The Night Mail

[Dave Hunt]

10 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

For instance at the start of the operating sequence of Pantmawr North, both up and down homes are pulled off, which represents the signal box being switched out.

 

Or me being in charge 🥺

 

Dave

[Chris Snowdon]

14 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

It goes the other way. Greater cross-sectional area will have less resistance 😄

Hmm - another reason why I was right to give up on physics.  Thanks for correcting me - I have now remembered how and why heating elements work...

[Chris Snowdon]

15 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

No BIKE OIL! it will destroy any plastic. Only use oil that is compatible with plastic. In the US Labelle has a range of lubricants that are compatible with plastic. Dunno about the UK.

 

 

Understood - this stuff isn't 3-in-1 or WD40, it's a non-conductive teflon lubricant rather than penetrating oil.  A tiny amount rubbed on and then off again seems to help on metal/metal mechanical parts.

[AndyID]

8 hours ago, PupCam said:

 

 

When the Mimram Modellers started to build their first S4 layout "Clayton East" back in the late '80s we decided to go the fully mechanically interlocked lever frame route.     We used Derek Mundys leverframe (extended with a couple of extra levers) and Alan Austin's "Ambis Engineering" locking frame.    It was fascinating learning about then working out the interlocking for Clayton East.     Sadly the layout was never completed (just as well as we had next to no stock to run on it!) but I still have the lever frame.  Actually, you can still operate a full sequence of the layout using it and a vivid imagination 🤣

 

 

 

Whilst investigating the Modratec version you mention (which I presume is now defunct)  I came across this beauty on the S4 forum.    

 

What a thing of beauty!   It looks like a real, proper engineered job to me, absolutely love it!

 

 

 

 

I always thought all the fancy mechanical interlocking was a bit of overkill. It's much simpler to supply 100 volts or so to the levers that are locked.

[AndyID]

6 minutes ago, Chris Snowdon said:

Understood - this stuff isn't 3-in-1 or WD40, it's a non-conductive teflon lubricant rather than penetrating oil.  A tiny amount rubbed on and then off again seems to help on metal/metal mechanical parts.

 

Ah! That sounds much better. 3-in-1 is deadly (don't ask me how I know)

[Chris Snowdon]

8 minutes ago, Chris Snowdon said:

Understood - this stuff isn't 3-in-1 or WD40, it's a non-conductive teflon lubricant rather than penetrating oil.  A tiny amount rubbed on and then off again seems to help on metal/metal mechanical parts.

And on another maintenance project, which does involve plastic/plastic friction, I am considering the following action:  To file all faces flat of moulding traces and any other witness marks, then clean, and when thoroughly dry, to try a rub on and then off again approach with some decent furniture polish (the sort with lots of beeswax in it but not much else in it).  Has anyone tried this?  In this case, am assuming the gears are polystyrene not nylon/delrin.

[AndyID]

Now that's a first!

 

I had a follow-up appointment on Thursday with the sturgeon who did a nice job on my noggin. His office just called to find out if I still needed to see him. He will have seen all the recent diagnostics and decided the visit is not necessary. We scrubbed it! It's either good news or very, very bad news. 😂

[polybear]

18 minutes ago, Chris Snowdon said:

And on another maintenance project, which does involve plastic/plastic friction, I am considering the following action:  To file all faces flat of moulding traces and any other witness marks, then clean, and when thoroughly dry, to try a rub on and then off again approach with some decent furniture polish (the sort with lots of beeswax in it but not much else in it).  Has anyone tried this?  In this case, am assuming the gears are polystyrene not nylon/delrin.

 

You can buy small blocks of beeswax on the 'bay VERY cheaply (ask Bear how he knows....); I've just been given a recent tip that rubbing some on a piercing saw blade works wonders....

[AndyID]

I did Latin (which is actually quite handy) and French until I was kicked out. Despite spending a fair amount of time in France I was always handed the anglaise menu but no problem in Germany at all despite never having studied it at all.

 

It's the Scottish intonation. I must have modified it quite a bit over the years so that people can understand me here but I think I screwed-up. Not sure why but people seem to love my accent. I should have got a job in broadcasting.

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

Thats just as bad as being instantly identified as to which shore of the Mersey you reside on...

 

I better be careful as my father was born and grew up, over the water. 

 

Jamie

[jamie92208]

2 minutes ago, AndyID said:

I did Latin (which is actually quite handy) and French until I was kicked out. Despite spending a fair amount of time in France I was always handed the anglaise menu but no problem in Germany at all despite never having studied it at all.

