ejstubbs
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Posts posted by ejstubbs
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1 hour ago, 009 micro modeller said:
I’m sure I read somewhere a few years ago about sellers removing stuff from EBay (ending the listing) and selling for cash to local buyers who had messaged them, or something similar, for similar reasons. I suppose for an in-person exchange you could take a photo of yourself handing over the cash in exchange for the items, though I’m not sure this would satisfy EBay etc. if there was a fraudulent complaint.
If the seller removed the listing from eBay and sold the item as a private transaction then neither party would be able to claim redress, fraudulently or otherwise, through eBay. eBay is very clear about this in its Ts & Cs, and its guidance to sellers and buyers: do the deal outwith eBay and you're on your own.
What you may be thinking of is the scam whereby a buyer completes the purchase on eBay paying by PayPal or, more likely these days, directly through eBay, but requesting collection in person. Having collected the item, the buyer then files a non-delivery claim and very likely gets their money back (given that eBay tends to favour the buyer in most disputes). To avoid this, sellers can (a) decline/not offer collection in person, or (b) insist on cash on collection. Taking option (b) means that eBay isn't involved in the financial side of the transaction, so the buyer can't fraudulently claim the money back from them. The seller and/or buyer could still gather photographic evidence of the in-person transaction - or maybe get a signature on a "received with thanks from...in payment for..." chitty - just in case the other party decides to try something funny. This is a [sadly not so] rare example where using cash is actually preferable to using electronic payment mechanisms.
I have in the past refunded a buyer's PayPal payment precisely because they asked to collected the item in person. The request for collection in person was perfectly reasonable since they were quite local, but I still insisted on cash payment (as I had stated in the listing) and in that case they were happy to comply.
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On 14/03/2024 at 06:49, Wheatley said:
For further examples see the Victorian interpretation of an inguanadon with the thumbspike on its nose (its in a park somewhere)
It's in Crystal Palace Park - there's actually two of them. The mistake was made by Gideon Mantell, the discoverer of the first, incomplete, iguanodon fossils. In his defence, he was working with the specimens he had at the time; it was only when more complete specimens were found later that the mistake was recognised. Bear in mind that he made his first skeletal reconstruction in 1834, and the Crystal Palace iguanodons, which were built nearly 20 years later, were still constructed with the erroneous nose spike or horn which they retain to this day*.
What's probably more egregiously wrong about the Crystal Palace iguanodons is that they are depicted as heavy, pachyderm-like creatures, contrary to what Mantell had worked out about them five years earlier. This error was based on the views of another paleontologist Richard Owen, who still clung to creationist ideas and believed that the iguanodon was fundamentally mammalian, and could not have "transmuted" from a reptilian form into modern mammal-like species. (Owen became the Superintendent of the natural history departments of the British Museum in 1856, which gained their own premises in 1880 in what we now know as the Natural History Museum. His rather forbidding statue stood at the midway point of the main staircase until 2009, when it was replaced by a statue of Charles Darwin having a nice sit down - but no cup of tea 🙁. Owen was widely regarded as being not a very nice person, to put it mildly.)
* They were retained during the 2001 renovation programme, thankfully, preserving the original mistake. All the models in the Crystal Palace Dinosaur Park were kept as as close to original condition during the renovations as was practically possible, given the state of deterioration of some of them. Some had actually gone missing, and had to replaced with fibre-glass replicas. As of 2007 the site is Grade I listed, and quite right too. When I was a nipper and my family lived in Bromley, we used to visit the dinosaurs quite regularly. They were looking pretty care-worn even back then. I was very pleased to find them lovingly restored when I visited the park again in the early 2000s, more than 40 years after I'd last been there, despite it being a bitingly cold day (we eventually retired to the nearby indoor cafe for a restorative cuppa and fish finger sandwiches - the latter being a delicacy I had not previously experienced but which proved to be eminently sustaining in such weather)..
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2 hours ago, Andrew P said:
More than likely he just told a member of staff to do their job properly, and that person got offended, and so complained that they had been told off.
And you know this how, exactly?
QuoteNo information about the female employee involved has been made public nor have any details of the complaint.
Until more information emerges, I'd suggest that you desist from uninformed speculation about a potentially sensitive subject.
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3 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:
I think they've made a general business decision to change from the £1 maximum fee to these percentage offers, so that's not related to your having sold something expensive.
Hmm, not entirely convinced. My wife was still getting the maximum £1 selling fee offers long - as in at least a year - after my original eBay account was only receiving the 80% off selling fees offer. That's partly why I set up my second eBay account, and lo and behold I got the maximum £1 selling fees offer almost straight away. Then when the first thing I sold (in May last year) meant that they lost out on nearly £40 of commission, no more maximum £1 selling fees offers for me. Yet my wife was still getting them in October and November last year i.e. five to six months later*.
