The Night Mail

[Hroth]

56 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

That's survived very well considering the Romans built it. First ones to use concrete you know.

 

Clever chaps, those Romans!

 

[BSW01]

11 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

That Scalescenes diorama works really well.  Is it built it in the suggested filebox?  Have you had any problems with fading or have you got a decent inkjet printer/use the manufacturers cartridges? 🤔 

(Unlike mine...)

 

 

Yes, fitted in an old box file. 
I usually give the finished building 2 coats of UV protected artist’s Matt varnish. 
I do use cartridges specifically made by the printer’s manufacturer. 

Edited September 2 by BSW01

[Tony_S]

3 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

That's survived very well considering the Romans built it. First ones to use concrete you know.

Much of the fort is Victorian. However during WW2 various concrete gun emplacements were added on top of the walls.  Some have started to collapse which is why visits to the inside of the fort are not possible. The mining installation was where the electrically detonated mines across the Thames would have been set off from. 

[Northmoor]

39 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

Much of the fort is Victorian. However during WW2 various concrete gun emplacements were added on top of the walls.  Some have started to collapse which is why visits to the inside of the fort are not possible. The mining installation was where the electrically detonated mines across the Thames would have been set off from. 

We were a cunning bunch in WW2.....

Last year I took a ride in RIB out to the Red Sands Forts from Whitstable (recommended, especially if the estuary is like a mirror as it was that day); one of the many interesting things about them is the shape they are arranged in - a sort of distorted cross - makes it almost impossible for a single aircraft to strafe or bomb more than two in a single pass.  You have to wonder how much longer they'll remain before having to be demolished.

[Tony_S]

24 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

We were a cunning bunch in WW2...

There was also a degaussing check at Coalhouse Fort and ships that failed were sent back to Tilbury. Operated by Sea Scouts and WRNS. The big guns pointing downriver had been previously installed on HMS Hood.

The much older fort at Tilbury is in better repair. 
Our town of Benfleet was once attacked by the Dutch navy in error as that thought it was Tilbury fort. 

[Tony_S]

32 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Last year I took a ride in RIB out to the Red Sands Forts

There are boat trips out of Southend to see the  Richard Montgomery wreck!

[Winslow Boy]

29 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

There was also a degaussing check at Coalhouse Fort and ships that failed were sent back to Tilbury. Operated by Sea Scouts and WRNS. The big guns pointing downriver had been previously installed on HMS Hood.

The much older fort at Tilbury is in better repair. 
Our town of Benfleet was once attacked by the Dutch navy in error as that thought it was Tilbury fort. 

Go on I'll bite - did it improve it.

[BSW01]

Today I’ve spent my convalescing time making paper corridor connections. I’ve been inspired by some I’ve seen in the press etc, but the final design is my own. I made a prototype set yesterday, but it took a fair bit of time, as I kept getting the creases wrong. So this morning I decided to make a former out of scrap 1mm grey card, about 50mm long. 

 

It’s a simple design, 4 pieces 4mm wide, 1 piece 5mm wide and 1 piece 10mm wide. The 4mm pieces were glued together in a stack, the 5mm piece was glued to the front, to make a 5mm square block. This block was then glued to the 10mm piece, so that this creates a platform, the result is shown in the photo below.


Black paper is then placed against the inside of the upright block, and the first crease is formed.

It’s very important to get the first crease square, so, to ensure the paper is perpendicular, there’s a red line drawn on the face of the block, to which the edge of the paper is lined up with. This creates a 5mm fold in the paper, once the first fold is made, the next is made by placing the longer side of the paper vertically against the block, with the folded piece at the front and folding the paper away from you etc. the edge of the block forms a nice crease.


This is repeated 9 times, until you have a completed side of 10 faces. This has speeded up the process considerably, it takes just a few minutes to fold a side now, instead of almost 10 minutes, without c0cking any up!

 

Parts required for one corridor connector, two of the folded paper sides, each end is doubled up to make them a bit more robust. 

 

Finally a pair of completed units.

Edited September 2 by BSW01

[Tony_S]

20 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

Go on I'll bite - did it improve it.

I think a few cannon balls were found in the field where the Danes had been defeated in the ninth century. The Dutch navy were mainly attacking the British fleet over in the Medway. 

