The Night Mail

[rockershovel]

14 hours ago, PupCam said:

Evening!

 

The ERs amongst us will be aware that I went for a little train ride yesterday which involved being an Early Riser.    Being on Hitchin station platform at 7:25am on a Saturday when you are retired is just plain cruel.  

However it was worth it as this was the train we caught.

 

 

Some were interested in photographs to show details but as they would mostly be of railway related objects there would have been risk to life and limb from low flying awls so I thought I'd post a few here instead.

 

 

 

Not really it's what credit cards were invented for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fantastic!  We loved it, I hope you do too!

 

 

Sorry Grizz, I didn't see your post until I was reading ERs this morning otherwise I would have done so but sorry I can't help.   

 

Having said that I was talking to one of the stewards who said they've actually got four sets so it maybe that there's a mix? 🤔   You might need to hedge your bets and consider both cases.

 

Well, what can I say?   It was a fantastic experience and a great, if long and tiring, day out.     You can go either as just a first class passenger (with complementary refreshments; coffee/tea/biscuits and other things to nibble)  and free to bring as much or as little food and alcohol with you as you wish or for the full-scale dining experience where you are plied with what seemed likely to be an almost continuous round of posh nosh whilst seated in the train (~5 hours there, 5 hours back).   As we don't eat a huge amount of food normally we thought we'd not be able to do the posh nosh, dining experience anything like justice.   As the full-dining was an extra £200 EACH that would have made for an expensive day out (the fare was £198 +£25 each facing single seat supplement) which we cash-strapped pensioners baulked at 😉.  Sorry @iL Dottore!  Actually what would have been really good would be to say just have a really good, Pullman style dinner on the return journey for a slightly more modest supplement and we could then enjoy the Pullman dinning experience but wouldn't end up feeling completely pigged out by huge quantities of unnecessary food.    In the end we didn't eat any of the stuff we'd brought from home, had a couple of bacon rolls from the buffet as breakfast and ate perhaps a 1/3 of the nibbles provided and went out for a light lunch in Carlisle.   We didn't stave and didn't feel bloated.   This is the top layer of the Morning Nibbles box.   There was another one in the afternoon.

 

 

And as for the trip?    A marvellous run up the ECML picking up at various points up to Retford.   Up to Doncastor then made our way across country south of Leeds to Hellifield and hence to Settle.   At the start of this section the dull grey conditions had changed to really dull fog with very poor visibility and we were thinking "Well this going to be great, we're going to miss the spectacular scenery" but we needn't have worried.   As we went west the fog lifted, the dull grey turned to grey and then even a hint of brightness and by Hellifield although not wall-to-wall blue sky and sunshine more than good enough to admire the view.  And of course, what a view!  

 

 

 

Funny enough whenever I pass through Dent going north I'm reminded of a 1960s(?) Railway Modeller article by David Jenkinson featuring his model of the "station on the curve".   It might not have been up to modern  finescale standards back then but it sure captured the essence of the place which I didn't see for real but recognised instantly until some 50 years later.   

 

 

 

And so on to Carlisle.   ~3 hours to spend so we had lunch, a mooch around the streets and a trip into the Cathedral.   The Cathedral was very nice with some lovely stained glass windows.  Whilst mooching the streets  Puppers eagle eye spied a sign saying "Model Railway shop - Upstairs".   It would have been rude not to go upstairs ....   A small but apparently very well crammed establishment!

 

Then back on the train for the 4:26 departure home, this time heading east as soon as we left Carlisle along the Tyne valley.  That's very nice too.    I did look to see if Bob & Paul were fishing but I didn't spot them.   If they were there maybe Bob's still having trouble with gravity and had fallen over in the long grass 🤣    As an aside, that's a great TV series isn't it?  Can't wait for the next programmes.

 

We aimed for Newcastle but just missed as we took the junction  for the south and then back down the ECML to home to complete a very memorable day.   To round it off beautifully we were greeted on the platform at Hitchin unexpectedly by Junior Puppers and the eldest (6 years old) Junior Junior Puppers which was a lovely surprise.

 

I have to say I think the preservation, modification to Pullman standard and painting in the old Blue Pullman scheme of these 125 sets is inspired.     If you get the chance, do have a go.

 

Alan

 

I've heard very favourable things about these trips. Sounds like another thing for my to-do list...

