Early Risers.

[Andrew P]

I had a bit of a surprise yesterday.

 

I just happened to mention of the O Gauge Facebook site that I was selling up my 2, O Gauge Layouts and ALL the Stock and by 2pm, I had sold most of the wagon Stock and a couple of the Locos. Never expected that 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Andrew P

[leopardml2341]

Proper morning this time.

 

Already at work, but due to interrupted sleep feeling a little under the weather.

 

Office C@ckwombles and F@@kwits watch out.....

 

Stay safe, sane and well.

 

Back later.

 

[iL Dottore]

21 minutes ago, polybear said:

Bear seems to recall a documentary on the Japanese Bullet Train - the drivers all had pocket watches, synchronised to a master clock in Despatchers (?) Office.  If the train is due out at 12, then that's when they move - to the second (signals permitting, of course).  And on a journey of hundreds of miles if they are not very accurate with their arrival time (I forget just how accurate) then the Driver can expect to have to justify why.…

I watch, on a fairly regular basis, Japan Railway Journal and in one episode they had a feature on Tokyo Subway driver training. After learning the route, the trainee driver - with the instructor in the cab - would have to cover the speedometer and complete the route keeping to the set speed limits (+/- 5 seconds [or less?], if I recall correctly) without reference to the speedometer. I wonder how many drivers in the London Underground, the Paris Metro or the Berlin U-Bahn could do that?

 

JRJ is a fascinating look into the world of Japanese railways. Although privatised, Japanese railways offer a level of comfort and service that few other countries (if any) can match. NHK World, who broadcasts JRJ, have had a number of presenters over the years, unfortunately - for 2021 - the sole episode made and broadcast had a clueless, female, social media “influencer” and the episode was unwatchable - the problem being the underlined items, not that the presenter was female…

 

Why TV feels that it needs to court the social media “influencer” is beyond me. I am certain there are far more people not influenced than influenced by these internet nonentities…

 

Andy Warhol: you were right….

[grandadbob]

Good morning all,

Sunshine and mainly blue sky here but there is the chance of a shower or two.

 

I really don't know why I stay in this country.  Apparently it's carp!  The people are carp. The NHS is carp.  The food is carp. The transport system is carp. The TV programmes are carp. The weather is carp. I'm probably carp as well!

Oh I know why,  I was born here and I love the place even with its faults and will never ever leave.

 

Whenever I get a train (very rarely these days and not at all since the beginning of Covid) I always try to get to the station at least 10-15 minutes before the due time so 30 seconds here or there doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Good day yesterday doing nottalot.  Steve visited, delivered  and set up the new Iphone for The Boss.  She is not very comfortable with any sort of technology but seems to have got to grips with this phone a lot quicker than her old one....in fact she never really got to grips with the old one! 

Inspected the gouges on his car which have gone right through the paintwork.  It is a metallic colour but he's had a quote from a guy (who has come highly recommended) which is not as bad as he'd first thought . Both doors will have to be completely re-sprayed and it's booked in later in the month.  Fingers crossed that it comes out OK.

He stayed for a long chat and watched the first half of the rugby match.  After that I stayed in my armchair and watched the rest followed by the end of the T de F stage. 

Steak was prepared and consumed about 6.15 and the new bottle of wine has passed the GDB acceptability test with flying colours.  Just as well as I bought 6 bottles!  After that I watched the F1 but managed to doze off during that.

Today after breakfast we'll be going for a walk which will include a quick visit to Asda.  

This may be followed by a visit to The Shed where toys may be played with.  I may even do some muddling in the form of spreading stony stuff on tracks.

Have a good one,
Bob.

 

 

[Barry O]

Yes @grandadbob despite its many strange ways of doing things I ltoo ike where I live especially when I am visiting other countries which are real disorganized chaos when it comes to day to day life.

 

It continues to chuckitdarn here.. means next doors "builder" won't be starting their extension with a bit of luck..unless his digger can float!

 

Dr Eldest Herbert has chosen the cover photo of his magnum opus.. he has a couple of changes to make then it is off to the printers..ooh eck! Who would have thunk it? The great grandson of a miner writing a big book with no pictures in it!

Breakfast is now calling so TTFN!

Baz

[PhilJ W]

Morning all from Estuary-Land. I stayed up last night to finish reading a novel. So late that dawn was breaking when I finished. Now back to bed for some sleep, be back later.

