Early Risers.

[grandadbob]

Evenin' each,

Didn't get to The Shed as other things kept getting in the way, all of them annoying.

Joe came  for lunch as he had couple of free periods and then returned after school with Gemma although I hasten to add that they weren't the "annoying things" getting in the way. That could never be the case.

Bangers and Mash for dinner accompanied by Aussia red plonk which all went down well and the kids have now gone home so all is quiet.

More plonk is called for I think..... PLONK!!!

 

PS Happy Birthday Jamie.

 

 

 

Edited October 29, 2019 by grandadbob

[big jim]

2 hours ago, Barry O said:

Big Jim.. make sue that is sorted pronto..it sounds very painful.

 

Baz

I’ve emergency appointment in the morning with the ENT consultant, the blood test come back as an infection so will have to see what happens tomorrow, been given antibiotics to take 

 

I’ve had to go sick at work unfortunately as it was an appointment tomorrow or nothing for the rest of the week

[The Stationmaster]

Evening all,

 

Finally caught up after the mouse needed recharging at just the wrong moment yesterday (after herself had nabbed the keyboard for a couple of hours) then she did the same today - but I'd recharged the mouse in the meanwhile.  Happy anniversary Dudders and Sherry and happy birthday Grandad Jamie.  Incidentally like that other grandad, he of the Bob variety, we use Branston baked beans which we much prefer to the Heinz variety and their taste has changed a bit, for the better, since they were rebranded from their old HP label.

 

And yet again like GDB I too will be missing Wycrail this Saturday as I am required to deliver herself to the RBH for an examination involving one of those internally inserted cameras which involves a changed diet for this week plus the prior drinking of a considerable quantity of what the motor trade would probably refer to as 'flushing fluid'.  Rather impressed with the NHS on this one in that as so often happens after a wait of multiple weeks to get a GP appointment going from there to initial interview with the consultant, and then this, has taken a little over two weeks thanks to our GP who knows how to short circuit the system in a beneficial manner.  So no cakes for me on Saturday and no looking at layouts either.  Then on Monday we go for the knee injections - and we'll see how they work.

 

A little bit of assorted paperwork checking is revealing some fascinating stuff which I'd probably forgotten I had.  A good example is the Southern Railway instruction booklets for staff working on electrified lines - one for 3rd rail and the other for high voltage overhead with both dating from the 1920s; I don't think they'll be culled in any downsizing of the ephemera collection, and the Lusitania medal definitely isn't going anywhere.

 

Enjoy thre rest of you evening one and all.

[Kingzance]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

I suppose it boils down to time spent on the job.  In the time it has taken me to fit out one room, they would have done the whole top floor.

Suggest replace the word "done" with the more accurate "bodged" - if the crew across the way from me are anything to go by! As for productivity, they rock up and sign on around 08:00, they start around 09:00, they stop for breakfast around 10:00, then lunch around 12:30 before a mid-afternoon stop at 15:00 and then finish by 16:00 - and that is without the time spent on their bl@@dy mobile phones! No wonder we can't build enough homes at a reasonable cost.

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

Evening all,

paperwork checking is revealing some fascinating stuff which I'd probably forgotten I had.  A good example is the Southern Railway instruction booklets for staff working on electrified lines - one for 3rd rail and the other for high voltage overhead with both dating from the 1920s; I don't think they'll be culled in any downsizing of the ephemera collection, and the Lusitania medal definitely isn't going anywhere.

 

Enjoy thre rest of you evening one and all.

Funnily enough I acquired a little blue booklet from Ebay a couple of years ago.  It's issued  by the LMS and is the instructions for working on and around the Lancaster Morecambe and Heysham electrification also high voltage AC.  Very interesting and will also not be disposed of.

 

Jamie

Edited October 29, 2019 by jamie92208

[Coombe Barton]

Guidance from the hereafter?

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/acceptance-and-coping-12/

[TheSignalEngineer]

Posted a parcel from the Dark Peak to Liqourice Land with a well-known courier yesterday. Google Maps gives a route of 45 miles. Checked the tracking and since it left it has so far visited Crewe, Rugby and Bradford. By the time it is delivered it will have covered at least 289 miles. No wonder our roads are clogged.

