Early Risers.

[Tony_S]

Morning all.

It doesn't appear to be raining but everything outside looks very damp so I assume it did overnight. Normal rain though as I can't see any evidence of yellow rain as suggested by the Met Office.

I won't be going to the Romford exhibition this morning. We will be going over to Enfield to see MiL.

Tony

[newbryford]

How would anyone know it is down a ginnel? Fascinating

 

More discussion here

 

Work today testing a new product.

If it works as promised, we will be very happy.

 

Catch up later.

Cheers,

Mick

[iL Dottore]

Good Morning All,

 

As always, congratulations and commiserations as appropriate (detailed comments later)

 

A rather expensive Saturday, alas. The AV Receiver in our 12 year old Denon Home Cinema system failed and the Swisscom Router - now over 4 years old - is increasingly obsolescent and we have WiFi interruptions (which is annoying when either I or SWMBO are working from home!)

 

Accordingly, I did some online research and found the best value for money AV Receiver, ordered the new Swisscom router and, whilst burning a large bundle of ten pound notes, also upgraded the aging DVD player to a 4K Blu-ray player. I also succumbed to peer pressure (my gaming chum Michael) and got a 1TB PS4 "Slim" model with two controllers. SWMBO approved it as this year's birthday present.

 

I mentioned that I had done some online research and it was after my researches that things got frustrating: After having narrowed down the options to 6 or so items, I accordingly went to the various Swiss electronics dealers' websites and promptly ran into a brick wall (of sorts). Let me explain. Say, for sake of argument, the UK magazine "What Home Cinema" (or similar) says a best buy is the KElectronics Blu-ray Play UBD-12300 (made up name), when you search for such items here in Switzerland you'll find that they stock the Kelectronics UBD-12200 or UBD-12330 or UBD-12400, but not the UBD-12300.  Furthermore, the descriptions on the various websites are minimalistic almost to the point of just saying "it plays DVDs", so any comparison between the Swiss sold model numbers and the "What Home Cinema" review is basically impossible. So do I take the plunge and hope that the UBD-12330 is a rebadged UBD-12300? From what I understand, this policy of having special model numbers for Switzerland and minimal website details is to prevent people from shopping around for the best price (usually from Amazon or a niche online Swiss retailer, not the usual stores). OK, you may be thinking, what's the problem? Why not order it from Amazon? Well because for so many things (electronics, accessories for electronics, musical instruments, etc.) are marked on Amazon as "this dealer doesn't ship to Switzerland". Whether it's protectionism (i.e. if you want to remain a Kelectronics dealer you don't ship Kelectronics to Switzerland) or companies are too small to deal with the paperwork on the occasional basis, I don't know. I suspect, mostly, the former. As an aside, I found out - through Switzerland's only consumer magazine - that if you are a dealer of X selling BigCorp item Y at CHF400 and you think that you can still make a profit selling BigCorp Item Y at CHF300, you are not allowed to do so. You have to sell the BigCorp Item Y at the retail price set by the importer or no longer be supplied with BigCorp items to sell.

 

Thank goodness I have friends just across the border who will act as poste restante for me.

 

Gotta dash now. Have to take the Wolfpack to dog school.

 

Stay Frosty

 

iD

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone

 

The sun is out, so I’m off to the workshop to continue with the re-organisation that I made a start on yesterday afternoon.

 

Carol Emerald, Sheila dances to some of her stuff when at her Zumba class, I didn’t know she was Dutch, you learn something new every day!

 

Back later.

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. After yesterdays exertions and getting to bed late last night I overslept this morning but now I'm bright eyed and bushy tailed, lets see how long it lasts. Jamie, I looked up your boat on E-bay. I think you have seriously underpriced it as the next (almost identical) one is listed at 8 times the price! and some others including new unmade kits at 14 times the price. I would consider putting in a bid myself but I would have no means of collecting it.

 

Being unable to sleep I was browsing thru YouTube (as you do) and found this odd little film of railwayania from Greenwich.

 

I fully expect to be the only one on here who did not know of it - not that it is spectacularly interesting. The walls of the alley go through the border of two houses.

 

 

 

 

Best, Pete.

It stated in the film that it was only one of the few such crossings in Greater London. I know of one such branch that has not one but two such crossings, the Romford-Upminster branch. I wonder if there are any others?

