The Night Mail

[Hroth]

25 minutes ago, pH said:

There’s a wagon for them:

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/forums/topic/48144-whacky-signs/?do=findComment&comment=5649569

 

 

Don't do N!

Anyhow, folk go on about the size of tension lock couplings, but look at that monstrosity of a boxing glove coupling!

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Hroth
how did that that get there???

[pH]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

…
A certain RM doing the Dartmoor Survival Course made the Nationals when he phoned his Missus reverse-charges from a phone box and got her to book him into a Pub for a few days, full board.  His downfall was he got gobby about it in the Bar one night and someone bubbled him to The Boys at Poole.

By all accounts he didn't get b0lloked (yeah, right...) as "they are encouraged to use their wits etc. etc." but "it isn't in the spirit of the exercise and he WILL be repeating the Course....."

I know someone who did the RN survival course in the New Forest, with participants organized in pairs. They did resort to ‘liberating’ food from gardens and even from shop and pub counters. What they didn’t know was that an RM NCO was shadowing each pair (they never noticed “theirs”), settling up with owners and shopkeepers.

 

My acquaintance was a mature entrant to the RN officer intake. His previous job had been as an Outward Bound instructor. He thought the course was quite enjoyable.

[polybear]

3 minutes ago, pH said:

I know someone who did the RN survival course in the New Forest, with participants organized in pairs. They did resort to ‘liberating’ food from gardens and even from shop and pub counters. What they didn’t know was that an RM NCO was shadowing each pair (they never noticed “theirs”), settling up with owners and shopkeepers.

 

My acquaintance was a mature entrant to the RN officer intake. His previous job had been as an Outward Bound instructor. He thought the course was quite enjoyable.

 

I once knew an RN Pilot who did a Survival (or was it escape & evade?) course; some time afterwards when he was at some fancy Hotel for his Wedding Reception he realised that the last time he was there he was out back, going thru' the kitchen bins looking for food...

[petethemole]

On electric cars I was passed today by a Mustang Mach-E (electric) four door sedan, which surpised me.  Apperently they are a thing.  A 'thing' indeed; I just can't get my head round the idea of an electric Mustang.  Also by a car with a custom plate "**58 ANG" of which the last four digits were spaced to read "8ANG" i.e. "BANG".  The music issuing from it was mainly a very loud bass drum beat.

[TheQ]

At RAF Boulmer I was advised to not to volunteer for SAR trips... The North sea is cold all year round..

 

 

[jamie92208]

2 minutes ago, TheQ said:

At RAF Boulmer I was advised to not to volunteer for SAR trips... The North sea is cold all year round..

 

 

A quote from a Douglas Reeman novel.   A volunteer is someone who has misunderstood the question. 

 

Jamie 

[Northmoor]

59 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

I must have got the shi!!y end of the stick then. The ones I did - jungle, winter and desert, were all horrible, as were the sea survival ones and the dinghy drills we had to do every 18 months. The North Sea in February is not somewhere I would suggest taking a dip off the back of a swiftly moving air/sea rescue launch.

After our boss won it in a SSAFA charity auction, a group of us at work got to try out the DRIU at Portsmouth.  This is the replica of the inside of a warship which built in a tank which floods anfd fills the "frigate" through all the holes in the floor, walls etc.  I found it great fun, got pretty wet but got taken for a drink in the officers' mess afterwards.  A former MEO mate pointed out how lucky I was to do it in September when the mass of water wasn't especially cold, remarking that he always seemed to have to do it in February, although apparently it did encourage everyone to work quickly....

 

51 minutes ago, pH said:

I hope these figures were not established by practical experimentation!

Unfortunately I think Dr. Mengele made a go if it.

[AndyID]

1 hour ago, petethemole said:

On electric cars I was passed today by a Mustang Mach-E (electric) four door sedan, which surpised me.  Apperently they are a thing.  A 'thing' indeed; I just can't get my head round the idea of an electric Mustang.  Also by a car with a custom plate "**58 ANG" of which the last four digits were spaced to read "8ANG" i.e. "BANG".  The music issuing from it was mainly a very loud bass drum beat.

 

Are you sure it wasn't a 58 Anglia?

[AndyID]

Our local good doctor who owns three houses in our little community seems to be having a spot of bovver.

