The Night Mail

[Stubby47]

10 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Actually, I found it on RMweb last night, where I was heralded as the forum know-all. As a token of my esteem for you all on here, I will absolve you of the need to address me as 'Sir', at least for the time being......

 

Ah, so you've still not quite adopted the French philosophy of Liberté, égalité, fraternité...

[Oldddudders]

12 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

 

Ah, so you've still not quite adopted the French philosophy of Liberté, égalité, fraternité...

Nope. On an entirely different forum I have this week been accused of being snooty, snobbish and up myself. I really am a class act!

[Compound2632]

22 minutes ago, Stubby47 said:

Liberté, égalité, fraternité...

 

8 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

snooty, snobbish and up myself

 

I'm trying to work out if there's a one-to-one correspondence there. Possibly if the order of one of the above is reversed?

[Oldddudders]

Presumably if I'm up myself I don't need fraternité!

[Dave Hunt]

Not sure about being up myself but several times people have said, "Up yours," to me. Was that a fraternal greeting then?

 

Dave

[SM42]

5 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Nope. On an entirely different forum I have this week been accused of being snooty, snobbish and up myself. I really am a class act!

 

More of an all rounder I'd say 

 

Andy

[SM42]

6 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

Another benefit of Durham was that it was far enough away to discourage casual visits home from a poor student so the weekly arrival of bags of dirty washing that some of our friends suffered when their kids were at other universities were largely absent. When Thing 2 went to Nottingham, though........

 

Dave

 

I chose carefully where to study.

 

Not so far away you couldn't pop home some weekends  for food supplies and get the washing done  but not so close that parents would be able  pop by for a visit unannounced

 

Around 70 -80 miles  with good a railway service is about right

 

 

Andy

[Northmoor]

31 minutes ago, SM42 said:

Not so far away you couldn't pop home some weekends  for food supplies and get the washing done  but not so close that parents would be able  pop by for a visit unannounced

 

Around 70 -80 miles  with good a railway service is about right

 

Our son is/was about this far away.  It's a serious point about the costs of student life that isn't discussed enough; too many try to go too far from home (wanting to break the link with home) or want to study in expensive cities like London.  In the latter case they get an unpleasant surprise at the living costs and in the former case, they find that instead of being able to travel home after tea on Friday for £40, have to leave on Friday morning before 11am, missing lectures and the ticket costs them £90.

[Tony_S]

I have had trains running today. Yesterday while putting tools away I thought that the turntable on the layout was in a silly place so I removed the board it was on. I will repurpose it as some sort of engine shed module to play with indoors. The turntable board was replaced with a curve joining fiddle yard sidings which were previously unconnected. I am afraid to mention that there was no precise model engineering. I just connected some flexitrack  so it looked right. I haven’t made it too fixed yet as I want to check that mist thing s run. On the main layout I had a Jinty with a few brake vans and a Midland Pullman set available but the Jinty got the job over of making a few laps round the “new” circuit.  When tidying the shelf the new track runs along I found a couple of locos I seem to have had hidden behind some wagons. One was a Bachmann Jubilee. I am pretty certain I bought it cheap,on eBay years ago, fitted a decoder and took it out to run and never did. It must have moved when I chipped it but it didn’t move now. I had a look at the wheels and they seemed to have a thick  layer of gunge that needed a fibreglass brush. I managed to get it moving but then it started shedding valve gear. All sorted now. I managed to retain  enough energy to cut the front lawn before giving up,and sitting down for a cup of tea. However I have been asked to water the new rose and the hanging basket while Aditi watches a webinar about Covid and diet from the Zoe project. 
Tony

Edited June 22, 2021 by Tony_S

[Stubby47]

Is this forum header a comment about the football taking place this evening?

 

[simontaylor484]

I went to Sheffield Hallam University, about 40 miles from home. It was either there or Cambourne school of mines. At times I think I made the wrong decision that I should have done Mining and Plant Enginering.