[AndyB]

Well, we've had the Cake Box Challenge. 

I'm wondering if this aggregates branchline needs Andy Y to set a litter-tray challenge. 

 

Afternoon all.

Another weekend is zooming by and my plan to do some wiring up of a certain model in the garage is looking unlikely. 

What I have achieved is to relax and do some gardening, digging in compost where the sweet peas will go and finding a present from next-door's cat in the process.

The new extension next door has created a sun trap* and the wall is crying out for either a vine or wisteria to soften the new brickwork. 

 

* where did the sun go?

 

Looking forward to work this week - not sure what it will bring in terms of challenges but after being parachuted into a project last week to help out - and getting a commendation as a result - anything could happen. My in tray suggests I'll be working on an interesting new project. 

 

Regards to all and an especial "Hi" to Debs.

[TheQ]

Afternoon Awl Inner Temple Here,

Well we've had light drizzle ( mostly) or heavy rain all day so far, it's now blowing 33 and is slowly supposed to climb till 22:00 Monday. Tomorrow afternoon's forecast is for GOF, 30 mph gof should be interesting.

 

So today I've spent 6 hours in the alley way, the first hour or so was spent feeding cables through to the nearest socket, carefully clipping the cable away from the polystyrene insulation. I will extend the ring main from a socket in the shed out through the alleyway and back. I would have done more but I found I was short of two double surface patresses, I needed three. Also need a waterproof single, so I can supply the hedge trimmer without leaving a door open, we keep getting birds flying in the shed.

 

 

A garden supply tap is required too, so I can fit that and save time on the day I replumb the mobile home supply, the old garden tap which was in the alley, and a supply down the garden to the raised beds (pipe buried / laid in long ago).

 

Later I spent the day cladding the roof, about 1/3rd to go. I still need to work out where to put the lights and what type. I think I'll need two sets, one set for general lighting, one for spots on the work place.

 

An omelette is about to arrive.

 

Time to go.

 

Omelette consumed, and some additional notes, I'd agree about Caro Emerald she's one of my favourites, I notice on the tracks a trail I suspect a door was not shut properly.

 

I've now metered the battery for the chainsaw on a stick, putting the dmm on it, the output rapidly drops from 18V to 9V on the 20V range. So the battery isn't charged, or is duff. I'll have to check the charger but I suspect it won't give the correct output without the battery being on and then you can't get at the terminals.

 

The bad news being I've searched the net and there are no batteries available of this type, not good for a two year old product....

Edited April 29, 2018 by TheQ

[Ian Abel]

Being unable to sleep I was browsing thru YouTube (as you do) and found this odd little film of railwayania from Greenwich.

 

I fully expect to be the only one on here who did not know of it - not that it is spectacularly interesting. The walls of the alley go through the border of two houses.

 

 

 

 

Best, Pete.

Strange, it appeared on my feed about two weeks ago! I also decided that "everyone" must surely know about it so didn't even bother to mention it. Definitely interested in finding it next time I'm in the UK though, did track it down on Google maps - that's a start.

 

Lovely day here...

The football game last evening with Trevor was a lot of fun, nice to find something other than a baseball game we can attend in town. Amazing part is that even though we're talking about two "professional" teams, the standard of play is still pretty poor here - I recon the "blind school" could have beaten both teams handily. Still they are bringing the game to a higher standard in this part of the world.

 

Off now to shop for the family BBQ event later today.

 

13 this AM, supposed to make 20 for a high. Very nice.

 

Have a good remainder of the weekend.

[jamie92208]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. After yesterdays exertions and getting to bed late last night I overslept this morning but now I'm bright eyed and bushy tailed, lets see how long it lasts. Jamie, I looked up your boat on E-bay. I think you have seriously underpriced it as the next (almost identical) one is listed at 8 times the price! and some others including new unmade kits at 14 times the price. I would consider putting in a bid myself but I would have no means of collecting it.

 

 

Thanks for that Phil.     It's now got 32 watchers after only 24 hours.   I was tempted to put a buy it now price of £150 but with that number of watchers suspect that it will go quite a bit higher as the basic kit is over £300 and the two motors weren't cheap.   It will be interesting to watch it.   I've now got to extract the other part built boat from the loft which I a 6' long battleship hull for a WW1 super dreadnought. (HMS Conqueror).   I made the 'plug' from which I was going to get a fibreglass hull cast.   There's a bundle of research documents to go with it so it will be interesting.   It also gets stuff out of the loft.

