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ejstubbs

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Everything posted by ejstubbs

  1. This. It's fundamental, and I don't quite understand why the OP decided to throw the spotlight on Wikipedia in particular. Yes, it's popular and often cited but, as Johnster and others have said, there are a lot of other much less reliable and far more popular online sources than Wikipedia. In particular, anything that it is posted on FB/Twitter-style social media should be treated with extreme caution until verified from a number of reliable sources of a less transient nature. It should be possible to find out when and by whom the questionable passage was added to that article. At the top of the article page there is a "history" link, which takes you to a list of all the changes to the page back to when it was first created. For the article in question there are a lot. Given the size of the 'travels of D2860' section it should be possible to spot when it was added by looking for a sudden large increase in the article's byte count. However, there are quite a lot of other useful tools available in the article history part of Wikipedia which can help to make it easier to pin down things like this. In the case of the Class 02 article I looked at the page statistics (linked off the history page) and found that a user called "N1TH Music" had contributed by far the most content to the article. Clicking on that user's top edits for the article showed a significant dump of information into the article by that user in the autumn of 2021. By checking the 'diff' links for each of their edits of a reasonable size it becomes clear that the questionable information about D2860's travels was added on 5th November that year: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=1053680398 Since that user has contributed the vast majority of the information in that article, sadly the questionable accuracy of that edit rather undermines one's confidence in a lot of the other information in that article provided by that user*. I note that the suspect information relating to D2860 is shown as having been removed at 22:12 on 7th September i.e. yesterday, by a user identified only by the IP address "80.1.163.170" - only for it to be reinstated two minutes later by a user called "Saintstephen000". It was removed again at 01:15 on the 8th by a user named "LRV1007", and reinstated at 02:37, again by Saintstephen000. Somewhat bizarrely IMO Saintstephen0000 then sent an incredibly patronising message to LRV1007 at 02:39 asking them, when making edits, to "make dam'd sure it's sourced" - which strikes me as being more than a little ironic in the context. It wouldn't surprise me if LRV1007 had deleted their profile after receiving such an ill-judged put-down. What the above shows is that, for all that may not be perfect about Wikipedia, one thing it does offer is a degree of traceability for the information presented in articles, together with the ability for people with better knowledge to correct inaccuracies in place (something sadly lacking in the FB/Twitter etc world), with changes being recorded and with oversight from both other informed contributors and the editorial staff**. Dismissing it out of hand as being inherently untrustworthy is, to my mind, a classic case of the perfect being allowed to become the enemy of the good. * I note that N1TH Music has contributed to a number of other locomotive and MU articles on Wikipedia. One would hope that their 'research' behind those contributions has been rather more thoroughgoing then seems to have been the case for D2860's supposed UK-wide stravaigings. ** Not dissimilar in that respect to discussion forums like this one, one might argue.
  2. Prompted by experience of Edinburgh's city centre during the Festival, I wonder whether a future cliche might be the tourist hauling a wheelie suitcase through crowded streets with their gaze fixed on their mobile phone as they try to locate their Airb'n'b? (Though maybe less so in Edinburgh in the future, with the new council rules on short term lets.) Further down the same street there could be another wheelie suitcase-herding and mobile phone-brandishing tourist standing at the doorway of a tenement building with multiple keysafes by the front door, desperately trying to contact their Airb'n'b host to find out which keysafe is the one for the flat they've rented and/or why the code they've been given for the keysafe doesn't work and/or key therein doesn't seem to open the door...
  3. IIRC Alan Woods wrote in one of the RM articles about Bredon that he avoided putting figures on the model for the same reason. But he did include small details that suggested that people were 'present' and involved in activities other than just railway related, like having a bicycle propped up against a fence as if someone had left it there while they just nipped off scene somewhere for a minute or two.
  4. Or use the forum's own "in the current thread" search option (like I did, and it worked just fine - though it doesn't seem to exist in the mobile version of the site).