 

It's the Scottish intonation. I must have modified it quite a bit over the years so that people can understand me here but I think I screwed-up. Not sure why but people seem to love my accent. I should have got a job in broadcasting.

Not far from you a young lady once told me that she loved my accent. 

 

We were on a train. 

 

Jamie

[Chris Snowdon]

16 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

Ah! That sounds much better. 3-in-1 is deadly (don't ask me how I know)

We've all (I imagine) made oil-based mistakes in the past and a lesson learnt the hard way is one seldom forgotten!

3-in-One is actually half-decent smoke fluid, until you spill it, or run the loco slowly so that the oil vapourises without smoking-off, thereby softening the chimney, then the smokebox, then the boiler...

WD40 will free a jammed mechanism, and clean-out the old crud, but must be followed-through with white spirit of some sort.  Lighter-fluid is quicker and simpler (and, in a closed room, quite relaxing!).

Over the years I've had two rather memorably interesting bits of advice.

1 - For smoke oil, save money by just using baby-oil from the chemist's.  Logistically interesting, like when you get nice smiles and "ahhs", but then you open your mouth to change your foot and explain it's for an "alternative use".  Or when I asked a lady her shade of nail-varnish, because I wanted to use the same stuff as an acrylic touch-up.  Should have stopped with just asking, not explaining why.  Can confirm that baby-oil does actually seem to work (not very well, but it does) in a Hornby unit, but it probably depends upon the smoke unit - I never tried it in a Seuthe and had given up by the time I got my first Synchrosmoke - which has been dry for years but still occasionally puffs!

2 - "Use KY".  No, No, and again No.  Regardless of how "cool" or "with it" my advisor was trying to be, a mixture of what is basically glycerine and vaseline is also basically sugar-glue and oil.  So "No".

Apologies to any who run diecast or tinplate, plastics must be less of a concern...

regards

cs

[AndyID]

10 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

Not far from you a young lady once told me that she loved my accent. 

 

We were on a train. 

 

Jamie

 

And ????

[Chris Snowdon]

17 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

You can buy small blocks of beeswax on the 'bay VERY cheaply (ask Bear how he knows....); I've just been given a recent tip that rubbing some on a piercing saw blade works wonders....

Thanks for that - I am now actually tempted to ask, so shall.  How does Bear know?

I avoid the 'bay unless checking whatever appears to be market-price for stuff - I fall into the stereotype of having tried to buy a piano on it at the wrong time of day, and I wasn't even drunk when I did it.

I have a tin of beeswax which I use when I'm feeling house-(flat-)proud.  Otherwise, I have a spray-can of similar stuff.

Can confirm that wax on a saw-blade helps - My late grandmother taught me to use the flat-end of a candle along the length of a normal saw's blade, above the teeth.  As the teeth cut, the blade would warm and so it would self-lubricate against the wood and wouldn't snag if the wood was still a bit green. Then go at the offcuts end-on with a hatchet.  Never tried it with a piercing-saw, but seem to recall that it's fairly normal to use an emulsion on lathe-blades in metal-working.

[AndyID]

I think this might have something to do with my resistance to DCC. Some seem to like making things a lot more complicated than they really are 🤣

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/188620-motor-speed/#comment-5639526

 

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[Chris Snowdon]

45 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I better be careful as my father was born and grew up, over the water. 

 

Jamie

Port Sunlight was lovely when I visited it.

[SM42]

One thing  I could never get my head round ( and probably put me off learning language) was the insistence on having the right accent ( I'm learning a language not am dram  auditions) 

 

I know few foreigners who speak English with with any sort of English accent ( the few I do are friends' children mostly brought up here.) They speak Polish then dip into English with a West Midlands  accent, e.g  foive, hilarious)

 

My Polish friends speak English with a Polish accent, I speak Polish with a West Midland accent. 

 

I suspect the accent thing put a lot of kids off, cos you sound stupid and will have the mick taken incessantly. 

 

Andy

[Northmoor]

13 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Language teaching in English schools is a national disgrace and has long been so. It goes right to the top; David Cameron had the most expensive education money could buy, but had no useful command of any foreign language. Heath's French was the subject of derision even among the English. Macmillan spoke French but he was a lifelong Francophile. 

 

However there's a reason for this. Polylingualism in Europe is driven by the fact that a lot of people live within a bus-ride of another country, some of which are only the size of Rutland anyway. Many European countries have had very variable borders over time; Germany and Poland, for example. When Angela Merkel referred to there being "three million Poles in Germany" she meant nothing like what UKIP meant by "the Polish population of Lincolnshire", a county untroubled by the tides of war and revolution for the past century and more. 

