Wright writes.....

[James Fitzjames]

18 hours ago, Andy Reichert said:

 

Having just received a batch of 10 Gresley suburbans from a couple of sources as an Xmas present here in California, I was dismayed to find that they are all red instead of maroon. 

 

My way of selecting them was to go to my big UK box shifter and search for "Gresley Maroon", and order the ones shown.  And  these items all came up as "maroon".

 

Since they were ordered a few weeks in advance and return shipping is prohibitive I'm kind of stuck (and unhappy with the supplier). Why didn't they know the colour had changed and alter their search terms? 

 

I'd love to repaint them, but the glazing is glued in and the door handles are brass. So apart from a huge job, it would seem to be very difficult to do at all,

 

Andy

Dark Brown filter laid very carefully might do the job

[chris p bacon]

1 hour ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

Dave,

 

presumably you haven't been invited to partake in the screening programme, perhaps you are too young. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/bowel-cancer-screening/

 

Suffice to say "smear test" is about right but cardboard coffee stirring stick might be slightly more accurate than mascara brush. 

 

Jol

 

A bit OT I know but to me Health is always on topic.

 

There was a recent thread where the new postal test is described as similar to a mascara brush 

 

I hit 55 2 years ago and was offered an endoscopy, found some nasties and after some treatment I'm good to go for a few more years, having now lived 6 years longer than my mother (Bowel cancer) I'm rather grateful for that.

[robertcwp]

47 minutes ago, chris p bacon said:

 

A bit OT I know but to me Health is always on topic.

 

 

And always important. Not just bowel cancer screening - bowel cancer is often curable if caught early enough, which screening greatly increases the chances of. Men over 50 also need to be keeping an eye on their PSA blood score (can be an early sign of prostate cancer - also curable if caught early enough) as well as other things such as cholesterol, any early signs of diabetes (often affects the older generation who have had too much sugar for years - the body can give up trying to cope with it eventually), heart and lots more. No use planning for that last great model railway project in retirement if you don't make it that far.

[Clive Mortimore]

18 minutes ago, robertcwp said:

And always important. Not just bowel cancer screening - bowel cancer is often curable if caught early enough, which screening greatly increases the chances of. Men over 50 also need to be keeping an eye on their PSA blood score (can be an early sign of prostate cancer - also curable if caught early enough) as well as other things such as cholesterol, any early signs of diabetes (often affects the older generation who have had too much sugar for years - the body can give up trying to cope with it eventually), heart and lots more. No use planning for that last great model railway project in retirement if you don't make it that far.

Hi Robert

 

Back in the 90's I was part of a group of nurses who were pressing the government to introduce routine health screening, based on research. I gathered information from various companies where there was health screening, an example was a company that dealt with poisons who would regularly check their workforce to ensure they were safe, at the same time they done a basic health test and would often detect something wasn't right with an employee and send him or her to the correct treatment very early on. This saved time off work and meant the workforce was healthy.  The occupational nurses found that staff were more willing to see them with a slight niggle which again sometimes lead to early intervention and they were able to educate the staff on living a healthier lifestyle. Even with a change to the colour of the rosettes the government wore all we were doing was 

 

As a nation we need to get to a the point where we are keeping members of society healthy before they become ill. 

[Tony Wright]

58 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Hi Robert

 

Back in the 90's I was part of a group of nurses who were pressing the government to introduce routine health screening, based on research. I gathered information from various companies where there was health screening, an example was a company that dealt with poisons who would regularly check their workforce to ensure they were safe, at the same time they done a basic health test and would often detect something wasn't right with an employee and send him or her to the correct treatment very early on. This saved time off work and meant the workforce was healthy.  The occupational nurses found that staff were more willing to see them with a slight niggle which again sometimes lead to early intervention and they were able to educate the staff on living a healthier lifestyle. Even with a change to the colour of the rosettes the government wore all we were doing was 

 

As a nation we need to get to a the point where we are keeping members of society healthy before they become ill. 

'As a nation we need to get to a the point where we are keeping members of society healthy before they become ill.' 

 

A laudable sentiment, Clive,

 

But who keeps whom? And what about those who 'choose' to become ill (eventually)? Because of smoking, diet, obesity, life-style, no exercise, etc, etc, etc................................ I know that sounds a bit Draconian, but life-style choices seriously affect our well-being; for good or ill. 