 

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/oct/21/spokane-dermatologist-william-werschler-accused-of/

[J. S. Bach]

5 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

On the subject of survival, many years ago I read an interesting article about how much of the body a person can loose and still live.

 

If I recall correctly, it was along the lines of 

 

You can loose

 

1.5 kidneys

3/4 of your liver

All 4 limbs

Both eyes

Your hearing

Most of your cerebral cortex

A good percentage of your cardiac muscle 

 

And you'd still live - it wouldn't be much of life and a very short one indeed  (unless you had someone to feed and clean you), but you'd be alive.

 

The human body is an amazing construct and even more fun than model railways to play with

What about one lung?

[Chris Snowdon]

15 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I still enjoy the old 1970's movie 'Waterloo', Christopher Plummer and Rod Steiger were tremendous in the two lead roles and the scale was truly epic. These days they'd probably represent the vast numbers involved using clever editing along with CGI but there's something more authentic feeling about borrowing the Soviet army.

I'm afraid I've only seen it once and even then as as child, but Terence Alexander's completely deadpan delivery "I've just lost my leg", (which I somehow recall as "I say Sir, it rather appears that my leg's just been short orf") sticks with me.

[J. S. Bach]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

Don't do N!

Anyhow, folk go on about the size of tension lock couplings, but look at that monstrosity of a boxing glove coupling!

The large, Lionel-style three-rail coupler are called (by some) lobster claws.

 

The wheels, btw, have pizza-cutter flanges.

 

[AndyID]

38 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

What about one lung?

 

Not sure but I know someone who has both lungs but one of them doesn't function properly and she has to have supplemental oxygen.

 

 

Edited 31 minutes ago by AndyID
Typhoo

[Chris Snowdon]

On 21/10/2024 at 23:03, Dave Hunt said:

 

Thank God we had radios is all I can say.

 

Dave

Spent a long part of my previous life making sure that both aero and maritime sectors had access to reliable radios, including satcomms, and importantly voice as we ll as da ta...

[Chris Snowdon]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

At RAF Boulmer I was advised to not to volunteer for SAR trips... The North sea is cold all year round..

 

 

Isn't is just?  The last time I went "wild swimming" (an experience which I have no desire to repeat) was off Bamburgh on a late-August evening.  Late in the day and in the second-half of summer, the water wasn't dangerously cold, just rather less than comfortable, but it was the breeze when I came back ashore which reduced me to an incoherent gibbering wreck, so that I needed to spend 20mins under a shower turned up "as hot as you can jolly well stand".  That would be the day after I paddled through some jellyfish on the same beach, which was also the same day when I was far to slow with the camera to capture a shot of a big yellow Sea-King heading south back to Boulmer at about 300ft above the waterline, with the Castle in the same frame.  That would have looked fantastic.

[J. S. Bach]

32 minutes ago, AndyID said:

Are you sure it wasn't a 58 Anglia?

That reminds me of this:

 

[Chris Snowdon]

22 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

What about one lung?

I have a suspicion that this list is repeated in literature and on film in one of the Bond films (I can't recall which novel, but think it was in the opening chapter when Bond returns from hospital and M reads him the list for fun).  Someone once told me that one fully-functioning lung is generally better than two sick ones, but a common cold can kill you in either case, but like Herodotus "This is what I was told, but I have no idea whether it is true".

[PhilJ W]

I knew a colleague who smoked like a chimney and as a result had lung cancer which resulted in his having a lung removed. He functioned quite well on one lung but the cancer got him within a couple of years.

[Chris Snowdon]

15 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

The large, Lionel-style three-rail coupler are called (by some) lobster claws.

 

The wheels, btw, have pizza-cutter flanges.

 

Pizza-cutter flanges have directed me towards coarse-scale track (Series 3/ Super 4).  Cosmetically and operationally I'm looking at adopting Simplex and 3-Link couplings, on carriages and wagons respectively, as I got a bit confused by NEM/Kadees - But, as buckeyes - has anyone tried sprung/extensible N/Rapido on 4mm?

[Chris Snowdon]

36 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

What about one lung?

Another old memory - wasn't there a chap who got most of his head shot off and then went on to climb Everest?  Sort of proved one version of the "10%" theory.

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.