The Night Mail

[Compound2632]

47 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

I have a theory that all shelves, cupboards, sheds etc. of shame are actually linked via some n-dimensional spacetime  continuum shift (something like that postulated for libraries throughout the multiverse in the Discworld books). Hence, it is in fact impossible for a cupboard of shame ever to be emptied because were that ever to happen, it would instantaneously be filled with items from other ones. 

 

So, then, if I conscientiously work my way through the cupboard of shame, building each kit in turn, I will eventually be rewarded with that elusive unobtainable kit I've been hankering for?

[Doncaster Green]

6 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

So, then, if I conscientiously work my way through the cupboard of shame, building each kit in turn, I will eventually be rewarded with that elusive unobtainable kit I've been hankering for?

You mean the one you bought years ago, put with all the others and completely forgot about.  Like what I do!

 

John

[Dave Hunt]

1 minute ago, Compound2632 said:

 

So, then, if I conscientiously work my way through the cupboard of shame, building each kit in turn, I will eventually be rewarded with that elusive unobtainable kit I've been hankering for?

 

Only if when your cupboard of shame is eventually emptied (fleetingly and without your definite knowledge), the kit you want happens to be the next one due for teleportation in another cupboard of shame that is passing through the same place in the n-dimensional spacetime matrix as yours. Since this has a probability rating similar to that of a whelk surviving a supernova, what you will actually get is more likely to be a packet of rusty Peco  track pins. 

 

Dave

[Winslow Boy]

27 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Only if when your cupboard of shame is eventually emptied (fleetingly and without your definite knowledge), the kit you want happens to be the next one due for teleportation in another cupboard of shame that is passing through the same place in the n-dimensional spacetime matrix as yours. Since this has a probability rating similar to that of a whelk surviving a supernova, what you will actually get is more likely to be a packet of rusty Peco  track pins. 

 

Dave

 

Ah yes but if I remember myt theoretical physics 101 correctly shouldn't the the mere act of observation affect the pile/stack/heap of shame so theoretically they will be there and won't be there at the same moment in the space time continuum.

 

This is getting beyond me. Just shove your hand in and grab something. That way it will only be there when you bring your hand back out. That's assuming you have a hand to bring back out. And on that thought I leave you, or maybe I don't because maybe I'm not here but there.

[SM42]

I have a wardrobe of RTR shame and and underdesk pair of boxes of kit shame

 

Then there is the chest of drawers of shame, the drawer in another wardrobe of shame,  the cabinet in spare room  of shame and the box under the bed of shame. 

 

There could be others, but like a squirrel I sometime forget where I buried my stash. 

 

I did find a box of vans the other day. Completely forgotten about them

 

I am expecting wagon kit trees to sprout at some point. (should save some cash if I can get them to fruit)

 

Andy

 

 

 

 

Edited December 18, 2021 by SM42

[AndyID]

Well the "inch or so" turned into a bit more than four. Down to 10 degrees (F) last night and bright sunshine today.

 

 

(The chimney is for the wood stove in my shop/shed. I may have loaded it up a bit much this afternoon. At the moment it's 22F outside and 72F inside.)

 

That power-pole will soon be gone. There's a house being built on the property behind us and the owners are paying the electricity company, the phone company and the cable company to bury all the wires. The underground conduits are now in place. Won't take them too long to pull all the wires.

 

Fortunately our new neighbors are not short of a bob or two which is just as well because it must be costing them a heck of a lot

[AndyID]

The population of the county in which we live is 174,673

 

The number of people in the county who are fully vaccinated against COVID is 67,487

 

That's 38%

 

Gordon Bennett!

[pH]

56 minutes ago, AndyID said:

That power-pole will soon be gone. There's a house being built on the property behind us and the owners are paying the electricity company, the phone company and the cable company to bury all the wires. The underground conduits are now in place. Won't take them too long to pull all the wires.

 

Fortunately our new neighbors are not short of a bob or two which is just as well because it must be costing them a heck of a lot

Better to do it now, before the connection is complete. 
 

Municipalities used to be keen on those, after the fact. Tidying up main drags etc. mostly by putting existing overhead services underground -  they were known as ‘beautifications’ . Not cheap!