[PupCam]

28 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

RMWeb is the only open social media I do now, though I use WhatsApp a lot and have various friend and family group chats which do what Facebook was supposed to do without all the nonsense, advertising, and stuff I am not interested in. I really don't miss Facebook. I never got into Twitter/X as it just seems a sewer to bring out the worst in people. And I never saw any value in Linkedin.

 

Like just about everything and everywhere on the internet I think Facebook has some very good points and some very bad points.   I belong to far too many groups  of "interesting stuff" on Faceache primarily as a source of interesting photographs and, to a less extent, interesting facts.   I ensure that the Muppet filter is always switched on and just sail past the idiot posts without barely noticing them as they shoot past into the distance.     I really don't get the "Here's my dinner of sausages, non-curly fries and beans  for tonight" photos but fortunately I seem to see very few of such posts - must be the friends I keep 😉    I like to post interesting images I've seen or things that may strike a chord with a particular bunch of friends from say my early years or railways, aviation, astronomy, architecture, mechanical engineering subjects etc etc etc   As I've said, I belong to far too many interesting groups but it's a great source of fabulous English Electric Lightning photos, interesting railway photos, motorcycles, lunar, planetary and deep space images etc that I wouldn't get to see otherwise.

 

I was reluctant to join Linkedin (primarily because of my line of work) but I posted a suitably brief and generalised profile.   I have to say I have been staggered by the detailed information numerous colleagues have posted in the past in what seems t be a giant willy-waving competition.  Haven't they heard of the OSA?   Anyway, it actually provided me with a very useful contact with someone in a completely different industry /sphere of operation for a particular project I was working on again, I would have had no chance of meeting that contact without it.     First job I did when I retired was to delete my profile which on reflection was a bit of a hasty move as it means I can't look people up on it now but sobeit!

 

Never done the Twatter thing .....  and I won't be starting anytime soon.

 

Of course there's always the "Block User" function on these things to eliminate the real idiots.     Which leads me to wonder how many members of RMWeb block that twit called Puppers that goes rambling on all the time?   🤣

 

 

 

[Tony_S]

12 minutes ago, PupCam said:

I was reluctant to join Linkedin

I only created an account so that I could check up for Aditi about just how well qualified the HR team at her college who were attempting to push her into “voluntary” redundancy. It turned out they had no professional qualifications. The “big” union at the college (Aditi was in another one) took an interest as some of their members were also affected, took up joint action. It also helped that Aditi’s line manager didn’t want her to go either. 
The account was set up for our dog and mentioned his skills at pest control and swimming. Still get job offers. It also revealed one of the  college senior managers had a background in pest control. 

Edited September 9 by Tony_S

[jamie92208]

4 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

According to that timing sheet, you didn't, you took the south-to-west chord from Engine Shed Junction to Whitehall Junction. You would certainly have noticed had you gone into Leeds station, as the direction of travel would reverse there - but I have no doubt that from an operational point of view, accommodating a railtour would have but a strain on the station's capacity.

Yes, that is the Wellington curve. For a short time around the Millennium it hosted a platform called Leeds Whitehall, during the rebuilding work at Leeds.  You could catch a train to Sheffield in either direction.  I only traversed it once when my train to Morley was wrongly routed out of Leeds and ended upby Holbeck Sed.  After a short time the driver walked through the train and we set off up the curve and off towards Huddersfield and Morley. 

 

Jamie

 

On reflection it may well be the Whitehall curve. 

Edited September 9 by jamie92208

[jjb1970]

I signed up for LinkedIn many years ago as the engineering institute I was a member of at the time decided they'd use LinkedIn as their sharing platform and asked everyone to sign up. I did but found myself getting loads of connection requests from people I had never heard of and with no professional connection to me. And then there were people using it like Facebook. I left. I don't work in a commercial role and really don't need contacts. I work in a micro-niche and everyone knows everyone. If I need to make contact for a reason I will normally call someone who will know who to introduce me to.

[Dave Hunt]

2 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

The problem is that most fixed wing pilots are not taught to reverse!

 

In my defence, the wall was only about two feet high with a fence on top. I was aware of the fence and was happy that I was avoiding it but the wall stuck out a couple of feet from the corner of the fence and and I was blissfully unaware of that until ..... wallop....  the parking sensor went into its wailing routine concurrently with the loud band from the rear of the car. I've just taken it into a local crash repair place and the chap there reckons it will need a new 'rear bumper', AKA lower rear body panel, and a couple of chrome/aluminium trim strips as there doesn't appear to be any damage to the steel body shell and they can straighten out the underneath guard panel with a bit of heat treatment. I'm waiting for an estimate before contacting the insurance people but knowing what VW charge for spares I think it will be fairly expensive.

