Early Risers.

[shortliner]

Well, well, well, some interesting things have turned up in the archaeological dig that is my father's hoarding. Towards the bottom we found an old Hornby O gauge clockwork set, including box, loads of track, two tender locos, two 4-wheeled Pullmans, two trucks and a SR brake van. Unusure whether to auction through an auction house in town or do it directly online. Any hints and tips welcome.

 

We have now finished sifting and will let the clearers get on and do their job. Have learnt a valuable life lesson about keeping stuff. Don't do it!

 

Hope all of your Easter weekends go to plan.

 

Mal

No idea of the value, but you may be better on Ebay or a "specialist" auction - Ebay will certainly get you a much bigger audience.

[leopardml2341]

At least you've a viable 'excuse' Geoff; if you don't find exactly what you wanted in time for SWMBO birthday

[PeterBB]

I have trawled through a large number of pages ; found some of agreement and others not.  Two that have stuck with me:

 

 

Quote "The travellers have been given 24 hours' notice to quit. I'd be surprised if they go though"

 

 In days gone by this was not really a problem but traditional working patterns changed and traditional short term common land parking was fenced off and in some case 'sold' to developers.  I am aware of a site owned by GRTs (Gypsy, Roma, Travellers - note capital letters for a minority ethnic group) who wanted to develop it but were refused planning permission only to have the site compulsory purchased and end up with property developer developments built on it so they were then 'on the road'.

 

In the mid 1960's councils were legally obliged to provide GRT sites but most ignored it and were not prosecuted.  Fast forward to the 1990's when a law was passed forbidding 'parking' with more than six vehicles -trailers were counted as a vehicle - and a family unit normally had many more vehicles in convoy.  Hence the current 'problem' which is a great nuisance and provokes 'nimby' wherever they are.  Think of the money wasted in Basildon and how that spent wisely in suitable ares would have solved a 'problem'  The reality is that only one square mile of the whole country as separate sites spread throughout the country properly developed with sanitation and refuse facilities would solve 99% of the hassle that is experienced because GRTs - a travelling lifestyle centuries old - need places to park.  Many have nowhere to go so have to 'park' when they travel and park- frequently  on totally unsuitable places with no sanitary facilities until they are 'moved-on'.   This leads to condemnation of all GRTs when most, and working with them I do know some who definitely do give them a bad name, are happy law abiding citizens who really look after their families and each other.

 

Rant 1 over. 

 

Time and a half and double time - some of the anecdotes above prove a point that it always was, and in some cases probably still is, abused.  I have never liked the concept and do not agree with it.  Emergency call-outs are a different thing.  I also feel that with all the Sunday trading etc. that it there should be some choice for individuals not to have to work on Sundays (or Thursdays for those of a different persuasion).

 

Rant 2 over.

 

Peter

Edited March 24, 2016 by PeterBB

[roundhouse]

We made our train to Chester mad it's on tie, so far. However one coach in the two x 5 car Voyager train has been locked out of use. The result is that it's wedged. At least we have seats but keep getting bashed as people search for non existant seats. We have used this service quite a few times on holiday weekends but never seen it this busy.

 

Part of the problem is that people can't read seat numbers or coach numbers. We had to explain to a family that they had the wrong seat numbers although correct coach.

 

Looking forward to a few beers in a few pubs and bars new to us including a new brewpub.

[emt_911]

I'm going to have to do this working from home lark again. More achieved than planned including down time for setting up the new modem/wireless router. What a difference in speed.

 

Still more writing to do this weekend but at least it's chargeable

[New Haven Neil]

I made a nice long and erudite post this morning, and pressed....something and the whole.*&^%$£ thing disappeared! Ar$e.

 

So, it was raining, and it still is.  Mad busy at work with a big delivery of 16mm scale wagons, lots pre sold so we were really up against it today, but managed to get them all out.

 

In other news, the IoM Steam Packet have managed to crash the fast craft Manannan on it's first week in service for the season, and it looks like a dry dock job.  Useless......the pier has been in the same place for many years, yet it jumped out at them.

