The Night Mail

[jamie92208]

It was my daughter in laws birthday this morning. Our granddaughter had bought her a lovely present, a set of combination spanners. Not a bad choice by a 5 year old. 

 

Jamie

[Tony_S]

51 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

uber eats or taking an uber are completely alien concepts and experiences to me - Thank God1

Aditi’s uncle sent us a video of his cab ride in San Francisco. It wasn’t Uber it was Waymo.  No driver, not even an emergency human in the drivers seat.  

Edited Sunday at 14:13 by Tony_S

[SM42]

Mrs SM42 has entered the building. 

 

So far I have got away with the man tidy state of SM42 Towers. 

 

 

Andy

 

Oops. Spoke too soon

[The White Rabbit]

And there was me thinking DCC stood for Deltics Can't Count... 

 

Plus one for yesterday afternoon spent playing trains. (And quaffing champagne and scoffing chocolate cake, our local area group has high catering standards)! A pleasant couple of hours were spent running various live steam devices round 32mm gauge track. In contrast, today has been very grey and wet, as I type the rain is drumming on the conservatory roof with some enthusiasm. 

 

Three pics attached, cropped a bit to avoid embarrassing anyone who might have excused their absence from home by giving other reasons... 

 

Now am I going to get brownie points for balancing the interests of the 'red' engine fraternity with the green engine fan club - or am I going to upset both groups? 

 

 

There was nearly an out of scale cat in this frame as well - she was happy enough with 'colonial' stock (and W&L, L&B and WHR trains) but didn't like Taliesin and slate wagons... curious ... so much for getting a picture of a cat watching the trains.  

 

 

And further to my own experiments a few days ago, someone brought their Go Pro along and had a bash at doing a driver's eye view in better resolution than my gear can manage: 

 

 

Edited Sunday at 17:36 by The White Rabbit
doziness

[rockershovel]

My late mother spent her 19th birthday as a volunteer Red Cross nurse during the Blitz, with the Luftwaffe raining micro-aggressions upon her....

 

The BMW and Zundapp combinations were the Wehrmacht analogy of the Jeep, something the Germans never developed. The sidecar wheel drive had a locking differential, something still in use today. The bike also had a high/low transfer box through which all ratios drove

 

Norton developed a seriously dangerous sidecar outfit with a dog-clutch driving an extended axle. Most of them were abandoned at Dunkirk, which was probably for the best. 

 

 

Edited Sunday at 15:21 by rockershovel

[New Haven Neil]

1 hour ago, The White Rabbit said:

Now am I going to get brownie points for balancing the interests of the 'red' engine fraternity with the green engine fan club - or am I going to upset both groups? 

 

Ah, I also took one of those green things yesterday, almost identical to that one, but it retired in disgrace with a stuck whistle valve letting all the hot dihydro monoxygen out.  It's in my bad books for sure.  So maybe the red lot are right? I do have a red engine.....should have taken that but it's a little light for the formidable gradient on Bill's railway.

 

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

2 hours ago, The White Rabbit said:

Plus one for yesterday afternoon spent playing trains. (And quaffing champagne and scoffing chocolate cake, our local area group has high catering standards)! A pleasant couple of hours were spent running various live steam devices round 16mm gauge track. In contrast, today has been very grey and wet, as I type the rain is drumming on the conservatory roof with some enthusiasm. 

Now are you sure it was 16mm gauge, because it looks twice that to my beady eye?

[rockershovel]

I'm loving the pictures of the outdoor NG live steam 

[Happy Hippo]

As part of the post exhibition sort out, or returning equipment to the stores, I decided to have a quick stocktake on the pannier fleet.

 

The current stock is as follows:

 

57xx  1 x Minerva; 1 x Dapol.

8750  2 x Minerva; 1 x Dapol; 1 x Kitbuilt(ABS?)

64xx  1 x Lionheart

74xx  1 x Lionheart

 

I don't think I really need any more unless a 16xx or a 34/84/94xx drops into my shopping basket.

 

Suddenly realising the size of the pannier fleet made me think of a reasonably sized loco facility to store them and give them the occasional potter about.  Nothing along the lines of Dave's Midsland magnificence, but a small(ish) valleys shed. 

 

Something along the lines of Dowlais Cae Harris or Ferndale:  The rest are just too big.

 

Of course, I'm now scheming out another layout to compliment PN, whilst using the same cassette tables.

 

There is the homage to the Ferry Road(Cardiff) freight lines or Rech Capel Junction. This either a S Wales version of a simplified Coleford Junction in the FoD, or a more complicated version of the line from Blodwell Junction up to Nantmawr quarry, on the Tanat Valley line.

