The Night Mail

[tomparryharry]

Rain. Rain. Rain.  No, not happy.  On a lighter note, I received a little N20 motor in the post this afternoon. This one has a stub axle sticking out of the side of a rather exquisite little gearbox. The cunning & dastardly plan is to modify said gearbox, opening out to accept a Romford 1/8" axle.  Being this size & dimension, it'll hopefully fit inside a Belpaire firebox.  

 

Naturally, as I'm typing this, the sun emerges. 

 

My luck will change, I swear....

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

Rain here as well.

 

Of course a bit of sun and that will encourage all the weeds to spring up in the veg patch.

 

I have just been hit with a wave of fatigue:  Don't know what caused it, probably the weather, plus trying to do too much close up work without my reading or modelling glasses on.

 

But I've bucked myself up no end by rooting through the fridge and freezer and sorting out what we are going to eat this evening.

 

I should have dug out the Aberdare from it's box and taken a picture................ Just to motivate the illustrious tph!

 

I'd quite like to build some outside framed GW locos in 7 mm scale one day. 

 

Sadly they don't fit into the timescale I've adopted so remain low down on the scale of works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

I've just had an Email from Dave.

 

He's now coupled up to a drip in Shrewsbury hospital being pumped full of antibiotics and is on a liquid diet, albeit not of a very exciting one.  Apparently they do not supply single malt on the NHS.

 

The good news is Dave is feeling a lot better, and if the improvement continues he will attempt a visit to RMWeb sometime tomorrow.

[newbryford]

43 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

 

The good news is Dave is feeling a lot better, and if the improvement continues he will attempt a visit to RMWeb sometime tomorrow.

 

Would that be a flying visit?

[Happy Hippo]

Just now, newbryford said:

 

Would that be a flying visit?

I think one of his mates was out this morning practicing to pick him up for such a visit.

 

One would describe it as quite spirited low level stuff compared to the usual quite staid flying demonstrated by the rotary wing  students of No1 FTS.

 

It was fun to watch.

[Erichill16]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

I've just had an Email from Dave.

 

He's now coupled up to a drip in Shrewsbury hospital being pumped full of antibiotics and is on a liquid diet, albeit not of a very exciting one.  Apparently they do not supply single malt on the NHS.

 

 

When I was doing my pharmacy pre-registration training at NHS hospital I was told for inpatients, beer and lager was to be ordered from the hospital kitchen while spirits were to be ordered from the pharmacy. We had a locked cupboard that we kept such items. I’d not sure if there was any single malts but there was no charge!
Regards 

Robert

[jamie92208]

59 minutes ago, Erichill16 said:

When I was doing my pharmacy pre-registration training at NHS hospital I was told for inpatients, beer and lager was to be ordered from the hospital kitchen while spirits were to be ordered from the pharmacy. We had a locked cupboard that we kept such items. I’d not sure if there was any single malts but there was no charge!
Regards 

Robert

When our 2nd son was born in the old Leeds Maternity Hospital on Hyde Terrace, the new mothers were all suplied with Mackeson milk stout from Kirkstall brewery.

 

Jamie

[polybear]

9 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I think one of his mates was out this morning practicing to pick him up for such a visit.

 

One would describe it as quite spirited low level stuff compared to the usual quite staid flying demonstrated by the rotary wing  students of No1 FTS.

 

It was fun to watch.

 

I heard "The Boys" were out practicising for a rescue attempt:

 

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

51 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

I heard "The Boys" were out practicising for a rescue attempt:

 

 

 

It gives you one hell of a wedgie!

[bbishop]

Off to Waterloo shortly.  Give my love to Dave.  Bill

[Happy Hippo]

Whilst RMWeb saw being reshaped yesterday I made some notes about SG:

 

 

Having been in possession of South Greenwood (SG) for nearly a week, I’ve had a chance to both erect and dismantle it, check for any issues that would affect future usage and assess its potential for adaptation to a UK outline model railway. 

Before I start, it should be understood that this railway had been stored in a garage for seven years, and I said that I would take it unseen.  I did give a donation to Wakefield RMS on collection, but apart from the fact that it was US outline, basically an oval of single track, and with a large traverser. I had no idea what I was getting and this remained the case until it was erected on our driveway last Monday. 

One might question why I would appear to take pot luck over acquiring SG, but it boils down to talking to Jamie about the shortcoming of my current layout and the various possibilities to overcome these.  Discussion ranged from small extensions, through to full conversion and creating a continuous run.  He mentioned the situation regarding SG and after a few enquiries, let me know it was available. 

