The Night Mail

[Happy Hippo]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I am our dishwasher. This fault-finding method is not recommended.

 

But it is very effective when you also give the dishwasher a damn good kicking and all the coins fall out of the filter pockets.

[Florence Locomotive Works]

Evening all,

 

The doom has lessened a bit lately, and I was been able to do some work on the lathe, consisting of making the final frame stretcher for Brunel’s tender. The design on it is freehand and made with gravers.

 

 

This book has been very helpful.

 

 

Douglas

[jamie92208]

9 hours ago, br2975 said:

Good evening.

.

Are you sitting comfortably ?

.

Then I'll begin.

.

As Mrs.2975 and I will be entertaining our 11 year old twin grandsons around the Jubilee Weekend, a trip to York is planned.

Rhys and Dan are obsessed with aircraft, so there will be a visit to the Yorkshire Air Museum.

There will also be a return visit to the NRM, as Dan is now addicted to our hobby.

Mrs.2975 and I decided we would all travel by train, I no longer enjoy driving, and, we could take a liquid picnic to eat on our journey..

Enquiries produced a quote of well in excess of £600 for the 4 return tickets.

Sitting down, and taking a deep breath, I realised we have Senior Railcards; and the quoted fare dropped to.............. £420 (approx).

Further calculations, suggested the purchase of a £30 Family & Freinds Railcard would reduce the fare still further to...........£320 (approx)

By employing split ticketing, that fare dropped even further to............£220 

Our split ticketing works as follows;

Cardiff Central - Cheltenham Spa

Cheltenham Spa - Worcestershire Parkway

Worcestershire Parkway - Derby

Derby - Chesterfield

Chesterfield - York

And the same, in reverse, for the return journey

.

So, not being trustworthy of 'apps' - "QR Codes" and the like, much preferring a hard copy in one's mitt, I set off to Cardiff Central today, to secure my tickets from the machine in the booking hall

.

And here are the said tickets................. all 40 of them !

 

Are you sure that you don't have Scots and Yorkshire roots.  That's a result.

 

Jamie

[SM42]

43 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

Are you sure that you don't have Scots and Yorkshire roots.  That's a result.

 

Jamie

 

Too much frivolity for that heritage I think. 

 

 

Today is a rainy day and another trip to the dentist for an annual decoking is first item on the agenda.

 

After that, shopping for edible goodies and other stuff.

This may include some cut price Revell  kits to build over here. 

 

I did sneak off to the model shop yesterday as it is but a 2 minute drive from the range. 

 

Unfortunately due to the unique way in which the UK has customs limits I had to curtail my spending. 

 

In hindsight probably a good thing as building work starts at SM42 Towers in 2 weeks and there were too many shiny things to look at in the shop

 

Prep for the trip  back to blighty will begin later. 

Really don't want to go back but I have to, or risk overstaying my visa free period, the builder will be lonely and work might ring me.

 

Andy

[polybear]

Bear here...

Today's fun kicks off with adding a second coat of primer onto the dado rail.  That'll blow a good part of the morning ☹️

After that it's a MIUABGA day.  I might think about cutting the door architrave.  I thought retirement was supposed to be fun?  Tigger Mode needs a squirt of WD methinks.

[Oldddudders]

On 19/04/2022 at 06:12, Happy Hippo said:

So you don't have a finely chiselled and beautifully bronzed body like Oldddudders?

[Maniacal laughter from both sides of the bed in Torquay] Sadly I don't qualify. I may not be overweight, but the chisel and bronzing seem to have passed me by....

 

We braved the Channel on Monday afternoon. 'Normandie' was carrying the heaviest load she'd had in a couple of years, so the entertainments lady was telling people. It included several coach-loads of Luton teens, fresh from some sort of football tournament. Other teams, so we learnt, included Uruguay! The voyage started well, as we'd been lucky enough to get boarded really quite early. I had amused the lady gendarme at Emigration by telling her that, yes, I have a carte de séjour as I live in France, but Sherry doesn't, because she doesn't. She could maybe see the advantages that might offer... Anyway, 45' before departure we were in the bar drinking Chablis. We lingered there until we were well out to sea, then off to the cabin for a couple of hours kip. Sadly, emerging at 19.00 BST, with more than two hours of the voyage remaining, we found the cafeteria queue was a mile long, and the takeaway place was rapidly running out of everything to eat. In normal times we'd have been in the a la carte restaurant, but they have not been open since Covid. So we ended up with a couple of sandwiches, while over-excited teens rushed around.

 

We docked pretty much on time at 21.30 - but didn't clear Immigration until 23.15.... We were very pleased to reach Travelodge, just round the corner. Brittany Ferries will hear more about the voyage. They knew the loading, so more staff might have been a good idea. As for Border Force, I hope those that voted for Brexit are pleased with what they got...... 