 

I presume this fit of madness has been brought on by the space left in the garage due to PN being in a dismantled state.

Edited Sunday at 18:42 by Happy Hippo

[The White Rabbit]

1 hour ago, New Haven Neil said:

Ah, I also took one of those green things yesterday, almost identical to that one, but it retired in disgrace with a stuck whistle valve letting all the hot dihydro monoxygen out.  It's in my bad books for sure.  So maybe the red lot are right? I do have a red engine.....should have taken that but it's a little light for the formidable gradient on Bill's railway.

 

My 'stud' is similar to a ship's navigation lights, one red, one green and one 'white'... Yesterday saw the 'red' one's turn - the green (a Karen) has a sticky RC switch and has embarrassed herself at the last two outings with excessively feminine capriciousness. The red [Lady Anne] is older and doesn't have a water gauge but so far has been more reliable if a little more prone to 'horizontal oscillation' due to the short wheelbase. [Her bum wobbles a bit]. Both are decent engines when they work, plenty of haulage and good range. No whistles on either, though it's an optional extra I'm looking at. 

 

The picture was of some of our host's engines, they were lined up and the sun was shining, so it would have been rude not to snap one off...

[The White Rabbit]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

Now are you sure it was 16mm gauge, because it looks twice that to my beady eye?

 

No... It was indeed SM32/16mm scale - I blame someone blathering in me lughole while I'm trying to post... duly amended, apologies all. 

[PupCam]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

As part of the post exhibition sort out, or returning equipment to the stores, I decided to have a quick stocktake on the pannier fleet.

 

The current stock is as follows:

 

57xx  1 x Minerva; 1 x Dapol.

8750  2 x Minerva; 1 x Dapol; 1 x Kitbuilt(ABS?)

64xx  1 x Lionheart

74xx  1 x Lionheart

 

I don't think I really need any more unless a 16xx or a 34/84/94xx drops into my shopping basket.

 

 

Sounds like a need for a few sessions with "Panniers Anonymous" to me!    Now, where did I get to in SNG's biography?

 

 

[Chris Snowdon]

10 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

Morning, from a mizzly generally yeuch rock, 11C feels like 5,

 

re Nimbus...es...ii....Rockershovel has said all that needs to be really.  You'd have to try hard to make a 750cc four cylinder engine make less power.  They often show up here in Manx week, a group of Danes arrive en masse with them, brave folk!  IIRC the Danish Post Office used them in great numbers, hence a high 'survival rate', they are a very simple design.  As for the heat shield, it isn't an uncommon design, our little street scrambler Hondas have a similar affair, never burnt myself on one.

 

 

As for cranes with odd length legs, the breakwater in South Shields had such a device, until it was scrapped in the 70's.

 

 

 

Thanks all for the info about the bikes.

 

Also, thanks to NHN for the photo of the South Shields crane - A magnificent beast, which I don't remember, but I am sure (from almost as long ago) that the Tynemouth cranes had a similar arrangement, just somewhat taller in height-difference and narrower in track.

 

regards

cs

[Chris Snowdon]

Doing the washing-up can give a slow memory time to work...

IIRC, there was a small layout featured in RM a couple of years ago, set on an inland wharf in East Anglia.  The creator had decided to make the dockside crane work, and had really gone to town on it, so that the jib didn't only luff and slew, but the entire device could do level-luffing.  I was very impressed by that and would be very interested to see it in operation.

 

regards

cs

[Northmoor]

20 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

So why wasn't the nursing home prosecuted for not having enough proper restraints, thus forcing the staff to resort to such measures?

 

I don't blame the carers, with people like you (who have no clue about what geriatric care really involves) baying for my blood, I'd scarper too.

 

Tying a demented patient to their bed to prevent them from hurting themselves isn't necessarily abuse, serving them slop in order to make more money is https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/care-homes-spending-just-244-13903615?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_reading_button#amp-readmore-target https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/27/social-care-britain-business-plan-elderly-mistreated-homes-profit

And the "carers" you so obviously despise, are equally trapped as the people they look after.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-67684417.amp

 

But it's easier to go after some 'carers' at their wit's end trying to stop a demented patient from going walkabout than go after the rich and powerful care home owners, isn't it?

Ricky Gervais may be "Marmite" to many but some of his work is excellent and thought-provoking satire on particular professions.  His series "Derek", set in a care home, wasn't perfect but the message was very clear; there are a lot of people doing thankless work looking after very vulnerable people, for pitiful wages (and often being asked to do it for even less) and while the cases of abuse rightly get attention, families are capable of being unbelievably mercenary with their elderly relatives. 