 

Dave

 

[rockershovel]

I signed up to LinkedIn some years ago, around 2008 I think? It produces a lot of stuff I have no real interest in but it has always produced something useful occasionally... bearing in mind that I  only really needed one or two good "hits" a year and sometimes, not even that. 

 

The algorithms are increasingly aggressive and there are rapidly increasing numbers of people treating it like Facebook, but ho hum. 

 

Facebook produces staggering amounts of dross, but few (if any) clubs run stand-alone webpages these days so I still find useful things there. 

 

 

[Dave Hunt]

The only social media I indulge in is RMW and, if you count it, Whatsapp in a very limited fashion. For a while Jill was on Farcebook but didn't attend regularly and eventually gave up when her list of unread messages got into high triple figures. I have enough trouble trying to keep up with TNM (and often failing).

 

Dave 

[GMKAT7]

Good afternoon Dave,

 

My commiserations at your bump and the cost of repairs.

 

A friend of mine has had a Passat estate for years and the cost of his repairs one year persuaded me to go the Skoda route rather than VW.

I have had the parking sensors wailing at overgrown vegetation, never quite sure if there is anything solid behind it.

 

Cheers, Nigel.

[DaveF]

I decided to give my 0 gauge layout its early autumn clean today, along with the stock which sits on shelves near it.  For various reasons it didn't get a good clean in the Spring.

 

It was clear that the spiders have been having a web building competition - the aim seems to have been to build a very dense web in the smallest location possible, preferably partly inside buildings.  

 

I eventually got everything cleaned up, but I needed an ordinary hand held vacuum, a very small hand held vacuum, and even smaller vacuum (keyboard size), several paintbrushes and a damp cloth.  It all looks a lot better now.  The only damage I managed to do was one dislodged tail lamp from a guard's van.  However it is clear that some bits of scenery are fading and really need redoing and the platform could do with resurfacing.

 

For some reason the n gauge layout doesn't seem to have any cobwebs - perhaps English spiders don't like models of Swiss buildings and trains.

 

David

[Hroth]

My Skoda Yeti has the parking "radar" feature (don't know how common it is across VW group cars), which as well as beeping like a banshee, also has a visual indication of how far from the sensors, front and rear, the car is.  Its really useful, more so than the parking cameras fitted on modern cars. A friend has a new Skoda Karoq with a rearview camera, and its a buggre to interpret, compared with the radar display!

 

Edited September 9 by Hroth
Net Nanny obfuscation...

[PhilJ W]

My car has a reversing sensor, trouble is it goes off when I am more than two feet away from an obstruction.

[PhilJ W]

Why do they make Farcebook so user UNfriendly? For example in the top right hand corner of the page you have notifications. The problem is they are in sh!t order, it should be easy to put them in some sort of chronological order.

[GMKAT7]

Good afternoon Hroth,

 

I like the visual parking indicator, I just wish the wailing bit was quieter 😂

 

Cheers, Nigel.

[GMKAT7]

Good evening folks,

 

The Boss and I are in DaveF territory this week on holiday, based in Alnwick.

 

Having raided Barter Books yesterday (along with the rest of Northumberland it seems), we finally got to Lindisfarne today for a long wished-for visit.

 

 It was a great thrill to drive over the causeway (in the dry of course) and see the castle, priory, etc.

Even had blue skies and sunshine!

 

Plus a pint of Holy Island Blessed Bitter at lunchtime 😁

 

Cheers, Nigel.

[J. S. Bach]

6 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Where can I get socks like these.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1819576465235619

They would be even better if they were flesh-colored instead of black!

[The White Rabbit]

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

I know that.

 

My point was the the TOCs in Japan, like JR East, JR West etc., put on both "joyful trains" (tourist trains) and luxury trains which feed revenue back into the system. I was just wondering why British TOCs don't also offer tourist trains or even luxury hotel trains (I have my, unPC, ideas on that)..

 

Having said that, given the state of both Britain's railways and its TOCs, I doubt if they could even if they wanted to (and had a large enough customer base for such things)

 

There's: https://www.belmond.com/trains/europe/scotland/belmond-royal-scotsman/ 

 

Also, maybe less luxurious but still potentially a 'joyful' train experience - The Great Britain - link to this year's for info: https://www.railwaytouring.net/the-great-britain-xvi---april-2024 - don't know if 2025 is running. 

