Seeing the machines are akin to hearsay, Raimey? Yikes. Methinks you've been overcelebrating the holiday.

I have no reason to put V-C on a pedestal. However, you keep raising objections to which responses are forthcoming, at which point you raise other objections. For example, re V-C remaining the "principal" . . . it was V-C that survived, after absorbing Breuil, F. Darne, etc. Not vice versa. The people running the company are still named Verney-Carron, as they have been for almost 200 years. Fairly unusual in the gun business these days, wouldn't you say?