The Night Mail

[Dave Hunt]

Before leaving the RAF you have a final medical examination to check whether there are any existing or pre-existing conditions that could be attributal to service life.  I was noted as being partially high tone deaf and a few years earlier would have been eligible for a pension increase as a result bur so many retirees were found to be so afflicted (surprise, surprise!) and were getting enhanced pensions that the rules were changed and to qualify you had to be nearly stone deaf, which saved HMG a lot of cash. Well, the Senior Civil Service pay rises had to come from somewhere I guess. When I left I was asked whether I would like my civvy GP to have copies of all my service medical records, to which I agreed. Then when I started to fall apart, especially when my spinal trouble really set in, I did ask the consultant whether it could be because of my job, to which he said that it was certainly a possibility but not 100% guaranteed and since I has also played rugby, done a fair bit of hillwalking etc., the likelihood of persuading the powers that be to accept responsibility was about zero. To be honest I didn't expect anything but just asked the question out of curiosity as much as anything. At least I didn't suffer from Gulf War syndrome, which some guys I knew did and that really wasn't funny.

 

Dave

[Northmoor]

14 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

I quite agree; when you think of all the horrible things in France......

Where they insist on eating some of them (and why do the French have no word for baguette?).

 

9 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

It's similar here but after the questions they still have to see the marker pen arrow.  And even when you are on a ward, when they come to give you medication they still have to ask you to confirm name and DOB and check them against your notes before handing over the happy pills. 

Being asked the same question multiple times = Irritating.

Waking up to find you've lost something you'd planned on making continued use of = rather more irritating

 

I will stake a handy sum that it was the NHS's lawyers, not clinicians, who pushed for the multi-stage checks to be introduced.

 

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

 Even harder for those who lived in the area at the time -  which  both the British and   Australian Governments  declared was unoccupied - Japan wasn't the only country to have its residents killed by a nuclear weapon.

I believe it was these Aboriginal communities who talk of "The Day of the Cloud".  Just another out of all-too-many examples of Government) being utterly callous towards these people.

 

Anyway, just returned from Farnborough where the credit card groaned at the purchase of a new sofa and chair.  I rewarded myself in Hobbycraft with an Airfix Lightning to add to the stash (I remember when they were about 1/10th of the current price).  Since the weather has been traditional Bank Holiday, varying here between drizzle and biblical all today, the Freelander's much-delayed oil change will have to wait another day or two and I'm going to do some modelling.  It's my day off, so there.

[SM42]

I have a hard week ahead. 

 

In work tomorrow but off on a site visit so not the most taxing of days. 

 

Next shift then is Saturday. 

 

I may get some modelling in, I may not.

There is some garden work to do and a day of spring cleaning at the club on Wednesday, other than that I am relatively task free. 

 

Not even any painting to do. 

I feel a bit lost. 

 

Andy

[polybear]

42 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

At least I didn't suffer from Gulf War syndrome, which some guys I knew did and that really wasn't funny.

 

Dave

 

Did it affect any Aircrew that you know of?

[Tony_S]

38 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

the Freelander's much-delayed oil change will have to wait another day or two

I had given up on DIY car stuff by the time I got a Freelander but I did have the occasional crawl underneath to see if all was well. Is the lower engine cover difficult to remove to access the sump plug? I haven’t done an oil change on the Evoque either.  
In the past, I always seemed to end up doing car maintenance on horrible cars in bad weather. Now we have nice cars that get serviced  at main dealers I can relax and play trains in the garage. 

[Dave Hunt]

10 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Did it affect any Aircrew that you know of?

 

Just one fast jet guy that I know of but a few helo operators did.

 

Dave

Edited May 6 by Dave Hunt
Correction

[Northmoor]

6 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I had given up on DIY car stuff by the time I got a Freelander but I did have the occasional crawl underneath to see if all was well. Is the lower engine cover difficult to remove to access the sump plug? 

Yes, held in place by "scrivets" and even on blocks, with the car half on/half off the sloping area outside our garage, it's a pain to access.  Which is why the job's been delayed for so long and I've now bought a £20 oil sump pump off eBay.

[bbishop]

Game rained off

  No play today. No   patients either. 

[Tony_S]

24 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Yes, held in place by "scrivets" and even on blocks, with the car half on/half off the sloping area outside our garage, it's a pain to access.  Which is why the job's been delayed for so long and I've now bought a £20 oil sump pump off eBay.