[rockershovel]

12 hours ago, Northmoor said:

My former office was about 90s walk from the Dome.  We used to have a lovely view of the Thames down to the Barrier, until they started building the rows of apartment blocks.  When they were drilling for the foundations, the creosote-like smell could be quite overpowering outside on some days.  I always assumed it was residual coal tar from when the site was a gasworks and power station.

IIRC before the Dome was constructed, the (resident) population of Greenwich Peninsula was actually nil.  It is now in five figures and rising.

Coal tar was once a sort of universal by-product, unwanted in itself but produced in large quantities from the production of coke, which was valued as a source of strong, consistent heat with minimum ash and clinker. 

 

In the fashion of the day it was spurious labelled with all sorts of miraculous properties  and sold as a panacea. It was particularly valued as a disinfectant soap (carcinogens being thrn unknown) Then someone thought of a few genuinely useful applications - like binding road surfaces - and they were off and running. Same goes for the phenols etc used in wood preservatives.

 

Same goes for coal gas, which was of no real use as long as the technology to store and transport it remained undeveloped. Then advancing metallurgy allowed the development of gas tight pipework and the gasometer, permitting storage of very large quantities and transmission over relatively long distances at manageable pressures, and it was GAME ON for domestic and industrial gas heating, cooking, furnaces etc. 

Edited April 20, 2022 by rockershovel

[Compound2632]

7 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

As for Border Force, I hope those that voted for Brexit are pleased with what they got...... 

 

I think you have to remember that for many of them, foreign travel was not high up their agenda, either on grounds of poverty, age, or disinclination. So I doubt they are bothered.

[Oldddudders]

9 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

This Chieftain hulk was one of many different types of tank littering Otterburn ranges in Northumbria

In Winter, I supplement the duvet with the other item for which Otterburn is rightly famous - a rug. Every car should have one, too. 

[Happy Hippo]

6 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

In Winter, I supplement the duvet with the other item for which Otterburn is rightly famous - a rug. Every car should have one, too. 

The boots of both cars has a veritable selection of kit that  is loosely bagged up and stays on board 'just in case'.

 

Wellington boots and spare socks; various forms of high viz clothing and work gloves; both a wool and fleece blanket; umbrellas, a box of long life snacks and drinks, torches and some neatly boxed plastic cutlery.

 

And that it just for  a trip to the local super market.

[bbishop]

24 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Same goes for coal gas, which was of no real use as long as the technology to store and transport it remained undeveloped. Then advancing metallurgy allowed the development of gas tight pipework and the gasometer, permitting storage of very large quantities and transmission over relatively long distances at manageable pressures, and it was GAME ON for domestic and industrial gas heating, cooking, furnaces etc. 

Coal gas was "wet" and so the pipework rusted away.  Not a problem in London as the gas then flowed in clay tubes.  Then came North Sea gas, which is "dry" and the tubes dried and cracked and the gas got to where it shouldn't, including Post Office Telephones chambers.  So I got a student project in the summer of 1973, proving the accuracy of the test pencil issued to the engineers as they descended the ladders.

 

Bill

[bbishop]

15 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

The boots of both cars has a veritable selection of kit that  is loosely bagged up and stays on board 'just in case'.

 

Wellington boots and spare socks; various forms of high viz clothing and work gloves; both a wool and fleece blanket; umbrellas, a box of long life snacks and drinks, torches and some neatly boxed plastic cutlery.

 

And that it just for  a trip to the local super market.

 

And the Yeti has a full set of PPE3 kit.  Bill

[bbishop]

I was the worst shot in the CCF - only right handed rifles and I shoot left handed.  I got the map.  Bill

[Happy Hippo]

53 minutes ago, bbishop said:

I was the worst shot in the CCF - only right handed rifles and I shoot left handed.  I got the map.  Bill

I was lucky in that I can shoot off either shoulder so was able to fire the bolt action L96 and the semi auto L1A1 SLR from what I considered the most comfortable position.

 

There were certain small arms that couldn't be fired left handed.  The Sterling SMG being one due to it's length bringing the ejector port too close to the face.  A problem also encountered with the SA80 weapons system:  The use of a bullpup configuration would allow the rifle to eject spent cases directly into your mouth, which is not good for you teeth. but excellent for policing your brass!

 

The Carl Gustaf I mentioned earlier, could not be fired from the left as the sight was firmly fixed to the left hand side of the launch tube. 

 

The problem with shooting is not which hand you use but which eye is dominant,  the eye does all the computations whilst the trigger finger has one action.