 

I think it was the great Bill Shankly who, when asked why he never smoked or ate junk food, said .... 'I want to die a healthy man!'

 

A major problem facing the nation's health right now is not necessarily one of illness (though that's always an issue) but one of a vast, post-War generation all getting into its 70s, and 'old age'. Just like me! Three score years and ten, and all that.....................

 

Regards,

 

Tony

Edited January 5, 2020 by Tony Wright
to clarify a point

[polybear]

5 hours ago, PMP said:

Good luck in court with that one. Having in the past seen the commercial impact a minor fluid spill did to an aircraft hold, i’d just follow the rules.

 

Hence my comment that it would make more sense if the sender could apply  "...a modicum of common sense" (though I appreciated that businesses most likely won't go there).

Which could well mean UK delivery only, for example.  Paying extra to send something via courier doesn't make it any less hazardous than delivery by Royal Mail.  (I've seen mums in cars with kids in the back acting as Hermes Couriers).

Pack it suitably and sensibly.  Royal Mail used to deliver such items but then changed the goal posts.  I don't recall too many hazardous incidents regarding a tin of humbrol in the post.  It's more a case of society becoming terrified of perceived risk and doing their very hardest to cover their a**es after someone has been tasked to generate yet another risk assessment.

 

[Philou]

Karl Freidrich MOHR - German chemist too (there seem to be a whole family of 'em) - that's from where I knew him, as I never did geology.

 

Freidrich MOHS - German mineralogist, for whom we also have to thank for the pencil hardness scale.

 

There, I learnt something else today from this very varied thread .

 

Back to the current thread - be very aware of bowel cancer as I lost a friend that way last Spring as he ignored the initial signs and then didn't follow things up correctly despite the best effort of doctors and clinicians. He was only just past his 69th birthday.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

[mullie]

4 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

I've discovered that I've actually got two original Hornby (ex-Airfix) 20T LMS brake vans on LB, both the property of Rob Davey (or they're his work). 

 

 

Here's the first, detailed and weathered by Rob, including a 'canvas' (toilet paper) roof and additional ballast. It seems to have got a bit 'bent' in old age!

 

 

I thought the latest one was so good, that I've detailed and weathered this one for use on the M&GNR. 

 

 

I've also detailed and weathered the fitted one. It's standing next to the other Hornby original (right). Though the roof is certainly finer, that bowed horizontal handrail is a bit alarming. I honestly can't tell any difference in the planking. 

I was looking at one with even more alarming handrails in a shop the other day and as they don't do it in post war LMS livery have decided to detail my Dapol version picked up cheap on Ebay. It is already running on the layout with Gibson EM wheels.  A new roof, separate handrails and possibly a Bill Bedford chassis should make quite a nice little project.

 

Martyn

[Lecorbusier]

A couple of questions if I may...

 

What kind of speed would a typical goods train travel at pre first world war?

 

If you had a small 0-6-0 tank like the Midland 1f ... what sort of speed would this have run at on the main or branch line?

 

The gearing on the motor I am fitting to my 1f currently gives a top speed of scale 30mph ish.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Lecorbusier

[Clive Mortimore]

11 minutes ago, Lecorbusier said:

A couple of questions if I may...

 

What kind of speed would a typical goods train travel at pre first world war?

 

If you had a small 0-6-0 tank like the Midland 1f ... what sort of speed would this have run at on the main or branch line?

 

The gearing on the motor I am fitting to my 1f currently gives a top speed of scale 30mph ish.

Hi Tim

 

With a good tail wind 25 mph. Even in diesel days Class 8 unfitted freight trains were limited to 25 mph. Once rolling an unfitted freight train will keep going, it is stopping it with only the brakes on the loco and the brake van that limits the speed.

[Clive Mortimore]

1 hour ago, Tony Wright said:

'As a nation we need to get to a the point where we are keeping members of society healthy before they become ill.' 

 

A laudable sentiment, Clive,

 

But who keeps whom? And what about those who 'choose' to become ill (eventually)? Because of smoking, diet, obesity, life-style, no exercise, etc, etc, etc................................ I know that sounds a bit Draconian, but life-style choices seriously affect our well-being; for good or ill. 