Of course it's possible that the maximum £1 selling fees offers stopped for good in November, but nonetheless I'm pretty sure they do profile users' selling history as a guide of which selling fee offers to make to whom.
* Since when she has had no selling fee offers at all, and of my two accounts only the new one has had the 80% offer. Looks like they went all-in in the run up to Christmas and are now in bit of a cooling down period.
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I don't use Amazon as much as I used to. When I do I almost always get the 99p for a week "trial" offer. In fact, looking at the Prime Membership page for my Amazon account, it's offering it to me now; it may be a permanent offer that I just get reminded about when I make a purchase. I do sometimes get the free one month trial offer but it seems to happen much more rarely than it used to. TBH it doesn't bother me that much: if I want free delivery on an order under £25 I get the order sent to an Amazon locker, of which there are many near here. I'm never in such a hurry for something that I can't wait a couple of days for it to be delivered.
It's the same with eBay: I used to get the maximum £1 selling fees offers more or less monthly. Nowadays all I get is the 80% off selling fees offers. I actually set up a second eBay account to see if that made any difference and the maximum £1 selling fees offer appeared quite quickly. I took advantage of it to sell a relatively expensive item, and all they've offered me on that account since is the 80% off.
One might almost get the impression that these companies have more sophisticated algorithms these days capable of recognising when people are just taking advantage of the attractive "tester"/"teaser" offers to get something for next to nothing, with no intention of signing up for the long term.
Recall also that Amazon got a lot of criticism in the press a few years ago for supposedly signing people up to Prime 'without their knowledge'. AFAICR it was always made pretty clear at the time of making a purchase what the offer was, although it was sometimes not so easy to find out how to decline it. Neither was it always easy to find out how to cancel the Prime subscription before they started charging (although in fact you could cancel the same day that you accepted the offer, and you still got the free one month). I had slightly less sympathy with those who took several months to spot that they were being billed on a regular basis for something they didn't want. (A person of suspicious mind might suggest that the offer appeared much less frequently once the above mentioned obfuscations had been removed, and they found they were making much less money out of accidental subscribers.)
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On 10/09/2023 at 11:46, DayReturn said:
Found the label of the mystery stripper. It’s composed of 2-Propanol; Dimethyl carbinol CAS #67-63-0; 2-Butoxyethanol CAS #111-76-2.
For the avoidance of confusion: 2-Propanol and Dimethyl carbinol are the same thing - see "Other names" in this Wiki article.
Additional help to solve mystery can be found in this Wiki article which says of 2-Butoxyethanol:
2-Butoxyethanol ... is a colorless liquid [with] a sweet, ether-like odour. It derives from the family of glycol ethers, and is a butyl ether of ethylene glycol [a.k.a. antifreeze]. As a relatively nonvolatile, inexpensive solvent it is used in many domestic and industrial products because of its properties as a surfactant. It is a known respiratory irritant and can be acutely toxic, but animal studies did not find it to be mutagenic, and no studies suggest it is a human carcinogen. A study of 13 classroom air contaminants conducted in Portugal reported a statistically significant association with increased rates of nasal obstruction and a positive association below the level of statistical significance with a higher risk of obese asthma and increased child BMI.
Commercial uses
2-Butoxyethanol is a solvent for paints and surface coatings, as well as cleaning products and inks. ... It is the main ingredient of many home, commercial and industrial cleaning solutions. Since the molecule has both polar and non-polarends, 2-butoxyethanol is useful for removing both polar and non-polar substances, like grease and oils.
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20 hours ago, whart57 said:
Even Templot works though AnyRail requires the WINE emulator
WINE Is Not an Emulator - it's in the name. (Technically it's a compatibility layer.)
I tried Wine few times but never really got on with it. I find VirtualBox much easier to use for running Windows applications, though it does require a Windows licence which Wine doesn't. But then my first Windows VM was a virtualization of a licensed XP machine which has been successively upgraded to 7 and 10, all happily running on the original XP licence. (Although I have had to buy a 64-bit Win 10 licence in anticipation of experimenting with 11 at some point, but TBH it wasn't that expensive and I don't grudge MS a few dollars every decade or so.)
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18 hours ago, Edwin_m said:
Pretty much the same with a Deltic-hauled express at Darlington in the 70s.