[Gwiwer]

8 hours ago, The Lurker said:

Don't diversions/embuggerances allow ticket holders to use any reasonable alternative route? Hence in the absence of a proper service, via London would indeed be reasonable?

Not necessarily. “CSL2” (Customer Service Level 2) has to be instigated first which I believe has several effects; it requires all staff - so far as is practically possible - to be informed of ticket acceptance and it may have an effect on ORCATS - the revenue apportionment system used by the franchised TOCs. 
 

So let’s say trains are disrupted between Clapham Junction and Waterloo to the extent that “any reasonable alternative” is thought necessary.  All relevant on-train and gateline staff on Southern, Thameslink, London Overground and London Underground, plus every bus driver across a wide area of south and central London (any route which might be used can include those which reach well beyond Clapham, Vauxhall and Waterloo). Plus supervisory and any revenue teams in the area. That’s a lot of people. While it is in theory relatively easy in London and is typically done by radio call and group email there is no guarantee everyone will have got the message. It is much harder in regional areas where buses may not be in radio contact with a controller and the driver knows nothing until faced with a horde of frustrated rail passengers. 
 

When a reasonable alternative exists then restrictions on travelling through central London are not lifted. So Gatwick - Reading - GWR destinations would have had the route via Clapham and Basingstoke available. I’m sure few were affected as some tickets are “AP” (travel via Any Permitted route) or are endorsed “via London Terminals +” where the + indicates validity on London Underground between the terminals but not for entry / exit at any other station. 
 

Today was different. Most things ran and mostly close to right time.  Within 5 minutes anyway. And it was cold. When light precipitation commenced it felt like snow but wasn’t. I was expecting Polar Bears to arrive at any moment. 
 

We are preparing (again) for SWMBO trip to Sir John which is due on Monday next. I have three days leave to support her at home though if she isn’t comfortable being left I shall take the rest of the week too. 
 

Hopefully the procedure will proceed this time and will lead to a reduction in her stress, anxiety and panic. And therefore an easing of the pressure on me. 
 

I might even get to play with the smouldering iron which was acquired recently and has yet to be heated in anger   

 

SWMBO has determined that it is bed time.  As a wise man follows a good woman I had best bid you all good night with good wishes all round. 

[J. S. Bach]

22 hours ago, Northroader said:

It’s using a motor, end plates stamped CLW, then universal shaft to belt drive to one end, then back underneath to the other end. DCC, what’s that?? (Sorry to intrude on the social chat)

 

Looks like a Weaver tank drive. Note that if that is the newer CLW motor, it should have a skewed armature; that allows for smoother low-speed operation because of less cogging of the armature.

[TheSignalEngineer]

45 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

Guidance from the hereafter?

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/acceptance-and-coping-12/

 

Reading the blog is bringing back some memories from when my parents died a few years ago. Dad had sorted out and disposed of a lot of stuff amongst family and friends but there was still a lot in their flat. When we came to Mom's sewing box my niece found a part done embroidery of a peacock complete with a load of unused silks. I said that I thought it was one of a pair, she was doing them when your mother was born in 1954, but they never got finished. A few days later I found a completed one so my niece restarted the job 61 years after it was put aside. Mom had done a similar job a few years earlier. When my paternal grandfather was wounded in the shoulder during 1915 he was brought back to recover at Winnick Asylum or Lord Derby Military Hospital as it was known for the duration. To help get the use back he drew a Rifle Brigade cap badge on a piece of cloth and started to embroider it. Before it was completed he was sent back to France. After his wife died in the mid 1980s Mom found it and finally completed it nearly 75 years after it was started. It is now framed and lives in the Railway Room with an oil painting of 46146 The Rifle Brigade painted for Dad, another rifleman, by one of his friends as a retirement gift.

 

Eric

 

Edited October 29, 2019 by TheSignalEngineer

[The Stationmaster]

57 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Not necessarily. “CSL2” (Customer Service Level 2) has to be instigated first which I believe has several effects; it requires all staff - so far as is practically possible - to be informed of ticket acceptance and it may have an effect on ORCATS - the revenue apportionment system used by the franchised TOCs. 
 