 

I find it eyebrow-raising how some relatively wealthy people will try all sorts of financial wizardry to get the state to pay for 100% of the care, when the elderly relative has an estate worth high six or even seven figures.  Even were they to be in the home for several years, the inheritance would still be substantial, but not substantial enough, apparently.

[AndyID]

11 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

I bet. And this was 1971. Everyone says the NHS is broken now - but that tale says it was utterly unfit for purpose in 1971, long before the money-making concept of NHS Trusts was invoked in 1990. 

 

I never thought of it like that but I have to agree with you. Anyway, she certainly was "baptized by fire" and she is a really excellent nurse. The thing about being married to a nurse is one should not expect a lot of sympathy for minor ailments but when you do get a lot of sympathy you know you really have a problem 😄

 

We were engaged not too long after that and married the following year.

 

Some character seems to have photo-bombed this shot.

[AndyID]

6 hours ago, rockershovel said:

My late mother spent her 19th birthday as a volunteer Red Cross nurse during the Blitz, with the Luftwaffe raining micro-aggressions upon her....

 

The BMW and Zundapp combinations were the Wehrmacht analogy of the Jeep, something the Germans never developed. The sidecar wheel drive had a locking differential, something still in use today. The bike also had a high/low transfer box through which all ratios drove

 

Norton developed a seriously dangerous sidecar outfit with a dog-clutch driving an extended axle. Most of them were abandoned at Dunkirk, which was probably for the best. 

 

 

 

Just shows how little I know about bikes. I always thought the sidecar wheel was not powered!

 

From what I remember the Nimbus bikes I saw had a distinctly pre-war/homemade look about them. I thought they had been built around some available source of four cylinder car engines. 😄

[Craigw]

 

"The BMW and Zundapp combinations were the Wehrmacht analogy of the Jeep, something the Germans never developed. The sidecar wheel drive had a locking differential, something still in use today. The bike also had a high/low transfer box through which all ratios drove"

 

No.

 

The Kubelwagen and the Schwimmwagen were the German equivalents. The motorcycles and sidecars were used primarily for communications and some recce activities.

[AndyID]

It's a story I told before but it might be worth a do-over.

 

My school pal John Gilmour (who had been renamed Fred Lawnmower by the class wag) was an orderly at the local hospital. He, Lorna and I were having a chat one night and Lorna and "Fred" started talking about some of the things they had witnessed. I almost passed out! (no kidding).

 

Fred had a running pre-war MG TC which he offered to me for fifty quid! I still regret not buying it but at the time I had nowhere to put it.

[AndyID]

I think I've finally cracked it 😄

 

Despite my career in digital electronics I'm not a big fan of DCC. DCC is great if you want to be the engine driver but for whatever reason I'd prefer the trains to respond to the signals.

 

It's really quite easy to make a DC controller that maintains speed by increasing track voltage to respond to changes in curvature, gradient etc. but the snag is it only works if the resistance between the controller, including the motor's resistance, is constant. Unfortunately rail has some resistance and fishplates etc only make it worse.

 

The idea is to determine the actual resistance of the circuit frequently enough to determine the motor's speed. Turns out that might not be so difficult. Small positive or negative changes in the supplied current will also result in a change in the applied voltage and from that it's not very difficult to determine the total resistance of the circuit. Good old Georg Ohm.

[iL Dottore]

3 hours ago, Northmoor said:

I find it eyebrow-raising how some relatively wealthy people will try all sorts of financial wizardry to get the state to pay for 100% of the care, when the elderly relative has an estate worth high six or even seven figures.  Even were they to be in the home for several years, the inheritance would still be substantial, but not substantial enough, apparently.

But isn't that the conundrum with the welfare state? If it is for everyone, then everybody pays in - regardless of income or wealth, but equally then everyone can take out - regardless of income or wealth. Once you start means-testing (which what the above really is) then it's no longer a welfare-state per se.

 

It's a problem that better minds than I have failed to resolve. On the one hand, you could argue, with the welfare state everyone gets the same level of mediocre and on the other with a full-blown capitalist system some get the very best there is, whilst others go without.

 

As for nationalisation vs privatisation: either can function well, provided there is close oversight and accountability. Otherwise, as we have seen in the UK, the nationalised industries are run for the benefit of the members of the most powerful unions and s*d the customer; or the privatised industries are run for the benefit of shareholders and the board of directors and s*d the customer.

