The Night Mail

[DenysW]

When I worked the outskirts of the construction industry it was 100% AutoCAD.

 

Back to pannier-free tank engines, here's a red one, photographed in storage:

[Gwiwer]

7 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

I've heard of underground trains but not many underground boats

Stand at the end of Islington Tunnel in London and you'll see plenty of underground boats.  I have even driven one through there myself a couple of times - without touching the walls I might add - and a fascinating and slightly eerie experience it is too.  There are many other canal tunnels around for fans of underground boating.  

[Dave Hunt]

I too have been through a few tunnels when on canal boating holidays. It always amazes me that in pre-motorised boat days they were usually 'legged' through the tunnels by men lying on their sides and pushing their feet against the walls in a walking fashion; going through some of the long tunnels like Harecastle must have been an exhausting job, even for men as fit as they obviously were.

 

Dave. 

[Dave Hunt]

51 minutes ago, DenysW said:

Back to pannier-free tank engines, here's a red one, photographed in storage:

 

What a splendid looking beast. I've got a makers' plate from one of the East African Garratts on my workshop wall from a locomotive built in 1949. It was given to me by my uncle who was senior locomotive inspector on the Mombasa division when the engines were being scrapped.

 

Dave

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

I too have been through a few tunnels when on canal boating holidays. It always amazes me that in pre-motorised boat days they were usually 'legged' through the tunnels by men lying on their sides and pushing their feet against the walls in a walking fashion; going through some of the long tunnels like Harecastle must have been an exhausting job, even for men as fit as they obviously were.

 

Dave. 

At least it was easier in the downhill direction?

<Picks up coat, leaves>

[laurenceb]

2 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

I too have been through a few tunnels when on canal boating holidays. It always amazes me that in pre-motorised boat days they were usually 'legged' through the tunnels by men lying on their sides and pushing their feet against the walls in a walking fashion; going through some of the long tunnels like Harecastle must have been an exhausting job, even for men as fit as they obviously were.

 

Dave. 

If you want to try legging a visit to the Black Country Museum at Dudley is worthwhile

[Happy Hippo]

23 minutes ago, laurenceb said:

If you want to try legging a visit to the Black Country Museum at Dudley is worthwhile

Most people of my acquaintance prefer legging it out of 'Doodloy'.

[Happy Hippo]

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

Most people of my acquaintance prefer legging it out of 'Doodloy'.

Oy!

[AndyID]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

"More tea Vicar?"

[pH]

7 hours ago, DenysW said:

Back to pannier-free tank engines, here's a red one, photographed in storage:

Workshops Rail Museum, Ipswich, Queensland - a great place!

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/gallery/album/2209-workshops-rail-museum-ipswich-queensland/

 

Edited January 12, 2022 by pH

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

 

"More tea Vicar?"

No but pass the sticky buns.

 

Jamie

[rodent279]

4 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

No but pass the sticky buns.

 

Jamie

Talking of cheap innuendo, was watching Are Your Being Served earlier. I have to say, it makes me cringe now.

[Dave Hunt]

5 hours ago, Northmoor said:

At least it was easier in the downhill direction?

 

Sadly the Telford water ski team had to give up because they couldn't find a downhill lake nearby.

 

Dave

[jamie92208]

1 minute ago, rodent279 said:

Talking of cheap innuendo, was watching Are Your Being Served earlier. I have to say, it makes me cringe now.

I've just re read the book MASH that the film was based on and that would struggle to get printed now but is still very very funny.

 

Jamie

[Dave Hunt]

10 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

No but pass the sticky buns.

 

Jamie

 

Isn't what you get if you sit on a jam sandwich?

 

Dave

[br2975]

Today I have mostly been priming.................... kits

.

I have been presented with the pile of kits shown below, as an unpaid commission !

.

The customers, Daniel & Rhys (aged 11) are hard taskmasters.

.

Some of you may recall the  ongoing saga of HMS Belfast, which is still fresh in my mind.

.

So I picked what was undoubtedly the easiest of the pile, the Revell PBY-5A for Dan, and the Hawker Typhoon for Rhys.

.

The Catalina being 1/48 scale has a wingspan in excess of two feet, and is an easy build.................... it was a present to the twins from their uncle, my boy, who originally  intended to build it as the PBY that located the survivors of the "USS Indianapolis"; the wreck of which my son was instrumental in locating, as he did with Scott's "Terra Nova" and several Japanese warships at the bottom of the Surigao Straight (puffs out chest with parental pride !)

.

I'm enjoying these kits, but, I'm not looking forward to the 'Lanc'

.

It gets me away from their other 'commission' - their 6x4 tailchaser - in OUR attic room.

.

It's great being a 'Bampy'

Edited January 12, 2022 by br2975

[Winslow Boy]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Sadly the Telford water ski team had to give up because they couldn't find a downhill lake nearby.

 

Dave

 

I thought it was walking back to the top that did them in.

[Happy Hippo]

27 minutes ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

I thought it was walking back to the top that did them in.

It wasn't walking but the practice swimming up a waterfall  that finished them off.

[J. S. Bach]

10 hours ago, DenysW said:

When I worked the outskirts of the construction industry it was 100% AutoCAD.

 

Back to pannier-free tank engines, here's a red one, photographed in storage:

Hmmm, that makes my 0-6-0+0-6-0 look a bit shabby!

[J. S. Bach]

1 hour ago, br2975 said:

 ...snip... So I picked what was undoubtedly the easiest of the pile, the Revell PBY-5A  ...snip...

