The Night Mail

[PhilJ W]

11 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

Flairs! Not on your Nellie 😀

 

I used to wear trousers like that, nowadays I wouldn't be able to pull them past my ankle.

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

In an effort to broaden my education I have been playing various on line puzzles such as Wordle.

 

Unfortunately, I have now found Lewdle.

 

This has really made me think!

Sherry has just forbidden me from even looking at Lewdle. I must stick to Octordle. Sigh.

[jamie92208]

9 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Sherry has just forbidden me from even looking at Lewdle. I must stick to Octordle. Sigh.

I've just got into Killer Sudoku and have just got my first Hard game out with 0 mistakes. I'm now rewarding myself with poached eggs usuing fresh laid eggs.

 

Jamie

[Tony_S]

I did do Sudoko for a while but gave up when I realised the hard ones were not really hard they just took longer to solve. I know if I had been teaching there would have been some of my students who would have been writing programs to solve Sudoko or Wordle. Some students were really clever. I know when Rubiks Cube was popular my nephew when at school used mathematical methods to solve any Rubik Cube orientation. He now has a maths degree, a couple of masters and a PhD and is working on machine intelligence research for Google in Switzerland.  
It is his birthday today and we were just chatting and he mentioned that he and his partner and a couple of friends were going to a cat cafe for lunch. After the call I had to explain the “cat cafe” concept to Aditi. She initially thought I was joking, then searched Google and found the one in Zurich, Casa del Gato could easily be mistaken for a cake cafe. Aditi wouldn’t like eating with cats wandering about though she said cows or chickens would be fine. 

[pH]

12 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

Aditi wouldn’t like eating with cats wandering about though she said cows or chickens would be fine. 

Even this one?

 

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Ameglian_Major_Cow

[Tony_S]

Lucknow had been restored after rewiring. The Bachmann LNWR Precedent I dropped checked out on DC this morning and I replaced the PCB blanking thingy  with a 21 pin decoder (a cheap one, just in case) and everything is fine. I may fit a decoder to another loco this afternoon that should be easy but after the last couple of days fiddling about with tiny tiny flexible wires I may just have a break. The only modelling today had been removing buses from packaging. I bought some cheap from Hattons. Atlas Editions don’t seem to want one to easily remove from model from the display packaging!
 

Edited April 3, 2022 by Tony_S

[Tony_S]

I had some difficulty stripping the very thin wire used between loco and tender when I needed to make new soldered joints on the Precedent. I think my wirestrippers are ok for domestic cables but does anyone have a recommendation for very fine flexible wires?

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

Lucknow had been restored after rewiring. The Bachmann LNWR Precedent I dropped checked out on DC this morning and I replaced the PCB blanking thingy  with a 21 pin decoder (a cheap one, just in case) and everything is fine. I may fit a decoder to another loco this afternoon that should be easy but after the last couple of days fiddling about with tiny tiny flexible wires I may just have a break. The only modelling today had been removing buses from packaging. I bought some cheap from Hattons. Atlas Editions don’t seem to want one to easily remove from model from the display packaging!
 

The dreaded Atlas triangle screws. You can buy the screwdrivers on line from various factors. I bought a set of six for less than a tenner. You can also use a torque screwdriver as below.

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

I had some difficulty stripping the very thin wire used between loco and tender when I needed to make new soldered joints on the Precedent. I think my wirestrippers are ok for domestic cables but does anyone have a recommendation for very fine flexible wires?

How thin is thin? The very thin wire can be stripped using emery cloth as the coating is sprayed on.

 

Edited April 3, 2022 by PhilJ W

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

How thin is thin? The very thin wire can be stripped using emery cloth as the coating is sprayed on.

it is the super flexible wire used for loco to tender connections. it is thinner than the typical wire on dcc decoders. 

The Atlas screws weren't triangular, they were crosshead but a piece of plastic moulding was glued on the base covering them. all in the appropriate bin now.

[BoD]

3 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I had some difficulty stripping the very thin wire used between loco and tender when I needed to make new soldered joints on the Precedent. I think my wirestrippers are ok for domestic cables but does anyone have a recommendation for very fine flexible wires?

 

Wire strippers Tony?  Don't you have a pair of these from the school physics lab?

 

 

Seriously though, if you are careful they can strip very thin wire.

[Happy Hippo]

Don't use these:

 

They will ruin your whole day.

[BoD]

28 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

They will ruin your whole day.