 

It ought not to involve ORCATS - in fact I don't really see how it could as that level of monitoring isn't available to feed into the system in any case because it uses the basic timetable as its train source for apportionment (it used to use TSDB back in BR days but it could well be using something else now) and it also used the time of day at which tickets were sold as part of the calculation.  Incidentally ORCATS is not just used by the franchised TOCS hence the concerns about  what is known as 'ORCATS raiding' where an open access operator runs a train just in front of a franchised operator's service serving some similar destinations and hence taking a share of the revenue coming in at that time of day for that route.

 

The normal arrangement for allowing passengers to use an alternative route in times of perturbation is a simple one between operating companies where they basically lift their normal travel/route restrictions to help out each other and in the past no money changed hands (that too might have changed of course).  The only time there was any extra payment in the past was for road vehicle hire and that's down to the operator with the problem (i.e. no different from the situation in BR days)  although normally in privatised times the compensation from NR (when it is their responsibility) would more than cover any extra costs incurred.

 

The only real difference now would be in delay repay to passengers where it is now more proactive than it used to be but that again is down to the affected operator and on past evidence it would in any case usually be less than the compensation paid to the operator by NR as a consequence of cancelled and delayed trains.     'Delay minutes' tend to be rather pricey things - our rate back in 1995 was £1 per minute of late or early running when it resulted in disruption to another operator and the same from Railtrack to us for each minute our trains were delayed by anything in NR's responsibility (and things in Railtrack's responsibility included acts of trespass, vandalism, and suicides apart from the more obvious things such as signal failures or frozen points).  

 

You can reckon now that 'delay minutes' are a lot more expensive hence the fact that they are capped for steam hauled special trains (which would long ago have been priced off the network if they had to pay the full consequential costs of some of the delays they have caused.  For example the cap in 5 years of Control Period 4  was £5,000 per incident for trains hauled by heritage traction/using heritage rolling stock; NR estimated that in that Control Period it incurred an additional cost of £600,000 (in its own costs and compensation to other operators) in consequence of the money it could recover from an incident involving heritage traction etc  being limited by the cap.

[Barry O]

Good night all!

Baz

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

It’s been a glorious day and one in which I’ve spent most of the time at the bottom of the garden, outside the workshop  working on the cellar door, which was almost like a game of 2 halves. The first side I tackled was the side that faces the small room and work progressed very quickly as there wasn’t much paint on and it sanded down very well. When I turned it over and started the other side, it was obvious that this side had had more coats of paint than the other and as I sanded it the paint seemed to be chipping off as opposed to be sanded off. So I ended up using paint stripper (gel type) on it and removed the lot. Anyway, it’s now down to bare wood and just needs a final sanding with some finer sand paper and then it’s ready for some fresh paint. 

 

Ava has had a bit of an accident at school this week, she fell on a trampoline and knocked out one of her front teeth. She was taken to the local hospital, where she was checked and advised to go to Manchester children’s hospital, where she saw a facial injury specialist. Thankfully they were able to refit her tooth and she will see her dentist (Friday 1st November) who will take over her treatment and monitor her progress to see if the tooth takes, so it’s fingers crossed.

 

Asher's and Old Dudder’s, happy anniversary 

 

Jamie, happy birthday 

 

Goodnight all 

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[AndyID]

An enormous bull moose just ambled past the house. Of course by the time I got my camera it has disappeared into the trees. Despite their size they are difficult to spot in the forest. You usually hear them before you see them.

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all

[BR60103]

5 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

Posted a parcel from the Dark Peak to Liqourice Land with a well-known courier yesterday. Google Maps gives a route of 45 miles. Checked the tracking and since it left it has so far visited Crewe, Rugby and Bradford. By the time it is delivered it will have covered at least 289 miles. No wonder our roads are clogged.

Toronto has two major postal sorting stations -- one in the west suburbs and one in the east.  I'm sure that sending a letter across Yonge Street  (the major NS road) requires going to one station then to the other.

 

[AndyID]

8 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

Looks like a Weaver tank drive. Note that if that is the newer CLW motor, it should have a skewed armature; that allows for smoother low-speed operation because of less cogging of the armature.

 

A honking-great high-torque motor and not much gear reduction is hard to beat.