Not dissimilar to the Lowland Caledondian Sleeper incident in 2019, then? The isolating cock somehow got closed during the shunt at Carstairs after the brake continuity test had been carried out. The driver did do a running brake test in the usual location en route to Edinburgh, but apparently failed to appreciate that he'd had to apply more service brake than normal to reduce the train's speed. Rheostatic braking on the approach to Edinburgh was likely compromised due to the pantograph dropping "unintendedly" as the train passed a neutral section at Curriehill, and it ended up running through Waverley at between 30mph and 20mph before it was finally brought to a stand 650m beyond its intended stopping point, apparently assisted by an intervention by the train manager.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5ece325b86650c76a551df1a/R052020_200528_Edinburgh.pdf
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On 06/01/2024 at 19:37, woodenhead said:
He’s probably not the ar$e people imagine him to be.
I think his tendency to lose his rag at the tiniest perceived on-track unfairness and resort to potty-mouth expletives doesn't endear him to some people.
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3 hours ago, kevinlms said:
Does the packaging suggest that it was a Peco version of the kit or not?
It's definitely in the new Peco packaging with the clear plastic box rather than the old style Parkside placcy bag with a Peco label on it, as in the second photo in the Hatton's link posted by Moxy above. (The actual item listing is here.)
I've raised an "item is defective" return with eBay this morning, it'll be in the post to the seller later today.
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52 minutes ago, JohnR said:
A quick call to Peco and I'm sure they'll pop the sprues you need in the post.
Good plan, I'll give that a try first before raising a complaint against the seller (who may actually not have known about the issue).
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I bought a Parkside PC58 LMS brake van kit from a private seller on eBay. It was described as "In unopened packaging", which appeared to be the case when it arrived today. When I opened the packaging I found, as per the thread title, four identical sprues of underframe parts but no sprues of body components. Before I go back to the seller to query this, can someone confirm that I am not going mad, and that these kits should indeed contain the body components as well as the underframe parts?
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38 minutes ago, Hroth said:
Audacity also allows the stream to be edited once captured, which can be useful.
You can use Audacity to edit audio without using it to record it. It just seems a rather tedious process to capture audio which already exists in a digital file by recording it in real time. You also have the potential issue of the PC making other sounds e.g. pings, beeps and bongs for notifications and the like, which are also captured in the recording (been there, done that, in other circumstances).
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1 hour ago, Hroth said:
I do record streams from BBC Sounds and youtube for later listening
Wouldn't it be a lot easier, and quicker, to use a grabber app, rather than recording stuff in real time? get-iplayer is available for Windows and does a good job job of downloading BBC Sounds audio files. There may also be a GUI front end for it - I know there is for MacOS. There are a number of grabber apps for YouTube and other video sources. I use ClipGrab (which is also available for Windows) but others no doubt do just as good a job. If all you want is the audio then there are plenty of apps around that can extract just the soundtrack from mp4 and other video formats (on Mac the standard QuickTime Player app will do it, possibly Windows Media Player also has that facility?)
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Hmm, sounds a bit like the old Lima GUV, where you pushed the windows in to get the roof off.
Thanks for this. It's actually the non-corridor coaches that I want to disassemble, I got that wrong in my first post.
When you say that there are two clips on each end, is that at the actual coach ends, or towards the ends of the coach sides?
EDIT: I located the clips you described. After about ten minutes fiddling about with them and trying carefully to separate the body from the underframe without causing any damage, I decided the job was beyond me ☹️
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I'm trying to find out how to go about disassembling the Hornby period III LMS corridor coaches - the new "super detail" ones, not the RailRoad ones. So far online searches have not been fruitful. Can anyone offer any guidance?
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12 hours ago, Sabato said:
I think the buffers are not a normal feature of end loading docks.
I was just using the distance between them as a convenient basis for measuring up the other dimensions from the photo.
2 hours ago, JeremyC said:Just to point out the buffers won't be vertically above the rails as buffer centres are about 5' 8" .
Yes, I realised my mistake yesterday - see my post.
3 hours ago, Nick Holliday said:This might be of interest, http://www.swithland-signal-works.co.uk/plans/16_Carriage_Landing_No1.jpg A genuine Victorian example.
Very useful, thanks.
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1 hour ago, DCB said:
The @Sitham Yard post looks quite modern. Most end loading docks would have pre dated motor vehicles being essentially built with the stations and very popular in the earliest days when toffs took their own carriages on "Carriage Trucks" when they travelled by train.
Are you suggesting that an older one might have been narrower, or wider - or just of a different construction? Sorry, not intending to challenge what you say, just to understand what it might mean on my between-the-wars era layout.
I'm also thinking that my estimation of the buffer locations was wrong - they should be ~1ft further apart than the rail gauge, which I think makes the width of the dock face more like 12-13ft.