  5. That seems extremely unlikely, I'm afraid. The expression appears to have come in to use in the 1940s, initially in the RAF, so it's hardly likely to have had anything to do with sail-era warships. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/gone-for-a-burton.html The only meanings of the noun "burton" in a nautical context listed in the OED* are basically the same as those given in the above link: "A small tackle consisting of two or three blocks or pulleys used to set up or tighten rigging, or to shift heavy bodies," or: "A term denoting the thwartship stowage of casks, bags, etc." There's certainly no mention of a reinforcement for yardarms. (Note that the OED cites, amongst other references, the same sail-era contemporary sources as the linked article, one from 1769 and the other from 1846.) Neither of those meanings can easily be related to the actual meaning of the phrase "gone for a burton", which the OED defines as: "...(of an airman) to be killed; (of a person or thing) to be missing, ruined, destroyed." Finally, the OED defines "last-ditch" as: "Of or relating to fighting, resistance, or opposition to the very last; maintained to the end," or: "Made at the last minute in an attempt to avert disaster; resulting from desperation." Neither of which meanings seem to relate easily to the actual nautical meanings of the word "burton", the alleged but undocumented meaning, or the meaning of the colloquial phrase "gone for a burton". I would also refer readers to this entry on the Phrase Finder web site, and in particular the tongue-in-cheek mention of CANOE. * The full, online version.
  6. I don't know whether this has been reported before, but just now I was trying to reinstate some images which had gone AWOL from a post of mine (this one) and, although most of them did not appear in the actual post itself, they do all appear in the "UPLOADED IMAGES" section of the edit screen. So they're on RMWeb's hosted server, and I can reinstate them in the post without having to upload them again from my computer. Might it be that some of the photos that people think are still missing have actually been recovered, but just not put back into the actual forum/blog posts that they are supposed to appear in? (I've left half the photos still not restored into the body of my post so that the Admins can see what I mean - if they haven't seen such behaviour already.)
  7. Out of interest, I just did a quick check and I can see that I paid £3.78 for my ZK-MG on eBay in April last year. That was shipping from China. The three listings for the same item I've found on eBay so far today are in the £12 region, all from UK stock. I can't find the ZK-MGP on eBay at all. The Amazon listing for the ZK-MGP is actually cheaper than the eBay listings for the ZK-MG! I'm tempted to try out the ZK-MGP - it looks like it should be a straight swap-in to the box I made for the ZK-MG. The choice would therefore appear to be £5.94 and wait a month from AliExpress, or £11.59 and get it next week from Amazon. Hmm... I think the typo in that instance is that "00kHz" should be "99kHz": that's the figure that appears everywhere else in both the Amazon listing and the one on AliExpress. Not that the odd 1kHz is really here or there.
  8. There was a previous discussion about this very subject last year, sparked by a post from Barclay: Unfortunately all but one of my waveform photos in that thread succumbed to the Great Hosting Meltdown of 2022. I think I still have them somewhere so I might be able to put them back on that thread. I think one difference between the ZK-MG that I used, and the ZK-MGP that is mentioned on this thread is that the ZK-MGP has programmable slow start and slow stop times whereas on the ZK-MG the slow start is fixed and the stop is instant. It's not clear to me what the "step size" setting on the ZK-MGP is for.
  9. While I don't necessarily disagree with your fundamental point, unfortunately I don't think you've chosen the best analogy. Although TV features (HD, Full HD, 4K, varying degrees of smartness etc) and screen size have expanded over time, prices haven't really gone up that much, if at all. A couple of examples: When I left uni I the first TV I bought myself was a 12" B&W CRT job which IIRC cost ~£100. These days roughly same money will by you a 19" colour flat screen LCD HD Freeview TV (another £20 or so and you get a DVD player built in); We bought our first flat screen TV in 2010: a 42" Full HD not-very-smart-at-all job for £700. Checking the same retailer just now, the lowest spec TV from the same manufacturer that they offer at around that size is a 43" 4K screen with Google TV "smarts" built in, which costs £200 less than what we paid for our TV 12 years ago. It's the same basic story with a lot of modern "high tech" products: the standard levels of specifications and capabilities have increased, but prices are much the same or lower - even more so if you take inflation into account (and very substantially so in the case of my 1980s B&W CRT TV). The main differences cf model trains are: (a) TVs are definitely a mass market product based on rapidly evolving technology, rather than comparatively short run products for a significantly more limited market and based to a large degree on old and not particularly quickly evolving technology, and (b) the rapid evolution of modern technology means that manufacturers can't make a cheaper, no-frills product and make a profit on it, because the no-frills components either aren't available at all, or aren't available at a price that would make the product cheaper than the one built using the current industry 'standard' componentry that's churned out for pennies in the tens of thousands or more, and comes with the latest baseline level bells and whistles effectively included for free. TLDR: model trains don't follow Moore's Law, whereas products like TVs whose functionality is largely delivered by electronics still more or less do.
