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Eastwood Town - A tribute to Gordon's modelling.


gordon s
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On 17/09/2020 at 09:51, gordon s said:

Needless to say the room is marginal for a double bed, but it's in.

 

No idea if we can come to an arrangement with the shop, but we now have a brand new new adjustable bed, that is not needed as I suspect she will stay in her old one.....Bless.  :)

 

 

Perhaps it's the choice of mattress on the single bed that's the issue - could another mattress help?  There are companies (memory foam springs to mind) that offer a free return/refund if unsuitable.  HTH

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On 17/09/2020 at 09:51, gordon s said:

 so have converted our study into a bedroom for her

 

Needless to say the room is marginal for a double bed, but it's in.

 

 

 

 

Here's an idea, put the Hornby Dublo in the study and the MiL in the train room ....... there, fixed it!

 

Should I get my coat now?

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Beds all sorted. I can’t fault Dreams who gave us full credit for the mattress and 80% of the bed frame in exchange for a new double. Overall it broke even, so no cost at all to change everything.

 

Second leg of the match against Minchinhampton this morning for the ‘Sandy Minge’ Trophy, followed by a few beers and a curry. We still seem to be living in this parallel universe where things are relatively normal compared to other parts of the country. Having shielded since March, I know what another lockdown will mean to many, so really hope things improve soon for those of you in higher risk areas.

 

I really want to get stuck into the new mimic panel. All the bits are here, but domestic jobs keep taking over. Last count we had a string of seven things go wrong last week with water leaks and some strange goings on with our lighting. Worst of the lot was Jackie found some weird jelly like beads in our water supply. No idea what they were, so Googled only to find they are resin beads from our water softener.

 

We’ve had it since 2003 and it’s worked well until now. Apparently there are thousands of these tiny resin beads held in side by a membrane and if that ruptures they escape into the water system. First sign was the washing machine stopping through lack of water and then Jackie found them in the sink. We had to disconnect most things and then spent most of the day removing these from every appliance that needed water plus having to drain down the loft water tank and clean that out completely. A complete pain in the backside that I knew nothing about before.

 

https://bfplumbingbayarea.com/blog/how-to-flush-water-softener-resin-out-of-pipes/

 

 

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My brother has a filter fitted to the water supply,  which needs changing every 12 months,  it takes out a fair bit of muck, when removed.  Mother has a magnetic type device that removes crud from the central heating supply,  it has to be cleaned every 12 months, the stuff that comes out is like a very rusty mud. It takes about half an hour to clean, a very well thought out device that has isolating valves incorporated into it.

 

 

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On 24/10/2020 at 12:03, Rowsley17D said:

It's been a bit quiet on here. Hope everything is well.

 

All is fine, Jonathan, just the usual summer break banging balls around a field.  The second lockdown this week will certainly get me beavering about again and I did have some trains running when a friend came over with some Lionel stock that needed looking at....

 

 

My MiL has now moved in with us, so any spare time has been taken up organising the house for her. In some ways it's a blessing as we were always concerned about her welfare as she lived on her own some 45 minutes away. At least we can now keep her safe and of course, it's company for her and nothing to worry about.

 

Hopefully I will be able to get back into the mimic panel first and then it's back to track building as I need three more crossovers.

 

With two of us as high risk, we are just very careful what we do and who visits. Life certainly goes on, but I know there are many who are going to find the next few months much more of a challenge.

 

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welcome back Gordon.. just pumped our garden out.. and .. it is bl!!dy freezing... not the right time of year for any sort of outdoor sport...

 

Baz

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9 hours ago, Barry O said:

welcome back Gordon.. just pumped our garden out.. and .. it is bl!!dy freezing... not the right time of year for any sort of outdoor sport...

 

Baz

You're going soft in your old age.

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Evening all......:D

 

First and foremost, hope you are all well and staying out of trouble. To make life a little easier for all, we now have my 91 yr old MiL living with us. Had to get a plumber in to fit a wash basin, but she now has her own bedroom downstairs with a toilet just across the way. Had to make a few other adjustments for her walking frame etc, but apart from a couple of early falls which meant hospital check ups, she has settled in well. She's always been cheerful and positive, so it's no problem having her here and it's saved a lot of travel for my wife going back and forth to Teddington 2 or 3 times a week.

 

Golf season is now over and the course shut, so I blew the cobwebs off everything and wandered up stairs a week or two ago.....

 

Had a ball the last couple of weeks as a golfing pal got wind of my interest in railways and asked if I could take a look at a train set he'd had for years that didn't work. Expecting him to bring round some Hornby 3 rail, I was gob smacked when he turned up with a Lionel Standard Gauge set from 1935....All £4/4/- worth which is around £300 in todays money.

 

Screenshot_2020-11-04_at_18_58_21.png.33ae8461dee2f6e2cff24078a3fe81bc.png

 

You can read more about it here.  Just waiting for some parts from the US and it should all be fixed....

 

 

On the ET front, all is well. Trains are running again, the mimic panel is well underway and I have five crossovers to build. I really don't mind being home in the warm and so happy to be back on ET again. It really is no fun golfing in the wet, so the radio will be on and track building will commence. Very pleased to have sorted out all the route selection issues and that's now working. Seeing a 9F with 30 wagons trundling right across the station throat from line 4 to line 1 was great and I could sit for hours just watching trains go by......

 

Stay well....

 DSCF1347.jpg.cccf56bd879ac49627d936747970d97c.jpg

 

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  • gordon s changed the title to Eastwood Town - The season is over, so here we go again......

I’ll be there in spirit......The Masters in November is going to be interesting. From what I heard yesterday, the forecast for Thursday is rain storms, so there may not be much golf....

