Leaderboard

Viaduct time...... Lets have a handful from different angles.

From the guy across the street. One sunny day in January 2021 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Trump." The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr Trump is no longer President and no longer resides here." The old man said, "Okay", and walked away. The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Trump." The Marine repeated, "Sir, as I told you yesterday, Mr Trump is no longer President and no longer resides here." The man thanked him and, again, just walked away. The third day, the old man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying again, "I would like to go in and meet with President Trump." The Marine, understandably irritated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you've been here asking to speak to Trump. I've told you each time that he's no longer the President and no longer resides here. Don't you get it?" The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it." The Marine snapped to attention and said, "See you tomorrow, Sir."

It's about time for me to get my finger out and do some more work on Ewer Street. A parcel of land next to the Acme Engineering Works has been reclaimed for building work, and to this end foundations have been laid for a Warehouse, which will match to some extent the one on the opposite side of the tracks, the buildings will be connected by a enclosed walkway above the track, and a loading bay built at the end of the warehouse. Construction will be my favourite method of boiler box carcase, clad with grey board, this is done as the layout is in the garage with a wide range of tempratures and the corrugated card gives a very solid carcase . Scalescenes papers and low relief warehouse kit will be used. Pictures of progress so far. All the best Adrian. (now back in tier 3)

We have difficult neighbours, many years of parties till all hours etc, police involved, all the drill. He's OK till he gets beer (and other things?) on board then turns into a nightmare. Finally a few years ago local bobby (don't have one now :-( ) did a major number on him, then hid around the corner to catch his mates driving away - drunk - nicked them for DUI, and so on. Brought a quieter time, and while he was.....busy....with his new girlfriend a baby thankfully came into the scene and things have been OK for 4 years now. Unfortunately when the bobby retired they closed the village police station - while boasting about 'community policing'. Pah.

Our neighbour moves out at 12 noon today. At 8am a lorry arrives to deliver a load of building materials, then a bunch arrived to put up the scaffolding, then a guy to do some plumbing (!) - followed by a man with a digger.. could be we are going to have real problems with the new neighbours who want to enlarge the house before selling on in the next 6 months... Our neighbour is, understandably, very upset about it.. She has had to explain to the Council Planners that the person who has submitted plans doesn't own the house until 12 noon today.. the Council had written "The Occupier" a stiff letter about the drawings submitted! If she is as pushy with us the new owner may have a big problem with us... Baz

Another WD view this morning. Short of pictures again, but the sun is shining, so that may be remedied later.

Morning. No walk, too cold, 4c and damp. Lots of spooky mist coming out of the fields on the drive down to Ramsey with Mrs NHN. My i30 is an auto which does not have s/s, the manual version does. I would have thought it a little odd in an auto, unless it only works in neutral, as Jamie says it can cause issues. NHN has twisted his right wrist and aggravated an old injury, it is 'not nice' currently and causing a lot of bad language. Wrist brace in use and hitting ibuprofen. Makes typing very awkward!

Evening all. Not much to report but here's a picture to be going on with....for now....ish.

Photos at Bottesford on the Nottingham to Grantham line today. Bottesford Class 114 Nottingham to Grantham May 81 J7384.jpg Bottesford Class 114 Nottingham to Grantham May 82 C5669.jpg Bottesford Class 47 Parkeston Quay to Glasgow C Sept 83 J8074.jpg Bottesford 156403 Crewe to Skegness 9th June 95 C20244.jpg Bottesford South Junction view east towards Bottesford East Junction Aug 83 C6124.jpg This was the Great Northern and London and North Wesern Joint line line from Melton Mowbray. David

I quote like the stop/start feature of cars. But then we only have one car that has it, so it's still a little novelty. My Focus is far too old to have anything exciting - a 56 plate. I'm holding out to buy a new (used) car as I think next year, quite a few will be returned. Prices are expensive at the moment. Although I'm a little sad. Baby Son has a cold. He's really stuffy and struggled last night. He cries and coughs so much that he sort of chokes a little. It's more just a really big cough but his throat must be red raw when he does it, poor guy. Not that much we can give him though as he's on other medication but a bath vapour thing may be the way so will try it tonight.