[Sir TophamHatt]

I should have taken yesterdays storms as a sign of what hit me coming into work.

 

My team has talked about moving away from an old and rubbish system to a new one for months on and off.

On Thursday, I took the initiative to start the transition.

What did I get?  Backlash, people removing themselves and "this is a rubbish idea" basically.

 

Talk about feeling unsupported by the other members!

Don't know why I bother sometimes - people seem to take it as a personal attack on them.

[jonny777]

25 minutes ago, grandadbob said:

Good morning all,

Sunshine and mainly blue sky here but there is the chance of a shower or two.

 

I really don't know why I stay in this country.  Apparently it's carp!  The people are carp. The NHS is carp.  The food is carp. The transport system is carp. The TV programmes are carp. The weather is carp. I'm probably carp as well!

Oh I know why,  I was born here and I love the place even with its faults and will never ever leave.

 

Bob.

 

 

 

Well said that man. 

 

A few light showers remain in North Somerset, but we are basically waiting for the rather nasty looking low pressure to the SW to flatten our garden with a combination of strong winds and heavy rain. 

 

We have already had the average rainfall for July, and that included 20mm yesterday, much of it during our street party, which was held under awnings in the organisers front garden. Everything seemed to go well....lots to eat and drink and many of us discovered the names of people living at the other end of the cul-de-sac. 

 

Eventually, though, the increasing frequency of heavy showers meant that there was very little space under cover, and apparently F1 racing was about to start; therefore the event drew to a rather haphazard close, but there was talk of repeating it around Chri**m*s time. One suggestion was that from 12 days before the 25th until 12 days after, we would assemble in the garden of each house in turn to eat mince pies and drink mulled wine. However, as this might easily result in a street full of obese alcoholics by January 2022 I don't think the idea will be taken up. 

 

The big question today is, will my front grass dry out enough today to allow me to cut it late this afternoon? 

[BSW01]

Good morning everyone 

 

The sun has just come out it looks like being a lovely day here in England’s northwest. However, the ground is far too wet for any sort of work, so I’ll give that a miss! Not that I’d have been do ping any today anyway, as we have Vickie calling round mid morning, as Ian is working today, I’ve volunteered to take her to collect Charlie’s birthday cake. After dinner Charlie is calling round as he wants me to show/help him make/paint some model figures etc. Finally we have one of the grandkids that wants to learn some modelling skills! So yesterday after I’d put the boxes in the new storage area, I cleaned and mopped the cellar floor, set up and cleaned a temporary table (the workshop is unusable at the moment due to the amount of stuff being stored there) and cleaned the chair I use in there. I really looking forward to this afternoon. 

 

Stay safe, stay sane, enjoy whatever you have planned for the day, back later. 

 

Brian

Edited July 5, 2021 by BSW01

[TheSignalEngineer]

4 hours ago, TheQ said:

 

The Mekon

Aagh! Saw one of those in a lab about 50 years ago. I did my HNC at Worcester. They had recently taken over the Radar Establishment school at Malvern and we did most of our course there. How things have changed. My communications lecturer was involved in radar development during WW2 and my electronics notes included half a page about the new-fangled 'Integrated Circuits'. 

 

[leopardml2341]

1 hour ago, Sir TophamHatt said:

I should have taken yesterdays storms as a sign of what hit me coming into work.

 

My team has talked about moving away from an old and rubbish system to a new one for months on and off.

On Thursday, I took the initiative to start the transition.

What did I get?  Backlash, people removing themselves and "this is a rubbish idea" basically.

 

Talk about feeling unsupported by the other members!

Don't know why I bother sometimes - people seem to take it as a personal attack on them.

I feel your pain

 

But you may find some solice in this thought:

 

"It's far easier for some to criticise other's work than to generate original ideas themselves"

Edited July 5, 2021 by leopardml2341

[The Lurker]

Greetings all from Sidcup where the sun has emerged between the clouds and it is warming up.

 

A relatively quiet weekend that was over far too quickly. We enjoyed the football. We watched the F1 highlights.