 

I think that what Britain needs more than anything is true accountability at all levels. An accountability with teeth (so to speak). Whether Union Leader or CEO if you sign off on something illegal and/or detrimental to the country as a whole then you go to jail Full Stop (plus wouldn't it be amusing to have the CEO and the Union Boss share the same cell?)

[rockershovel]

2 hours ago, Craigw said:

 

"The BMW and Zundapp combinations were the Wehrmacht analogy of the Jeep, something the Germans never developed. The sidecar wheel drive had a locking differential, something still in use today. The bike also had a high/low transfer box through which all ratios drove"

 

No.

 

The Kubelwagen and the Schwimmwagen were the German equivalents. The motorcycles and sidecars were used primarily for communications and some recce activities.

No. The VW lightweight staff cars had no 4WD capability and very limited load carrying or cross-country abilities. 

 

The Scwimmwagen had the 4wd capability but wasn't adopted in any numbers 

 

The Wehrmacht were still a horse-drawn army to a great extent.

Edited yesterday at 00:56 by rockershovel

[Craigw]

1 minute ago, rockershovel said:

No. The VW lightweight staff cars had no 4WD capability and very limited load carrying or cross-country abilities. 

 

The Wehrmacht were still a horse-drawn army to a great extent.

 

The Kubel and schwimm were not staff cars and were used for all functions. The Schwimmwagen was 4wd, the Kubel not.

 

The Wehrmacht was the Army - Navy and Airforce. The Heer (Army) was very reliant on horse drawn equipment, especially in the non-mechanised infantry and supply units. The Penzer divisions were usually better equipped albeit that they usually had a mix of armoured and motorised infantry.

[rockershovel]

42 minutes ago, iL Dottore said:

But isn't that the conundrum with the welfare state? If it is for everyone, then everybody pays in - regardless of income or wealth, but equally then everyone can take out - regardless of income or wealth. Once you start means-testing (which what the above really is) then it's no longer a welfare-state per se.

 

It's a problem that better minds than I have failed to resolve. On the one hand, you could argue, with the welfare state everyone gets the same level of mediocre and on the other with a full-blown capitalist system some get the very best there is, whilst others go without.

 

As for nationalisation vs privatisation: either can function well, provided there is close oversight and accountability. Otherwise, as we have seen in the UK, the nationalised industries are run for the benefit of the members of the most powerful unions and s*d the customer; or the privatised industries are run for the benefit of shareholders and the board of directors and s*d the customer.

 

I think that what Britain needs more than anything is true accountability at all levels. An accountability with teeth (so to speak). Whether Union Leader or CEO if you sign off on something illegal and/or detrimental to the country as a whole then you go to jail Full Stop (plus wouldn't it be amusing to have the CEO and the Union Boss share the same cell?)

The UK, unlike most European countries has never had a Communist Party of any meaningful size or influence. 

 

Nor has it had a Catholic Party (or a C of E Party, for that matter)

 

The Labour Party was formed as the political arm of the Trades Union movement, hence the relationship between the two. The Trades Union movement derived from Methodism, a Protestant Non-Conformist movement originating in the late 1600s - hence the religious imagery still used, such as the "Tolpuddle Martyrs" and the use of the term "Chapters" in some unions. 

 

Hence the division between Fabian, "progressive liberal" leftist thinking (which currently dominates the Labour Party) and the older, worker-focussed version which saw no contradiction in placing its members interests in paramount position. The bitter struggles in the construction industry, epitomised at the Isle of Grain arose from this. 

 

The TUC was strongly Eurosceptic and strongly opposed to immigration, particularly of contract workers. Most Trades Unions of the time used the Closed Shop to exclude migrant workers.

 

 

[rockershovel]

The central problem of nursing care for the elderly revolves around changing demographics.

 

One might think that we had never experienced a pandemic before, judging by the events of 2020-23 but this is quite untrue. 

 

However in the SARS epidemic of the 2000s we dealt with it by closing down international travel. Nor was the immigrant community anything near the present size. So it never really made an impact here (I encountered it in the Caspian region and there was nothing funny about it). 

 

In the "Hong Kong Flu" epidemic of the late 1960s the average life expectancy was about 73. We did not have the substantial population of octogenarians in nursing care. 

 

The Conservatives really set this hare running in the 1980s and early 90s. The house price inflation of the late-1980s "Lawson boom" led to John Major specifically advocating transmission of family assets through inheritance ("wealth cascading down the generations", in his 1991 Conference speech). My late mother regarded the value of her house as her security for her old age (the inflation of the 1960s and 1970s was a recent memory; no howls of exrcration against "rich pensioners" in THOSE days).