[AndyID]

10 minutes ago, pH said:

Better to do it now, before the connection is complete.

 

 

Oh, that line has been there for yonks. It's the main 25kV feed for the whole area. They will do a hot-swap from overhead to underground without interrupting the main distribution service. We will lose service briefly while they transfer us from the transformer on that pole to a surface transformer.

 

My concern was that our water association main runs along the same right of way but it does not have any locate cables buried with it. The electric company did break the pipe but they repaired it quite quickly.

[pH]

16 minutes ago, AndyID said:

Oh, that line has been there for yonks. It's the main 25kV feed for the whole area.

Sorry, I assumed (without looking too carefully) that you were only talking about a service to a single house. 
 

So what length of wires are they going to underground?

[BR60103]

The basement of shame:

 

 

These were taken just after we moved in.  They were intended to illustrate the club's write-up on Estate Sales.

 

(The green shirt is davnigh of this site)

 

[AndyID]

59 minutes ago, pH said:

 

So what length of wires are they going to underground?

 

About 130 meters (Google Earth). They've bored under the single lane road into our community.

[jamie92208]

5 hours ago, SM42 said:

I have a wardrobe of RTR shame and and underdesk pair of boxes of kit shame

 

Then there is the chest of drawers of shame, the drawer in another wardrobe of shame,  the cabinet in spare room  of shame and the box under the bed of shame. 

 

There could be others, but like a squirrel I sometime forget where I buried my stash. 

 

I did find a box of vans the other day. Completely forgotten about them

 

I am expecting wagon kit trees to sprout at some point. (should save some cash if I can get them to fruit)

 

Andy

 

 

 

 

Parkinsons law postulates that work expands to fill the time available for it's completion.  I would suggest that there is another law relating to the space available for part and unbuilt kits. They just multiply anf fill it up. I speak as the occupier of a rather large shed.  There is a similar law that if a flat surface is tidied up and cleared, it never stays empty and uncluttered  for more than 5 minutes.

 

Jamie

Edited December 18, 2021 by jamie92208

[DenysW]

Don't forget the space needed for the completed ones. In my case a Walters operating bascule bridge, which I'd totally underestimated the length of the approach and departure ramps.

[Dave Hunt]

1 minute ago, DenysW said:

Don't forget the space needed for the completed ones. In my case a Walters operating bascule bridge, which I'd totally underestimated the length of the approach and departure ramps.

 

That's the Sidrat (reverse Tardis) phenomenon whereby the space actually available for structures in a model railway layout is in reality smaller when the item has been made than it appeared when planning.

 

Dave

[Happy Hippo]

33 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

That's the Sidrat (reverse Tardis) phenomenon whereby the space actually available for structures in a model railway layout is in reality smaller when the item has been made than it appeared when planning.

 

Dave

That also applies to the space required to put the track down.

 

After you have measured, re measured and check measured, made numerous plans and drawings, then committed yourself and created the the baseboards they will:

 

a.   No longer fit  into the space required.

b.  The track plan will have become impossible to fit onto the boards.

[Northmoor]

If you genuinely have so much stuff that it is preventing you moving around your property, you might have a problem, like in those endless hoarding programmes where the "offender" usually has a mental health issue which is no doubt helped considerably by broadcasting their unresolved grief/anguish/anxiety on television for the public to laugh and point at.

 

Personally, I don't see the problem with having lots of stuff if you really want it.  Not everyone wants to live in a bare show home where every item is valued for how much it's worth and how it looks, rather than the memories attached to acquiring it.  I was brought up in a house with bookshelves and Dad's study was the railway library; I quite like having several stuffed-full bookshelves around the house.  There is something incredibly sad about World Book Day when you would hear stories of children coming into school with the Argos catalogue, because it's the only book they could find in the house.  My in-laws came from North East England and told of the survey of, "How many books there are in your house"; IIRC Billingham had the dubious record of averaging less than one.

 

If RMWebbers have stuff, it's usually associated with a hobby.  Thanks goodness we have these because some of the people who have suffered most over the last couple of years are those who have always looked down on hobbyists as nerds.  We have a distraction from the isolation (which many of us are quite comfortable with), many others have struggled without constant fresh output from Netflix.  