 

One the laptops (purchased March 20) has decided to stop charging up. We think it is the internal battery. It is on a Curry's care scheme and I duly arranged for it to be picked up by them today for investigation/repair. I made sure I told the person that it had to be after 9 because I am on a school run. They followed up with a call yesterday morning and I again emphasised the time. I got a text late last night suggesting that it would be between 7 and 11 this morning. At around 5 to 8 while with Younger Lurker I got a call saying they'd be there in 15 minutes time. I had to explain to the courier who clearly did not speak English as a first language that it had to be after 9 o'clock. But now I have no idea if or when they will actually come. I will give to the end of the 11 o'clock window before having to try to follow up.

 

 

[New Haven Neil]

Laxey rectification in action - last day in service. Turns out a 'couple of years ago' was 2011.  This is Manx Time in action!  When we say its 1958 here, we don't mean the time , but the year....

 

 

 

 

I can't find my slides of the ones at the Harton Electric Railway in South Shields, not sure where they are.

[tigerburnie]

Morning, damp here but not as damp as Edinburgh thankfully, thick sea harr, looks even more like autumn, still we had at least two weeks of summer, not bad for up here lol. Talk of where you live, I have been a proper nomad in my time, Holland was ok, Belgium was meh, France was lovely, though most of Paris was a tip, Luxembourg was ok too. London was interesting, Devon folk were not friendly at all, Derbyshire was nice, Staffordshire was ok in places, Leicestershire where i was born was/is a nice county but the towns were all dumps and Scotland is glorious. The problem is not the places, it's the people.........................

Q in the 1960's I used to build type 40 radar amongst other things as part of my apprenticeship, spent months milling wave guides too.

[BSW01]

7 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

Laxey rectification in action - last day in service. Turns out a 'couple of years ago' was 2011.  This is Manx Time in action!  When we say its 1958 here, we don't mean the time , but the year....

 

 

 

 

I can't find my slides of the ones at the Harton Electric Railway in South Shields, not sure where they are.

They take me back, they look like the ones I used to maintain many moons ago. We used to refer to them as octopuses. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by BSW01

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, polybear said:

 

 

 

And finally:

Is it a Bird?  Is it a Plane?  No, its......

JetBear....

https://jetpackaviation.com/speeder-pre-order/

(Flight Training Courses conducted by Ewoks have yet to be confirmed)

Will they actually materialise?  Well, they're already producing Jet Packs, and for $5K you can go on a 2-day tethered flight experience course.

Good morning all.

I don't think I'm a Luddite but I find the concept of jetpacks and human or heavy cargo carrying drone type aircraft fatally flawed.

With a conventional aircraft, if the power fails, and aircraft do lose power ocasionally for several reasons, an aeroplane turns into a glider, a helicopter into an autogyro, and a hot-air balloon begins a slow descent. In all three cases it's usually possible to get one's flying machine safely back to earth. However, a non-aerodynamic aircraft that depends on power alone for lift will instantly turn into a stone.  Their promoters will probably bang on about ballistic parachutes and built in redundancy, but parachutes require a cerain amount of height to deploy, and aircraft already have built in redundancy but they still have engine failures.  

Remember, the effects of gravity can be grave!

[PhilJ W]

Morning all (again) from Estuary-Land. I feel a lot better now after a couple of hours eye-lid inspection. The book that I couldn't put down was 'The law of innocence' by Michael Connolly, a crime thriller. Tea has brewed so its be back later.

[Pacific231G]

38 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

Laxey rectification in action - last day in service. Turns out a 'couple of years ago' was 2011.  This is Manx Time in action!  When we say its 1958 here, we don't mean the time , but the year....

 

 

 

 

I can't find my slides of the ones at the Harton Electric Railway in South Shields, not sure where they are.

Excellent. For the six months I was there in 1969-1970 I used to see the Harton Electrics almost every morning while walking to college. I never saw its mercury arc rectifiers but I went on an MRC visit to the Post Office Railway at Mount Pleasant in the late 1970s and saw them there. AFAIR they were in the lower part of the station tunnel under the platforms.

I'd earlier had a glimpse of them working at the BBC World Service transmitter site at Daventy in about 1976 during a visit by Bush House Studio Managers to learn what happened to our output after it had left the studio.

[southern42]

Morning all from red dragon land.

Wet out but now sunneeeeeee with blue skies.  

Will try and pull up some more crocosmia later if it dries up enough.