 

Many Europeans also hear foreign language media on a daily basis. This is crucial, it familiarises the listener and habituates them. 

 

They see nothing unusual in this. Most of Central and Southern Europe was once within the Dual Monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an Empire which used multiple languages of government. This us now beyond living memory, but only just. The subsequent Soviet era is well within living memory. 

 

Learning Gaelic or Welsh is an interesting case. Few Scots or Welsh actually speak either language. A colleague of mine turned down a posting to Milford Haven (with BP) because of the disruption to his children's education resulting from the requirement to study Welsh in school, at the expense of other languages. BP were unsurprised and put him on a single-status, rotational posting instead...

Ironic that Cameron should be so poor at languages when Nick Clegg, criticised for being so similar in background, is I think, fluent in four.

 

I take your point about Mainland Europeans learning English; I recall a Dutch colleague of a friend explaining to him that the British shouldn't feel too ashamed at not being bi-lingual.  As he put it, which language would you pick, as you effectively have about six neighbouring ones to choose from.  It's amusing hearing British footballers who've played in Spain for a while come back apparently unable to say much in Spanish.  Then you get the (Spanish) Arsenal manager who is apparently fluent in four languages.  Someone with a real aptitude for complex mathematics is rightly praised and often hailed as a genius, but I think anyone who can speak at least three languages fluently is also showing a high level of intelligence.

 

Interesting what you say about learning Welsh.  I went to school less than ten miles from Milford Haven; starting in 1983 we didn't have to learn Welsh and hadn't at Primary level either.  French was compulsory (with an awful teacher) and you chose Welsh or German for the first three years.  It was later when the syllabus changed to do all three for one year then drop one until your GCSE options.  But it was only Welsh classes, not teaching through the medium of Welsh, which is only coming in recently through special schools.  I wish our system had changed earlier though; I found German easy (forgotten most of it now though) but some conversational Welsh would have been nice, if only to talk to my Brother-in-Law in his first language.

[AndyID]

3 minutes ago, SM42 said:

One thing  I could never get my head round ( and probably put me off learning language) was the insistence on having the right accent ( I'm learning a language not am dram  auditions) 

 

I know few foreigners who speak English with with any sort of English accent ( the few I do are friends' children mostly brought up here.) They speak Polish then dip into English with a West Midlands  accent, e.g  foive, hilarious)

 

My Polish friends speak English with a Polish accent, I speak Polish with a West Midland accent. 

 

I suspect the accent thing put a lot of kids off, cos you sound stupid and will have the mick taken incessantly. 

 

Andy

 

It is a very strange thing. In my case the appeal seems to be an excellent command of the language with a slightly foreign accent. I suppose that adds an element of mystery.

 

I've been on a ski chairlift when a lady next to me told me she could listen to me talking all day while her partner was beside her. I don't think it was any sort of "come-on".

[Happy Hippo]

3 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

 

I hang my head in shame and just nod my head when I'm asked something. I've found its better that way.

You sound like Ted off The Fast Show.

[AndyID]

1 hour ago, jamie92208 said:

I better be careful as my father was born and grew up, over the water. 

 

Jamie

 

Ireland?

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, Chris Snowdon said:

And on another maintenance project, which does involve plastic/plastic friction, I am considering the following action:  To file all faces flat of moulding traces and any other witness marks, then clean, and when thoroughly dry, to try a rub on and then off again approach with some decent furniture polish (the sort with lots of beeswax in it but not much else in it).  Has anyone tried this?  In this case, am assuming the gears are polystyrene not nylon/delrin.

Another way of lubricating plastic on plastic moving surfaces is to rub them with a soft pencil.

[AndyID]

4 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Another way of lubricating plastic on plastic moving surfaces is to rub them with a soft pencil.

 

Good old graphite 😄

[SM42]

The bathroom window at SM42 Towers is not well. 

 

The bottom hinge ( one of those double glazing parallelogram type efforts) of the opener has gone a bit wierd so it is hard to close if you open it too far. 

Just to the first latch is fine, past that it gets tricky

 

It has to be closed in a sort of rocking motion to get the opener back in the frame of bizarrely rubbing the hinge with your fingers seems to work too. 

 

The concept is lost on Mrs SM42,  who throws it wide open and then force closes it so its all twisted,    in tight at the top and 5mm out at the bottom. 

 

The window is currently about half open, but not open too much I'm told. 

 

How the glass , a material  notorious for its ability to bend, is still in one piece is beyond me. 

 

I really need to get it sorted soon.

 

 

Andy