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Peter, I quite agree that provision for genuine GRT's should be made. I live in Basildon and my council tax had to pay for the fiasco. The land concerned in this case was adjacent to a proper GRT site and part of the green belt. A 'travelling' family had acquired the land and moved on to it illegally. However the only way the council could get them to leave was a court order which they duly acquired. However the next thing these so called travellers done was to hire an expensive lawyer to fight their case on legal aid! this is one of the reasons the case dragged on for so long. And as it turned out half way through the case it was revealed that the woman in who's name the notice was being challenged was not entitled to legal aid and in fact owned a £300,000 detached house in Ireland. When I worked for a London borough they had a properly built and managed GRT site, that was until the (Romany) manager of the site had to go into hospital with shotgun wounds. After that the situation deteriorated to such an extent that there was no alternative other than closing the site.

[lightengine]

£7.85 London Waterloo to Exeter? Outrageous!

Good old BR Bob.

Edited March 24, 2016 by lightengine

[JohnDMJ]

Rather reminds me of when I worked at that well known telephone company.  On the Milllenium Bank Holiday weekend, they offered staff the chance to work for standard rates plus time and a half, but with the added proviso that if you worked a minimum of 20 overtime hours, a supplement of £50 per hour would be paid!  Needless to say, applicants had to form an orderly queue and the slots were fillled quickly.  I missed out on one, so was only going to get two shifts totalling 15 hours, so wouldn't qualify for the bonus, and somebody pulled out as they also had not got their full quota.  Their slots were offered on a ballot, and I was one of the two who got an extra, taking me onto unheard of hourly payments.  The work was the usual call handling, and on the third day, there was virtually no inbound call traffic after 11.30, and I was working 10 til 6.  The staff on duty on that afternoon were earning upwards of £70 per hour to read books, play cards, and drink tea.  I personally took three calls in the last 6 hours  and earned over £450 for the same period, making the cost to the company of my attendance £150 per call.

 

The Millennium Bug was a complete fiasco IMHO. VEry expensive non-event.

 

Morning all.  I believe that closure on Easter Sunday is compulsory in the UK, like Christmas Day. Not sure how long these Christian holidays will last in these enlightened times.

 

Ed

 

Depends on the sales floor area. Restaurants, etc. are exempt anyway but we will be treating Easter Sunday as a normal Sunday. On an aside, our Sunday / Bank Holiday hours are restricted to 5; after 5 hours, the law requires a minimum of a half-hour break, so we'd need to get, sorry, pay, a fourth person in on Sundays if we did the normal 10:00 - 16:00 (or 11:00 - 17:00) stint like everyone else! However, because of our small sales floor area, we could legally operate our normal MTWTFS hours of 09:00 - 17:30 or beyond.

 

Our carrier bags are free! We don't have the requisite number of employees to be forced to charge for them!

 

Who said the law is an ass?

 

 

 

As usual, thoughts, etc. with all who need them

 

Wishing you a Happy Easter and bidding you a good night

[JohnDMJ]

 

In other news, the IoM Steam Packet have managed to crash the fast craft Manannan on it's first week in service for the season, and it looks like a dry dock job.  Useless......the pier has been in the same place for many years, yet it jumped out at them.

 

It was obviously bored and wanted some excitement!

[pH]

The Millennium Bug was a complete fiasco IMHO. Very expensive non-event.

 

This has been discussed on here several times before. As someone who was part of a project in one medium-sized organisation which absorbed several tens of thousand of person-hours, I would certainly not rate it as a "non-event". Or, if it was a "non-event" it only was so because of all the effort put in by projects like that to make it so. That's the problem with IT preventive maintenance - all your effort is to make sure that users don't see any problems or differences. If you do your work properly, no-one notices.

[newbryford]

Thoughts to those that need them.

 

Hoping for a bit of a POETS tomorrow about 3.15pm. Even though it is Good Friday, it's a prime time for me to work, especially as I'm having (most of) Monday off.

 

Busy weekend with work and play coming up.

Saturday is clean up at wife's work, golf, followed by a home ice hockey match - Junior NB is home for the weekend, so it's our time together.

Sunday is work - at wife's at driving, then a trip to Billingham to catch the last league hockey game. And another trip out for Junior and myself.

Monday's day out is a trip to York Ex after a clean up duty again.

 

This week has also been busy on the modelling arrival front with a full rake of the excellent Dapol HIA wagons - some need a couple of small modifications to represent later build variant.Then lots of weathering to do.

It was topped off with a Rapido APT-E arriving yesterday. Gorgeous model. Need to finish the layout tor run it on......

 

No doubt I'll be popping in again, but in the meantime, have a Good Easter folks.