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@Sitham Yard Thank you for that: a much better photo than I'd been able to find trawling through my books and t'Internet. So, on the basis that the buffers are positioned vertically above the rails, by viewing the photo at its maximum size and applying a ruler to it, the face of the dock seems to be roughly 9½ft wide, offset slightly due to the presence of the platform ramp on the right. That gives me something concrete* to work around for the one on my layout.
* See what I did there?
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How wide would a typical end loading dock in a goods yard have to have been? I'm assuming that the vehicles which were loaded and unloaded couldn't have been significantly wider than the wagon carrying them - and in fact less wide, in the case of a closed wagon like a CCT. But would it have been required to allow a certain amount of space on the dock at either side over and above that e.g. for people involved in the loading and unloading to have safe access alongside the vehicle?
I suppose that if the vehicle was being driven on or off the wagon then no such intervention would have been required, but if for some reason it wasn't able to move under its own power and it was having to be manhandled then there would seem to be a need for a bit of heaving room.
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1 hour ago, DCB said:
You can tell volunteers NOT to do something
Multiple reports indicate that the volunteers in question were indeed told NOT to do something - strictly, not to do it again - but that they went ahead and did it anyway. That's not really acceptable from anyone in any organisation, in any kind of role. (Except perhaps for certain politicians...but let's not go there.)
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1 hour ago, Pete the Elaner said:
is it about time there was a race somewhere in Africa?
The South African Grand Prix was a regular fixture on the F1 calendar from 1962 to 1985, with another two races post-apartheid in 1992 and 1993. There had been efforts to reinstate South Africa in the F1 calendar, and even a provisional/leaked calendar for 2023 showing South Africa taking Belgium's place, but that initiative eventually fell apart.
Rather more obscure is the Moroccan Grand Prix. The first Moroccan Grand Prix was run in 1925, but of course there was no F1 in those days, and no drivers or manufacturers championships. Various other Moroccan Grand Prix took place at a couple of different circuits on and off during the 1930s and 1950s, but the only year it was an official part of the F1 calendar was in 1958, when it was run at the Ain-Diab circuit near Casablanca as the final race of the F1 season. That race was notable as the one where Mike Hawthorn won the drivers championship by one point from Stirling Moss: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Moroccan_Grand_Prix
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10 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:
2 compact 35mm APS cameras
APS did not use 35mm film, it was 24mm wide.
35mm cameras are not obsolete: you can still buy 35mm film, either ready-loaded in cassette or on 50ft or 100ft bulk rolls that you can load into your own cassettes (I chore I used to subject myself to in order to save money as an impecunious youth). I still have a small collection of 35mm film cameras, including my Dad's old Yashica rangefinder camera with a built-in CdS meter, a Zenit (which could also be used as a self-defence weapon, it's that heavy), an early 1980s Chinon SLR (which was actually available with autofocus lenses back in the day) and a couple of more modern compact rangefinder cameras. I've put film through each one of them in the last year and had perfectly good prints from all of them.
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18 minutes ago, rodent279 said:
Can't read the article, seems to be behind a paywall.
You need a 12ft ladder: https://12ft.io/https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/heritage/five-volunteers-suspended-from-north-yorkshire-moors-railway-after-station-group-accused-of-carrying-out-unauthorised-work-and-taking-safety-risks-4411596 or a copy from an archive https://archive.is/uOG0x
According to a post on the Rail UK forums, the suspension happened a while back, and followed a warning that appeared to have been ignored: https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/nymr-is-there-an-issue-at-levisham.253670/post-6386675 (note the date of that post).
Royal Mail Tracking Service
in Wheeltappers
Posted
Best not to go near a Post Office with RM Tracked 24 and 48 I think. Apart from anything else, it costs extra to drop a Tracked package off at a Post Office (16p it would have been for the last small parcel I sent). If you're able to wait in, you can get it collected from your home address for free - they'll even bring the address label ready printed off you can't be bothered to fit that yourself. Otherwise drop it off at a local RM delivery office, or in one of their parcel post boxes (locations of which they give on their web site when you buy the postage).
I'm with andyman regarding the reliability of the Tracked 48 service: not had a problem with it to date.
I never buy postage through eBay; apart from anything else, in my experience it's poor to unusable for selecting anything more than the base level for a given service. I much prefer to buy postage direct from RM online.
eBay don't 'encrypt' the buyer's address, they just insert a code of their own part way through. As that's just for their own admin purposes, you don't need it if you aren't buying the postage from them. I just take the postcode they give you and feed it in to RM's reverse postcode lookup tool to confirm the buyer's postal address. It's quite common for the official postal address that RM have on file to be subtly different from that given by eBay - likely due to buyers not really knowing their own postal address properly, and eBay not checking. Using the official address as known to RM reduces the risk of the item going astray.