The Night Mail

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

Maybe because it promised a way out?

 

Of course - Rugby.

 

(The town, not the sport.)

[J. S. Bach]

1 minute ago, Dave Hunt said:

Yes, a work colleague in San Diego said the same about Utah.

Dave

I've been to Utah, but just the bit down in Four Corners.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Corners

 

I did buy a neat T-shirt there with the following on it:

Front: THEY SAY THAT YOU CAN ONLY BE IN ONE PLACE AT A TIME

 

Back:            I'VE BEEN IN SIX PLACES:

          FOUR STATES AND TWO INDIAN NATIONS

 

[DaveF]

It has rained gently today, apparently the local floods are receeding and roads in town reopened though some shops etc are closed.  In the last few minutes heavy rain has returned.  It is now forecast to stop at 10p.m. and start again at 3a.m.

 

This afternoon I decided to run my Swiss n gauge layout.  For some time all went well until an old Minitrix crocodile suddenly stopped.  There was no apparent reason but there was a short circuit.

Note is is 12VDC - it is so old it couldn't be anything else (well over 40 years old).

 

Removing the screw which holds the circuit board which provides connections to the motor and it works.  Put the screw back and the short circuit returns.  The screw goes through a hole in the circuit board and actually forms one of the two connections from the chassis (negative) to the negative side of the circuit board and on to the negative side brush. 

 

So as it is all the same polarity how can there be a short circuit?   I suspect that with age the board has warped a bit and something elsewhere on the positive side touches something negative when the circuit board is screwed down tight.

 

Investigations continue.  

 

David

[Oldddudders]

Chez moi has been flooded, apparently. Alison has sent pics of water up to the railway-barn door. My insurance co had sent me a prior txt warning me, so that was thoughtful. The house is not affected, though. 

 

A nonsense of French bureaucracy meant that her middle son, Brodie, 19, who has lived in France since he was 3, was likely to be classified as an alien, subject to deportation. The Prefecture in Le Mans had been wonderfully unhelpful, refusing to even acknowledge his application for a Carte de Sejour, despite a clock ticking down. I suggested getting hold of the Consulate in Paris, and apparently that then led to the Ministry of Something-or-other getting involved. That was last week. Today, the  Carte miraculously arrived by post.....

[Dave Hunt]

31 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Of course - Rugby.

 

(The town, not the sport.)

 

And from there, of course, the world is your mollusc.

 

Dave

[jamie92208]

49 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Yes, a work colleague in San Diego said the same about Utah.

 

Dave

I once went to Fernley Nevada, once was enough. 

 

 

18 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Chez moi has been  Nevafaflooded, apparently. Alison has sent pics of water up to the railway-barn door. My insurance co had sent me a prior txt warning me, so that was thoughtful. The house is not affected, though. 

 

A nonsense of French bureaucracy meant that her middle son, Brodie, 19, who has lived in France since he was 3, was likely to be classified as an alien, subject to deportation. The Prefecture in Le Mans had been wonderfully unhelpful, refusing to even acknowledge his application for a Carte de Sejour, despite a clock ticking down. I suggested getting hold of the Consulate in Paris, and apparently that then led to the Ministry of Something-or-other getting involved. That was last week. Today, the  Carte miraculously arrived by post.....

That sounds so French.  I'm glad that the card has arrived but it must have been a bit worrying for Allison. Some friends are having great trouble renewing/extending their long stay visas,  they've now been sent temporary Attestations to produce along with their expired cards if needed. 

 

Jamie

[pH]

8 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

As well as my previous linguistic attributes I can swear in four other languages.

 

Twice a week, I play in a pickup soccer game. This being Canada, the players originally come from all over the world - our four best players are from Cambodia, Brazil, Jamaica and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The common language is ‘obscenity’.

[bbishop]

 Flavio, one of which?  I'm assuming a beer because SWMWG is Schweizerduytschin, and I doubt you would survive an aberration pertaining to the first picture.

[skipepsi]

2 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Yes I have been to Burnley but also policed various places in West Yorkshire that were definitely in the shallow end if not dried up. The upper Spen Valley and the various villages south of Pontefract come to mind. 

