MrWolf
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Posts posted by MrWolf
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21 hours ago, Andy Keane said:
I have now made up the stink pipe for Station Road and also the shunting klaxon for the yard. They both have 1mm steel rods up the middle for strength and to plant them and for the stink pipe a bit of thick walled 2mm tube around the steel to bring it up to the correct 6" scale diameter.
The next question is what colours to paint them. I guess the klaxon post and box could be white like a loading gauge or stone like the buildings but its hard to know. The stink pipe would have belonged to the local authority so I guess it could be white, black, coloured, etc - all thoughts most welcome.
You've made a great job of some more of those ordinary items that are seldom if ever modelled.
The stink pipes were generally painted mid green or a bluish green to blend in with their surroundings.
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Today Little Muddle, tomorrow - the world!
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7 hours ago, Mikkel said:
What a lovely photo. And a rare good shot of a round-ended 3- planker with lefthand GWR!
It's interesting to see the large oil lamp on the corner of the building too. In the later photo it has disappeared and there's a row of gas lamps beneath the canopy.
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That looks suspiciously like a wash house, the washer itself being built into that odd corner. I do like to see models of things that were once very ordinary but now all but extinct.
A very nice job you made of it too.
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15 hours ago, franciswilliamwebb said:
Shepherd’s yawning? 😇
It occurred to me that the shepherd may have been awake all night worrying sheep.
😜
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Anaglypta wallpaper, 1887 though!
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That's great news, I'd better order some of both and get my builds finished!
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I've had fun and games trying to attach fishing line to the Ratio / Peco posts, it seems to not like any type of glue.
I've gone with extremely fine copper winding wire and when I can get back to the layout for a few hours I'll post up the results.
Otherwise I'll be drilling six holes in over three hundred posts.....🤪
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1 hour ago, Enterprisingwestern said:
I assume Little Red Riding Hood is aware of what she is living with?!!
Damned good idea though.
Mike.
That might be the other way around, she may or may not have been the silent killer I was referring to...
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9 hours ago, alastairq said:
Rivarossi used to make a B&O Dockside switcher....and used the same mech for a tender version[with a slope back tender].
They had full valve gear, so may be worth keeping an eye out for?
Their motors were huge, and could threaten the integrity of the National Grid when pulling a long train.
But.....if non-working, could be a good source of parts for a Varney?
[As well as having a nice plastic bodyshell]
I had one of those Rivarossi locos, mint, boxed and seemingly unused, it came in with some other railway odds and ends to a friend's antique shop.
After a check over and a little oil, it ran beautifully on code 100 track.
It went back to Italy via eBay for £30+ post as Swindon never had one.
It would make an interesting and powerful loco and they do turn up fairly often.
I think that the motor would probably run my 6" Colchester lathe.
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1 minute ago, PhilJ W said:
If you don't touch the scrotes you won't be in trouble, just give them a fright. By starting up the chain saw and asking them if thats what they are looking for.😈
That would be classed as threats to kill, putting them in fear of harm, use of an offensive weapon and in holding them at sawpoint, unlawful imprisonment.
A better idea would have been to have said nothing to the police, armed ourselves with something silent, a couple of rolls of chicken wire and the keys to another friend's fishing boat. ☠️
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11 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:
We'd be laughing and sneering at them as examples of a backward-looking country in decline, stuck in a time warp, unable or unwilling to learn. Oh wait ...
My inner cynic would suggest that we, the British are not backward looking, the vast majority aren't looking at all, except at what is handed to them.
The politicians, academics and oligarchs like that just fine, a compliant, fearful and servile people.
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5 hours ago, johnofwessex said:
Has it been reported?
What would be the point of that? If you could even get a drugs marker put on the car, chances are all they'd get is a cannabis warning, or if charged with DUI and banned (if indeed the f'tards have ever held a license) they'll just buy another junker and drive it around until they get pulled again.
The most likely result in court is being bound over or maybe a suspended sentence.
If you think the police are indifferent to such behaviour, it's largely the fault of the utterly inept justice system.
Last year I was helping a friend clear some land behind another friend's house which was so overgrown you could only see one of the three garages on site.
We'd replaced the lock on the brick garage to store our tools, but after just four days someone crowbarred the door and stole two Stihl petrol brush cutters and a chainsaw.