 

Anyway on another tack we have returned from the graveside safely and no one got hit with the spade.   It all went well and Beth did two very good short readings.   A new 'Remembrance' rose is now planted with the ashes underneath along with lots of compost.

 

Jamie

[bbishop]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. After yesterdays exertions and getting to bed late last night I overslept this morning but now I'm bright eyed and bushy tailed, lets see how long it lasts. Jamie, I looked up your boat on E-bay. I think you have seriously underpriced it as the next (almost identical) one is listed at 8 times the price! and some others including new unmade kits at 14 times the price. I would consider putting in a bid myself but I would have no means of collecting it.

 

It stated in the film that it was only one of the few such crossings in Greater London. I know of one such branch that has not one but two such crossings, the Romford-Upminster branch. I wonder if there are any others?

 

I was around that neck of the woods today.  Cycled from church to Blackheath, train to Woolwich Arsenal  (including the Angerstein Junction), DLR to Stratford, then Romford and cycle to the show.  Same coming back (other than Jubilee to Canning Town) , except the first train was on the Greenwich line so cycled home from there via Lewisham.

 

Bill

[AndyB]

Evening all,

It's been a tad chilly this evening. And set to drop to 4^oC as the high for tomorrow? 

Nevertheless, more compost has been dug into the borders and tripods set up for the sweet peas.

And one of the last bits of track laid on the first phase of the new layout. And yes, I did get two wires pressed against the track and watched part of a 4-cep run up and down.

Nice. 

[tomparryharry]

Good Morning All,

 

As always, congratulations and commiserations as appropriate (detailed comments later)

 

A rather expensive Saturday, alas. The AV Receiver in our 12 year old Denon Home Cinema system failed and the Swisscom Router - now over 4 years old - is increasingly obsolescent and we have WiFi interruptions (which is annoying when either I or SWMBO are working from home!)

 

Accordingly, I did some online research and found the best value for money AV Receiver, ordered the new Swisscom router and, whilst burning a large bundle of ten pound notes, also upgraded the aging DVD player to a 4K Blu-ray player. I also succumbed to peer pressure (my gaming chum Michael) and got a 1TB PS4 "Slim" model with two controllers. SWMBO approved it as this year's birthday present.

 

I mentioned that I had done some online research and it was after my researches that things got frustrating: After having narrowed down the options to 6 or so items, I accordingly went to the various Swiss electronics dealers' websites and promptly ran into a brick wall (of sorts). Let me explain. Say, for sake of argument, the UK magazine "What Home Cinema" (or similar) says a best buy is the KElectronics Blu-ray Play UBD-12300 (made up name), when you search for such items here in Switzerland you'll find that they stock the Kelectronics UBD-12200 or UBD-12330 or UBD-12400, but not the UBD-12300.  Furthermore, the descriptions on the various websites are minimalistic almost to the point of just saying "it plays DVDs", so any comparison between the Swiss sold model numbers and the "What Home Cinema" review is basically impossible. So do I take the plunge and hope that the UBD-12330 is a rebadged UBD-12300? From what I understand, this policy of having special model numbers for Switzerland and minimal website details is to prevent people from shopping around for the best price (usually from Amazon or a niche online Swiss retailer, not the usual stores). OK, you may be thinking, what's the problem? Why not order it from Amazon? Well because for so many things (electronics, accessories for electronics, musical instruments, etc.) are marked on Amazon as "this dealer doesn't ship to Switzerland". Whether it's protectionism (i.e. if you want to remain a Kelectronics dealer you don't ship Kelectronics to Switzerland) or companies are too small to deal with the paperwork on the occasional basis, I don't know. I suspect, mostly, the former. As an aside, I found out - through Switzerland's only consumer magazine - that if you are a dealer of X selling BigCorp item Y at CHF400 and you think that you can still make a profit selling BigCorp Item Y at CHF300, you are not allowed to do so. You have to sell the BigCorp Item Y at the retail price set by the importer or no longer be supplied with BigCorp items to sell.

 

Thank goodness I have friends just across the border who will act as poste restante for me.

 

Gotta dash now. Have to take the Wolfpack to dog school.