[SM42]

4 hours ago, jamie92208 said:

Parkinsons law postulates that work expands to fill the time available for it's completion.  I would suggest that there is another law relating to the space available for part and unbuilt kits. They just multiply anf fill it up. I speak as the occupier of a rather large shed.  There is a similar law that if a flat surface is tidied up and cleared, it never stays empty and uncluttered  for more than 5 minutes.

 

Jamie

 

Problem I  have is that expanding work is not modelling. 

 

A cull is on the cards when I have the time 

 

Mrs SM42 is very good at dumping stuff on any surface 

 

Chairs mainly act as tables at SM42 Towers

 

Andy

[rockershovel]

I don't think Netflix addicts suffer from lockdown. Some people I can think of probably hardly know it even happened. 

 

I just kept busy. Sorting parcels, working on a drilling site, the sort of places where it was mostly observed in the breach because there was more to do, and nobody was likely to get paid for sitting at home... 

[Oldddudders]

1 hour ago, Happy Hippo said:

That also applies to the space required to put the track down.

 

After you have measured, re measured and check measured, made numerous plans and drawings, then committed yourself and created the the baseboards they will:

 

a.   No longer fit  into the space required.

b.  The track plan will have become impossible to fit onto the boards.

Which is why the only way to plan a detailed layout is to pose pieces of pointwork, or paper facsimiles, on a baseboard, and see just how much space is actually available. Amazing how the loop suddenly turns out to hold one fewer coaches than you had expected.... 

[Compound2632]

48 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Personally, I don't see the problem with having lots of stuff if you really want it.  Not everyone wants to live in a bare show home where every item is valued for how much it's worth and how it looks, rather than the memories attached to acquiring it. 

 

Many years ago some friends of my parents were house-hunting. His comment was that none of the places they'd looked at looked lived in. She said, "What he means is, none of them had a model railway."

[Tony_S]

If anyone visited our house they might think we were one of those families without books, apart from a few cookery books in the kitchen. However upstairs is quite different. Aditi had a massive cull of academic books when we were tidying the loft and study. They all got recycled. The  charity  shop liked academic books, they are heavy and the used book dealers pay by weight. There are still a lot of full bookshelves though. 
I prefer to read novels on a tablet now but still prefer paper for reference books. 
Due to Covid I have taken to reading library books using the Essex Library eBook service in addition to purchasing books for my Kindle. 
Tony

[Danemouth]

Well back in June SWMBO decided it was time for a turn out of the stuff we accumulated over the past 20+ years that we've been in this house. We filled two builders skips and that excludes the stuff I gave to my son in law to sell and the stuff the metal fairies took from the skips. I can now enter the spare bedroom over the garage!

 

Dave

[polybear]

33 minutes ago, Danemouth said:

Well back in June SWMBO decided it was time for a turn out of the stuff we accumulated over the past 20+ years that we've been in this house. We filled two builders skips and that excludes the stuff I gave to my son in law to sell and the stuff the metal fairies took from the skips. I can now enter the spare bedroom over the garage!

 

Dave

 

Ouch - that must've been painful....not only parting with the goodies but also shelling out for two Skips (I think the last time I ordered one it was about eighty quid.....but that was a mighty long time ago.  I hear the going rate is heading towards 300 now )

[PhilJ W]

12 hours ago, AndyID said:

That power-pole will soon be gone. There's a house being built on the property behind us and the owners are paying the electricity company, the phone company and the cable company to bury all the wires. The underground conduits are now in place. Won't take them too long to pull all the wires.

 

Fortunately our new neighbors are not short of a bob or two which is just as well because it must be costing them a heck of a lot

That reminds me of when I visited Malta for the first time back in the late 70's. We paid a visit to the old capital of Mdina, parts of which date back to pre-Roman times. It had just attained World Heritage status and as part of that they had to put the electric cables (which were strung from the eaves of the buildings) underground. It was then that they hit a snag as virtually every time they dug a hole they came across something archaeological that had to be recorded or rescued. It took them five years to put the cables underground instead of the 12 months predicted.