Early Risers.

[NGT6 1315]

Mawnin' awl. Up early in order to get the ladies home later this morning. It's only now that I begin to realise how much the past several weeks of excitement and nervousness have taken their toll on me, too, and that I dearly need to recover much-needed strength…

 

Glad to hear you're okay, Neil. It was only yesterday when I read of an accident with a car vs. a sidecar bike east of here having had a rather worse outcome after the former overlooked the latter while merging after overtaking another car, killing the person travelling in the sidecar.

 

Rather makes one realise just how quickly any life may be put in jeopardy by seemingly random circumstances, doesn't it?

 

Anyway, ta for now and enjoy whatever you're up to!

[Robert]

Morning All,

 

It is a slightly cloudy morning here, with the temperature around 15°C.  It is due to get hotter later on, with thunderstorms this evening.

 

I feel this is going to be summer's last gasp.

 

Time for a coffee

 

Have a good day everyone...

 

Edited to say:  Glad you are Ok Neil.  That could have been nasty.  There are far too many people out there who just don't concentrate!

Edited August 30, 2017 by Robert

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl, Inner Temple  Here.

 

A good nights sleep of 7  hours, I think the previous few days exertions are wearing off and it was a lot cooler in bed..

 

A slightest hint of drizzle when I too Ben the Border Collie out for his morning stroll round the garden, the bad new being three or the exterior lights round the house came on, then one went off. These are industrial type floodlights, this will require getting up a ladder to see what's gone wrong...

The slight drizzle continued all the way into work, I slowed from the limit of 60mph in my Landrover on a long straight and an Audiwomble got halfway past me before he realised the reason I was slowing was, the car in front was turning right. Much braking ensued and he dropped in behind me. For the rest of the trip into the city he properly followed me, even where there were easy places to overtake, I think he frightened himself...

 

 We have the company annual survey coming up, many questions, carefully arranged, to try to get the answers they want.

 

Like surveys I hate the companies that after you have purchased something from them, then send a email saying " please like us on XXXX" well if they send an email like that the one thing they won't get from me is a "like" even if they were good...

 

Todays work, continuing measuring a major system the measuring is going OK but I think one of the values has shifted. So once I've checked everything else today and tomorrow I'll have to re-measure that value, and if faulty discuss it with the Boss. Luckily my provisional

evaluation is, although if fails our allowances,  it's well down on the specifications of the unit it is used to calibrate.

 

Time to.... go and Measure the resistance values....

 

The rain has arrived and the lab temp has dived, waiting for it to recover.....

Meantime run some current tests that'll warm things up a bit...

Edited August 30, 2017 by TheQ

[AndyID]

Good morning one and all

 

I wonder if anyone shares my loathing of on-line customer surveys.  I ask because a week after my car was serviced I have had an e-mail from Volkswagen asking lots of questions that some might consider dumb.  Being asked how well the service was undertaken and what I thought of the customer experience – my expression, not theirs – but there was no way I could answer the question about the Volkswagen app and how easy it was to use to book the service because my primitive mobile is probably not capable of running apps.  I did find a way of grumbling at having received a postcard inviting me to book the service a good week after I had already booked it.  Sadly there was no way of complaining about what a PITA it is to complete surveys like that.  Is there really so much paranoia in commerce and industry?  I would rather not fan that particular flame. 

 

Best wishes and felicitations to all in distress and recovery.  Neil, you seem to have got off lightly. 

 

Chris

 

Unless there is a box I can check that says "No complaints. Trust me, I'll let you know if I have any", I just ignore all these surveys.

[AndyID]

 

Time to.... go and Measure the resistance values....

 

Just tell your boss resistance is futile.

[jamie92208]

Morning awl from a cloudy village in the southern uplands of Leeds.   A good day was had yesterday, see the layout thread.   Bill Bishop of this parish arrived in the afternoon and joined the team getting the layout fettled.    Today will be more of the same with Derek Shore arriving to photograph the layout for the Muddler later this morning.  Apart from that not a lot is on the agenda though various preparations fro next week's expedition across the channel.

 

Regards to all.

 

Jamie

 

PS there are no customer surveys attached to this message.

[lightengine]

The sail training ship Stavros S Niarchos entering Teignmouth harbour yesterday.

[81C]

Off to the garage today for the cars MOT & service just hope I can wake the dead that being my daughter that lives around the corner who hopefully collecting and taking me back to the garage 

if not it's a mini cab back and a flea in her ear, there are no bus services between here and there I'd go somewhere nearer but I know they are reliable. 