Good evening everyone After I’d finished my breakfast this morning I looked at the calendar on my phone and was horrified to see that my appointment time was 8:50! Oh sh!t I thought, I'm going to be late, it was already 8:40 and I hadn’t even put my shoes or jacket on. So I quickly got myself ready and legged it down the road to the surgery, I arrived there at 8:52, I apologised for being a few minutes late and was checked in. As I sat in the waiting room, I was told that I wasn’t late, I was actually early. It turned out that my appointment WAS as I’d initially thought 9:10! It would seem that I’d written it down wrong in my calendar, doh! So after all that I didn’t need to rush there at all! Anyway, all went as well as these sort of things can do. As I was fastening my shirt I asked about booking my next appointment, which will be in 12 weeks time. Believe it or not, I was able to book it there and then directly with the nurse! Apparently, the nurses at the surgery have a booking in system that is separate to that of the doctors, although the nurses and doctors can view each other’s system (but not alter) to ensure no double bookings etc take place. I was absolutely flabbergasted, as I assumed I’d have to phone checkpoint Charlene in 6 weeks time and book it, at last I thought, some joined up thinking! Once back home, I changed into my working clothes and headed back downstairs to the cellar. I continued working on the wall next to the door that I was working on yesterday and got that finished just before dinner. After dinner I started on the longer section of wall, getting about 20% of it done before it was time to pack up for the day.

Yeah, there is one there and one near the terminal one pic from today, crewe freightliner depot

Good morning everyone It’s a beautiful sunny day here in the northwest of England but a lot cooler than yesterday, but no frost currently 3C. I’ve been requested to be on standby for door answering duties (a package for Sheila not me) as Sheila will be ironing the bedding this morning. Man-handling a 6ft sq duvet is not something that can be stopped quickly if you’re in the middle of folding it etc, but it’s always a good idea to bag a few brownie points. So paint removal will be on hold today. I’ve got a few other quieter things I can be doing, but to be honest it’ll be a nice change and I don’t think my back (or knees) will complain about the rest. Stay safe, stay sane, enjoy whatever you have planned for the day, back later. Brian

Beth's Clio (A Renault car) has the stop start feature which I switch off when I remember. As it's an automatic it usually holds itself on a small gradient without the handbrake. When the dratted thing switches off it starts to gently roll down the hill. As to fuel tanks I'm quite happy with my 16 yr old Volvo's 15 gallon affair. I can get 900 miles out of a tank. I certainly don't need to fill up en route when we come to Leeds. It's warmer here nearly 10 degrees. Clearing out the bathroom is on the agenda for today and then strating to strip floor tiles and wall cladding. I don't see why I should pay a craftsman for that job. I also need to identify which circuit breakers control the 2 sockets and the wall mounted heater. Happy days. Regards to all. Jamie

I finally got round to fitting buffers and a coupling to the footplate end of the Caledonian tender: What prompted this was the arrival of a new addition, a Deeley tender, to which I made the same modification: My thanks to Rob @MrWolf for spotting it on Ebay and bringing it to my attention. So, beginning to build up a stable of water tanks now. Thanks for looking, Al.

I had a good walk around the village this afternoon, to make up for missing this morning. Went to see Debs friend's grave, realised that she had been put in the same grave as her sister who died of natural causes last year - so sad. It then began to rain as I was a goodly way from the house, but didn't get too heavy thankfully. Her ladyship is having a 'deep tissue massage' after work and I have to collect her from there, the masseuse is a good friend's girlfriend, she's quite a character and a mix of cultures, born a Kiwi, Jewish by choice not birth (including learning Hebrew which I think you have to do to be accepted into the faith, quite a feat) and mad as a hatter, we love her to bits. Rather easy on the eye too.

