letter or packet to my daughter in Wigan from my home in East Sussex it takes usually five working days to be delivered. Complaining is pointless, there always seems to be an excuse and the service never improves, parcels sent by carriers take on average two days for sometimes a lot cheaper than Royal Mail. Moral seems to be use the PRIVATE SERVICES rather than Royal Mail or Australia Post.