LisaP4

full of sardines

Just a little something I've been working on when I get the chance: Lynton & Barnstaple Railway coach No.16 as a 3D printable 'kit'. Modelling in 1:35 scale, but it's easy enough to rescale to whatever (see image of 4mm, 7mm, 1:35, and 16mm scales). Not happy with the door vents, those'll need redoing, but it's coming together slowly.

Fool's Paradise - Buddy Holly

I bought a PS3 just so I could play The Last of Us; still the only game I have for that console. Great game. If anyone here likes incremental games (cookie clicker, kittens game, etc.) and also railways (above average chance of that here), I've started writing a little Railway-Builder incremental game. If you'd like to give it a go, it runs in the browser: https://ticklishhoneybee.github.io/ClicketyClack/ Still quite early in development, but some friends have been playing it, so you should get some fun out of it.

Not entirely sure if I'm back, or just lurking for a bit. But hi anyway.

I did the maths on solar panels and batteries here a little while ago, and it'd cost less to go solar than to pay one electricity bill. If I wasn't planning on moving out soon(ish) I'd be on solar already. Admittedly I have very low energy needs, and it'd cost more if I had to include heating a UK house in winter, but it'd certainly be paid for well before it wore out.

Hello you lot, 'sbeen a while; still see a few familiar faces (or nicknames, at least) around though.

... nope, they're still coming.

I got a surprising 'Your registration is complete!' email from rmweb last night... then another, and another... there's been a few. Came to see what's going on, couldn't log on, had to reset my password... let's see if I keep getting emails.

Morning all. General salutations, commiserations, congratulations, and such, to everyone; seeing as I've missed over a hundred pages in 'ere. The humidity this summer has been horrendous (90%+ a lot of the time), thus, so far this year I've only managed to get into the workshop for any appreciable amount of time once. I've mostly just been living in front of the air-con vent, and sleeping a lot. At least summer is a good excuse for making ice cream; so I made some strawberry ice cream, it was delicious, even dad liked it.

Morning all, from tomorrow! Had to battle dad into the shower today, then get him to the doctor. A rather tiring exercise on top of not much sleep. Thus, naps were muchly in fashion in the afternoon. Still tired, will probably have an early night (well, early for me). In the meantime, I'm gonna eat ice cream. Enjoy your day all, whatever may be left of it.

Vaguely, I think one is similar to walschaerts, but with no drop link, the union link back-facing, and the combination lever inline with the expansion link. While the other is kind of a mix of southern and baker gears. Don't recall which is which though, assuming I'm anywhere near right.

We used to start with wood soaked in kerosene/paraffin with a little coal on top, plus the electric blower for draft. We had a jar that was slightly shorter than the length of the firebox (thus if it fit in the jar, it'd fit in the firebox), that we kept full of wood and kero. Said jar was found by wandering around the supermarket isles with a bit of wood in hand, I think it was some brand of peanut butter. None of us liked peanut butter, but ate it as we didn't want to waste it, and needed the jar. Speaking of different fuels, we always carried wood, coal, and char with us, as each had its own uses. When you need heat now, use wood, it won't last long, and it isn't the hottest, but if you're low on steam and blocking the line (or have long queues of waiting passengers) it'll give you the quick boost you need. If you need a lot of heat, but aren't in a hurry for it (low on water, injector's packed it in, so have to pump in a lot of cold water) char is what you want, anthracite would probably do the job too. For the rest of the time, when you just want a good constant fire, nothing beats coal. It's not the hottest, and it's not the fastest, but it does give the most even firebed, and you will burn less of it because of this, even compared to longer-burning fuels. I've just discovered that paraffin and kerosene are the same thing; I always thought them to be different products of oil refining, but apparently not. Mind, I did learn this from wikipedia, which isn't the greatest for accuracy at times. Also, Kerosene/paraffin is always blue here, methylated spirits is pink, or sometimes purple - probably depending on how much dye they add.

Morning(?) all. Caught up with everything, got distracted, caught up again, figured I'd better write something before it took a whole day to post it again. A rather nice overcast day here today, spent most of it trying to cajole dad into the shower, without luck. Shall have a bit more of a poke at the 16mm scale loco in a bit, still nibbling on some assorted left overs for a late dinner. Also I need to stop looking at 2FS layouts, before I get sucked into doing something. Enjoy your day all. Where is this, and what's the gauge? I don't think I've seen you mention it, or have but forgot! I've seen air used quite a bit for steam raising on larger (4"/foot and larger scale) 7¼" gauge locos, but usually with a fitting on the blower pipe to attach the air line to. On the other hand, I know a couple of 11" gauge lines where they just stuff a length of drain pipe into the chimney to get a natural draft. A few years back here, the guards on the trains were first told to announce the stations, then told not to. There was apparently a number of complaints about the grumpy guards' voices. I also recall a guard once announcing the names of the stations, but calling out the names for the wrong line; it took five or six stations before he realised (or was told of) his mistake, and started calling out the right station names. Now there's recorded announcements, which are quite loud and bothersome, probably so as to be heard when wearing headphones; which are necessary to drown out the announcements. We tried anthracite once, and only once, it was horrible to burn. It took ages to catch alight, then burnt too hot, and too quickly. "Char" is popular here with miniature loco's, no idea what it actually is, but the draw card is not having to clean the firetubes if you use it exclusively; much like anthracite though it needs a lot of heat to get it burning, then burns too hot. It does last a while though, but burns to a fine sand, which naturally gets blasted straight up the chimney and into the driver's (and passengers') face(s). I'm rather a fan of good steam coal, Blair Athol being the local coal of choice for loco's of all sizes. Many have to settle for Rosewood coal around here though, which is high in tar, resulting in black smoke, a black face, and blocked tubes. Dad's Sweet Pea, btw, we used to get from cold to 100psi in about 20 minutes; though that had a Briggs steel boiler, and I imagine we wouldn't be starting from quite as cold as you would in the UK.

Reminds me of a movie quote: "bums wanna look like bums, and swells wanna look like swells." I guess the same applies for numpties. I think the movies was Ironweed. I promised dad, several years ago, that I'd keep him out of a care home for as long as I was able, and yeah it wears me down at times, but along with the tough times are the good ones to remind my why I do it. Back when it was the 'in' thing to wear lots of badges (usually bands and such) I picked up the nickname 'steam', as one of the badges I wore was a 'Support Steam' badge; I don't know what happened to the others, but I still have that one. So now I need to catch up with the thread since I started writting this post yesterday.