The Night Mail

[Tony_S]

24 minutes ago, polybear said:

forgotten something so put the shoes down on a stair and did an about turn

My neighbours spent Christmas with their family in Wales. When he got out of his car after the journey back I could see he wasn’t walking well and had a black eye and other facial wounds. I asked him what had happened. Someone had left something on the stairs (spiral). He had gone from top to bottom, and put his hand out at the bottom against a door which was usually shut (to keep  dogs, cats sheep etc in the kitchen) but wasn’t so he hit his head on a ornate iron door handle before finally hitting the floor. 

[Winslow Boy]

4 hours ago, PupCam said:

 

It may fall down on the plausible denial front but that is, as us system engineers might say, "An emergent property of the system" and is more than compensated for by the 100% watertight security that such a method affords which is the primary function of the exercise   

 

 

Hmm.   I love beetroot and eggs  but Beetroot Omelette?       I think I will give that one a miss Dave!

 

Suppose that's a bit like the surgeon who says the operation was a success but the patient died.

[Happy Hippo]

54 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

My neighbours spent Christmas with their family in Wales. When he got out of his car after the journey back I could see he wasn’t walking well and had a black eye and other facial wounds. I asked him what had happened. Someone had left something on the stairs (spiral). He had gone from top to bottom, and put his hand out at the bottom against a door which was usually shut (to keep  dogs, cats sheep etc in the kitchen) but wasn’t so he hit his head on a ornate iron door handle before finally hitting the floor. 

These people who live in castles, but can't afford the serf for guest catching duties..

 

It would never have happened at either Castell Danemouth or br2975's manor house.

[New Haven Neil]

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

As an Ersätzschweizer living in a Swiss German Kanton I can attest that there are the Swiss and then there are the Suisse Romande. Believe me the British North-South divide has nothing on the Röstigraben. The French Swiss are - to put it diplomatically - “unique” (but the French cantons tend to have better food on average…..)

 

We have an elderly lady friend who is from the French speaking part of Suisse (Geneva? not sure) - she hates the Swiss.....says they're just after your money!  She's loaded by the way, kettle/pot?

[Compound2632]

When I went to a meeting at CERN, getting on for ten years ago now, I was told that one had the best of all nations there: German engineering, English flair for making-do, French cuisine in the staff restaurant, and Swiss prices...

[Gwiwer]

3 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Swiss prices...

I was last in Switzerland in 1974.  I still haven't saved enough for another cup of coffee

[New Haven Neil]

2 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

I was last in Switzerland in 1974.  I still haven't saved enough for another cup of coffee

 

We found Paris more expensive....

[Compound2632]

Just now, New Haven Neil said:

We found Paris more expensive....

 

Only if you choose it to be. The impression I have of Geneva is that it all wants to be like the 16th arrondissement.

[Tony_S]

23 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

I was last in Switzerland in 1974.  I still haven't saved enough for another cup of coffee

I was last there in 2017. Had pneumonia! I went to Austria in 2018. No pneumonia. 
I am sure one day we will travel to Switzerland again.

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by Tony_S

[New Haven Neil]

It was the 5th, @Compound2632, but still very expensive compared to Brig.

[Tony_S]

17 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

It was the 5th, @Compound2632, but still very expensive compared to Brig.

I didn’t really know which arrondissement we stayed in on our last visits. Wikipedia informs me that it was the 1st and 9th. The Metro station locations were my main points of reference! Food and drink didn’t seem to be more expensive than London. We did have a drink in a cafe in what appears to be an area with embassies while we were walking towards the Eiffel Tower. Aditi said she wanted something to drink and use the loo and didn’t care if it was four times the price of everywhere else.  So we did. 

[polybear]

2 hours ago, Tony_S said:

My neighbours spent Christmas with their family in Wales. When he got out of his car after the journey back I could see he wasn’t walking well and had a black eye and other facial wounds. I asked him what had happened. Someone had left something on the stairs (spiral). He had gone from top to bottom, and put his hand out at the bottom against a door which was usually shut (to keep  dogs, cats sheep etc in the kitchen) but wasn’t so he hit his head on a ornate iron door handle before finally hitting the floor. 

 

Where there's blame there's a claim.....