 

Stay Frosty

 

iD

Fiat used to do this with their spare parts. Fiat 124 clutch (1200)? No problem! Fiat 128 clutch. The same went for Fiat 850-127-128-124 (small size) clutch. Across the border, different number.

 

Cheers,

 

Ian.

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Jamie, perhaps you should have put a minimum bid on your boat, £200 sounds like a fair number. My interest is that its scale is 1/75, ideal for 00 scale. I have a half finished Billings Cutty Sark thats also 1/75 scale, hull finished but rigging to be done.

[The Stationmaster]

Evening all,

 

Quiet on here today although I suppose it hasn't all been caused by absences at exhibition type things, or has it?  I duly set off for 'Globalrail' at Didcot this morning and it turned out to be a fairly worthy altrernative to not getting to SWAG (for the second year in succession) although the getting there was not helped by one motoring cockwomble of the exceedinglyslow-womble variety plus some loonywombles on bicycles one of whom was clearly in a hurry as he pulled right avcross the main road in front of the exceedinglyslow-womble, but breakfast at Root One helped restore my equilibrium.

 

The show itself was of course graced by the presence of a layout from Ian (Roundhouse) of our little corner of the web plus two from other past/present RMweb folk so there were some excellent layouts to be seen and some nice friendly chat to be enjoyed.  As a past visitor to this show I was rather surprised by the very considerable, and varied, trade presence but managed to spend nothing beyond the cost of entry. but someone not too far from here did make a rather nice purchase of an extremely attractive loco of German origin - which ran as beautifully as it looked.  Since returning home apart from eating the evening meal I seem to have spent most of my time either watching tv or doing soduku puzzles as herself has been monopolising this keyboard 'doing her quizzes'.

 

Enjoy the rest of the evening

[Simon G]

A very pleasant afternoon was spent with 2 friends running 4 locos on a garden railway, two live steam, one battery steam and one battery diesel. The sun shone (mostly) which helped the proceedings and I got my day’s exercise in walking to the friend’s house at the other end of the village, and then back again. At the risk of incurring Deb’s displeasure, here is a photo of three of the locos

 

[tetsudofan]

Oh dear, another picture, hope is does not incur further displeasure...... 

 

Been a damp, miserable day but I did take a wonder round the garden and found that it had been snowing spring blossoms:

 

 

Nothing was running today, like the big railway, leaves on the line.

 

Off to bed now, best wishes to one and all. oyasumi nasai.

 

Keith

 

[Gwiwer]

Good night all.

[Barry O]

Busy day. Managed to earn a crust and finish some of my own railway related items.

 

Glad we missed out on cricket today as it has been a tad chilly with a thin wind here all day.

 

Sleep well and hope the Chemo goes ok Debs.

 

Baz

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone

 

Throughout the day it looked like it was going to rain, but thankfully it held off and the sun finally made an appearance late afternoon, after I’d come in from the workshop.

 

Quite a bit of progress has been made in the workshop, the old moveable bench has been spilt into two separate cupboards and the wheels and there support frame removed and height adjustable feet have been fitted. The next stage will be to alter the ring-main and fit some bench mounted (metal) trunking for the sockets for the bench light, drill stand and bench grinder. As I salvaged this from a workshop refurbishment some years ago, it does require a repaint, so that will have to be done before it’s fitted. I’ve also adjusted the height of the shelving unit that houses all my power tools, it was a little to tall and was making opening and closing of the window blind a little difficult. It was fine until I decided to move it to make room for the larger, but fixed bench, still, you live and learn. I currently have Venetian blinds up at both the door and window, but I’m now going to fit roller blinds instead, it’ll make opening them much easier.

 

Simon and Keith, Ooh, you’re a brave men, beware of the awl!

 

Goodnight all

[Coombe Barton]

Debs has just started session four (of five, I think) chemo. She's under 15 minute observations which means no real sleep.

 

We've been chatting all day, exchanging jokes and photos.

 

She's still poorly as is expected.

 

The chemo is necessarily severe, given what it's got to attack.

 

We'll know more after this session's over.

[pH]

You think Canadians are normal?

 

Outside one house during 2017 in Chilliwack, BC:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN34RQCQEuQ

 

Good morning, Pete.

Canadians are normal. Chilliwack isn't.

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[newbryford]

Come on Debs.

 

That is all.

 

Mick

[laurenceb]

Night awl