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

5 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

I used to think Reverse Thrust was something from the Kama Sutra!

Or the Hippo manual for tail salutes.

[Happy Hippo]

Today, I enjoyed an outdoor session in the garden.

 

I started off  by hedge trimming, whilst Morgan who had come around for the day was pruning the greengage tree, and fixing a leaking tap.

 

After lunch we got together to install the preformed pond liner into the trench I'd dug a few weeks ago.

 

After that it was back to more hedge trimming.

 

Regarding Facebook, like many here, I use it very little, mainly for private groups which are concerned with  things I'm interested in.  However, on occasion I get friends requests out of the blue from people I don't know at all.

 

The latest was a request to me via somebody else's FB page!  Allegedly from a female (well, by the name), but checking their profile, which was very sparse revealed a 'he'.

 

Needless to say I ignored it.

 

The very small, kinder part of me thinks it could be someone desperately lonely who has plucked up the courage to ask someone to be their friend and is desperate for a favourable reply.

 

The miserable git who is always shouting in my ear and invariably overrules Mr Softy, laughs and mutters rude things about how desperate they must be if they want me as a friend.

Edited September 9 by Happy Hippo

[bbishop]

9 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

If you mean @bbishop, I'm now much better informed on the management politics of the South Western, which is rather useful for understanding the context of some Somerset & Dorset Joint Committee and Officers' Committee minutes.

As a first aider, I was concerned for Stephen's blood pressure when we discussed the LNWR management takeover of the LMS.  He went very red faced.

[Northmoor]

6 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

I know that.

 

My point was the the TOCs in Japan, like JR East, JR West etc., put on both "joyful trains" (tourist trains) and luxury trains which feed revenue back into the system. I was just wondering why British TOCs don't also offer tourist trains or even luxury hotel trains (I have my, unPC, ideas on that)..

 

Having said that, given the state of both Britain's railways and its TOCs, I doubt if they could even if they wanted to (and had a large enough customer base for such things)

They don't do such a thing because:

(a) it's not been agreed as part of their franchise and,

(b) they'd rather ask the government to subsidise the regular services but run a luxury service that makes 30% profit that they could keep entirely for themselves.

[Northmoor]

7 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

RMWeb is the only open social media I do now, though I use WhatsApp a lot and have various friend and family group chats which do what Facebook was supposed to do without all the nonsense, advertising, and stuff I am not interested in. I really don't miss Facebook. I never got into Twitter/X as it just seems a sewer to bring out the worst in people. And I never saw any value in Linkedin.

Agree completely except that I joined my current employer (which indirectly led to my current job) and saved myself from a likely nervous breakdown, through LinkedIn.

 

Rule of Thumb is that anyone with more than about 200 "connections" is either a Prime Minister or works in recruitment and measures their success like the number of "Friends" they have on Facebook.  I always imagine putting them in a room with their 500+ connections and sitting back to watch them try to name a single one of them.

Edited September 9 by Northmoor
Second paragraph added

[Dave Hunt]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

The miserable git who is always shouting in my ear and invariably overrules Mr Softy, laughs and mutters rude things about how desperate they must be if they want me as a friend.

 But I haven't seen you for a few weeks now Richard.

 

Dave

[Northmoor]

Oh and on the subject of the @PupCam railtour (glad you enjoyed it BTW), Mrs Northmoor and I were meant to be doing similar (but steam hauled) last week, going 1st Class for the bacon butties and afternoon tea but declining the all-day nosh which might have been a waste. 

 

It had been deferred by a month seemingly due to fire risk in Kent, now falling in the first week after the schools had gone back (she works in the local school).  The Head kindly gave her the time off - perhaps because it had been our Anniversary treat to ourselves but which she wouldn't have been obligated to - so it was rather irritating when the operator cancelled the tour due to lack of bookings.  I've heard of railtour companies doing this and consider it very poor practice; they're not a charity and so everyone else has to change their plans because the company can't sell their product well enough.....

 

There's nothing else that appeals to us or is convenient so we're just getting a refund. Poo.  Infuriatingly our local Watercress Line does dining or afternoon tea trains but seemingly only on Wednesdays.  Do preserved railways only wish to attract the retired?

[DenysW]

5 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

In my defence, the wall was only about two feet high

The exact definition of a Dad Wall. You can't see it, but you can reverse into it, and regret same.