The Night Mail

[Hroth]

7 hours ago, Hroth said:

Mornin' All!

 

Seeing as I've not seen a moving kettle all summer*, I'm off to Chester General this morning, to watch Sir Nigel Gresley pass through on a railtour from Holyhead to Cardiff.

 

Blink and its gone!

 

* Its still technically Summer, the equinox is still a few days off....

 

 

Hurrah!!!

 

 

It was only about 10 minutes late.

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

Looks like a certain terrorist organisation might have to revert to good old fashioned HF morse for comms.

 

Although it's rather easy to to DF and triangulate.

 

Nor would the use of semaphore or smoke signals be a good idea as it's rather visual for satellite or drone surveillance.

 

 

[J. S. Bach]

I do not have to travel very far at all to see MALLARD:

Just turn my head!

 

 

 

BTW, it cost me a whole buck at a local train show!

Edited yesterday at 15:26 by J. S. Bach
To edit the post

[Winslow Boy]

4 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

Ah, but does the Bear have a shed??

 

 

You know the bear isn't the only one with a List.

[polybear]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

Looks like a certain terrorist organisation might have to revert to good old fashioned HF morse for comms.

 

Although it's rather easy to to DF and triangulate.

 

Nor would the use of semaphore or smoke signals be a good idea as it's rather visual for satellite or drone surveillance.

 

 

 

Carrier Pigeons?

 

10/10 awarded for dastardly cunning - though I imagine a fair few innocents may have been casualties.

[polybear]

16 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

You know the bear isn't the only one with a List.

 

Bear doesn't have "A List"

He has "The List"....

 😁

 

 

[jamie92208]

Good afternoon from a sunny Charente.  I was meant to get back from the land of Toblerone, and cow bells today but sadly my day touring Switzerland had to ve aborted on Monday as Andy was not well.  I managed to get him home  yestetday and he went to see the quack and things have settled down.  Today has been an odd job day and getting Admin sorted out post trip.  Some good trains were seen but both of us managed to loose our notebooks at different points.  Some of the data has been retrieved by comparing notes and studying photos, so all is not lost. 

 

We had a good afternoon with Flavio sampling cakes,beer, tram rides and trains. 

 

Time to get on now.

 

Jamie

[Happy Hippo]

Both the 74xx  and the Class 25 Sulzer Type 2, are now fitted with sound decoders and are working.

 

The 74xx can be put back together once I've fitted a crew; well it would have been daft not to as I already had the cab off.

 

The Class 25 would benefit from another speaker from my stash and I really need to wire up all the lights:  I was worried I'd need to fit some resistors to the LEDs to prevent them going pop, but on close examination of the circuitry, they are already fitted with surface mounted resistors, so the problem does not arise.

 

However, I'm probably going to extend some of the factory fitted wiring as it will make it a a lot easier to wire up.

 

To assist, I've bought a bag of 2.5mm pitch PCB screw blocks, which saves a lot of soldering.

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

once I've fitted a crew; well it would have been daft not to as I already had the cab off.

I have appealed for help on an appropriate thread for a similar problem. I had no difficulty removing the body from a Heljan 00 diesel (10800),  but there didn’t seem to be access to where a driver would be. I didn’t want to apply force to the cab moulding in case there is a hidden fixing. I read through the whole Heljan 10800 thread just in case!

[Oldddudders]

2 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

You know the bear isn't the only one with a List.

Port or starboard?

[Winslow Boy]

15 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Port or starboard?

All depends on which way you pass it I'm told.

[Winslow Boy]

2 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Bear doesn't have "A List"

He has "The List"....

 😁

 

 

True but do you have a ledger.

[AndyID]

42 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

All depends on which way you pass it I'm told.

 

Glad you were able to shed some light on that.

[SM42]

5 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Looks like a certain terrorist organisation might have to revert to good old fashioned HF morse for comms.

 

Although it's rather easy to to DF and triangulate.

 

Nor would the use of semaphore or smoke signals be a good idea as it's rather visual for satellite or drone surveillance.

 

 

 

The Warsaw Uprising was co-ordinated by word of mouth and runners

 

Andy

[PhilJ W]

3 hours ago, polybear said:

 

Carrier Pigeons?

 

10/10 awarded for dastardly cunning - though I imagine a fair few innocents may have been casualties.

Two children were killed and many other innocent people were maimed and blinded.

[New Haven Neil]

I'm getting ER-like delays loading up on this thread now.  :-(

[PhilJ W]

6 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

I'm getting ER-like delays loading up on this thread now.  :-(

It happens on all threads.

