The Night Mail

[Florence Locomotive Works]

24 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

Does that mean he landed in the drink?

Or he’s dumped the flight and relay computers in the drink…

 

 

oh and the blackbox

Edited August 25, 2021 by Florence Locomotive Works

[TheQ]

A blast from the past from eBay, currently for sale..

 

 Tornado IFF control panel.

[Happy Hippo]

4 hours ago, TheQ said:

A blast from the past from eBay, currently for sale..

 

 Tornado IFF control panel.

One presumes that 'Master' on the IFF panel was when the Nav wanted permission to speak to Dave!

[Tony_S]

Aditi commented this morning that it looked just the sort of day to do the woodwork to replace the rotten fascia on her summerhouse. This went quite well until I needed my jigsaw. The battery was quite dead/exhausted/flat. It doesn’t have the same battery and charger all my other power tools have. I couldn’t find its charger. After much crawling round the garage floor I found it behind some model railway power supplies. Anyway putting the battery in didn’t result in a charged battery but a bit of cleaning and poking of terminals  and it worked. After lunch I found out that Amazon had supplied the blades that I had ordered but they were not the correct type for my saw. They didn’t seem to come adrift though and did work. Some “proper” ones will arrive tomorrow. I came very close to ordering a new saw this morning but fortunately everything ended up ok. I will make another length of fascia tomorrow as another piece is a bit rotten. I don’t think Aditi had seen that bit.

So after all that wielding of power tools, I thought I would wire in an Xpressnet panel on the other side of my layout as I had found a reel of appropriate 4 core cable while looking for the battery charger. So of course I managed to stab my right thumb with a tiny screwdriver. Thanks to my current post stenting medication (due to change next week) the electronics were a bit messy. Everything works though!

Tony

Edited August 25, 2021 by Tony_S

[SM42]

Been off grid a couple of days due to the  neighbour's WiFi being down and she was on holiday. Yes she knows we use it. She gave us her password.

 

 The packing was eventually done and loaded and we set off in the rain for Poznan, calling in a Nowa Sol station. (No action there to report) and Wolsztyn followed by the nearby Vodka factory shop 

 

A couple  of pics in the rain

 

A general view across Wolsztyn

 

And of the line of rusting locos from next to which I took the above picture

 

 

I did get some coal for my Polish coal wagons too 

 

I did some low flying today, but only a little bit after take off and just before landing.

 

I am now back home and missing the motherland already 

 

One thing about flying currently is that it needs an awful lot of paper that only 1 person checked and no-one in this country seemed at all interested in. 

 

Hopefully our test kits will arrive tomorrow so we can scrape some bits off ourselves to be sent away for testing. 

 

I wonder if I'll get a CD this time too?

 

Andy

Edited August 25, 2021 by SM42

[Florence Locomotive Works]

A question regarding boilers for our semi aquatic friend, and anybody else interested.

 

 

HH, I have after a not insignificant amount of head scratching, found a way in which i could more or less literally shoe horn my spare Stuart Turner oscillating engine in between the frames on my scratch built engine. However, I am wondering if the boiler that I made will be safe with its flat plates soldered onto a tube. It would be operating at a max of approximately 15-20 psi, and I do have the facilities to do a hydraulic test on it. 

 

Here are a few shots of the engine and where it would in theory be mounted. It would drive the rear coupled axle via some gearing to give it more power. (cylinder diameter is 1 cm, stroke is roughly 1.5 I can get the volume of the boiler if needed)

 

 

 

 

Should the boiler not end up being suitable for the task then I will be left with two options. 

 

 

1. Make the engine electric.

 

2. Build a new proper boiler and make my own twin oscillating engine which would have a crankshaft that would also function as the leading coupled axle. An interesting challenge.

 

 

 

Douglas

[Florence Locomotive Works]

13 minutes ago, SM42 said:

A general view across Wolsztyn

I thought that was taken in the 60s or 70s for a second there!

[SM42]

20 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

I thought that was taken in the 60s or 70s for a second there!

It does have that look about it with the heritage coaches in the foreground 

 

Andy

[polybear]

7 hours ago, SM42 said:

The packing was eventually done and loaded and we set off in the rain for Poznan, calling in a Nowa Sol station. (No action there to report) and Wolsztyn followed by the nearby Vodka factory shop 

 

And of the line of rusting locos from next to which I took the above picture

 

 

 

It looks like this year may well be the last for the Wolsztyn Experience:

http://www.thewolsztynexperience.org/footplating.php

I've always fancied doing it myself, but never got my ar5e into gear to actually arrange it - though it was on the bucket list for retirement.  Sadly it looks like C-19 has resulted in a hole in my bucket.....

Cue (Queue?) songs about holes in buckets....

 

Anyone else actually done it - or similar, inside or outside the UK?

The closest Bear has done is a couple of footplate rides on the Watercress Line

[Mike Bellamy]

16 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

Someone's out to beat Dave's low flying escapades:

 

I thought we had committed every transport plane we have to the evacuation from Kabul - perhaps this was to confuse everyone by strapping the transponder to the back of a seagull so nobody knew that another transport was on the way to help out - although I guess if that had really happened, the bird would have fallen from the sky faster than a Hippo 

[SM42]

That's a real shame about the  Wolsztyn Experience, but it looks like there may be a glimmer of hope It says  that it only "may" be, although that is a very small glimmer. 