 

Oh well all water under the bridge I just wonder at times what could have been. Especially when the Black dog is in the vicinity.

[Happy Hippo]

All quiet in Llandudno this evening... Apart from the gulls.

[simontaylor484]

2 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

All quiet in Llandudno this evening... Apart from the gulls.

No wandering goats from the first lockdown left then?

[Florence Locomotive Works]

Evening all,

 

 

As I haven’t been to college yet, though I intend to go, I can’t say where I have gone. I would like to get out of this part of the world though as college around here is a joke, consisting mostly of party schools. As I’ve got NZ citizenship thoughts of college down there have been thrown around but nothing formalized.

 

On the modeling front nothing got done today, although I have been thinking over in my head how to make working point rodding in 4mm to a reasonably scale size, so maybe that counts. Thoughts of a new layout on a spare and slightly more generous baseboard have also cropped up, it would be completely unsceniced bar a platform and station, and would have operating point rodding similar to the layouts the LNWR and L&YR commissioned from Bassett Lowke. The LBSCR might have had one as well. 
 

 

We are having “Mexican Hash” for dinner tonight, I believe it’s a new recipe but smells very good. 
 

 

In other news construction on the dam across the Arkansas river downtown is moving a pace. It’s roughly 2 months behind schedule as due to heavy rain and melting snow in February the earthen dam surrounding half the pillars of the 1919 Midland Valley RR bridge were washed away, and had to be rebuilt. Disassembly of the bridge has now commenced and about half is gone. Here’s a photos of the still in service and now BNSF owned bridge downtown in around 1929. The foggy background is the thick blanket of chemical smoke that used to come from the Sinclair refinery until the refinery was well, refined in the 50s.

 

 

And here’s the bridge in question. The part last where the high level cars are is now gone.

 

(From https://condrenrails.com/Tulsa-Railroad-Pages/Bridges.html)

 

Douglas

[Happy Hippo]

12 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

No wandering goats from the first lockdown left then?

The Goat Lords of Llandudno are rumoured to have increased their area of operations to both the Little Orme and the area around St David's between Llandudno and Llandudno Junction.  However the vast majority have returned to the Great Orme.

 

[New Haven Neil]

That little switcher (SW1200?  or NW2?) is not going to keep time with that passenger consist!

 

I got paid to go to college as an officer cadet, so had no choice where I went to. I lived 500 yards form a respected Marine College - so got sent 140 miles to Liverpool!

[Florence Locomotive Works]

6 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

That little switcher (SW1200?  or NW2?) is not going to keep time with that passenger consist!

That’s KO&G NW2 number 1001, I’m not at all sure what it’s doing up there, as that is not in any way shape or form how to get to the yard across the river, and I assume it wasn’t heading for union station. At the time the line was owned by the Missouri Pacific, and continued south I think. The bridge was turned pedestrian in around 1975 and the rest of the old MP formerly Midland Valley line into downtown was made into a cycle path. The line on the other side of the river is still in service and is on the ground of the Public Service Company of Oklahoma, and also leads into the old Sunoco now Holly refinery. I think it’s now owned by our local short line, the Tulsa Sapulpa Union Railway Company, who operate a fleet of immaculate 50s vintage switchers.

 

Douglas

Edited June 23, 2021 by Florence Locomotive Works

[Dave Hunt]

21 hours ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

On the modeling front nothing got done today, although I have been thinking over in my head how to make working point rodding in 4mm to a reasonably scale size, so maybe that counts. Thoughts of a new layout on a spare and slightly more generous baseboard have also cropped up, it would be completely unsceniced bar a platform and station, and would have operating point rodding similar to the layouts the LNWR and L&YR commissioned from Bassett Lowke. The LBSCR might have had one as well. 

 

By 'operating' point rodding do you mean rodding that actually operates the points or which moves when the points are operated by some other means. lf the former I think that you could be asking a lot of 4mm scale section rodding to move the points without buckling. Even the latter would demand a lot of very careful micro engineering but would at least be more practical. 