Not necessarily - they are supposed to be bloodless.

[bbishop]

Apropos my visit on Friday to the National Gallery, one of our number would appear to have Spanish ancestry.  Look up the picture of Archbishop Fernando de Valdes.

 

Bill

[jamie92208]

Found this on YouTube and thought it rather good.

 

Jamie

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by jamie92208

[Winslow Boy]

4 hours ago, BoD said:

Not necessarily - they are supposed to be bloodless.

 

Whose blood? Asking for a friend.

[laurenceb]

5 hours ago, BoD said:

Not necessarily - they are supposed to be bloodless.

Still make you jump!

[iL Dottore]

Tapered flares? Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron?

I see that some of the contributors are sartorially reminiscing, it would be most interesting, and undoubtedly amusing, to see photos of our fellow TNMs in such 60s/70s clobber - such as

• Nehru jackets
• Cuban heels
• Platform shoes
• Tie-Dyed T-shirts
• Kaftans
• Miniskirts*
• Monokinis*
• White polyester suits
• Bell Bottom Jeans
• Spandex leggings
• Shirts with BIG collars
• Kipper ties
• Big hair
• Pony tails**
• Afros

* if appropriate (or not - as the case may be)

** the ancestor of the “man bun”

 

Fortunately, I was able to avoid the sartorial excesses of the 60s and 70s (at least there’s no photographic evidence of any such thing)

Edited April 4, 2022 by iL Dottore

[jamie92208]

This is the best I can come up with.

1978 in San Francisco.  Taken by a lady with what she described as a small car.

Jamie

[polybear]

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Tapered flares? Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron?

I see that some of the contributors are sartorially reminiscing, it would be most interesting, and undoubtedly amusing, to see photos of our fellow TNMs in such 60s/70s clobber - such as

• Nehru jackets
• Cuban heels
• Platform shoes
• Tie-Dyed T-shirts
• Kaftans
• Miniskirts*
• Monokinis*
• White polyester suits
• Bell Bottom Jeans
• Spandex leggings
• Shirts with BIG collars
• Kipper ties
• Big hair
• Pony tails**
• Afros

* if appropriate (or not - as the case may be)

** the ancestor of the “man bun”

 

Fortunately, I was able to avoid the sartorial excesses of the 60s and 70s (at least there’s no photographic evidence of any such thing)

 

Bear can reliably inform that such things were NEVER worn (or owned) by this Bear....

[Oldddudders]

15 hours ago, Tony_S said:

it is the super flexible wire used for loco to tender connections. it is thinner than the typical wire on dcc decoders. 

Antex used to offer a small vee-shaped piece of metal to be attached to the shaft of their small soldering iron. Wire run over this suddenly lost its insulated sheathing. Just running it across the hot shaft should have the same effects. 

[Tony_S]

17 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Antex used to offer a small vee-shaped piece of metal to be attached to the shaft of their small soldering iron. Wire run over this suddenly lost its insulated sheathing. Just running it across the hot shaft should have the same effects. 

I will try that and see what happens. Though I hope I don’t need to replace any more snapped wiring for a while. I was really quite cross that clumsiness turned a simple job into a frustrating task.
Tony

Edited April 4, 2022 by Tony_S

[Happy Hippo]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

Bear can reliably inform that such things were NEVER worn (or owned) by this Bear....

The bare bear

[PhilJ W]

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Tapered flares? Isn’t that a bit of an oxymoron?

I see that some of the contributors are sartorially reminiscing, it would be most interesting, and undoubtedly amusing, to see photos of our fellow TNMs in such 60s/70s clobber - such as

• Nehru jackets
• Cuban heels
• Platform shoes
• Tie-Dyed T-shirts
• Kaftans
• Miniskirts*
• Monokinis*
• White polyester suits
• Bell Bottom Jeans
• Spandex leggings
• Shirts with BIG collars
• Kipper ties
• Big hair
• Pony tails**
• Afros

* if appropriate (or not - as the case may be)

** the ancestor of the “man bun”

 

Fortunately, I was able to avoid the sartorial excesses of the 60s and 70s (at least there’s no photographic evidence of any such thing)

I can claim to have worn only two of the items on that list.

[Doncaster Green]

I can neither confirm nor deny that some or none of the items in that list were or were not worn at anytime or no time during the period in question.

 

Official spokesperson

[SM42]

Kipper tie?

 

 

Round here that's a refreshing hot beverage.

 

Andy