 

I had a year in Nottingham at Uni and have very happy memories of my time there.  I actually watched them start building the QMC.  The lift shafts were built first using slip form paving. 

 

Jamie

Hemsworth, South Kirby, South Elmsall and if you are fearless or stupid Thurnscoe/ Goldthorpe. Etched in my memory even though we moved south more than 30 years ago

[rockershovel]

5 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

The UK has various visa classes and permanent leave to remain for non-UK nationals with permanent right to live there.

 

I see dual nationality more as adding than subtracting. My offspring have dual nationality as a result of Mrs JJB being a Johnny foreigner (what is the feminine version of that?) and neither is any less British because of it. 

 

These days mixed nationality parents and shared culture and identity is increasingly just normal and common, I really don't see that as a bad thing.

Luxury beliefs of that sort are all very well until put to the test.

 

My late great-aunt had some horrific tales of Partition. She never returned to her homeland; nothing would have persuaded her to do so. 

 

I've seen things in the wreckage of the Former Soviet Union which were pretty hair-raising. Despite 70 years of intensive propaganda and social engineering, the FSU disintegrated into a tangle of racial and cultural infighting within months. 

 

Try sub-Saharan Africa for an object lesson in the dangers of cultural mingling.....

[polybear]

9 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

The point being overlooked is, who was Clegg's father and his father before him?

 

8 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Like most politicians, I don't think he had one!

 

After Uncle Psycho Bear died I was asked by Auntie Poly Bear to help sort his paperwork; in amongst this I found a copy of a letter he'd written to the P.M., a certain Mr Blair....

 

Now Uncle P. could be best described as having "somewhat strong views" on various matters - the Gov. being "anti-motorist" was a particular favourite (and his views on NCP Car Parks were positively x-rated 🤣).

 

Now whilst this letter could best be described as a Rant, it was a very well constructed, factual Rant.

 

However....

 

The final paragraph was an absolute scream.....

 

"Please pass on my regards to John Prescott** - you know him, don't you?  And his Father....if he has one"

 

**a.k.a "Johnny Two-Jags" - who was Minister for Transport at the time

 

Bear came as close to literally p1ssin' himself laughing as you can get  🤣

 

I saved that letter and it's safely in a scrap-book.

 

p.s.  And yes - he did get a reply from 10 Downing Street - though from a flunky rather than The Man Himself.  Personally I reckon he was too busy p1ssin' himself laughing.....

 

 

 

 

[DaveF]

It has only taken me 5 hours to solve the crocodile problem (the Minitrix one that is).

 

I eventually found that a wire soldered to the PCB on the pick up side had partly broken at the soldered joint and there were two very thin strands free.   When the PCB was screwed down they got trapped under the board's edge making contact with the chassis hence the short circuit.  

 

A new piece of wire has now been fitted.

 

By the way, as you know all n gauge locos are small to work on.  However with a model of a Swiss crocodile you have to remove 3 bodies.  Then you have two separate chassis with wheels, coupling rods etc to detach from the central chassis which contains the motor.  The screws are incredibly small and very good at hiding, especially the ones holding the outlying wheeled chassis to the central unit and they are not a standard size if you lose one, they have long shoulders, fortunately the one which went walkabout turned up again.

 

Then it has to go back together again.

 

The good bit is that not only does it work but it runs much better than for a very long time.

 

David

Edited Wednesday at 19:23 by DaveF

[New Haven Neil]

In an attempt to lighten matters:

 

Look what you can buy in Tesco!  Not sure I've ever seen a mauve one though.

 

[Happy Hippo]

4 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

In an attempt to lighten matters:

 

Look what you can buy in Tesco!  Not sure I've ever seen a mauve one though.

 

  Mild and versatile. An excellent choice.

 

The only other food related loco that readily springs to mind is this:

 

 

 

 

[Tony_S]

1 minute ago, New Haven Neil said:

Look what you can buy in Tesco!  Not sure I've ever seen a mauve one though.