[polybear]

8 hours ago, Northmoor said:

 

Last year I took a ride in RIB out to the Red Sands Forts …….. one of the many interesting things about them is the shape they are arranged in - a sort of distorted cross - makes it almost impossible for a single aircraft to strafe or bomb more than two in a single pass.  You have to wonder how much longer they'll remain before having to be demolished.

Yet if anyone came along hoping to save it by sympathetically converting it into a hotel or house then English Heritage etc would scream like hell and do all they can to block it.  They’d far prefer see it fall into a pile of unsaveable  authentic rubble.

 

[polybear]

7 hours ago, Tony_S said:

Our town of Benfleet was once attacked by the Dutch navy in error as that thought it was Tilbury fort. 

 
Was the damage noticeable?  😉

[AndyID]

7 hours ago, BSW01 said:

Today I’ve spent my convalescing time making paper corridor connections. I’ve been inspired by some I’ve seen in the press etc, but the final design is my own. I made a prototype set yesterday, but it took a fair bit of time, as I kept getting the creases wrong. So this morning I decided to make a former out of scrap 1mm grey card, about 50mm long. 

 

It’s a simple design, 4 pieces 4mm wide, 1 piece 5mm wide and 1 piece 10mm wide. The 4mm pieces were glued together in a stack, the 5mm piece was glued to the front, to make a 5mm square block. This block was then glued to the 10mm piece, so that this creates a platform, the result is shown in the photo below.


Black paper is then placed against the inside of the upright block, and the first crease is formed.

It’s very important to get the first crease square, so, to ensure the paper is perpendicular, there’s a red line drawn on the face of the block, to which the edge of the paper is lined up with. This creates a 5mm fold in the paper, once the first fold is made, the next is made by placing the longer side of the paper vertically against the block, with the folded piece at the front and folding the paper away from you etc. the edge of the block forms a nice crease.


This is repeated 9 times, until you have a completed side of 10 faces. This has speeded up the process considerably, it takes just a few minutes to fold a side now, instead of almost 10 minutes, without c0cking any up!

 

Parts required for one corridor connector, two of the folded paper sides, each end is doubled up to make them a bit more robust. 

 

Finally a pair of completed units.

 

Yes, but people with inquiring minds want to know what they are sitting on in the last pic. (Is that some sort of medical implement?)

[Oldddudders]

9 hours ago, Northmoor said:

We were a cunning bunch in WW2.....

Last year I took a ride in RIB out to the Red Sands Forts from Whitstable

Is that where Radio 390 was located in 1965-7?

[AndyID]

1 minute ago, Oldddudders said:

Is that where Radio 390 was located in 1965-7?

Are you actually old enough to remember that? (I think you are correct BTW).

[Oldddudders]

13 minutes ago, AndyID said:

Are you actually old enough to remember that? (I think you are correct BTW).

Sadly yes - born in 1948!

[AndyID]

2 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Sadly yes - born in 1948!

Oh, you really are old. I wasn't born until 1949 🤣

 

I still remember the offshore radio wars quite well.

[Oldddudders]

Radio 390 played very different music from the mainstream pop pirates. And I loved some of it. 

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

Between the various sharp, and thankfully short rain bursts yesterday, I managed to empty the car back into the garage.

 

It is surprising how much scenic materiel, especially static grasses, get dislodged during transit to and from a show, so the car required a good vacuum out to remove all the fall out.

 

This afternoon I will be going into the garage to examine the rolling stock to see if that survived the trip back.

 

I already have a small pile of bits:  coupling chains, an injector drain off a pannier tank and a brake block from the Fowler DM to re-attach to their respective partners.

 

Gordon will come over on Thursday, and we'll start on the replacement of the south end main line exit onto the cassette table.

 

Some will recall I reworked the colliery exit road prior to Welshpool, and the improvement in running,compared with the main exit justifies the same retrofitting of new rail.  A few derailments on exit by the pannier tanks (the diesels were ok) seem to be caused by a slight alignment problem.  I suspect that long term, we may do the North end exit, although to date it is fault free.

 

I'm also considering the replacement of the cassettes!!