I called 999 to be told that unless the burglary was in progress I should call 101.
An hour later, I got through and was asked if the burglary was in the house?
No. The garage.
Is the garage attached to the house?
No.
Then we can't attend.
About an hour later we were hacking into the creepers at the back of the next garage and found the items in bin liners hidden between the garages under a large ivy plant.
Obviously the thieves were intending on coming back with transport and probably had loot from other outbuildings.
I called 101 again to fill them in on what we'd found and ask if they would like to catch the culprits as there had been a spate of burglaries, all they would need to do is keep watch.
The answer, as you might have guessed by now was no.
So I offered to assist, what if four ex military types secreted themselves nearby that night?
I was then sternly told that it would be we who would be in trouble with the law.
Exasperated, I suggested that the desk jockey should prepare for mayhem and hung up.
We took all our tools home and decided that breaking and entering for the purposes of theft must now be legal, but we missed the press release.
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10 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:
Perhaps the German word for "styling" is "functional" ?
I believe it was the Bauhaus school of design who stated that form should follow function.
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Interesting beast and one that could tell today's manufacturers a thing or two about creating a stable mazak casting.
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2 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:
More like a twelve bore to the panniers.
To paraphrase Blazing Saddles:
"Don't shoot 'im, you'll just make 'im mad!..."
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Likewise, I learned to ride (ish!) when I was twelve, around the school grounds on a knackered orange Vespa Ciao, about as uncool as you can get, followed by various scrap Honda Cubs around the local fields.
First road bike was a Puch Sports 50, bought from someone who had dismantled the engine and bu66ered it up.
I followed that with a CB100N, (Are there any left?) CG125, a rigid Francis Barnett in trials trim, a 350 "upright" Panther, (Forks modified with Triumph springs and I don't recall seeing another 350.) and the first big bike was a 1960 BSA A10 caff racer with 1958 Rocket engine, a "proper" greaser's bike at last. 😆
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Exactly like that! I can't remember if it was that model or more likely an even older B2 that he bought from a fellow apprentice who was heading back to Wales and whose mother would have had a fit if he turned up on a motorcycle, but another tale was of getting the bike running.
Father had just returned from a test drive and was making some adjustments when a passer by told him that he had an identical bike in his back garden he'd been meaning to give the scrap man and he was welcome to it.
As for butchers getting near motorcycles, it seems far from uncommon. Whoever last worked on the 1953 C11 evidently only possessed an adjustable spanner, a hammer and a chisel.
Even the little slotted screw securing the distributor clamp to the crank case has been chiselled to death.
I'm replacing the damaged fasteners with better used ones from my stash, even though I'm thinking of moving this one on.
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Out for a chug through the countryside today on our motorcycles we found ourselves filtering through traffic and up ahead is a VW Golf with clouds of armpit smelling weed smoke coming out of the windows.
Coming into the next town on our round trip we pass a Ford Focus, different car, same problem, both drivers oblivious to what was going on around them.
It occurred to me that dropping a grenade into the driver's footwell might wake him up.
For about four seconds anyway...
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The ETZ is still a good entry level bike and looks like a bike. I rather pity today's teenagers who are faced with a choice of rev and pray plastic scooters.
The Achilles heel of MZs was the archaic charging system that was a halfway house between dynamo and alternator and after the end of the GDR rectifiers became hard to find.
There were plenty of awful / unrepairable bikes built elsewhere in the 70s and 80s and it was the cost or non availability of parts that got me more interested in old British machines which could be kept going as I really should have been after an RD125LC given my age.
There is quite a bit of interest in vintage Japanese bikes, but they suffer from the same problem as British bikes, in than it can cost as much to restore a 125 as a 650 and those costs are far higher with Japanese bikes.
I quite agree that badges sell, the names of many of our old makes have survived on paper or been revived to trade on reputation.
Otherwise, imitation being the best form of flattery, rivals follow in the footsteps of the famous, Rover gave us the Land Rover, from which we got the first versions of the Mercedes GelandeWagen and the Toyota Land Cruiser.
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4 minutes ago, rockershovel said:
Nothing wrong with MZs. Try the 1970s ISDT Special, very quick. The 125 and 250 singles were well engineered and very nicely finished, although if there is a German word for "styling" there probably shouldn't be....