Once upon a time (before we were married so long long ago) paneer wasn’t available in supermarkets. Aditi wanted to make some so went to buy some cheesecloth in the department store near where she lived in Ilford. This was called “Bodgers”. So Aditi went to the fabric department and asked if they had any cheesecloth, plain, undyed etc. The assistant asked what was it for and she said “making cheese’. He got quite irate and accused her of being unnecessarily sarcastic . I did interrupt to explain that she really was going to make some cheese called paneer. He actually knew what that was. 

[AndyID]

30 years ago when we lived in Northern New Jersey a friend from Scotland came for a visit. I picked him up at JFK and he commented on the drive back to NJ how much Long Island looked like Beirut.

[New Haven Neil]

I've just stumbled across this photo from a few weeks ago, can't recall if I posted it at the time.

 

Tony and I discussed ages ago Joe Works 009 kits, and I knew I had two.....somewhere, which I finally found.  This is my rather battered and worn Gamecock class Peckett they made a kit of.  It did a tremendous mileage on our old club 009 layout and frankly is totally clapped out.

 

 

[Northmoor]

On 08/10/2024 at 18:07, Willie Whizz said:

Here in Nottingham we get tired of actors in dramas set in the Queen of the Midlands fudging the way we talk by doing Yorkshire. 
 

The recent ‘Sherwood’ was somewhat better than most, but still not great. 
 

To get a feel for the real thing from older people in the poorer parts of the City, imagine Su Pollard dialled-down by 20%. 

Having not long previously lived in Worksop, I was impressed with all the main actors in The Full Monty - no doubt helped by the script - getting the local nuances of South Yorkshire/North Notts absolutely spot on.

[Northmoor]

22 hours ago, Chris Snowdon said:

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

So don't use KY where you should use Peco Electrolube?  I assume that vice versa must also apply, as the man who advised me thus was walking rather awkwardly.  

[Northmoor]

13 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I did learn some very down-to-earth Swedish that would probably not be all that useful if on holiday or doing business in the country.

Did you imagine using it with the Swedish detective with the leather trousers and Porsche 911 in The Bridge?

[Northmoor]

11 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I thought Rock Ferry was an album by Duffy, although I will readily admit to never listening to it, so cannot comment on whether it is worth a whirl.

It is and is pretty good.  I mainly bought it because Duffy and I went to the same school (but missed each other by about 5-6 years) so would have had the same music teacher.  Let's just say Duffy's contribution to music is as memorable as mine is forgettable.

[AndyID]

3 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

And from there, of course, the world is your mollusc.

 

Dave

 

Don't you mean oxter?

[pH]

3 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

Don't you mean oxter?

 

Niche joke, Andy.

[AndyID]

8 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

The UK has various visa classes and permanent leave to remain for non-UK nationals with permanent right to live there.

 

I see dual nationality more as adding than subtracting. My offspring have dual nationality as a result of Mrs JJB being a Johnny foreigner (what is the feminine version of that?) and neither is any less British because of it. 

 

These days mixed nationality parents and shared culture and identity is increasingly just normal and common, I really don't see that as a bad thing.

 

Lorna, I and our two daughters are all UK/US nationals. Our son is still on a Green Card. We have considered returning to the UK but we can't decide which nation is in the bigger mess.

[Mike Bellamy]

9 hours ago, GMKAT7 said:

We here in 'dreary Derby' also tire of Snottingham acting like the 'Queen of the Midlands '.

 

Of course there was the farce some time ago when East Midlands Airport was renamed Nottingham Airport, even though it was in Leicestershire with a Derby DE postcode - and there was already another Nottingham Airport at Tollerton (east of Nottingham).

 

7 hours ago, Tony_S said:

I have never ventured outside Derby railway station. 

 

Until Covid closed the venue, we ran the Derby Exhibition at the Derby Roundhouse, one of the very few remaining buildings of Derby Works. Being right next to the station, those of us running the pay desk knew every time a train had arrived as we then had another queue to clear - particularly as our friends at Railway Modeller ran a four page article about the history of the Roundhouse which of course also featured our exhibition there.

.