 

That is they will be dismantled and rebuilt using plywood bases rather then MDF.  although the MDF was sealed prior to use, it appears to be swelling slightly due to moisture ingress.  As this is not consistent, we are getting a rather uneven track base through the various cassettes, which theoretically should not be the case as they were all made up from the same sheet of MDF, although the ply sides were from a number of offcuts.

 

However, it is not a priority:  Some rerailing diamonds or check rails on the exit may also help cure the issue.

[BSW01]

3 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

Yes, but people with inquiring minds want to know what they are sitting on in the last pic. (Is that some sort of medical implement?)

Sort of, they’re sitting on a small plastic box, the implement in the box is a craft knife, with a plastic sheath covering the blade. 

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from a wet place.  I've managed to get some mojo back recently, see my layout thread, and have started a general fettle and test of LGA.   This has in some areas required sitting cross legged under the layout resoldering droppers.  The experiential learning cycle has now kicked in.  On Saturday I made sure that my legs (still in shorts) were not underneath the smouldering iron.  Solder is still rather warm after falling about 850mm.  I also,hopefully,cured a persistent fault on the eastern exit from the fiddle yard.  Some trains would go through fine, others would need some manual assistance.  I discovered a 6" piece of rail that did not have a dropper connected to it.  Obviously, Locos with tender and loco pick ups would cope, but short wheelbase Locos without tender or tender pick ups, would stall.  I must have missed that when the layout was wired up.  Thi gs are better now. 

 

Jamie 

Edited September 3 by jamie92208

[45655]

2 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Radio 390 played very different music from the mainstream pop pirates. And I loved some of it. 

 

 

Very popular with housewives, apparently.  

 

Apart from Radio London, it was also the only pirate station which actually made money.  Probably because both were run by advertising rather than music business people.  Sadly Radio 390 was prosecuted out of existence (the Courts were persuaded that Red Sands was inside the 3 mile limit) before it could make back its launch costs.

 

I think that's Edward Cole, later a well known voice on Radio 4.

 

Keith

Alton.

 

 

[iL Dottore]

5 hours ago, polybear said:

Yet if anyone came along hoping to save it by sympathetically converting it into a hotel or house then English Heritage etc would scream like hell and do all they can to block it.  They’d far prefer see it fall into a pile of unsaveable  authentic rubble.

 

Ain’t that the truth.

What is it about such organisations like the National Trust, English Heritage and many local councils that attract SO many jobsworths?

 

Blinkered cretins who refuse to budge on tiny matters of detail at the cost of loosing the entire edifice.

 

No wonder so many frustrated owners of such properties just say **** ** and let the whole thing disintegrate until it HAS to be torn down and then they can build upon the land.

[bbishop]

We have the same problem at church with the Victorian Society.

[Oldddudders]

58 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

What is it about such organisations like the National Trust, English Heritage and many local councils that attract SO many jobsworths?

 

Blinkered cretins who refuse to budge on tiny matters of detail at the cost of loosing the entire edifice.

But surely they are no different from the more rigid-thinking members of our own hobby? If it isn't micro-millimetric-correct, then it is an abomination, according to a section of modellers. And a % of gricers are apoplectic if livery details have not been faithfully reproduced on a restored loco. Getting things right is what such people live for, and why they join such organisations - to make a difference. 

[iL Dottore]

28 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

But surely they are no different from the more rigid-thinking members of our own hobby? If it isn't micro-millimetric-correct, then it is an abomination, according to a section of modellers. And a % of gricers are apoplectic if livery details have not been faithfully reproduced on a restored loco. Getting things right is what such people live for, and why they join such organisations - to make a difference. hack-off a lot of people.

There, fixed it for you! 😁

 

But there does come a point where such pedantry, zealotry and refusal to entertain any sort of compromise becomes counter productive.

 

It has been said, not without some justification, that such individuals lead such tiny, inconsequential lives of little or no importance that when they can be in control, they do so with a vengeance. They may not be able to have any influence on the really important things in their lives, but they will do their damnedest (for example) to ensure that the colours of the lettering on the ends of a restored carriage are exactly as Swindon/Crewe/Derby/York specified (or whatever is their cause du jour) - even if the paint is no longer available or that to get the right colour is has to be lead-based paint and thus can't be used.