 

 

Interesting day on the CVR, yesterday. Sun at the start of the day (hot and sticky), then sun and showers, then dark cloud with a heavy downpour. When it had dried out, I agreed to do the last but one passenger train, only for it to rain on the way round - did I hear a little wheel slip approaching the top of the hill? Then, on the trip back to the shed, a pair of rabbits decided to dash about across the track and between the rails in front of me. It is bad enough when they play games on the level, but on the steep bit round the curve it is not very sportsmanlike!  Ah, yes! I could, possibly, just run them over but just think of the mess, the probability of having to re-rail a derailed train, or faced with a band of protesters waving their 'be kind to animals' banners...

 

Some other interesting moments.

I spotted this on the Museum wall, thinking 'I know of someone who might like this,' and  'Oooo! I've been on that!' (Port Erin to Port St Mary) - camera held high at arms length to get the exhibit as square as possible...So much interesting stuff in there, it is nice to stop for a few minutes when passing through to have a look.

 

I was just about to make my way from the workshop to the station to help out with the train when it started to drizzle, so I went to get my waterproofs and then the heavens opened - big time.

Workshop on the left, Shed on the right, Buffet Coach Cafe with extended outdoor eating area centre.

 

Whilst sheltering from the rain, a little birdie popped into the workshop.

 

One from last week.  Don't take your eyes off the road, Jack!

Just found out they do a black snood....

 

Time for a bit of toot on the flute.

Fitt  and  Elfie doing alright.

 

Take care all and play safe.

_________

Best wishes

Polly

[leopardml2341]

29 minutes ago, southern42 said:

One from last week.  Don't take your eyes off the road, Jack!

Just found out they do a black snood....

 

Best wishes

Polly

Sorry, but I just couldn't resist - there's a certain 'Toy Story' feel to that pic

 

 

[TheQ]

The first T80 went into service in 1954 (RAF Ventnor) the last left service in 1992. (RAF Buchan)

 There were at least 41 T80s built, but many were withdrawn shortly after introduction and some never made it to their intended sites due to cutbacks, hence there were plenty of spares for training sites.

 

Mooring Awl,

Bin a bit busy again at work, there being 2 major systems due this week.

I went out one door of the outer lab, for tea break and came back through the same door... However the door had moved 30 ft sideways in the wall. The wonders of modern modular construction..

 

Feeling a bit rough this morning, I definitely moved too many slabs Saturday.

 

I assume Tigerburnie did his apprenticeship at the AEI buildings in Leicester, I went  there once for a job interview, Not enough money and the place was very depressing. I also felt like a foreigner in the area..

 

Of job interviews we have a candidate arriving Wednesday / Thursday From MK by train!! 

 

The excitement of the day is collecting spuds from a farm shop on the way home. maybe some onions and carrots too if I can stand the joy..

 

Time for the next measurement.

 

 

 

 

[Winslow Boy]

4 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

I watch, on a fairly regular basis, Japan Railway Journal and in one episode they had a feature on Tokyo Subway driver training. After learning the route, the trainee driver - with the instructor in the cab - would have to cover the speedometer and complete the route keeping to the set speed limits (+/- 5 seconds [or less?], if I recall correctly) without reference to the speedometer. I wonder how many drivers in the London Underground, the Paris Metro or the Berlin U-Bahn could do that?

 

JRJ is a fascinating look into the world of Japanese railways. Although privatised, Japanese railways offer a level of comfort and service that few other countries (if any) can match. NHK World, who broadcasts JRJ, have had a number of presenters over the years, unfortunately - for 2021 - the sole episode made and broadcast had a clueless, female, social media “influencer” and the episode was unwatchable - the problem being the underlined items, not that the presenter was female…

 

Why TV feels that it needs to court the social media “influencer” is beyond me. I am certain there are far more people not influenced than influenced by these internet nonentities…

 

Andy Warhol: you were right….

 

I'm afraid we have moved from actually 'knowing' about a subject to 'what can I say or do' that will make me 'famous'. 

 

This is particularly demonstrated with museums now a days wanting to 'get a return' on there investment but unfortunately not having the initial financial acumen to realise that they is not always possible or desirable.

[PupCam]

4 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

included half a page about the new-fangled 'Integrated Circuits'

They'll never catch on .....

 

[simontaylor484]

Afternoon all

Rain has stopped outdoor activities for most of the day. So admin tasks have been done including re applying for my driving licence.

[Tony_S]

1 hour ago, PupCam said:

They'll never catch on .....

 

I once went to an early Microsoft Windows preview. I said it was going to do well and was told by everyone else at work I was talking rubbish and it would never sell 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Tony_S