[Barry O]

Ey up!

Good day at the Test Match yesterday. England bowling and fielding were poor but congratulations to the West Indies who deserved the win.

 

House guest goes home today..time to dry out my liver and stop eating.

 

Neil, hope the aches and pains aren't too bad today.

 

Dom, hope the "bringing home" goes well.

 

Baz

[BoD]

Morning all.

 

I have had plenty of online customer surveys but I don't think I've started one yet let alone completed it. The email just gets binned.

 

In other news I have just over a one meter section of track to lay to finish the track work. This section completes the circuit of the loft. I have already selected the loco that will be given the honour of making the first complete run. I can't afford a golden spike.

Edited August 30, 2017 by BoD

[Tony_S]

Morning all.

Overcast with drizzle here now and it will continue to be so, I have been informed.

Aditi is doing something to a cherry tree and is then off to Brentwood to have her hair pruned. It can't be just a cut going by how much they charge.

I am not doing anything to do with model railways at the moment but I am sure I will soon.

Hope you all have a good day and especially Dom welcoming Annika to her home.

Edited August 30, 2017 by Tony_S

[Gwiwer]

Morning all.

 

The world has either turned orange and furry overnight or there's been a cat sleeping across my face.  Beyond the window things seem to be grey and damp with sounds of moving trains. 

 

Do we need a survey to determine our opinion of surveys?  I sometimes idly fill them in (fill them out for our American members) and sometimes just ignore them.  It really depends if I have strong feelings about the subject and time to donate to it.

 

I am required to take a pair of SWMBO shoes into Richmond later for repair.  Meetings must be arranged.  There are hot cross buns lurking in the fridge suggesting "Use By" today.  I sense attention must be given to all the above.  

 

Best wishes to all and sundry particularly those under the weather or newly parenting.

[Horsetan]

Here is the Roco wreck. The remarkable thing is that it all works, including the headlamps, and a 9v PP3 is enough to get it going.

The tender turns out to be a 2'2'T34, so a new body would be needed to turn it into a "T32".

 

There are quite a few things about it that might not pass muster these days, namely:

 

- very coarse NEM standard wheels,

- quite large handrail knobs;

- crude headlamp bodies

- bogie wheels too small (scale 850mm dia.) for use on a DB-Neubaukessel (which had 1000mm bogie wheels)

 

but as it's being stripped for parts, this is all pretty much academic.

 

The wheels are all plastic-centred (Roco today use all-metal), so they could be put on a lathe - if I had one here - to see how the tyres have been mounted on them. If they are anything like the method shown on this fiNe-160 webpage then it might - just might - be possible to remount them and then have the tyres reduced in width and the flanges turned right down to P87. If not, then it's another order to Teichmann in the hope that he has managed to produce another batch of "01" driver castings.

Edited August 30, 2017 by Horsetan

[AndyB]

Morning all and it's an overcast one here today with rain forecast.

 

Neil, sorry to hear of your accident. A lucky escape by the sounds of it. 

 

Dom, good luck with bringing the wee one home. I suspect a number of ERers will be watching this one with interest.

From experience the littleun senses the nervousness of the parents who are no "in sole charge" and wails their lungs out the moment you get through the front door. 

 

IanA, hells bells. If the colour of the locomotive is a tad out I'm glad they haven't spotted that layouts can sometimes be a little bit compressed compared with a proper scale model; imagine the angst of spotting that. 

 

Nothing much planned for today although the in-laws are inbound. So some menu planning and food purchases are needed. 

 

Have a nice day everyone. 

[81C]

Off to the garage today for the cars MOT & service just hope I can wake the dead that being my daughter that lives around the corner who hopefully collecting and taking me back to the garage 

if not it's a mini cab back and a flea in her ear, there are no bus services between here and there I'd go somewhere nearer but I know they are reliable. 

No flea required she pitched in her new car a big shiny Merc Chav' thing bang on time and she said she could drop me back

if it was before 2:30 you could have knocked me down with a feather. 

[emt_911]

Morning all. Persistant precipitation has changed my plans for the day. An early swim was undertaken but after the heat of the last few days followed by the rain will probably mean lots of accidents on the roads. So, for my own sanity and safety I've decided to stay where I am and possibly do some modelling.

 

Time for another coffee.

 

Have  good day everyone.