 

C19 in Poland is a lot less  widespread than here. 295 cases reported yesterday and whilst the numbers are on an upward trend they  are currently hovering round the 200 -300 range per day 

Life seems pretty normal there, with a few rules still in place around masks etc. 

 

It was less hassle travelling there, than travelling back. 

 

As I have said before, we have been very lucky to have been able to go out and see the family.   Many others have not had such a chance. 

 

 

Andy

Edited August 26, 2021 by SM42
To clarify what I was responding to

[SM42]

20 minutes ago, Mike Bellamy said:

 

I thought we had committed every transport plane we have to the evacuation from Kabul - perhaps this was to confuse everyone by strapping the transponder to the back of a seagull so nobody knew that another transport was on the way to help out - although I guess if that had really happened, the bird would have fallen from the sky faster than a Hippo 

 

Those on line radar tracking sites do some odd things.

 

I've watched MrsSM42's flight land at Poznan Airport and still be on the run out the other side of the city centre. 

 

It may be due to how the data is collected, which I think is based on the what the aeroplane is sending out and of bit of filling in the blanks by the site's software. 

 

Similar to how your satnav works in tunnels

 

Andy

Edited August 26, 2021 by SM42
Flippin phone keypad and its predictive text

[Stubby47]

Yeah, FlightRadar24 is to be taken with a large pinch of salt.

 

The 1st image above covers our area, and we get a lot of over flying due to the proximity to the hospital and from Culdrose.  It's just a passing interest of mine to see what's overhead.   But real time and reported time are somewhat different. 

[Happy Hippo]

39 minutes ago, Mike Bellamy said:

 

I thought we had committed every transport plane we have to the evacuation from Kabul - perhaps this was to confuse everyone by strapping the transponder to the back of a seagull so nobody knew that another transport was on the way to help out - although I guess if that had really happened, the bird would have fallen from the sky faster than a Hippo 

There was an RAF photographer by the name of Arthur Gibson whose initial downward vertical acceleration was far higher than mine!

 

[Stubby47]

2 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

There was an RAF photographer by the name of Arthur Gibson whose initial downward vertical acceleration was far higher than mine!

 

 

Well, he was carrying the cameras...

[SM42]

9 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

 

Well, he was carrying the cameras...

 

I know old cameras are heavy, but HH would be carrying the cake, which I suspect may be a little bulkier

 

Andy

[PhilJ W]

2 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

I know old cameras are heavy, but HH would be carrying the cake, which I suspect may be a little bulkier

 

Andy

HH or the cake?

[SM42]

Just now, PhilJ W said:

HH or the cake?

 

Both 

 

Andy

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

Douglas,

 

We all have our foibles and mine is for boiler with end plates that are flanged over.

 

This considerably increases the surface area where the solder can 'grip' the two pieces of metal.

 

Even then, for a simple pot style boiler I would also be putting in a stay that runs along the centreline of the boiler and is threaded at both ends.

 

This allows you to put a washer and nut at each end that you tighten up and then solder over.  Obviously the purpose it an additional component to stop the two end plates from moving apart in the event of one of the ends coming adrift.

 

You could add such a stay to your existing boiler which in my eyes would make it safer, but I'd much prefer to see you make a proper boiler.

 

That brings me onto my second point, and that is boiler steam production:

 

The 'boiler' you already have would probably not run the Stuart single cylinder.

 

Yes, it would run it 'light' but put any load behind it and the steam consumption would probably by higher than the steam production.

 

The other aspect of that is getting a single cylinder to turn over those driving wheels.  It's not going to be self starting, and when it does get going the running speed due to the large diameter of the drivers is going to be very very fast.  Throttling down the steam will reduce the power available to such an extent that it will stop.  15-20 psi will find it difficult to get such a unit working properly (as opposed to running on the bench).

 

When you start designing your own boilers, you have to be sure that the boiler is capable of producing the volume of steam required for continuous running.

 

In Gauge 2 (for that is what it used to be called), you are firmly into the realms of serious engineering. Certainly a decent boiler would need to be approaching the upper limit for the 3 bar litre.

 

Forget vintage style stuff, manufacturers in this day and age would not be allowed to be built that type of steam locomotive to those standards!

 

[Happy Hippo]

18 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

I know old cameras are heavy, but HH would be carrying the cake, which I suspect may be a little bulkier

 

Andy

Please remember that cake would be carried in a Bergan rucksack between the knees as well as a considerable amount also being stored internally:  The risk of such storage is that in the event of an extremely hard opening shock, it could possibly dislodge this with predictable results!

[SM42]

45 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Please remember that cake would be carried in a Bergan rucksack between the knees as well as a considerable amount also being stored internally:  The risk of such storage is that in the event of an extremely hard opening shock, it could possibly dislodge this with predictable results!

 

Does that mean that you would go back up if such an event were to occur?

 

Andy

[Stubby47]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

Please remember that cake would be carried in a Bergan rucksack between the knees as well as a considerable amount also being stored internally:  The risk of such storage is that in the event of an extremely hard opening shock, it could possibly dislodge this with predictable results!

 

From you or the bergen ?

[Winslow Boy]

2 hours ago, SM42 said:

 

Both 

 

Andy

 

 

 

Would the cake be inside or outside HH and if outside would it still be outside by the time he landed?

[Happy Hippo]

25 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

 

From you or the bergen ?

Moi!  That's when I start the propellor!

 

I do love to share.

[Happy Hippo]

 

From Camden Miniature Steam.

 

One of my favourite bookshops.