Now allowing for a few differences due to metric to imperial conversions (I work small stuff in metric, but still prefer good old imperial for anything of great size), SG is 25’ x 10’ comprising of 12 boards each measuring 5’ x 2’ 6”,  They are all solid 9 mm ply tops with  4” x .75” sides and ends and suitable internal bracing.  They connect together using pattern makers dowels and over-centre catches.  The two boards which sit in opposing corners of the layout have four legs so are self-standing. Nine boards have two legs at one end, and they work on the piggy back principle.  One of the fiddle boards has no legs as it fits into the gap where the piggy back boards meet. 

It’s ‘wired’ for analogue control. 

The trackwork is all Peco Code 143 Flat bottomed rail.  There are seven points with solenoid motors, and the track on the traverser alone totals around 70 feet.  

Some of the scenery is fixed to the baseboards, whilst other parts and buildings are removeable.  The scenery is protected when in transit, as the boards are paired together, facing into each other and are secured to ‘transit plates’ which are fitted at each end of the pair of boards and have carry handles.  A pair of boards requires a two-man lift, and although a single board is light enough to be lifted by one man, the length and width of the boards makes this awkward. 

 

Having given it more that the once over, I found the following: 

 

Quite a bit of the underboard wiring is either damaged or missing.  As an example, none of the turnouts have microswitches for crossing nose polarity, and there is no switch gear for point control or for the isolating sections. 

The track is laid upon quite thick carpet underlay to deaden any sound.  This was originally glued down, but is now lifting in places, so it would need re-securing.  More importantly some sections of it have also been subjected to some damp, and there are traces of mould on some sections of underlay. 

Quite a few track joints at the board ends have broken, and some of the off-scene boards have short sections of rail missing.  

The traverser is in two parts and consists of two sheets of ply, neither of which have any bracing, so the two boards are quite badly warped. 

Some of the over-centre catches that hold the boards together are either damaged or broken. 

I ran a B Set through the reverse curves on both on the scenic boards and also those going onto the traverser and even when being pulled, buffer locking occurred. 

 

I do need to make it clear that this is not a list to complain about, but shows the scale of refurbishment that would be needed just to restore it to running condition. (Ignore the buffer locking with US outline). 

So with some regret, I feel the best option is going to be to strip everything off so that we are back to bare boards.  Recover what scenery we can and as much track as possible, then dispose of the underlay and give the boards a a wash over with a dilute bleach to kill off any mould spores, 

After that, there is a completely clear palette to work with.  But at least plotting and scheming can continue whilst the process is being carried out. 

 

 

 

 

 

[jamie92208]

Good luck with it Richard.  Phil and Pete, the main co conspirators in creating South Greenfield would just be pleased that it is going to be used at all.  Pete in particular, as a Yorkshire farmer would have been horrified if it had never got used.  Havd fun with the redesign. I look forward to photographs in due course.

 

Jamie

[Stubby47]

That sounds like a lot of work, but you have a plan and a short term goal, so that's a start.

 

This amused me:

still prefer good old imperial for anything of great size), SG is 25’ x 10’ comprising of 12 boards each measuring 5’ x 2’ 6”,  They are all solid 9 mm ply tops with  4” x .75” sides

[tomparryharry]

On 26/08/2020 at 20:28, The Johnster said:

He's not principally from the Principality, in principle, but as he lives principally in the Principalty and has for some time, and as a matter of principle we principally rather like him although he originally principally hails from perfidious Albion, we can principally proceed with the procedure that he can be for procedural purposeful purposes perceived to be principally from the Principality, at least in principle, for the purpose of the purposeful Principalitarians who both live principally in the Principality or principally not in the Principality.  

 

Right, now that that's cleared up with no chance of confusion, Ian doesn't spit much, even using Welsh words, which he does quite well for a diwl saes.   He is therefore not exempt from mentioning scale and gauge.  But I am; too much spit, see, bwtti bach...

 

Of Perfidious Albion? Hmm.... I've never had the adjective applied to me, in any form; at least, as far as I know. 

 

I'm very lucky. I can trace my family back to the English Civil War. I'm very proud of 'Perfidious Albion', as people are wont to call it. It has put me where I am today. 

 

I will respectfully remind people that the pen is, indeed, mightier than the sword. 

 

Perfidious. Hmm... 

[Happy Hippo]

21 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

Perfidious. Hmm... 

I think that nasty infection cleared up within a few days of residing west of Offal's Dyke (or whatever she's called these days.)

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, tomparryharry said:

 

Of Perfidious Albion? Hmm.... I've never had the adjective applied to me, in any form; at least, as far as I know. 

 

I'm very lucky. I can trace my family back to the English Civil War. I'm very proud of 'Perfidious Albion', as people are wont to call it. It has put me where I am today. 

 

I will respectfully remind people that the pen is, indeed, mightier than the sword. 

 

Perfidious. Hmm... 