One nice  YouTube video is being filmed on a crash repair car with all the bodywork panels and cover removed. Makes it look easy but the person making the video was still spilling oil and generally making a mess.  
Whatever holds the lower engine cover on my Evoque must be quite effective. Last November we were travelling between Kettering and Grantham at night when I thought the road surface ahead, at the bottom of a slight downhill stretch, looked odd. What looked like shiny tarmac in the dark was  flood water coming off fields. This was on a road with a 60 mph limit. I had slowed down a lot but there was quite a whoompf sound and water splashed right over the roof, even though it was a lot less than the cars safe wading depth. I suspect it was deep enough to give the cars  underside a good smack.  No missing bits though.

Edited May 6 by Tony_S

[Happy Hippo]

2 hours ago, Northmoor said:

the Freelander's much-delayed oil change will have to wait another day or two and I'm going to do some modelling.  It's my day off, so there.

My son in Law,who insists on sorting out anything to do with the(his) families cars, has continually neglected to heed the advice of changing the cam belt every 5 years or 75k miles (whichever comes first).  It is now over 101K miles

 

At the beginning of last week their Ford Galaxy stopped after the brief sound of four gnomes hammering on little tin drums emanated from the engine bay. 

 

The belt had expired, and with it all the valves.  

 

I've not heard what's happened to the top of the cylinders, but it is not going to be a cheap repair.

 

I have no sympathy for him.

[pH]

7 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Some of the snakes are best avoided though.

Personally, rather than spending time trying to identify a snake as “avoid/no need to avoid”, I would avoid them all.

[New Haven Neil]

Mrs NHN had a real scrap with hospital staff just before we moved here, so 22 years ago..  In to have a third surgery on a knackered knee, they began to mark up....the wrong one.  Mrs NHN, who is not backward in coming forward, took great exception to this, as you may imagine.  Medical staff insisting it is the left, Mrs H disagreeing, to the point they are talking about her having some kind of mental health issue.  She points out the plethora of scars on the right, indicating the previous attempts at repair.  Lot of note flipping done, eventually revealing a medic had transposed sides some time before....but not one of them had noticed upon several subsequent examinations!  Words were had, plus an official complaint, which was of course swept aside in the normal way.  The only positive from it was that it wasn't the hospital I worked in!

[New Haven Neil]

New wagon enters service.  Dingham couplings courtesy HH and Baz, thanks boys.

 

 

This is currently the shedmaster's favourite still.

 

 

ION, ages ago I had a chat here with someone about Joe Works 009 locos was it Tony? @Tony_S anyway I found the remains today, of the Gamecock Peckett.  It's rough.  Run to death on an exhibition layout years ago, and rattled round in a box for years since.  The other, little Yankee one has fallen to bits, the motor mount clips have snapped off the chassis - it's scrap basically.  :-(

 

[Dave Hunt]

3 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

My son in Law,who insists on sorting out anything to do with the(his) families cars, has continually neglected to heed the advice of changing the cam belt every 5 years or 75k miles (whichever comes first).  It is now over 101K miles

 

At the beginning of last week their Ford Galaxy stopped after the brief sound of four gnomes hammering on little tin drums emanated from the engine bay. 

 

The belt had expired, and with it all the valves.  

 

I've not heard what's happened to the top of the cylinders, but it is not going to be a cheap repair.

 

I have no sympathy for him.

 

An army major neighbour of ours in Germany had the cam belt on his Alfa Romeo break on an autobahn when doing about 95 mph (not his fault as the car had only done something like 15k miles) and he described the event as like being in an APC that was hit by a barrage of anti-tank rounds and then hit a rock face as everything locked up. He ended up in a smoking heap at the side of the road trying to calm his wife down as she was having hysterics.

 

Dave  

 

Forgot to add that the car was a write-off.

 

 

Edited May 6 by Dave Hunt

[jamie92208]

6 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

A friend of mine fought for years for compensation after he got his medical records released.

 

He was eventually given a medical pension, and was able to enjoy it for just over 6 months...

 

Before the cancer killed him.

We had a retired railwayman who was a member of our MRC.  I got to know him quite well.  It turned out that he had been in the original  SBS, causing havoc in the Aegean. He got badly shot up on a beach and ended up as a POW for 2 years after a German surgeon removed several bullets from him.  After he retired from the railway his knee started giving him gyp.  An Xray eventually revealed that he had a bullet in his knee that he knew nothing about. An op ensued but the stupid surgeon threw the bullet away.  I helped him claim an increase in his war pension but it took a lot of convincing the MoD that he had been carrying a bullet around for over 40 years without knowing.  A very interesting guy to talk to. 

