Lights Out.

Carnegie thinks it is a nice touch, but it begs the obvious point. If we want to reduce carbon emissions caused by misusing energy, why not do it permanently?

"THE Forth Bridge is one of dozens of world landmarks that will plunge into darkness for an hour next month. The iconic structure will join many other famous locations on the planet in switching off their lights to mark WWF's Earth Hour."

Personally speaking Carnegie likes to see the Bridge "lit up" when he comes home to Fife.

Off Track.

They sort out the Road Bridge ... sort of, but then we get disruption to the rail network. Fifers just can't win.

"An investigation into how a rail signal line was cut has been launched after passengers suffered "significant" journey disruption in east Scotland. Engineers have now fixed the fault, which affected a stretch of line between South Gyle, outside Edinburgh, and Markinch in Fife. Services between the capital and Fife, Aberdeen, Inverness and Glasgow were affected until 0400 BST on Monday."

Painting by numbers.

"The process of painting the Forth Rail Bridge is finally set to end in four years' time, it has been announced. The need for continuous maintenance of the structure has passed into folklore and led to the coining of a phrase for a never-ending job. However, Network Rail has announced a £74m contract which will see painters down their brushes in 2012. The new paint has an estimated life span of 25 years, although is it hoped it will last closer to 40 years. The expression "like painting the Forth Bridge" features in the Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms."

It will be good to have the old Bridge back without it being covered up in the plastic canopies which have been used to catch the old paint as it was sand blasted off the Bridge structure. But it seems to Carnegie that the current paint job has been ongoing for several years at least.

Here's hoping ion future that Network Rail don't repeat the mistake of Railtrack which cut back on the maintenance schedule of the Bridge so much in order to save money that it caused the structure to rust and lead to the current paint job.