[AndrewC]

 

Greetings from the borough of boring. Still in recovery mode. A bit better and no longer relying on pain killers. The fog is slowly lifting from my addled brain. 

 

Congrats Dom & Mrs Dom. 

 

The usual congratulations and commiserations as appropriate. Still playing catch up.

 

The great garden wall build enters day 7. I think we hired the slowest brickies on the planet. To be fair the main fellow has had to cry off most of the time as his Mrs went into early labour and hasn't been able to be on site for more than a couple of hours. Its just been his junior doing all the work on his own. With luck they should be finished and cleared up next week some time. 

 

Back to work. An hour meeting which should have been an email is about to begin. <insert profanity here>

 

Enjoy your day everyone. 

[DDolfelin]

In other news I have just over a one meter section of track to lay to finish the track work. This section completes the circuit of the loft. I have already selected the loco that will be given the honour of making the first complete run. I can't afford a golden spike.

 

Pics please - or directions to where they might be found ... signed Fan Club Secretary.

[Robert]

Pics please - or directions to where they might be found ... signed Fan Club Secretary.

 

Hopefully not on Photobucket!

 

It seems that I am rather late to the party, but I have just realised that Photobucket are holding me to ransom together with all of their other customers.

 

I've been using Photobucket to host my images for around 8 years, but they are now demanding 400 dollars a year for access from third party sites.  That means that every photo, on every site that I have posted in the last eight years is no longer accessible.

 

Couple that with the fact that their "download" functionality seems to be broken, which is also mighty suspicious.  Fortunately, I have backups of pretty much everything.

[newbryford]

 

In other news I have just over a one meter section of track to lay to finish the track work. This section completes the circuit of the loft. I have already selected the loco that will be given the honour of making the first complete run. I can't afford a golden spike.

 

On my layout, I actually painted a spike (track pin) yellow.........

 

Even the last (planned) wire that went in was yellow.

 

Cheers,

Mick

[The Stationmaster]

Morning all,

 

Glad to hear things weren't too serious Neil and I hope that you gave her a blast of best engine-room English regarding her inability to control a piece of machinery.  Far less seriously a woman gently tail ended me at some traffic lights in Ipswich many years ago and she was deeply apologetic while I tried to keep a straight face as the towbar ball arrangement on the back end of well over 1 ton of my car had dealt quite obviously with the front end of her BMC 1100.

 

Well jungle warfare continued yesterday with some results which the management finally agreed to notice - the use of the vacuum cleaner was accordingly deferred to today.  A real success yesterday was contacting Admiral insurance and duly talking down their quote - my insurance for the coming year works out at about £4.35 per week; laddo's for his Mini Cooper was also talked down but is still at £474.

 

Have a good day one and all.

[Horsetan]

....the towbar ball arrangement on the back end of well over 1 ton of my car had dealt quite obviously with the front end of her BMC 1100.....

 

My Executor client has paid the Firm's stonking great bill this morning and hence the money is there to fund the Citroen CX! 

 

 

The one I'm hoping to see up North already has a towbar fitted so, even if it turns out that 2.5-litres and oleopneumatic suspension can't haul a "single horse" trailer, at least the back end is protected!

 

 

Edited August 30, 2017 by Horsetan

[Tony_S]

Morning all,

 

... A real success yesterday was contacting Admiral insurance and duly talking down their quote - my insurance for the coming year works out at about £4.35 per week; laddo's for his Mini Cooper was also talked down but is still at £474.

 

Have a good day one and all.

£474 per week for a Mini Cooper! I didn't realise they were in such a high insurance group

[Horsetan]

£474 per week for a Mini Cooper! I didn't realise they were in such a high insurance group

 

Footman James quoted me £250/yr classic car insurance for the CX, based on 6000 miles/yr, with the option of using it for work if I needed to (the diesel Bora is used daily for work and covered 10,000 miles between the last two MoTs).

 

The logic that I draw from this very arbitrary example is that - thinking laterally - maybe it makes a sort of sense for young drivers to start off with a classic car......

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Glad to hear that you escaped serious injury Neil with your accident. I once had a car with an enormous tow hitch, the reason for its size was it was a combination ball and pin hitch. And someone managed to run into it fortunately without damage to my car. I cant say the same for his though, he decided to reverse his car off of mine, this was accompanied by a cloud of steam where his radiator had been punctured.

Edited August 30, 2017 by PhilJ W