The Night Mail

[SM42]

16 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

@SM42If you have several to do it might be worth making a wooden former that you can strap the offending lever to as hard as you dare, then immersing it in boiling water for a couple of minutes. Then repeat till formed.  Muslin bandage is excellent as a strapping and can be used time and time again.  You can justvpourvthe water over it from the kettle. A piecevof a tin can could also becused as the former.

 

Jamie

 

That sounds like it involves engineering and not bodgery 

 

I'm quite good at the latter. 

 

Some thunking is required. 

 

Andy

[SM42]

The next problem has occurred. 

 

Wagons that ran quite freely last week, now seem to have the brakes pinned down ( and they haven't got any brakes yet) 

 

Very odd

 

More bodgery required

 

Andy

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, SM42 said:

That sounds like it involves engineering and not bodgery 

 

I'm quite good at the latter. 

 

Ah, then you want my method, which is to soften the area to be bent by a good soaking with d-limonene.

[Canal Digger]

2 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

5 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Like Dave, staff writing was the bane of my life. 

 

I was sent on a course entitled Junior Division of Staff College (JDSC). This was a course you went on before you took the Progressive Staff Qualification No 2 examination (PQS2*) which was required before you could be promoted to Major. We were either being lectured, running around Salisbury Plain or writing: There was a lot of writing!

 

JSP 101, if memory serves me correctly, had all the templates and examples of each style of letter, document or memorandum, so it sat on my desk.

Expand  

 

Ah, more happy memories courtesy of HH. Life for a Flight Lieutenant in the RAF was not dissimilar to that which he describes for an Army Captain except that the course was entitled Junior Command and Staff School (or JCSS for short) and the exam was just called the C exam. There was a third hoop before being eligible for promotion to Squadron Leader, though, which was an 18 month correspondence course called ISS (Individual Studies something or other) with an exam at the end. Naturally, being the RAF (where the art of cramming a week's course into a month was highly refined) some of the subject matter in JCSS, ISS and the C exam was repeated (and promptly forgotten). The delights of dear old JSP (Joint Services Publication) 101 cropped up in all the aforementioned trials and one was expected to be able to reproduce the different types of correspondence and other paperwork without reference to it during exams but no-one with any sense would actually try to do so in everyday life and like HH there was a copy in my office that was well thumbed. Could it just be coincidence that Room 101 has connotations of severe dislike?

 

Funnily enough, the location of the JCSS was in those days RAF Tern Hill, now an Army barracks, which is only about a mile from where I now live. I don't actually shudder when I pass it but it's a close run thing.

 

I imagine that many people in other walks of life had similar mind numbing sequences of qualification for progression. I'd hate to think that the likes of HH and I were the only ones to suffer.

This reminds me of 'Happy Days' of me trying to learn a strange language, known as RN Signalese, so that me a Civi Project Manager could write Signals asking ..... or explaining something.  When I could I wrote in plain text and asked a more experienced person, but on Friday afternoons Service Personnel were rarely around.  

[newbryford]

1 hour ago, SM42 said:

The next problem has occurred. 

 

Wagons that ran quite freely last week, now seem to have the brakes pinned down ( and they haven't got any brakes yet) 

 

Very odd

 

More bodgery required

 

Andy

 

Solvent joins can sometimes set unevenly and twist over a few days.

I would surmise that the solebars - including t he W-irons have twisted inwards, making the axles tight.

[J. S. Bach]

7 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

 ...snip... It stayed pretty close for the rest of my career, along with another delightful tome called Queen's Regulations. ...snip...

Would that now be called King's Regulations?

[Dave Hunt]

24 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

Would that now be called King's Regulations?

 

Indeed it would. One of the myriad things that will have to be changed.

 

Maybe renaming them Monarch's Regulations would be futureproof.

 

Dave

[Dave Hunt]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Ah, then you want my method, which is to soften the area to be bent by a good soaking with d-limonene.

 

I've never used d-limonene Stephen; I understand that it is a solvent, in which case wouldn't it make the surface of the plastic sticky and subject to fingermarks etc?

 

Dave

[SM42]

37 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

I've never used d-limonene Stephen; I understand that it is a solvent, in which case wouldn't it make the surface of the plastic sticky and subject to fingermarks etc?

 

Dave

 

It does but they can easily be removed.  It's only a small part so they aren't obvious 

 

Andy

[jamie92208]

59 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Indeed it would. One of the myriad things that will have to be changed.

 

Maybe renaming them Monarch's Regulations would be futureproof.

 

Dave

I saw a lawyer referred to as a KC rather than QC yesterday.  I will have to tease onebof my cousins.

 

Jamie

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

Maybe renaming them Monarch's Regulations would be futureproof.

 

Not necessarily...

 

59 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

I've never used d-limonene Stephen; I understand that it is a solvent, in which case wouldn't it make the surface of the plastic sticky and subject to fingermarks etc?

 

Yes, so only soak the area to be bent and handle with tweezers etc.

 

And as @SM42 says, once the part has set solid again, one hopes any blemishes can be removed.

Edited January 3, 2023 by Compound2632

[Erichill16]

@SM42 have you tried the Parkside LNER grain hopper that is really atrocious.

I think Peco are ‘fixing’ it before it is re-released.  