Our 4 series BMW is an automatic and fad stop/start which engages when you fully stop the car even in drive. It works reasonably well and has cut my tendency to dry steer! it also has a petrol tank that is a few litres smaller than the previous 3 series. it’s had a special adaptation - working indicators!

Since J6s seem to be rather popular...................... A further view of the latest Nu-Cast/SEF one; riding on its scratch-built chassis. It's now complete with guard irons and balance weights, but I await its tender to build. Since I'm well in credit with Geoff Haynes, I'll ask him to paint this. Seen recently, this 521 Series J6 is now with Geoff for weathering, replicating an image in a Keith Pirt softback on Retford (I painted it). And an original Nu-Cast J6, shunting on LB. A further SEF/Nu-Cast J6, this one towing a London Road symmetrical wheelbase tender (the tender provided by SEF is the least-common type behind a J6). Painted (by me) but not yet weathered............ Now weathered (by me). J6s were rarely gloss black. All these examples have the shorter/shortest chimney, appropriate for BR days.

One of our cats jumped up on the desk yesterday and managed to disconnect my Teams meeting by stepping on the laptop keyboard. He got an extra helping of tuna as a reward.

Did my usual 07.30 Thursday provisioning run - needed both heated screen and seat today. Glorious Devon morning now the sun's properly up. Off to deliver mum's share soon, then to the garage to book Abbi the Yeti in for new boots. A brisk (definitely, this morning) two lengths of the prom beckon on the way home. Think I'll dig out some gloves! John

Ey up! The Beast has a butt9n for "EV" , one for "4WD" a " save battery" life button, a "run in economic" mode button... and others.. it can feel like getting a plane ready for flight when yo get in it but her indoors loves it down to a "turn the heated seats on" switch..it does have a small fuel tank though. My eye feels a lot better this morning.. great! As it needs to be ok for its next meeting with the laser on 5th December. We are scheduled for T cell tests, blood tests etc on Friday but no formal info has arrived..yet... Hopefully that will be sorted today. A very happy delivery man arrived here yesterday at exactly the right time we had been given. The Wine Society man..Austin is his name..is always very pleasant and does wear some interesting clothes.. always shorts, bright coloured socks and some form of Doc Martens.. yestersay highly polished red ones. Such a positive view towards customers. Time to drink my tea, her indoors is off to moreasons.. Baz

Bear had a bit of a rest day today (the paws are protesting after yesterday's paint scraping escapades) so it was a little bit of the dreaded G word (today is Bin day so it made sense to load it up a bit first). Then a tiny bit of kitchen work followed by taking the car for a run, prompted by earlier discussions on ER. Just had a call from a buddy of mine so we put the world to rights for the best part of an hour; one subject was when (or indeed if) our Model Engineering evening class will resume at a local college. Such classes are very few and far between, sadly, so if it folds then we'll be shafted good and proper. Not only does it allow access to some nice lathes, mills and tooling it's also a good social meet-up. Here's hoping...

Back in 1982/83 I was determined to get London night routes, especially those that were still RM-operated. It meant pushing the limits of 400asa film and hand-held camera, and later very grainy 1000asa roll film. The following were all 400asa slide film. N83 RM912 Charing Cross Jul83 N89 RM1902 Southall Aug82 N90 RM630 Pimlico Aug82 N92 RM1732 Aldwych Aug82 (N92's never seemed to display an ultimate destination) N99 RM1816 Chingford Station June 82 Needless to say many late nights and very early starts were the order of the day. I doubt I could keep up the pace now.

Hunny. Lots of it.

Morning I wonder if we can get to Cornwall with a full tank for a beer

She has done.. in a nice way.. and then they coughed up some dosh to "smooth things over".. Baz ps they have a very nice looking dog as well.. so I might forgive them at the moment!

Congratulations!