  10. Unless the box is vacuum sealed (which they aren't) the model is going to be "exposed to the air" inside its box anyway.
  11. Sophistry. "Approved installer" were your original words: that clearly refers to the person doing the work, not the work being done. Words have meanings. Unless you're Humpty Dumpty (or a certain kind of politician) you can't change their meaning willy-nilly to suit your argument.
  12. The word "reasonable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. The manufacturers would likely argue that they are already are emplying "reasonable" levels of QC. You can apply the sames levels of mazak testing that defence and medical contractors apply, but that's going to push the price right up, and we know how the UK modeller loves low prices. The decisions on "reasonable" would need to be settled in court with lots of long and expensive arguments. Probably enough to either bankrupt the manufacturer, or at least persaude them that the model railway business isn't worth the effort - which solves all the problems of course as we get no more new models. AND, you may well find a judge who looks at the stuff and says it's toy trains, so how much do they really matter? After all, a faulty OO gauge Class 31 kills no-one. Sounds to me like the argument over whether a Jaffa Cake is a cake or a biscuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_Cakes#Legal_status IIRC the final judgement was based on the proposition that a cake is something that goes hard (i.e. stale) when left out of the packet, whereas a biscuit goes soft. If only someone could come up with a straightforward criterion like that for deciding whether a model locomotive is a toy or an "adult collectible"*, how much simpler life might be. * Which sounds to me more like the kind of dodgy magazine that you can find for sale in the darker recesses of eBay** - but maybe that says more about me than it does about the phrase itself. ** Er, so I'm told. I'm not speaking from personal experience, obviously.
  13. Normally the case with items like boilers and cars etc. Not so with cars, AIUI, so long as it can be demonstrated that the person/garage performing the regular servicing did so at the recommended intervals and carried out the work as specified by the manufacturer at each service interval. From https://www.theaa.com/driving-advice/service-repair/faqs:
  14. All well and good, and I'm glad you got your faulty car repaired, but spamcan61 was responding to cypherman's assertion about manufacturer recalls for inherent faults, not one-off failures occurring outside of the warranty period. Actually, I think cypherman was half right: manufacturers do operate service programs whereby, when an inherent but non-safety-critical becomes apparent, dealers are instructed to carry out the remedial work FoC the next time a vehicle is brought in for a service - often without the owner even being aware of it*. But that isn't the same as as safety-related recall, which involves the manufacturer contacting the registered owner of every vehicle affected, and requesting that they bring their vehicle in for remedial action ASAP. * Although it is usually listed on the service job sheet - typically because the computer adds it to the job sheet automatically for vehicles that require it. But then I suspect the majority of car owners only give the job sheet a fairly cursory skim anyway. To be fair, my local dealer's service manager is very good at taking me through the job sheet point by point each time my car goes in to have work done.
  15. I've conceived a need for a few of the Dapol unpainted wagon bodies* (OO scale) but they seem to be out of stock absolutely everywhere. The Hattons web site suggests that they're due to come in to stock sometime this summer but that's about it. Unfortunately the usual alternative source such as the Bay of e have so far failed to come up with the particular ones I need. Anyone know if these products are ever likely to be available again? * Not the complete unpainted wagons, just the bodies - the product codes for the unpainted bodies start with a "B" whereas for the complete wagons they start with an "A".