 

I suspect that your CCF SAA instructors just couldn't be bothered to go to the extra effort of working with a left handed person.  Rapid fire being impossible with a bolt action rifle as you have to get it off the left shoulder in order to recycle the bolt, and then you have to re sight before firing.  not so much of a problem for a designated marksman or sniper where a slower and more accurate rate of fire is needed, but a plain 'grunt' that is left handed, especially in the bullpup generation is a pita.  

 

Some more exotic and expensive bullpup systems can have the breech housing and the ejector port reversible to allow usage by left handed shots, but where accountants rule, don't expect  HM Armed Forces to get something useful and expensive where every bean is scrupulously examined at least three times before the contract goes out to the lowest tender.

 

The Americans found this out when they replaced the M1911 Colt .45 with the Beretta P92.  So much cheaper than the rivals, so they bought loads.  Now they have replaced a lot of the Berettas with Glock or Sig pistols.

 

Edited April 20, 2022 by Happy Hippo

[jamie92208]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

Coal tar was once a sort of universal by-product, unwanted in itself but produced in large quantities from the production of coke, which was valued as a source of strong, consistent heat with minimum ash and clinker. 

 

In the fashion of the day it was spurious labelled with all sorts of miraculous properties  and sold as a panacea. It was particularly valued as a disinfectant soap (carcinogens being thrn unknown) Then someone thought of a few genuinely useful applications - like binding road surfaces - and they were off and running. Same goes for the phenols etc used in wood preservatives.

 

Same goes for coal gas, which was of no real use as long as the technology to store and transport it remained undeveloped. Then advancing metallurgy allowed the development of gas tight pipework and the gasometer, permitting storage of very large quantities and transmission over relatively long distances at manageable pressures, and it was GAME ON for domestic and industrial gas heating, cooking, furnaces etc. 

I did a school project once about Gas and the NCB sent me a large poster showing all the procts that cial tar went into, over 100 ISTR.  

 

Jamie

[ejstubbs]

14 hours ago, Northmoor said:

My former office was about 90s walk from the Dome.  We used to have a lovely view of the Thames down to the Barrier, until they started building the rows of apartment blocks.  When they were drilling for the foundations, the creosote-like smell could be quite overpowering outside on some days.  I always assumed it was residual coal tar from when the site was a gasworks and power station.

IIRC before the Dome was constructed, the (resident) population of Greenwich Peninsula was actually nil.  It is now in five figures and rising.

 

Post WW2 my Dad used to work at the Solid Fuel Research Station in Greenwich, researching things like improving the efficiency of solid fuel stoves.  The gas works was a handy source of coke, along with the odd spare sack of coal, for their research.

 

He used to relate the story of a time when a gleaming white cruise ship came up the river past their lab and moored for a couple of days in the Pool of London.  Two days later a very grey-looking ship, apparently of an identical design, was seen heading downriver out to sea...

 

(He reckoned it was actually the lead in the paint that reacted with something or things in air - perhaps sulphur fumes?)

Edited April 20, 2022 by ejstubbs

[ejstubbs]

13 hours ago, SM42 said:

The instructor was very kind to another participant who shot into the top of the target sheet missing all the score zones. 

 

" Nice grouping" she said.

 

The classic example of precision vs accuracy!

[bbishop]

I'm not left handed, I'm ambidextrous.  This doesn't mean I can use either hand for any task, it means that I do about half exclusively left handed and about half exclusively right handed.  My left eye is dominant but also very astigmatic and my optician wouldn't give me glasses until my eyesight settled down, hence the problem with shooting.

 

Stirlings etc were just fired from the waist.

 

A consequence of my ambidextrosity is that I have no concept of left and right.  So when we were taught to salute, I automatically did a mirror image of the instructor .....  Driving tests were interesting.  Bill

[PhilJ W]

My dad was ambidextrous, not born that way, he was left handed but forced to use his right hand at school (left school at 14 in 1934). My brother is also left handed and when the school tried to do the same to him my dad went ballistic. The forcing of left handed pupils to use their right hand stopped not long after that.

Edited April 20, 2022 by PhilJ W

[polybear]

5 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

The boots of both cars has a veritable selection of kit that  is loosely bagged up and stays on board 'just in case'.

 

Wellington boots and spare socks; various forms of high viz clothing and work gloves; both a wool and fleece blanket; umbrellas, a box of long life snacks and drinks, torches and some neatly boxed plastic cutlery.

 

4 hours ago, bbishop said:

And the Yeti has a full set of PPE3 kit.  Bill

 

The Bearmobile has cake.  I may freeze in a snow drift, but I'll be happy....

 

Bear here.....

Well the Dado Rail is well and truly primed, followed by the scoffing of a Pizza.  Happy Bear.

Now it's time to cut the lawn at Bear Towers.  I can do that.