Greetings one and all! There are some matters arising this morning. My Polo has stop-start which works when it feels like it. There is a button down by the gear stick which activates it should it need encouragement. In present circumstances I'm not too worried whether it kicks in or not. The car is doing eight miles a week, this comprising two fodder runs, and I shall be looking for a legitimate opportunity to take it for a longer run. Stevenage and back is about 30 miles so if and when the lockdown arrangements permit I shall pay Poorly Pal a visit. Brian, welcome to the Zoladex club. You remind me that I need to brave Checkpoint Charlene to arrange my next appointment, due in two weeks. It is really a shame to trouble them sometimes. Yesterday I had a letter from Professor Oncologist. Strictly speaking it was a courtesy copy of the latest letter to my GP reporting on my latest telephone audience. It was addressed to a doctor whose name is unfamiliar at an address other than that of the surgery which I attend and if it is to be believed I have had cancer for seven years instead of five. He urges that the bowel screening should be followed up. So it should, but much has happened since he dictated the letter. Flavio, thank you for reminding me that the day of the big meal in Switzerland is C*****mas Eve. This reminds me of something that happened three years ago. The big meal was a comprehensive spread, served buffet style. One of my fellow travellers was somewhat indignant that there was no turkey, having perhaps forgotten momentarily that one of the points of foreign travel is sampling the cuisine of the nations that you visit. At dinner on 25th December we sat down to turkey. You should have seen his face. Oh, how we laughed. Today I shall despatch the three cards to overseas destinations. I do not yet have the necessary stamps but this will be a simple matter - a bus ride, a queue in the post office and another bus ride. Then comes the mass dispatch and it will all be over for another year. It's not just the army that is good at logistics. Best wishes to all Chris

Evening all. So the MiL has expressed that she'd rather not risk us visiting at Christmas. So that'd be 2 weeks off with nothing to do....apart from ooooh, let me see. ... Fishing Muddlin' Gorging / Carousing Stop me if I'm missing the down side.... I'm going to have to plan this fortnight carefully to not waste any time on frivolous stuff.

My Shiraz is stronger than I thought 'cos I'm seeing double triple!

Oh, I don’t know. To no local surprise whatsoever, Peterborough is up one to Tier 2 due to a sharp increase in cases in the Millfield and Bourges Boulevard areas - a densely populated area of Victorian and Edwardian terraces, once Home to the sizeable railway workforce and now a dormitory of HMO for the mostly East European contract labour employed at Amazon, Freeman’s, Perkins Engines etc. and surrounding agriculture. Perkins want a month’s production by Xmas Eve, the traffic at Amazon etc is already exceeding previous Xmas numbers, and there’s still the campaigns to come for spuds and Brussels Sprouts in Dec...

We had a short walk. I posted a couple of cards, Aditi cancelled the newspapers now we have got to the end of the subscription vouchers. This was prompted by the newsagent saying they were ceasing deliveries at the end of this year. They had omitted to tell us that they had subcontracted the newspaper delivery to an agency and home delivery would continue. Aditi said we had cancelled our voucher subscription anyway. When I cancelled the subscription vouchers I said I had been happy to read a paper with a political stance different to mine but recently I thought some of their columnists were deranged. Aditi had just taken out an online reduced price subscription to an American newspaper. She also regularly reads French newspapers courtesy of Essex library online services. Tony

I hope the current owner told the delivery, scaffolder, and digger operator where to go and how to get there in graphic detail.

Greetings all from the boring borough. Another fun filled day ahead. <not> Yesterday's end to end demonstration demo was a total fustercluck as one of the gears in the cog changed some setting at the last minute and everything went bang. At least it showed off our component's resilience and error handling. <sigh> Our Disco-sport has stop/start and it has not done its thing more than a couple of times since March. Mostly I'm getting a low battery, start engine greeting when ever I get in and sit down. Hopefully a few medium distance runs next week will settle her down. I've mentioned before how crap European batteries seem to be compared to the ones we used in Canada. By comparison the ones here are wimpy and last about half as long. The old Freelander went through 3 in the span of 14 years. By comparison the Tercel we had in Canada still had its original battery until the day it went to the breaker. 21 years and over 600k km. As for the "Duster" I'm surprised about the name since Fiat is likely to still own the trademark from when it took over Chrysler. Then again both Ford and GM have/had vehicles called Sierra. Coffee awaits as does an endless stream of Teams meetings today. Enjoy your day. Lastly, a Happy Thanksgiving to ERs in the USA. The closing scene from the great turkey drop WKRP.