Everybody should be proud of their origins; it only goes wrong when the pride takes the form of regarding other nationalitiies or ethnicities as inferior, because 'yours is best'.  I think 'perfidious Albion' can be used without causing offence, being a term conjured by (to my mind) the greatest Englishman of all time, Stratford Bill though I think he may have been quoting Froissart.  

 

I can only trace my family back to the Great Famine in Ireland, when my mother's side (from Skibbereen, one of the best documented horrors because it was an easy ride for journalists staying in Cork) decamped to South Wales, what was left of them, a good number are in the Famine Pit at Skibbereen.  We visited on a family holly in 1963 and mother scattered earth from the Ould Country given her by Great Aunt Nell, 101 years old in '63 and whose parents had been witness to the tragedy.  I know little of my roots on my Father's side, as he was adopted by Richards' originally from Cardigan; his birth mother was Moon living in South London, a schoolteacher impregnated by  an Army office she was not married to who went and got himself killed on the Somme.  Social convention in those days and the stigma of illegitimacy meant she was forced to put the child up for adoption if she wanted to keep her job.  

 

This means that I might be related to Kieth Moon, but I had not got his phenomenal skill with a drum kit!  There are apparently related Moons living in Bath, and late in his life father wanted to establish contact, which I advised against, on the principle that those people might not want to turn old stones over to see what was underneath.  For once, he took my advice!

 

There have been ap Pritchards', shortened and Anglicised to Richards' as a surname, in Cardi for as long as there have been records.  But it is less meaningful to assume connections in Wales than in England, because in Wales the custom was for men of property to will such property divided evenly between sons, including illegitimate ones, which tended to break it up and mitigate against the establishment of local dynasties of wealth and position such as happened in England where the custom, indeed the law under Anglo-Norman feudalism, was male legitimate primogentiture for the main property; hence bloodlines were of much more import than they were in Wales.

 

I would respectfully remind people, even the ghost of Stratford Bill, that the computer keyboard is mightier than the pen, but I would not recommend using either in a direct confrontation with anyone wielding a sword.  As was shown by Indiana Jones (Jones is a Welsh surname) in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', you need a gun for this...

 

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by The Johnster

[Happy Hippo]

17 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

I would respectfully remind people, even the ghost of Stratford Bill, that the computer keyboard is mightier than the pen, but I would not recommend using either in a direct confrontation with anyone wielding a sword.  As was shown by Indiana Jones (Jones is a Welsh surname) in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', you need a gun for this...

 

I have a number of guns rifles, knifes and a sword.

 

All have been used in a professional capacity or as proper tools, and not as a satisfier of an overactive ego.

 

*We shouldn't really call them guns because a gun is the preserve of the Royal Artillery or the Royal Navy.  The stuff we use are collectively Small Arms and should be referred to by their exact designator (pistol, revolver, carbine, rifle, etc)

(Of course then you get the oddity called a shotgun: so called because it hasn't got a rifled barrel)

Edited August 29, 2020 by Happy Hippo

[The Johnster]

21 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

*We shouldn't really call them guns because a gun is the preserve of the Royal Artillery or the Royal Navy. 

This is interesting and, to me, educational.  I will endeavour to use the appropriate terms in future, but may still have to resort to 'some sort of gun' occasionally.  In view of your definition of a shotgun, can such a device fire a shell, or do shells have to be fired from rifled barrels.  

 

I stayed for a long weekend at Dale Fort some years ago, amazing place.  It has the world's biggest air rifle, a steel barrel sunk into solid rock as an experiment from around the 1850s or so, a time when much development of naval guns was taking place.  Clearly, on board a warship, a gun which did not require gunpowder in the breech was much safer; ships being destroyed by powder magazine accidents were a major concern.  In the end the RN adopted breech loaded gunpowder as the standard method despite the hazard, in order to maintain the rate of fire considered necessary, but compressed air, steam, and hydraulic pressure were all tried.  At Dale, the whole thing was top secret and hidden in the rock behind and beneath the fort; it is now use as storage for the bar, an ideal location for it.  A steam driving pump provided the air pressure and the thing was capable of lobbing a shell about 3 miles up Milford Haven with decent accuracy.  It apparently still works, at least to the extent that there's no reason that it shouldn't with a bit of cleaning, but bombarding oil tankers is not for some reason considered an appropriate activity.  I think it is the world's largest airgun.  I think I am justified in calling this thing a Naval Gun, as it was built under the direction of the Royal Navy for their potential use.  The other advantage was that there was much less recoil than with a 'conventional gun'.

 

It has more in common with the 'rocket firing guns' of the type that was allegedly being constructed by Saddam Hussein as part of his foreign policy of the early years of the century, but I think these are more correctly mortars; is there not such a piece of artillery as a rocket firing mortar or can a mortar fire anything you drop into it?