[Dave Hunt]

1 hour ago, Winslow Boy said:

All depends on which way you pass it I'm told.

 

The port always goes port.

 

Dave

[figworthy]

It appears that our resident even toed ungulate has some exotic company :

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/17/capybara-escapes-west-midlands-zoo-prompting-drone-hunt/

 

Adrian

[AndyID]

I did manage to find a few lines from William Topaz McGonagall on "The Scottish Inventors".

 

What a wondrous thing to have telly and penecillin
'Twer not for Baird and Alec Flemming, and the latter costs but a shilling.
And we shouldna forget Watt and Rankine
Or to get frae here to there we would be walking.

 

Then there was that instrument from hell
Invented by Alexander Graham Bell.
But I canna fault John McAdam he made the roads that once were bogs
For without him we'd be walking on roads made from Napier's logs.

 

 

 

Edited 14 hours ago by AndyID
Typhoo

[Chris Snowdon]

Hi jjb1970

Thanks for the picture of Bahia - Very new indeedy, and highly relevant to this topic because "Night Mail" includes, and always has included shipping (my big set is the Irish Mail, but I still don't know what happens to it after Holyhead).

Those big fairings on the focsles of new ships do look so strange, and yet they use exactly the same idea as those who used to sail cobles, with a tarp strung from the sprit to the mast..

Her bow looks a bit funny, though there seems to have been some return to "hatchet" bows recently.  Very interesting and thanks again

regards

cs

[jjb1970]

6 minutes ago, AndyID said:

I did manage to find a few lines from William Topaz McGonagall on "The Scottish Inventors".

 

What a wondrous thing to have telly and penecillin
'Twer not for Baird and Alec Flemming, and the latter costs costs but a shilling.
And we shouldna forget Watt and Rankine
Or to get frae here to there we would be walking.

 

Then there was that instrument from hell
Invented by Alexander Graham Bell.
But I canna fault John McAdam he made the roads that once were bogs
For without him we'd be walking on roads made from Napier's logs.

 

 

I find it sad that Rankine is largely forgotten, he was a brilliant man. The Rankine cycle is still the basis of steam power plant, he was a pioneer of the theory of heat engines.

[Chris Snowdon]

I think Wardale drew on Rankine's work in "The Red Devil", and also it's how "waste to energy" plants work...

regards

cs

[jjb1970]

3 minutes ago, Chris Snowdon said:

Hi jjb1970

Thanks for the picture of Bahia - Very new indeedy, and highly relevant to this topic because "Night Mail" includes, and always has included shipping (my big set is the Irish Mail, but I still don't know what happens to it after Holyhead).

Those big fairings on the focsles of new ships do look so strange, and yet they use exactly the same idea as those who used to sail cobles, with a tarp strung from the sprit to the mast..

Her bow looks a bit funny, though there seems to have been some return to "hatchet" bows recently.  Very interesting and thanks again

regards

cs

 

Bow form is a very happening area of naval architecture, there has been a huge amount of work in recent decades which has led to very different designs.

 

The vertical stem bow style (sometimes called the axe bow after a proprietary design) is intended to be more efficient across a range of operational conditions and also reduces hull stress and makes ships more comfortable. Highly flared bow designs lead to slamming in heavy weather which is uncomfortable and not great for the hull. Modern practice is to go through waves rather than ride over them.

 

If you can be sure of operating at design point a more traditional design with a bulbous bow is more efficient,  but as you move off design point or enter heavy seas efficiency drops. Although more modern designs are less efficient at a nominal design point they have much better efficiency across a range of speed, draft and sea state conditions.

 

A more extreme alternative is the X bow, that was more about maintaining a 'stable' and comfortable platform for offshore vessels but has been applied to all sorts of ship types.

 

This is changing ship design in other ways. Some of the very newest big container ships have moved the accommodation right up to the bow as it's advantageous for container stowage, that's been made possible as newer bow designs have transformed hull behaviour at the pointy end.

[Chris Snowdon]

Have had a brainstorm.  A possible model RMS, if one has the enormous aounts of time, money and space necessary, would be a down-scaled conversion of the old Marcle Models SD 14.  Leaving out most of the 'tween-deck detail, reduction of scale of above-decks equipment, masking over the superstructure and adding a RO-RO ramp at the stern, and then it might just work...

I've been to a few meetings at a place which has an HO-scale vehicle-ferry in their collection of models, including a couple of goods trains on the rail-deck (tankers and Interferry vans).  If memory serves, then it really can't be that much more than about twelve feet long...

regards

cs