Super Scottish power for this morning. 37081 Loch Long and 37183 sit in the centre road.

Crossing the viaduct.

Good morning all, Still dark but dry and a cool 7°C. There may be some sunny periods with temperatures rising to all of 9°C. My Dacia "Dusty" (there's original) has a switch to deacactivate the stop/start but it will switch back on on every time you start the car. I rarely switch it off. Usual sort of Thursday so bin men (one lorry only today) due soon and Sainsbury's at about 8.00am. Haven't heard from the latter yet about missing items or subs. I am agog with anticipation! That's about as exciting as my day will get. Have a good one, Bob.

You are quite right Brian, I did mean the delectable Loni Anderson. “Stop-Start“ I think is a response by the manufacturers to reduce emissions by switching off the engine when the vehicle is stuck in traffic, which - if driving in London is anything to go by - is most of the time. So, from that perspective it does make sense. I have a stop-start system in Hettie (my Skoda Yeti - “Hettie the Yeti“, geddit?) which took a little bit of getting used to, but now has become an integral part of how I drive. The latest wheeze is for undersized fuel tanks: a report in one of the Swiss consumer magazines highlighted that new cars for sale in Switzerland will come with small fuel tanks and to have a normal sized tank will require paying an extra £2000 or so. According to the consumer magazine, a study showed that a smaller fuel tank results in less pollution and carbon emissions (sic), as does a reduced size or absent spare wheel. Clearly, the reduction to emissions because of these measures is fairly small for each vehicle, but when multiplied by millions of vehicles it turns out to be quite a large reduction. In the absence of affordable electric cars with a decent range, one way of reducing emissions is to stop taking all these unnecessary short journeys: such as ferrying little Taormina and little Tarquin the 50 yards to the school gates or using the car to go from one side of the road to another (something I saw somebody doing in the US more than once). Another way of reducing emissions is to use public transport. Setting aside, for the moment, the problems with public transport due to the coronavirus, this presupposes that you have a decent public transport network. Not every country can boast a good, comprehensive and integrated public transport network like Switzerland. i’m looking forward to a reduced activity Thursday and Friday this week as my American clients will be enjoying (if that’s the right word) their Thanksgiving “Vacation”. I do have some paperwork to do, but nothing I can’t procrastinate about. Now for another cup of coffee before taking the doggies out for what will be a particularly chilly walk. Stay safe, stay sane! iD

If you think you can compete with this, dear boy..... + + Thought not.....

Thanks Mark, I will order a tin forthwith. I'm not sure about varnishing, though. I think the loco might have been varnished at some point before in its long life. The tender I got completely separately from the loco, and it has been over-restored already: new axle-boxes and wheels, and a complete fine-scale paint job, with really high-quality hand-lining. So, its really case of creating a reasonable-looking functioning whole, more than doing a museum-class resto. Anyway, I made myself a new work-tray today, so that I can get comfy in the study to do jobs like this, rather than working on them in the utility room, and that instantly inspired the creation of a replacement tender-loco drawbar, and the long-postponed fitting of a coupler to the tender, so now Old George can at least pull a train.