 

I think it was the great Bill Shankly who, when asked why he never smoked or ate junk food, said .... 'I want to die a healthy man!'

 

A major problem facing the nation's health right now is not necessarily one of illness (though that's always an issue) but one of a vast, post-War generation all getting into its 70s, and 'old age'. Just like me! Three score years and ten, and all that.....................

 

Regards,

 

Tony

Hello Tony

 

I could go on for hours around this subject. I agree lifestyles can be bad for health. That is where good health education should be in place, helping alcohol addicts early on so when they reach their 40s they are not needing a secondhand liver from someone else. Exercise is good but when you get gymnast coaches getting 12 year old girls doing moves that are damaging their growing bodies so that they need hip or knee replacements in their 40s. Again appropriate health education regarding what exercise is beneficial for which age group. 

 

Health screening is wonderful, we do not do enough of it. My wife and her sister are both alive because they attended their breast screening appointments. I wish there was a regular screening for men with regard to prostate cancer instead of the doctors waiting for us blokes to turn up with symptoms.

 

Back to railway modelling, don't use sharp tools when under stress either from home life or work. If you do you run the risk of wasting doctors and nurses time where if like me you put a number 11 scalpel blade through an artery in your thumb.  

[Anglian]

Self-inflicted modelling related injuries is a whole topic in itself. Don't ever use a hot melt glue gun wearing shorts.

With regards to long term health care if you are ever suspicious about spots, or moles or anything similar that you've just noticed get it checked out at your GP as soon as you can.

 

[Barry Ten]

38 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

 

 

Health screening is wonderful, we do not do enough of it. My wife and her sister are both alive because they attended their breast screening appointments. I wish there was a regular screening for men with regard to prostate cancer instead of the doctors waiting for us blokes to turn up with symptoms.

 

 

 

 

At the risk of opening yet another can of worms, the medical case for routine PSA screening is far from settled.

[Philou]

Over here, I have a PSA test done as part of routine yearly blood tests (free for me via reciprocal agreements with the NHS) BUT once I shall be 75+ it'll be no longer free (go figure). As I understand with the PSA test, there are too many false-positives at the moment with the tools (sorry) that they have at hand (sorry!). My view is better to have a false-positive and then a further check-up rather than ignore the possibility of something far worse.

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

[DougN]

All very topical at the moment with me. My father has just passed away (3/1/20) at almost 72. A intelligent man and a veterinian but when it came to his own health, well made very poor decisions. Smoked all his life. Over weight at times. Which was a surprise as he worked with large animals all his life. His risk was the smoking. It caused vascular issues and a family history of type 2 diabetes. How  ever the hard to diagnose pancreatic cancer was the thing that did him in. 

 

It is making me think at 45 I need to have a good MOT on the body to avoid some of this nastiness. I have too many kits to finish and i want to see a long retirement!

[Tony Wright]

At least modelling keeps the mind active and healthy!

 

One of the things I submit material to is the online Pullman Newsletter.

 

I've been asked to provide more pictures of LB's Pullman trains (of which there are four).

 

Here they are.............................

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No other main line had so many Pullman services. Long gone, of course - far too elitist in this egalitarian world, but, in real life, magnificent nonetheless.

 

I'm privileged to be old enough (and still fit enough in the mind) to remember sights such as these.  

 

And there 'I' still am, snapping away to my heart's content!

Edited January 5, 2020 by Tony Wright
to clarify a point

[nerron]

Doug,

So sorry to read your sad news. My sincere condolences.

Ron.

[Clive Mortimore]

2 hours ago, Barry Ten said:

 

At the risk of opening yet another can of worms, the medical case for routine PSA screening is far from settled.

Hi Al

 

That was one of Stephen Dorrell's (than SoS for health) answers, along with not all prostate cancers kill. Hence it is too expensive for the potential outcome. Unless you are a true positive and yours is one that could kill, like the 11,700 prostate cancer deaths in the UK every year, that's 32 every day.

 

Less people die on the roads (1,770) each year but we can afford to make them safe for the idiots driving on them.