Keep us posted on the Cat's progress, please.

 

Hmmm, a 1/48 Catalina, just where on the layout could I fit one?

[Northmoor]

11 hours ago, br2975 said:

Today I have mostly been priming.................... kits

.

I have been presented with the pile of kits shown below, as an unpaid commission !

.

The customers, Daniel & Rhys (aged 11) are hard taskmasters.

.

Some of you may recall the  ongoing saga of HMS Belfast, which is still fresh in my mind.

.

So I picked what was undoubtedly the easiest of the pile, the Revell PBY-5A for Dan, and the Hawker Typhoon for Rhys.

.

The Catalina being 1/48 scale has a wingspan in excess of two feet, and is an easy build.................... it was a present to the twins from their uncle, my boy, who originally  intended to build it as the PBY that located the survivors of the "USS Indianapolis"; the wreck of which my son was instrumental in locating, as he did with Scott's "Terra Nova" and several Japanese warships at the bottom of the Surigao Straight (puffs out chest with parental pride !)

.

I'm enjoying these kits, but, I'm not looking forward to the 'Lanc'

.

It gets me away from their other 'commission' - their 6x4 tailchaser - in OUR attic room.

.

It's great being a 'Bampy'

Excellent, I've just finished two of those myself - the Hurricane and Stuka - except that they were started about 40 years ago.  Just finished a P-40 Kittyhawk last night (see below).

I admire your confidence by starting with probably the hardest kit in the collection.

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Northmoor
Pic added

[jamie92208]

10 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Isn't what you get if you sit on a jam sandwich?

 

Dave

And in my innocence I thought that buns would get sticky when a female of the species falls forward.

 

Jamie

Edited January 13, 2022 by jamie92208

[Winslow Boy]

24 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

And in my innocence I thought that buns would get sticky when a female of thevspecies falls forward.

 

Jamie

 

There's always one whose got to lower the tone isn't there.

 

Admittedly the tone can't get much lower but still there's always one who tries.

[Happy Hippo]

Yesterday I was persuaded to visit the Blue and Yellow emporium in Walsall in order to purchase a Kallix storage unit in and on which to place the toys retained in the Hippodrome for the amusement of small folk.

 

It was interesting to see how many people were exempt face masks.  I could understand there would be individuals unable to wear a mask for medical reasons, but I did not realise that this medical exemption spanned whole families and groups of friends.

 

There seemed to be no policing of the government rules at the entrance so one assumes that the staff are desperately trying to avoid confrontation with these people. 

 

Do other participants in TNM find a similar situation in other shops/stores/other parts of the country?

 

However, whilst standing in the queue for the tills my two brain cells bounced together and a thought came into my head; Actually it wasn't so much a thought but a recollection of a matter that is dear to almost all railway modellers, and that is how far are you prepared to compromise your modelling?

 

If you are not the owner of a private railway that is a 1:1 scale model, then you do have to compromise.

 

This can range from un-prototypical couplings to track and pointwork that has such incredible curvature that if scaled up, would be inoperable.

 

I know there are some who will  have a fully interlocked lever frame in their signal box, and others who will insist on the correct lamps always being displayed on locos, brake vans and the tail of a passenger train, but there must come a point at which one must say I don't care!

 

Admittedly, we have the (in)famous 'Rule 1' which states it's your model, and you can do what you like, but we all must have a point at which we decide that there is a minimum that we are willing to reach, before the compromise becomes too much.  Possibly it is that stage where we decide that our concept of realism becomes too corrupted.

 

For instance, one would expect that a model of a double track line running up a Welsh Valley in South Wales would entertain trains of 40+ mineral wagons, and that passenger services would be around 5 coaches long.  However, when I first started modelling in 7 mm scale my train length was a loco, 6 minerals and a brake van.  A passenger train was the proverbial 'B set' and a pannier tank.

 

Neither of these formations are really typical of a Welsh Valley, but my brain subconsciously adds more wagons and coaches to the mix.  Likewise I know when the oil tank train runs into the fiddle yard at Splott West, depending on which line it exits the scenic section, depends on whether it is running to a small depot in the dock area, or running back to Pengam sidings for remarshalling for onward travel on the rail network. 

 

I don't think this is a modern phenomena brought on by the conflict between high fidelity models and the need for more realism in the space one has available, as such mind torturing angst no doubt bedevilled the modellers of the 1920s and 1930s, who would think nothing of running trains between Kings Cross and Edinburgh, via Peterborough and Newcastle in a large shed in their garden (probably grounds of their family pile).  I suspect a large tender loco would haul the 'Flying Scotsman', all three tinplate carriages, through a series of very short stations, separated by curves that were so sharp you could cut yourself with them.  No doubt, run by a team rather than an individual as most stations would also double as wind up points for the clockwork mechanisms.

 

Now my acceptance levels for the operation of my railway have remained similar to that described above, but because I've re-evaluated the storage area on the next generation of railway(s) I've been able to increase the length of my trains so that I can  operate 3 coach passenger trains and a nine wagon mineral wagon train (assuming it is made up of 16 tonners, slightly less if it's 10 ft wheel base stock).  It's still far less than the prototype, but it is workable.

 

That I use the 7 mm scale stuff I have as an example, does not mean that this is a problem only encountered by those who model in larger scales, as the compromise situation is one faced by all modellers in all scales.

 

So I suppose the question to you all is what compromises are you prepared to accept?

 

Answers on a spreadsheet please!

 

Edited January 13, 2022 by Happy Hippo
punctuation