[Happy Hippo]

All those who were commissioned during the Queen's reign will not require new Commissioning Parchments as the oath of allegiance they swore was to the Queen and her legal Successors (and not sworn at ,which is what my late grandfather would have done).  I presume the same automatic change was taken by Barristers who were QCs and now KCs.....

 

But do they get The Sunshine Band?

Edited January 3, 2023 by Happy Hippo

[J. S. Bach]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

All those who were commissioned during the Queen's reign will not require new Commissioning Parchments as the oath of allegiance they swore was to the Queen and her legal Successors (and not sworn at ,which is what my late grandfather would have done).  I presume the same automatic change was taken by Barristers who were QCs and now KCs.....

 

But do they get The Sunshine Band?

Why would they now be in Kansas City? 😺

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[AndyID]

I have saved a couple of bucks (quid even.) The ballast/choke thingy in the fluorescent light fitting in our downstairs utility room conked out. Pretty ridiculous really. It's not even 30 years old.

 

I was going to replace the ballast but then I discovered some four-foot LED tube replacements that are direct wired between line and neutral. The offending ballast thingy has been binned and the fitting has been rewired for the LED tubes. This also has the advantage that, unlike fluorescent tubes, LEDs really don't care how often they are tuned off and on and there are no magnetics to produce any sort of annoying hum. (They also don't give a rat's about temperature.)

 

One slightly odd detail is that the ends of the LED tubes are marked L for line and N for neutral. I installed them that way but in operation it should not make the slightest difference! The tubes "see" AC regardless of their orientation. Maybe it's only important that both tubes are oriented in the same direction or does that really mean they are actually passing current on opposite half-cycles to even out the load? Aaaargghhh...

 

But one very clever bit is that these tubes have a four position slider switch at one end that lets you determine the color of the light. Now that is clever. I hope they patented it.

[AndyID]

There has been a fair bit of whining recently from the quill-pen brigade who seemed to resist being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the nineteenth century. Meanwhile many of the same seem only too happy to avail themselves of technology only available to those in the 21st Century.

 

As a former developer of word-processing kit developed in Scotland (where else?) long before MS Word even existed I am, to put it mildly, saddened. (Turdycurses removed.)

 

RANT ON

 

The UK was far ahead of the US in Computer Science and it had the intellectual capacity to dominate the field in microelectronics too. And what did our "far seeing" politicians do?

 

It's all very, very sad.

 

RANT OFF

 

But it does have something to do with why I'm a few hours behind most of you.

 

 

 

 

[SM42]

8 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

@SM42 have you tried the Parkside LNER grain hopper that is really atrocious.

I think Peco are ‘fixing’ it before it is re-released.  

 

There is one languishing somewhere whilst I summon up some patience to try and get a half decent wagon out of it. 

 

Not their finest moment. 

 

Will Peco re release? 

I'm not holding my breath. The range seems to have stagnated unfortunately.

 

It's  something like 5 years since the 13t hopper came out and I haven't seen any signs of anything else being developed. 

 

I appreciate the financial outlay involved but I'm sure there are a few wagons that would prove popular and for some they are halfway there. Just need the body mouldings. 

 

 Whether that would translate into profit.

Hmmmm. Tough one

 

Waiting patiently in the pile is an Ian Kirk 12t van 

It has a price label of a whole English pound on it. 

It came free with some other odds and ends up I picked up once. 

 

Showing its age but still holds up well alongside more modern versions.

 

Andy

[New Haven Neil]

5 minutes ago, SM42 said:

It's  something like 5 years since the 13t hopper came out and I haven't seen any signs of anything else being developed. 

 

Having had the experience of a trade visit to Peco a few years ago, with full guided tour, believe me they keep developments very close to their chest.  I was hustled past one place, that was hard to see into, but someone came out of a door as we passed and I glanced to that side.  There was a bit of harumphing about what he had in his hand as he dodged back in upon seeing me, I was good and kept it to myself!  It was something that has only recently come to market.  Their development may be a bit glacial, but they try very hard to get something right for the market, they don't do risk.

[Compound2632]

9 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

@SM42 have you tried the Parkside LNER grain hopper that is really atrocious.

I think Peco are ‘fixing’ it before it is re-released.  

 

I built a good few Parkside 4 mm scale kits and soon discovered that there is a strong correlation between kit number and quality. The last kits released by Parkside Dundas are among the finest plastic wagon kits around - the series of RCH 1923 Specification mineral wagons, for example, and the LMS cattle wagon.

[Oldddudders]

9 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

Why would they now be in Kansas City? 😺

Kansas or Missouri?

[DenysW]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

Kansas or Missouri?

The one where Everything's Up To Date, as asserted by Rogers & Hammerstein in Oklahoma!.

[Oldddudders]

Just why are/were the three main railway yards in that city all given names starting with A? Argentine, Armourdale and Armstrong.  

[Winslow Boy]

54 minutes ago, DenysW said:

The one where Everything's Up To Date, as asserted by Rogers & Hammerstein in Oklahoma!.

 

I take it that's not a rhetorical question? And what do we win if we are able to come up with a answer. Just asking as i don't want to go to great effort if it's not a good prize eg. weekend in Skegness in February.

[Happy Hippo]

 

Just now, Winslow Boy said:

 

I take it that's not a rhetorical question? And what do we win if we are able to come up with a answer. Just asking as i don't want to go to great effort if it's not a good prize eg. weekend in Skegness in February.

Do your best, the second prize is a week in Telford.