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

I didn’t really know which arrondissement we stayed in on our last visits. Wikipedia informs me that it was the 1st and 9th. The Metro station locations were my main points of reference! Food and drink didn’t seem to be more expensive than London. We did have a drink in a cafe in what appears to be an area with embassies while we were walking towards the Eiffel Tower. Aditi said she wanted something to drink and use the loo and didn’t care if it was four times the price of everywhere else.  So we did. 

Going into a French cafe to use the "facilities" sounds like an adventure!

[Northmoor]

2 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

We have an elderly lady friend who is from the French speaking part of Suisse (Geneva? not sure) - she hates the Swiss.....says they're just after your money!  She's loaded by the way, kettle/pot?

It's funny how Switzerland has a reputation as a centre of wealth; until not long ago I didn't realise how recent this is.  Until as late as the 1950s, its economy was based mostly on agriculture and was one of the poorer countries in Western Europe.  I guess it was after that, the money placed on deposit in a safe, neutral country surrounded by chaos a decade earlier, started to earn serious money for its "guardians".

[Canal Digger]

23 hours ago, laurenceb said:

a working area of one foot square

I dream of one foot square, cue Monty Python Living In A Cardboard Box

  

[rodent279]

These arrived today. Mrs R & I are excited to use them for the first time.

Is this a sign of old age?

[Canal Digger]

19 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

So the thingumybob that I put down last week and can't now find could possibly be in your shed? Or any other shed in the railway modelling multiverse?

The number of times that I've had to give up looking for a uijrifrip, and had to buy yet another (to follow the previous 10), knowing that this will only increase the pile of tools needing rack space, hence making it hard to find the whatsit ...

[Pacific231G]

18 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

did they have whistles on all locomotives back in 1845?

In the Netherlands the Guild of Musicians was particularly powerful. The driver, not being a member of the Guild, would of course be forbidden to play the whistle, which counted as a musical instrument, professionally. The answer to this tricky question of demarcation was a requirement for all trains to carry a brass band to warn of their approach. The Guild of Bandmasters was far less powerful so the driver was authorised to conduct the brass band, who sat in an open wagon coupled in front of the locomotive, so long as they only played simple tunes. In the end, the tragic loss of brass players in railway accidents and from pneumonia led to the guild dropping its objections and Dutch locomotive drivers were then instead allowed to use the whistles with which their British built locomotives had always been equipped.   

17 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

I think you'd only need to know which key they were playing in. Mind you, without a DSP (digital signal processor) it would require a perfect pitch ear

The answer is quite obvious. It was a requirement for the recruitment of Dutch level crossing keepers that they had perfect pitch. They could therefore, upon hearing the brass band in the distance, estimate the speed of the train and so close the gates at the appropriate moment. 

 

I really don't know why, given the importance of the Doppler effect, none of this seems to appear in popular railway histories.  I think I found it in the writings of  Dr Strabismus (Whom God Preserve) of Utrecht- for which university the railway was of course built.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Pacific231G

[polybear]

9 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

These arrived today. Mrs R & I are excited to use them for the first time.

Is this a sign of old age?

 

The larger of the two looks just right for use as a cleaning bath for etched brass kits during assembly....

[Gwiwer]

2 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

We found Paris more expensive....

And the average Parisienne “café au lait” was also scalding hot and uninteresting. I recall Zurich coffee being much more drinkable. 

[The Pilotman]

There’s a lot to be said about living in Switzerland, even their flag’s a big plus. 

Edited January 7, 2022 by The Pilotman

[Tony_S]

30 minutes ago, rodent279 said:

Is this a sign of old age?

Nothing wrong with looking forward to using a new pan. Have you had to sort out new homes for them? I had to do some unexpected woodwork and make a new shelf for a recent kitchen appliance purchase, as it was deemed to be a not left out except in use sort of thing. 

[PhilJ W]

4 minutes ago, The Pilotman said:

There’s a lot to be said about living in Switzerland, even their flag’s a big plus. 

[AndyID]

37 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

And the average Parisienne “café au lait” was also scalding hot and uninteresting. I recall Zurich coffee being much more drinkable. 

 

That's 'cos they grow it on the South facing slopes of the Jungfrau

[AndyID]

As the song says, "the snow turned into rain".

 

And now we have avalanche warnings