[Northmoor]

1 hour ago, DougN said:

 

It is making me think at 45 I need to have a good MOT on the body to avoid some of this nastiness. I have too many kits to finish and i want to see a long retirement!

I also thought it a good idea about this time last year (I'm 47).  While the analysis was useful - it identified, apparently, that my cholesterol could do with being lower - I did wonder about the value of the whole exercise.  I stupidly had just eaten a large evening meal before attending the check-up (so my waist felt enormous) and the nurse managed to incorrectly measure my height by a whole two inches.

I would endorse the importance of getting things checked before they become a problem, but have over the last few years, become increasingly convinced that your life expectancy is largely genetic and/or set in childhood.  Treat your body badly and you won't reach your its design life, but if you are "programmed" to last to 75, no amount of health foods are going to make you live to 90 and there are quite a few charlatans out there trying to persuade us otherwise.  I have known more than a few serious athletes/sportsman who have died young, sometimes very much so.  I also met a man in A&E recently who seemed very frail and I thought he was there with his elderly wife.  It turned out he had had meningitis as a child and the woman was his mother; when he gave his DoB to the nurse it confirmed that he was about 53.

My father-in-law ate and drank moderately healthily, but was somewhere between heavy and chain-smoker most of his life.  He died at 72, from cancer unrelated to smoking.  My mother smoked very briefly in her late teens, drank very little, ate a balanced diet her whole life and led an active (if not a sporting) existence until her last week of life.  She died at 72.

 

[MJI]

10 minutes ago, Clive Mortimore said:

Hi Al

 

That was one of Stephen Dorrell's (than SoS for health) answers, along with not all prostate cancers kill. Hence it is too expensive for the potential outcome. Unless you are a true positive and yours is one that could kill, like the 11,700 prostate cancer deaths in the UK every year, that's 32 every day.

 

Less people die on the roads (1,770) each year but we can afford to make them safe for the idiots driving on them.

 

 

He is local to me so is know. Seems a reasonable sort. (Someone I knew lodged in his house.)

 

So out of interest what percentage of positives are false?

[Clive Mortimore]

11 minutes ago, MJI said:

 

 

He is local to me so is know. Seems a reasonable sort. (Someone I knew lodged in his house.)

 

So out of interest what percentage of positives are false?

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/prostate-cancer/should-i-have-psa-test/

[Stanley Melrose]

I'm hoping it won't be too long before Zilico (which I incorporated in my working life) gets round to prostrate cancer as well as the other planned developments it has in train - see <https://zilico.co.uk/>

 

Always worth getting a PSA check in the meantime . . .

 

Stan

[Pannier Tank]

37 minutes ago, Tony Wright said:

No other main line had so many Pullman services. Long gone, of course - far too elitist in this egalitarian world, but, in real life, magnificent nonetheless.

 

I'm privileged to be old enough (and still fit enough in the mind) to remember sights such as these.  

 

 

You were very lucky, we never had any Pullman Services on the WCML until the all Electric Manchester Pullman. Still we had the delights of the Duchesses / Princesses / Royal Scots on Named Trains such as The Royal Scot, The Caledonian etc happy days.

[Tony Wright]

36 minutes ago, Pannier Tank said:

 

You were very lucky, we never had any Pullman Services on the WCML until the all Electric Manchester Pullman. Still we had the delights of the Duchesses / Princesses / Royal Scots on Named Trains such as The Royal Scot, The Caledonian etc happy days.

I saw all those as well, of course. Indeed happy days.

 

I suppose I had the best of both worlds regarding seeing the two great northern routes under steam. Born and bred in Chester, but lucky to have a paternal family living in Yorkshire. 

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

[Tony Wright]

2 hours ago, DougN said:

All very topical at the moment with me. My father has just passed away (3/1/20) at almost 72. A intelligent man and a veterinian but when it came to his own health, well made very poor decisions. Smoked all his life. Over weight at times. Which was a surprise as he worked with large animals all his life. His risk was the smoking. It caused vascular issues and a family history of type 2 diabetes. How  ever the hard to diagnose pancreatic cancer was the thing that did him in. 

 

It is making me think at 45 I need to have a good MOT on the body to avoid some of this nastiness. I have too many kits to finish and i want to see a long retirement!

My condolences, Doug,

 

Kind regards,

 

Tony.