 

Cheers,

Mick

[roundhouse]

Just been drinking Dead Guy all the way from Oregon, here in Chester but for done reason it tastes even better than in the Rogue Brewery in Newport OR. It's being served a little Warmer here and the matly taste is really coming out. Fantastic.

Mrs R has just decided to wear her half pint in the next pub though. What a waste but at least I didn't get soaked this time.

[newbryford]

This has been discussed on here several times before. As someone who was part of a project in one medium-sized organisation which absorbed several tens of thousand of person-hours, I would certainly not rate it as a "non-event". Or, if it was a "non-event" it only was so because of all the effort put in by projects like that to make it so. That's the problem with IT preventive maintenance - all your effort is to make sure that users don't see any problems or differences. If you do your work properly, no-one notices.

 

I had to go round all the electronic devices on two worksites (chemical production plants) that had any form of clock in them to make sure they didn't fall over on Y2K day. Most of my time was spent writing to said manufacturers and asking them. I had a huge pile of "compliant" letters in return.

Only one device was suspect in that the clock would reset to January 1st 1900, but as nothing in the process relied on the date (or time), the solution was to put a sticker on the control panel simply saying "Ignore the date"........

 

Cheers,

Mick

[PeterBB]

PhilJW   Yes, 'illegally' and on green belt - so too was the land of my above comment ... so why was permission given to a developer?   The overall 'illegal' situation arose out of this type of thing and the refusal of councils to abide by the decision to provide suitable provision, which, as you stated, led to the type of fiasco situation that you described.  Basildon and Bristol were two of those that did their best and in one particular year in Bristol the cost to the rate payers of removal from 'illegal' (officially 'not registered') sites went down by 97.5% from the previous year.

 

More recently I am aware of a family group who were removed from a site following a court ruling (peacefully) ... and later the same council designated the site as one of the suitable places!  They had lived there happily for some years, had organised it well, including provision for waste recycling and the children were in education in local schools.  While it was in a lovely area and incidentally well hidden, parts of the site were prone to flooding so I was surprised to read that it had been designated as 'suitable'. 

 

In John's comment above - these fast craft have problems with waves when docking.  On a return trip to Ireland the ferry had to go back and forth (or should I say fore and aft) for the same amount of time it had taken to cross the Irish Sea before it was able to dock safely.  In terms of IoM our local vicar goes every year on his old BSA and says that it is worth going to visit - so one of these days perhaps ...

 

Peter BB

[laurenceb]

Night all

[JohnDMJ]

This has been discussed on here several times before. As someone who was part of a project in one medium-sized organisation which absorbed several tens of thousand of person-hours, I would certainly not rate it as a "non-event". Or, if it was a "non-event" it only was so because of all the effort put in by projects like that to make it so. That's the problem with IT preventive maintenance - all your effort is to make sure that users don't see any problems or differences. If you do your work properly, no-one notices.

 

I too was involved with the pre-emption of this 'impending catastrophe' and was working at some little company called Unilever, who even had countdown clocks all over the place. At the doomed hour, all of a sudden, nothing untoward happened!

 

For our systems, nothing was upgraded, altered, amended or rewritten, so was a complete non-event! A lot of effort was put into proving we didn't need to do anything!

Edited March 24, 2016 by JohnDMJ

[The Stationmaster]

Well, well, well, some interesting things have turned up in the archaeological dig that is my father's hoarding. Towards the bottom we found an old Hornby O gauge clockwork set, including box, loads of track, two tender locos, two 4-wheeled Pullmans, two trucks and a SR brake van. Unusure whether to auction through an auction house in town or do it directly online. Any hints and tips welcome.

 

 

Mal

 

Mal,

 

Condition is all, closely followed by the condition of the box and, of course the completeness of the contents.  So if the items are in really good condition with no scratches or rust or dents etc then you're onto a good starting point.  If the box is complete you stand a reasonable chance but if it is fully intact with no wear or damage you're onto a good one.

 

Selling can work in two different ways - going through the right specialist auction will cost you more (roundly 20%, some take a bigger slice) but you will go right to the appropriate part of the specialist market and if the condition is right this is where the big money can be found.  If the condition is not too good then Ebay is probably best - the fees are less in any case and while teh specialised collectors might look in the lesser level of the market might well be prepared to overpay for something that doesn't look too bad.

 

Whatever you do don't go to a dealer - at very best you'll be offered a third of what he will expect to sell it for.