[Happy Hippo]

If we ever needed to cancel the eye domination factor, we used that highly technical and astronomically expensive eye patch!

 

My shooting box has an even more extravagant set of accessories:  Two pair of safety glasses!  One pair has the left lens obscured, and the other pair has the right lens obscured.

 

This solves the problem of the dominant eye trying to take charge as the pupil can only see through the eye you want then to look through.  It can sometimes be seen with shooters trying to close the wrong eye and having all sorts of focusing issues.  the patch stops that from happening.

 

In Bill's case, the non issuing of corrective lenses was totally wrong, especially with astigmatism as not having the sight corrected can lead to eye strain, headaches and possibly other more serious eye issues.  It may have been the way things were done back then, but that sort of practice would get  people banned from the profession in this day and age.

 

But I suspect that this was quite normal back then.  It was only when I was being treated for the detaching retina that I should have been told not to play any form of contact sport as it increased the risk of a retinal detachment happening.  There I was playing rugby ,hockey and doing a bit of boxing, which should have been totally verboten:  Especially when I'd been to the optician asking for contact lenses to play the games!

Edited April 20, 2022 by Happy Hippo

[SM42]

I am right handed, left footed and have a dominant right eye but my left likes to get on on the action 

 

Shooting clays was a left eye closed affair, meaning I lost a lot of stereo vision. 

 

I now have a small piece of masking tape over the upper, central part of my left lens of the safety glasses. It does enough to cut out the left eye getting interested in what is going on but not so much as to stop me seeing in 3D. 

 

It is however a problem with some targets  as they can appear around the side of the patch and then there are two targets, or two barrels, depending on what the left eye likes the look of. 

 

I am trying to train myself out if this problem but don't get much chance to practise nowadays.

 

 I'm pretty sure if I see two barrels  the left one is traking the target's flight .  Once I notice this I then need to work out which if the two targets is the real one being tracked by the single barrel  

 

 

I'm surprised I can average around a 55- 60% success rate really.

 

Still it's all good fun anyway 

 

Andy

[Happy Hippo]

The only clays I've tried to shoot at was tossing them into the air and trying to drop them with  A 9mm Browning Hi Power pistol.

 

I went through four x 50 round boxes on 9mm ammunition and hit the target.....

 

Once!

 

So for me I had a 0.5% chance of hitting the target.

 

Others fared little better.

 

After that we decided that the accuracy of guns depicted in movies might be slightly exaggerated.

 

Although taking a Hollywood action movie as an example (any of them),  you notice how the hero is absolutely brilliant when it comes to knocking down the bad guy's minions with single shots at incredible range. 

 

Yet when he is up against the 'Mr Big'  he fires a months worth of ammunition, usually at fairly close range, and is unable to score a hit.

 

So embarrassed by the sudden loss of shooting prowess, the hero acts like a stunned mullet which allows Mr Big  to escape. 

 

There then follows a high speed car chase followed by a crash, then fisty cuffs and perhaps a stabby implement to finally finish it all off.

 

I do hope I've not spoiled any plots🤣.

[Tony_S]

15 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

 

After that we decided that the accuracy of guns depicted in movies might be slightly exaggerated.

 

Although taking a Hollywood action movie as an example (any of them),  you notice how the hero is absolutely brilliant when it comes to knocking down the bad guy's minions with single shots at incredible range.

It wasn’t Hollywood action movies when I was young. It was Westerns or Cowboy films as we called them then. Watching with Dad he was amused at how many shots Randolph Scott could fire off without reloading. And as for Hollywood WW2 films about places he had been to …

Edited April 20, 2022 by Tony_S

[SM42]

11 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

The only clays I've tried to shoot at was tossing them into the air and trying to drop them with  A 9mm Browning Hi Power pistol.

 

I went through four x 50 round boxes on 9mm ammunition and hit the target.....

 

Once!

 

So for me I had a 0.5% chance of hitting the target.

 

Others fared little better.

 

After that we decided that the accuracy of guns depicted in movies might be slightly exaggerated.

 

Although taking a Hollywood action movie as an example (any of them),  you notice how the hero is absolutely brilliant when it comes to knocking down the bad guy's minions with single shots at incredible range. 

 

 

I'm not surprised you couldn't hit it if you only threw them up. Gravity is flippin quick and it needs an lot of lead, even more with a single pellet that a pistol throws out.

Of course you may have hit it and gone straight through without breaking it .

I've seen them with just one pellet hole in them but otherwise intact.

 

I'm always surprised that the skill set required to be the bad guy's henchmen does not include any sort of prowess with a firearm.

 

Seems they'll take anyone who can work out which is the unfriendly end of a gun.

 

Andy