  16. Looks fine to me using Edge, Firefox and Chrome on Windows 10, and Safari, Chrome and Firefox under MacOS Mojave.
  17. This any good? https://www.elginmodelrailwayclub.co.uk/2010/articles/advice/standard-railway-modelling-dimmensions.html "The following diagrams show the structure dimensions with the table indicating the appropriate measurements in various scales as devised by the British Railway Modeling Standards Bureau (BRMSB)." It's not the BRMSB web site as mentioned by Les Bird - but then I'm not sure that such a thing exists, given that the BRMSB itself seems to have ceased to operate 60 years ago or more, before the world-wide web was even a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye. There's another thread about the BRMSB standards here.
  18. The Dalmunzie Railway is shown on the current OS 1:50,000 map, including the zig-zag that was used to gain height before the crossing of the burn which is shown between the words "dismantled" and "railway": For some reason the 1:25,000 map just shows it as a path. I went up that glen one winter a few years ago with some pals to refresh our winter hillwalking skills (navigation, ice axe arrest, snow bollards, that sort of thing). I can't remember exactly what state the railway was in, and I don't seem to have taken any photos of the outing, unfortunately. My recollection is that there was a remnant of some kind of buffer stop at the eastern end of the upper zig-zag, so there was probably some evidence of rails in place as well. ISTR that the line of the railway faded away as you got closer to the farm, and was basically no longer visible at the point where it crossed a field/paddock between the farm and the "big house". However - again a vague recollection - I think there was a shed with some rather neglected-looking rolling stock round the back of the hotel. It's possible to trace most of the route on Google Maps satellite view: start at the Dalmunzie Castle Hotel and work westwards. EDIT: I had an inkling that this had been discussed here before, and found this in the "abandoned rails in the road..." thread: which includes a link to a Railscot page about the railway complete with photos, and this Press and Journal article about it (which itself includes the video linked above, and a reference to Rod Dingwall's book about the line, which is still listed on Amazon).
  19. Thanks for confirming what I thought I'd seen. However, as I don't "do" Facebook on a regular basis, I'm quite sure that wasn't where I read it!
  20. I'm sure that I read that the railway scenes were filmed on the East Lancs, but I can't track down the source now.
  21. I don't know if it's the one you have in mind, but this is the one I usually refer to: No idea where I first got it from, I'm afraid.
  22. Ah, thanks. Somewhat non-obvious if you don't do it very often. I'd only ever done it once before, to cut down a bit what showed up in VNC when the forum software was upgraded. So I knew it could be done, just couldn't remember how!
  23. Is it possible to edit an activity stream - either a custom one, or one of the default ones? I can't see any way to do this from the "My Activity Streams" drop-down, or when actually viewing a stream. I'm sure this has been explained before but my searches have so far come up blank.
  24. Currently on holiday in Portugal (so perhaps not strictly appropriate in the UK prototype forum) and yesterday took the train from Lisbon to Sintra. Was somewhat surprised to see a short turntable complete with bridge and rails in situ - though not connected to anything - as we emerged from the tunnel on the approach to Campolide station: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7304501,-9.166735,19z/data=!3m1!1e3
  25. Hmm, that's probably a year or two before I bought my current Epson device, which came with Epson Scan rather than Silverfast. Maybe Silverfast only support older Epson scanners if it was their software that was originally supplied by the manufacturer? Vuescan doesn't need a special version for each individual scanner model like Silverfast seems to, so I downloaded the Vuescan demo and it identifies my scanner as an Epson WorkForce 625, which it isn't, but the software does seem to drive the scanner OK. However, they want to charge me £50 to actually be able to do useful things with it like actually saving the scans to a file. (Oddly, the licensing portal does identify the scanner model correctly.) Unfortunately Silverfast doesn't recognise the Epson WorkForce 625 either, but even if it did it looks like they charge around about the same for software for a consumer level photo scanner as Vuescan do, so I don't think there's much point pursuing that avenue on a cost basis (plus Silverfast's web site is utterly horrible: very 20th century layout & design, only seems to list a phone number if you want to contact them, and the online store is veerryyy slow). Anyway, for now I'm still a 'happy' Epson Scan user...
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