[chrisf]

Good morning one and all

 

Yesterday the time came to say "no more fine tuning" and I took my round robin to the copy shop.  There is plenty of time to write the cards, print the labels and seal the envelopes before the cards are despatched at or before the end of November.  The necessary festive stamps will not be available, I'm told, until the week after next.  One must not rush these things!

 

I let my mind wander yesterday - yes, yes, I know, when don't I? - and had what could turn out to be a crazy and expensive idea.  I've not been to Dublin for a good 20 years and rather fancy being there when Pride is happening.  Unfortunately, if my information is correct, the date is the same as Pride in London.  Decisions, decisions.   One very big plus point is that there is no limit on the number of marchers.  I'm told that last year there were 60,000.  London was capped at half that.  We shall see what happens but don't hold your breath.

 

Today there is food to prep for tomorrow's lunch with Poorly Pal and tonight I'm off to Bletchley to be educated in the ways of the bygone railway in Northamptonshire, courtesy of the HMRS.  The car is already loaded up for tomorrow's trip to Stevenage becaue the chances of me getting the car near enough to the house tonight to do the loading tomorrow morning are slim.  The position is aggravated because a small lorry loaded rather precariously with what looks like junk has appeared in the street.  Someone placed two cones with a piece of wood joining them to reserve a space for it.  I thought it was going to be yet another skip.  The couple next door have informed the police, who I'm sure will take the report just as seriously as they treat everything else round here.  Again, we shall see what happens.

 

Best wishes to all

 

Chris

[AndyID]

"The library on old age has grown so voluminous that the fifty million Americans over the age of sixty-five could spend the rest of their lives reading such books, even as lusty retirees and power-lifting septuagenarians turn out new ones."

 

If you can get on to New Yorker magazine you might find the article interesting. The quote above is from:

 

"Why We Can’t Tell the Truth About Aging"

A long life is a gift. But will we really be grateful for it?

By Arthur Krystal

October 28, 2019

[Barry O]

Ey up!

Cricket last night was hard work. No trouble from the players but the games were played very quickly so concentration levels were very high.

 

Our joiner is now arriving today to work on the garage..better late than never.

 

We seem to be missing some ERs again. Just hope they are ok.

 

Use your day wisely everyone!

Positive thoughts to all who ail.

Baz

[Ozexpatriate]

10 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

Guidance from the hereafter?

John, your commitment to reinforcing Sandy's legacy through her many projects is truly admirable.

[Ozexpatriate]

15 hours ago, Ian Abel said:

Still "negotiating" for an entire reindeer/sleigh exhibit on the roof, but that's mostly a pipe dream

The Clement Clarke Moore standard of eight, or the Robert L. May amendment to nine, including the one with the shiny red nose?

 

Or perhaps just Grandsanta's solo reindeer from "Arthur Christmas"? Better than Rolf the unmentionable's six white kangaroos, though that would make an ironic statement in wintry Minnesota.

 

Your vision necessarily reminds me of the flaming sleigh at the end of "Christmas Vacation".

[45156]

Morning All

 

Belated happy birthday to Jamie, and happy anniversary to Ian and Sherry. 

 

Baz - agreed that we do seem to be missing a few ERs, and I reiterate the wish that all is well. 

Chris - follow your feelings and do whatever feels right, and hang the expense - if you can afford Dublin, then go for it - it would probably be a great experience.

Everybody else - generic greetings to all ailing and celebrating.

 

Bathroom ceiling got painted - I started on refreshing the grout, but the grout pen ran out - not a problem, I thinks, there's another one that I used in the kitchen drawer.  Yes, it was there, but it had dried up!!  It was only a couple of years old.

 

Writing group today, followed by a visit to the hardware shop to get another grout pen, then bank for (hopefully) a printout, then pick up 30747 from work.

 

Back tomorrow (/)

Regards to All

Stewart

 

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

A mainly blue sky has appeared and it should be a fine day with some sunshine.

The main weekly visit to Sainsbury's has been brought forward to today and will be followed by a visit to a local garden centre which has just been taken over by another firm. This afternoon I am going for an eye test.

It is unlikely that The Shed will be visited which means I should have an injury free day.

That is all.

Have a good one,

Bob.