Not at all, I've had TS125 / 150 / 250 over the years.
Any bike that can be dragged out of a shed for £20 and put back on the road with a new fuse holder and a universal brake lamp switch to replace the one inside the rear hub has to be a winner, that was a 1977 TS150.
Great bikes, if they could have modernised production, they might still be with us.
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16 minutes ago, Northmoor said:
I've often suspected that had most classic British motorbikes been the product of another country, almost no-one in Britain would still ride them.
That doesn't explain the worldwide following for them though does it? We did at one time make the best and most popular bikes in the world, as Japan does now.
Other machines from Europe and America tended to be much more expensive and wars with Italy and Germany didn't help sales either, other than cheap lightweights.
Quite a few British companies did get a start by fitting Peugeot engines and other French makes into their own frames.
So it's not rose tinted daydreaming of the old empire that has some of us riding old British bikes, we ride them because we like them.
I've owned and ridden lots of Japanese bikes, Moto Guzzi, Mobylette, BMW and once even a Harley Davidson (But I don't like to talk about what became named the Push Bike.)
I'd love to own an MV Agusta, as my childhood hero was Agostini, but I simply can't afford one and that's that.
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9 minutes ago, rockershovel said:
I find it hard to grieve the lack of surviving post-War Villiers powered lightweights. They were rubbish, mostly produced by once-distinguished firms at the end of their tether.
Post 1956/7 I would have to agree, particularly those powered by the Piatti derived Villiers engines. They really should have paid more attention to what the Germans were developing, we've made that mistake a few times and it could have cost us dearly when the powers that be were so dismissive about the development of jet engines in the thirties.
9 minutes ago, rockershovel said:The Germans had shown the way forward and the Japanese took up the challenge.
Motorcycle snobs like to sneer at the MZ, but Japanese manufacturers realised back in the fifties that it was only their parent country's regime that was holding them back from becoming world beaters.
9 minutes ago, rockershovel said:As for BSA's last gasp, the Tina and Beesa scooters .....
(Shudder...) Just plain awful. BSA should have taken the Dandy, stood it alongside a Honda Cub and had a jolly good word with themselves.
Not so many years ago, I ended up with a running Tina, another in bits and a bunch of NOS brightwork and other parts for £80. I think that tells you all you need to know.
I suspect the engine and transmission would be better off powering a record player...
Then there was the BSA Ariel Three...
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They certainly were slow, ideal for chugging around town or on the back lanes at 40mph, but avoid bypasses and motorways!
The one I had very nearly got scrapped by a dealer for its girder forks as they fit the desirable models from the thirties. The vendor has been offered X amount over the phone by someone I knew of, so I turned up with a van and the asking price, which was still a bargain.
I fettled it up and ran it more or less as found, with new tyres, brakes and wiring loom.
When my other half passed her test she used it to get used to the foot controls being on the proper side until hitting 25 when she could get much cheaper classic insurance on the Speed Twin.
The falling off incident was at a stop line on a very steep hill opposite the city grammar school (Yes they do still exist!) She'd pulled up at the line and thanks to a generous application of diesel and rain her foot went one way and the front wheel the other.
As always happens at such embarrassing moments there was an audience of school kids, doubtless with their phones out, as she was trying to heave the bike upright.
Frustrated, hot and bothered with the weight of the bike making it slide towards the junction she took off her helmet.
At this point about a dozen boys rushed over in full Lancelot mode, picked up the bike and set it upright on the pavement so she could restart it.
There's definitely advantages to being female.
In a typical case of "The more there were, the less there are" as American collectors put it, the little ride to work bikes from the thirties and forties are pretty thin on the ground compared to expensive and sporting machines.
Back in the fifties my father had a lot of 250 and 350 bikes such as B21 and B22 models which were often available for £2 or less, which he fixed up and put the profits towards a 1954 Norton 88.
I often think that a time machine would be handy!
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For those who like old Motorcycles.
in Wheeltappers
Posted
I suspect that is more to do with the current style of registration number being rather non memorable rather than your memory breaking down.
I remember the registration number of the old bangers my father owned, (Hillman Minx 9080RE, Vauxhall Viva JJV205F, Hillman Avenger NJF750M, Vauxhall Cavalier YVS692S, but once they started putting letters at the front, I was lost.