 

......and with Southampton/Leicester and Spurs all having fun in the Premier League, TV Sport is really good right now. I phoned BT yesterday to see what sort of deals were on offer and they knocked off £9 per month on BT Sport in exchange for renewing the contract. With Champions League and Moto GP I would have renewed anyway.......:D

 

 

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12 hours ago, gordon s said:

I’ll be there in spirit......The Masters in November is going to be interesting. From what I heard yesterday, the forecast for Thursday is rain storms, so there may not be much golf....

 

......and with Southampton/Leicester and Spurs all having fun in the Premier League, TV Sport is really good right now. I phoned BT yesterday to see what sort of deals were on offer and they knocked off £9 per month on BT Sport in exchange for renewing the contract. With Champions League and Moto GP I would have renewed anyway.......:D

 

 

 

You haven't got time for television, there's a train set to be finished.

 

Mike.

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Pressure, pressure, pressure.......:D

 

just been down to Screwfix to get some led batten lights. A long, long time ago (cue Don McLean) when we had the room kitted out for ET, I thought half a dozen 50w down lights fitted in the sloping eaves would be more than enough to light up the layout and allow me to work in the evenings. How naive can you get......:D

 

Picked up three 4’ s and one 5’ as a starting point. The quality of light is always the unknown with cool white tending towards blue and warm white heading towards yellow. These are marketed as daylight, so hopefully will be OK.

 

Biggest problem is working around the large horizontal centre swivel opening windows that are essential to open in the summer. I think it will be possible for the lights to cross the window opening and still allow them to open, but the vertical position is still an issue with light spread versus hard shadows.
 

Right now a beer is called for, so more in depth fiddling can take place tomorrow.

 

Really looking forward to working in decent light and being able to take pics with a reasonable speed/aperature, rather than the grainy or blurred pics with little or no depth of field.

 

Any guidance you can offer on led lights/fixings and pelmets always welcome.....

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  • gordon s changed the title to Eastwood Town - Let there be light....
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Hi Gordon,

 

Have you considered LED tape lighting strip,  available in lengths of up to 5 metres, some come with a dimmer switch.  It's usually sold for under kitchen wall cabinets. If you take a look at Kevin's Little Muddle  thread,  he uses some waterproof strips, he uses one strip of cool white and one of warm white, he fitted it two or three years ago and it certainly enhanced his photos.

 

 

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Thanks SS. Ashamed to say I hadn’t seen that thread before, but agree the quality of light really is first class. With 327 pages to plough through, I did a search thread and managed to pull this one up, so will definitely read some more.....

 


Thanks for the info. We have led strips under our kitchen cupboards, but hadn’t considered them for ET. I like the flexibility they could bring and the daylight colour looks very good with the mix of cool and warm.

 

A lot of reading clearly needed.......

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I’ve just fitted one of these in my Railway Room: 

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B088KHHZK9/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

it can can be dimmed and the colour of the white varied continuously from a very yellow white to a blue white.  The 35w is more than bright enough for my 3m x 4m room.

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1 hour ago, gordon s said:

Really looking forward to working in decent light and being able to take pics with a reasonable speed/aperature, rather than the grainy or blurred pics with little or no depth of field.

 

 

Hi Gordon,

 

Working in decent light and being able to take good model photos is two different things.

 

In the real world there is only one sun, a long way away. Which means all real-life shadows fall the same way, and they are all parallel. Our eye/brain software is very sensitive to this, because it uses the shadow detail to work out what we are looking at in 3D.

 

On most layouts, the overall lighting causes the shadows to criss-cross in multiple directions. That's how our eye always knows when it is looking at a model picture, no matter how realistic the modelling. It's also the reason owners of portable layouts set them up out of doors to get the best photos.

 

To make something approaching model sunlight, you would need a row of focused spotlights (car headlights?), high up along one end of the railway room. With baffles between them so that the light beams are effectively parallel. Or to make something approaching a model overcast day, with no distinct shadows, you would need a large number of closely spaced dim lights all over the ceiling.

 

Neither of those are especially practical, and most layout lighting falls between those two extremes, with a number of spaced bright lights. Which is good for working under, but produces multiple criss-crossed shadows on the models.

 

For modern digital cameras, the lighting doesn't need to be especially bright because you can turn up the ISO setting a long way without losing too much image quality. So arrange the wiring of your lights so that each one has its own switch, and for the photos turn them all off except one.

 

cheers,

 

Martin.

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1 hour ago, Regularity said:

I have been advised by those who work with these things that 24v LED strips are better than 12V. No idea why, but thought I would pass on the recommendation.


Some interesting info re length and power on 12v versus 24v.

 

 

https://www.instyleled.co.uk/12v-vs-24v-led-strips/

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19 hours ago, gordon s said:

A long, long time ago (cue Don McLean) when we had the room kitted out for ET, I thought half a dozen 50w down lights fitted in the sloping eaves would be more than enough to light up the layout and allow me to work in the evenings. How naive can you get......

Well you were younger a long long time ago. :D

 

Anyone seen my coat and i'll be off.

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On 11/11/2020 at 19:43, martin_wynne said:

For modern digital cameras, the lighting doesn't need to be especially bright because you can turn up the ISO setting a long way without losing too much image quality. So arrange the wiring of your lights so that each one has its own switch, and for the photos turn them all off except one.

 

I would take issue with this Martin, whilst it may be true for full-fat DSLRs, the majority of compact digital cameras require much more light than would be required for normal viewing, possibly due to limitations of lens optics, sensor size, and camera software.

 

For those wanting to take good close-up photographs down at track level, and therefore using small cameras or mobile phones, the more light the better.

 

Al.

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