[Jock67B]

Evening all.,

Just as sleepy as before so I'll take me off to the pudding!

Have discovered that I've 'won' a nice example of a 2P 4-4-0 to pull the suburban non corridors from Dapol I've been chasing.

Dick, I seem to remember a link in the Great British Locomotives thread where you mentioned a list of car paints and related them to the original Humbrol numbers such as 33, Humbrol 'Matt Black' or Humbrol No. 32, 'Matt Slate Grey'. Does anyone know how far those minute cans stretch?

Speak more in the morning, Happy Easter, and thoroughly enjoy the egg you recieve!

Kind regards,

Jock.

G'night Pete! G'night Owls!

Edited March 24, 2016 by Jock67B

[emt_911]

Jock - I hope that a good nights sleep will help you. Looking forward to your long posts with lots of insight.

 

Night all

[BSW01]

Evening everyone. Another grey and dull day, but a bit of a lighter grey than of late. The sun made several vane attempts to break through this morning, but it failed miserably and by the time I got to the office it was raining, and has never stopped all day! Hardly anyone at our monthly meeting due to sickness or training, so luckily there was no pi$$ taking at all.

 

Well that's it now, I'm off work until the 4th of April. I've lots of boxes ready to fill with the contents of bookcases and cupboards etc., which will then make moving those pieces of furniture easier when I get around to the decorating in a few weeks time.

 

Talking of pay rates, when I worked for British Steel, the production departments worked a normal 3 shift pattern, with weekends off. Whilst we in the maintenance department used to work 24/7 3 shift continental shift rota pattern, and weekends and bank holidays were part of the normal working week for the maintenance department. This meant that there ways always a maintenance shift covering always covering factory. It meant that all bank holidays and Saturdays were paid at time and a half, a Sunday was double time. However, if you worked a rest day you would get that day's rate plus a half. So if you worked a bank holiday rest day you would get double time, and overtime for weekend rest days would be double time for Saturday and double time and a half for Sunday. Needles to say, if I was asked to work overtime I didn't refuse, often doing 12 hour shifts too! As a bonus our department was able to take our holidays, which included lieu days for the worked bank holidays, whenever we wanted them,but production departments had to rake their holidays during the shutdown periods.

 

Mal. We learnt that lesson when clearing out Sheila's uncles place, we don't even keep cards off each other now.

 

Jock. Hope your tiredness recedes and you can start posting your more usual posts.

 

Goodnight all.

[pH]

I too was involved with the pre-emption of this 'impending catastrophe' and was working at some little company called Unilever, who even had countdown clocks all over the place. At the doomed hour, all of a sudden, nothing untoward happened!

 

For our systems, nothing was upgraded, altered, amended or rewritten, so was a complete non-event! A lot of effort was put into proving we didn't need to do anything!

 

John, lucky you! (and I genuinely mean that). As I've said somewhere on here before, some of our systems were predictive, and started throwing up problems as early as 1997. Quite a few of them were developed in the 1970s, probably with the assumption (if anyone was thinking that far ahead) that they would be replaced before 2000. And 2-digit years were from a time even earlier than that where saving storage was still something to think about. 

 

An example of a problem - you have a process which creates an order for something used regularly in significant quantities, say 2 inch bolts. Every 4 weeks, an order is generated and sent to a supplier for 5000 of them. An order goes out successfully on 99/12/10. every day after that, in the overnight process, the system checks if 28 days have passed since the last order was sent. On 00/01/07, another order should go out. But 99/12/10 subtracted from 00/01/07 is less than 28, so no order is sent. It doesn't happen on succeeding nights, either. (If the system has been built properly, there should be an order sent when the number in stock fall below a certain 'emergency' level.) But if not, stores run out of 2 inch bolts, and many people are not happy.

[PhilJ W]

Time for bed, goodnight all.

[The Stationmaster]

Shopping trip to Tesco was suitably productive, however at 16.30 Mrs Stationmaster woke from her afternoon nap to inform em what we had forgotten and stated it was need for this evening's lasagne.  So off we went for a second, fortunately much briefer, encounter with the brain dead cockwombles who seemed to have chosen today to do enough shopping to last them to the next millenium and who have brought the art of aisle blocking with a single trolley to a pitch of bl**dy perfection.

 

G'night all

[grandadbob]

Yawn..still waiting for my parcel. Don't suppose it'll come tonight now.