[Happy Hippo]

22 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

This is interesting and, to me, educational.  I will endeavour to use the appropriate terms in future, but may still have to resort to 'some sort of gun' occasionally.  In view of your definition of a shotgun, can such a device fire a shell, or do shells have to be fired from rifled barrels.  

 

It has more in common with the 'rocket firing guns' of the type that was allegedly being constructed by Saddam Hussein as part of his foreign policy of the early years of the century, but I think these are more correctly mortars; is there not such a piece of artillery as a rocket firing mortar or can a mortar fire anything you drop into it?

Shells are fired from rifled barrels and the term shotgun shell is another one that has slipped into use, I suppose  like calling a brake van a guards van. 

A shotgun can fire solid shot which is a large projectile (slug) and this can have rifling cast into it, to allow the slug to spin which improves it's accuracy over longer distances.

 

Artillery is usually split into 3 types. Gun, Howitzer and Mortar.  Guns and Howitzers have rifled barrels and mortars tend to be smooth bore.

 

A gun differs from a howitzer in that it has a long barrel and fires at low trajectories, whereas the howitzer is designed to fire at high trajectory. You can use a gun at long range, but need a Howitzer to lob a shell over a hill!

 

Guns, Howitzers and Mortars can all fire  a Rocket Assisted Projectile (RAP) where the ammunition also has a rocket motor fitted.  The individual round being fired conventionally and the RAP ignites one clear of the barrel. (You do not want it igniting in the barrel!)

 

Another simple way of definition is that a gun cannot be carried by an individual.  

 

The term machine gun harks back to when the early Gatling and Maxim style machine guns were developed and needed a complete gun team to carry and operate them.  The title machine gun tended to stick, so all automatic guns firing rifle ammunition were collectively grouped as machine guns.  The USA did try and to the right thing and correctly called their first light support weapon the Browning Automatic Rifle  (BAR).

 

It boils down to semantics!

Edited August 29, 2020 by Happy Hippo

[Dave Hunt]

Evening All,

 

After a week's absence I'm back to disgrace the pages of The Night Mail. Without dwelling on my misfortunes I have been in the grips of a caustic combination of campylobacter, a mini stroke and a bad flare up of diverticular disease and have been shuffled around the environs of Telford and Shrewsbury hospitals being scanned, poked, prodded, relieved of blood and other fluids, connected to various things that occasionally go 'bleep', given pills, potions and infusions various, observed, examined and discussed by groups of varying sizes since Monday. The upshot is that providing nothing else goes wrong I should get home tomorrow or Monday with nothing other than some (temporary with any luck) double vision and enough needle marks to convince any passing policeman that I am a confirmed junkie.

 

Thanks to the kind offices of our noble pachyderm founder I have been kept abreast of happenings both here and on ERs but my fond hopes for the near future are home cooking, my own bed and some modelling time (luckily the double vision does not affect my directly forward view). In my absence Jill has been making some drapes for the front of my layout, which is probably above and beyond the call of duty for a railway modeller's wife, so I will need to think of some suitable thank you for that.

 

And despite my somewhat glib remarks above, the NHS have been great.

 

Dave

 

Ps - interesting stuff above about the different types of firearms HH but wasn't there also something called a carronade that the Navy used? I seem to remember reading the term in books about Nelson's exploits.

 

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by Dave Hunt

[jamie92208]

Good to see you back amo gst us Dave.

 

Jamie

[polybear]

Dave's back

[Happy Hippo]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

E

 

Ps - interesting stuff above about the different types of firearms HH but wasn't there also something called a carronade that the Navy used? I seem to remember reading the term in books about Nelson's exploits.

 

 

A carronade is the naval gun equivalent of a sawn off shotgun.

 

Short barrelled and smooth bored a bit like a trench mortar, but fired in a more horizontal plane rather than the mortar's more vertical tragectory.

 

Loaded with grape shot (lead balls the size of a grape) it was lethal as an anti personnel weapon at close range.  (Think of a reloadable Claymore mine!)

Loaded with chain shot it was very good at dismantling rigging, shredding sails and breaking  spars.

 

The short barrel allowed the rapid fanning out of the projectile(s) but meant that the Caronnade did not have the long range of it's long barrelled compatriots.

 

Short barrel short range/long barrel long range certainly hold true for rifles where a carbine is good for most situations the average infantryman is likely to be in.  and still have the ability to hit the target.  Longer ranges need longer rifles.  You never see a short barrelled sniper rifle, except in some Hollywood movies!

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by Happy Hippo

[bbishop]

Dave, nice to have you back.  Can I suggest you have a lazy week?  Bill

[tomparryharry]

13 hours ago, The Johnster said:

.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 30, 2020 by tomparryharry
Yes.