Afternoon all, Car needs a run vfot r about an hour to give the battery a decent boost - slightly hesitant for a cold start this morning. The engine seemingly only stops when I turn off the ignition or stall and then starts on the ignition key - that is good enough for me. And it has a 67 litre fuel tank according to the manuel so I suspect the UK version has that sort of capacity or more - it will officially do east Cornwall and back on a tank full according to the trip 'puter thingy. I reckon the small fuel tank idea is to get folk used to electric cars and having to stop to wind it up or connect to a windmill or whatever every 150 miles or so. After all I bet the average battery in an electreacle propelled car is a darn sight heavier than a plastic 50 litre fuel tank. As the bank was, as usual, not open when wanted herself paid in a cheque at the Nationwide which - after instruction from a helpful young man - means we've actually found a use for a Nationwide card (she won't let me have one in case I try to take out money so whenever a new one arrives for me it is hidden). Talking of money I had a new variant on a scam call this morning when 'Kevin' from somewhere in the sub-continent called to kindly inform me that I was due a refund on my SKY account. As I don't pay for the sky I'm not at all sure what he was on about but part of it was a nice shade of blue without any clouds earlier on (it didn't last). Tea finished, time to depart draws near I wonder if the Crazy Bear farm shop might be a suitable destination? Have a good day one and all and stay safe

Morning all from Estuary-Land. My I10 IIRC has a 30 litre fuel tank which is quite sufficient for my sort of driving and at 46 MPG with mixed driving and over 50 on long runs its quite big enough. I don't have stop/start and don't need it as I no longer commute and when I was commuting it was bangernomics where if it stopped you got another banger.

Our missing items on Mondays Sainsburys delivery was the WINE, we hadn't asked for a substitute.

Well, I took Simon's wise advice and went and ran some trains, not madly fast, because plunges to the floor cost money, time, effort and/or gnashing and wailing, but it did work (once I turned the radio off to avoid the news). Old George is gradually getting cleaned, while I try to make my mind up about whether to touch-in his numerous scratches and chips. I think I probably will, once I can get a paint-mix that looks close - it needs to be eggshell finish, neither gloss nor matt. It must be his 100th birthday so, so maybe he'll get a telegram from granddaughter.

Good afternoon. Another sunny one. However the tardis is still in the north of Scotland. At Thurso there was a rather nice Murial of a Highland Loco. Then it was back to Georgemas junction, Then reverse and off to Wick. where there was another Murial. There is still quite a bit of trackwork at Wick but not much sign of it being used and no sign of the light railway to Lybster. A pleasant walk round the town, a bite to eat in a cafe then back on the train for a nice ride south. There aren't many lines where you can see seals from the train. IIRC this is just north of Brora. More tomorrow. Jamie

Narrow Planet number and shed plates (85B Horton Road, Gloucester) arrived for 8749 yesterday. I'm well pleased. Apologies about the crooked lamp and the torch on the platform Whoops!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Slightly worrying point about titchy fuel tanks. This being the third recent post from Skoda owners, it was interesting to make comparisons with my (this week) 7-year-old Yeti, Happy Birthday, Abbi (short for abominable, geddit). My previous two cars were Hdi Peugeots with full tank-ranges around 600 miles (averaging 50-ish mpg) before the warning light came on. The Yeti (mine's the adorable 170hp Tdi version with 4wd, no stop-start) has a smaller tank and averages about 43mpg bringing that down to more like 450. That's taken some getting used to, nowadays, I sometimes get more than one tank-full on the same credit card bill! I really wouldn't fancy having to fill up more often.... She also has a "skinny" spare, though maybe 195 x 16 is stretching the definition somewhat. I've no intention of moving her on any time soon, but her eventual replacement will clearly require some thought. John

I've seen some cars where the stop/start control was a pig to find (BMW/Audi). On my car (Ford Ecosport), it's a clearly marked button which displays on the dashboard TBH - even though it is switched on, my normal work commute doesn't activate it.

Despite my brain cell hurting I decided to do at least a little something to wind down I cut the edging stones from the edge of a ratio platform kit top.... ....and cut the bottom three courses of stone from the bottom of the platform edging from the same ratio kit ....and ended up with this..... ....after some very careful bending and manipulating of the edging stones, not perfect but it’ll have to do because I had to use impact adhesive so it’s stuck solid Ignore the mess on the canal floor, I wiped away a spill of glue and it removed some of the paint with it....oops