 

Jamie

[AndyID]

4 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

My son in Law,who insists on sorting out anything to do with the(his) families cars, has continually neglected to heed the advice of changing the cam belt every 5 years or 75k miles (whichever comes first).  It is now over 101K miles

 

At the beginning of last week their Ford Galaxy stopped after the brief sound of four gnomes hammering on little tin drums emanated from the engine bay. 

 

The belt had expired, and with it all the valves.  

 

I've not heard what's happened to the top of the cylinders, but it is not going to be a cheap repair.

 

I have no sympathy for him.

 

My first car was a '55 VW which cost me 35 quid. On one occasion a valve head separated from the valve stem on a motorway. The valve head punched a hole in the piston then proceeded to shot peen everything else inside the engine. The noise was quite impressive. I knew there was a serious problem when I removed the spark plugs and discovered one of them was smashed to bits. 🤣

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

 

My first car was a '55 VW which cost me 35 quid. On one occasion a valve head separated from the valve stem on a motorway. The valve head punched a hole in the piston then proceeded to shot peen everything else inside the engine. The noise was quite impressive. I knew there was a serious problem when I removed the spark plugs and discovered one of them was smashed to bits. 🤣

That was a common problem with VW flat four engines. It was always the same cylinder IIRC, something to do with it not receiving enough cooling air.

[J. S. Bach]

3 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

NThis is currently the shedmaster's favourite still.

 

 

 

And here I was expecting something entirely different!

 

 

Edited May 6 by J. S. Bach
To edit the post

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from a thundering Piedmont.

[AndyID]

1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

That was a common problem with VW flat four engines. It was always the same cylinder IIRC, something to do with it not receiving enough cooling air.

 

Possibly not enough oil too. Those engines were, to a great extent, oil cooled.

[AndyID]

7 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

My son in Law,who insists on sorting out anything to do with the(his) families cars, has continually neglected to heed the advice of changing the cam belt every 5 years or 75k miles (whichever comes first).  It is now over 101K miles

 

At the beginning of last week their Ford Galaxy stopped after the brief sound of four gnomes hammering on little tin drums emanated from the engine bay. 

 

The belt had expired, and with it all the valves.  

 

I've not heard what's happened to the top of the cylinders, but it is not going to be a cheap repair.

 

I have no sympathy for him.

 

Now, if he'd bought a Ford Galaxie that would never have happened 😄

[jjb1970]

Can't have been as bad as those old NSU Wankel engines...... 

 

The biggest engine failure I say was on sea trials for a new build Containers ship. We left Kure for the inland sea and were increasing revs when there was a most unpleasant sound as all three main engine turbos failed (it was a big 48MW Sulzer). DU (the engine builder) blamed ABB who in turn blamed SKF, it was still in court last I heard about it. Bit embarrassing to have to be towed back to the yard by tugs, but the reaction of the IHI people on board was classic. In a European yard it'd have been pretty much 'well **** happens, that's what sea trials are for' whereas I got the impression that in an earlier time the Japanese would have been committing seppuku or something.

 

Another one which was more impressive but a much smaller engine was another newbuild this time in Norway. During commissioning tests a generator breaker closed out of phase sequence, the resulting forces ripped the engine off the bed plate. Apparently that wasn't meant to happen '.

[BR60103]

One of the actuaries I worked for told me of his experience being conscripted. (Back when the Brits did things like that.)

He had heard that he could be "excused boots" for having weak feet.  He applied.  Then he noticed that during the next couple of weeks while his squad was being marched off one place, he was going somewhere else.  At the end of the weeks he was discharged, and applied back at the office where he'd just been given a farewell party!

 

During his studies he learned that weak feet could become flat feet and that, being a deterioration, would qualify him for a disability pension.  Starting with flat feet would not be a deterioration.

 

 

[polybear]

Heads-up Guys.....

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68966497

 

Hopefully it won't affect any fellow TNM'ers

[iL Dottore]

15 hours ago, Northmoor said:

I will stake a handy sum that it was the NHS's lawyers, not clinicians, who pushed for the multi-stage checks to be introduced.

Not necessarily (although an over abundance of checks probably IS due to - ahem - “legal advice”).

 

Surgery has always been a high pressure (and sometimes high stress) specialty and, humans being humans, mistakes do get made. I know of cases when patients just about ready to leave theatre had to be opened up again as an instrument and dressing count showed something missing (important rule: always check the floor first). Studies found that by adopting a check-list approach as used by pilots (and by railwaymen in Japan), errors drop precipitously.

 

Having said that, given the NHS’s frequently woeful lack of administrative competence (as recounted by NHN and many others) it’s perhaps as well you do have multiple checks.