 

Dave

[Happy Hippo]

27 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

By 'operating' point rodding do you mean rodding that actually operates the points or which moves when the points are operated by some other means. lf the former I think that you could be asking a lot of 4mm scale section rodding to move the points without buckling. Even the latter would demand a lot of very careful micro engineering but would at least be more practical. 

 

Dave

I have to agree with Dave.

 

Scale or close to scale point actuation in 4mm scale would be very difficult. The only example I have seen where the rodding works was on a P4 example where the turnout was driven if I remember directly by a slow action motor and the stretcher bat drove the rodding run back and fore thus to and from the signal box.  It was not connected to the lever frame and was purely 'working cosmetic in much the same way as some install 'working inside valve gear' on their locos. The whole set up might have be made up with Wizard Models etches.

 

 

There used to be a YouTube video sculling around with the stuff shown working, but I can't find it any more.

 

 

[Florence Locomotive Works]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

By 'operating' point rodding do you mean rodding that actually operates the points or which moves when the points are operated by some other means. lf the former I think that you could be asking a lot of 4mm scale section rodding to move the points without buckling. Even the latter would demand a lot of very careful micro engineering but would at least be more practical. 

 

Dave

 

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

I have to agree with Dave.

 

Scale or close to scale point actuation in 4mm scale would be very difficult. The only example I have seen where the rodding works was on a P4 example where the turnout was driven if I remember directly by a slow action motor and the stretcher bat drove the rodding run back and fore thus to and from the signal box.  It was not connected to the lever frame and was purely 'working cosmetic in much the same way as some install 'working inside valve gear' on their locos. The whole set up might have be made up with Wizard Models etches.

 

 

There used to be a YouTube video sculling around with the stuff shown working, but I can't find it any more.

 

 

Im not sure myself, I was thinking of using long sections of relatively scale brass rod to physically move the points via a bell crank. The other end would go into a homemade lever frame of some sort.

 

 

Douglas

[polybear]

7 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I have to agree with Dave.

 

Scale or close to scale point actuation in 4mm scale would be very difficult. The only example I have seen where the rodding works was on a P4 example where the turnout was driven if I remember directly by a slow action motor and the stretcher bat drove the rodding run back and fore thus to and from the signal box.  It was not connected to the lever frame and was purely 'working cosmetic in much the same way as some install 'working inside valve gear' on their locos. The whole set up might have be made up with Wizard Models etches.

 

 

There used to be a YouTube video sculling around with the stuff shown working, but I can't find it any more.

 

 

 

Ray Hammond (past Chairman of the S4 Society IIRC)  constructed a layout to 'pure' S4 Standards (not to be confused with the much more common P4 Standards) called Buntingham, which features working point rodding and trackwork construction standards which are truly scaled down from the prototype; I believe Ray did this in order to prove those who said it couldn't be done were wrong .  (I believe the layout is still alive and well, despite being constructed in the mid 70's).  MRJ Issue 49 may well contain a feature on the layout.  I also found this in my travels:

 

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

Having seen the demo of the When you are doing 'things', they also come to you. Our neighbour just asked if I would look at his extension cable as it wasn't working properly:

[Happy Hippo]

Having seen the very impressive working rodding demo, I am glad that I did not say impossible! However I am confident in saying it wouldn't work well with thin brass rod.  Even with rodding stools set at scale distances, the wire would not have the same rigidity as steel. 

 

Of course now someone will be producing a working example in 2mm scale driven by rods of wet spaghetti shavings. 

[Stubby47]

It could be made to work if the rodding only 'pulled' the point and a hidden spring beyond the point was used for the 'push' movement.

[Happy Hippo]

Not sure why the extension cable saga got repeated a few post back. Possibly because I am using my phone rather than the more usual pc ans something got mixed up in the electrons department.  Not an unusual happening where I am involved with smart phones.