Early Risers.

[laurenceb]

Night awl

[Barry O]

I too have sighted HH..he came and chatted to me on my demo stand at Warley  a few years ago.

 

Baz

[Barry O]

Yes BoD indeed we are..and teachers having to show children how to wash their hand..incredible! 

Baz

[tetsudofan]

1 hour ago, brianusa said:

With not much travelling these days, I find my car's battery goes flat;  'Dead' for all others than locals.   The charger is doing extra service so isn't there something that would keep the battery charged up,  I have heard there might be such a device.

     Brian.

 

My car does not get much use during the winter so I use a "trickle charger", quite reasonable price purchased from Halfords.

 

Having had to call out the M-B assistance people to get a dud car working the Dealership suggested the trickle charger, even suggested where I bought it!!

 

Keith

[Barry O]

Goodnight all!

Baz

[Coombe Barton]

... and family anniversaries

 

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2020/03/17/st-patricks-day/

[andyram]

Evening all - I hope everyone here is virus free.

 

Today has seen the interesting developments regarding the government's "plans" to support business etc through the current crisis. I remain open minded but sceptical about the methods and it remains to be seen how helpful they prove to be. 

 

So to today - I did open on the planned reduced opening hours. Matlock Bath was as quiet as I expected it to be, but the irony was that I actually ended up with a total number of visitors, sales and takings that is similar to a regular out of season day. 

 

At home there was a much clearer indication of the current impact of the virus. We have been doing our weekly food shopping online for several years now. Today's arrived with 11 items unavailable. These included toilet paper, kitchen roll, cleaning wipes, vegetarian steaks, cat food and beer! Thankfully I was able to pop into another supermarket and secure the two essential items from that list (I leave you all to decide which two items they were!!!)

 

Tomorrow is a day off from the shop anyway so it will be a day of marking for the college, braving the post office to dispatch online orders and then trying to secure the other items that are required from the above list - all of this is health permitting of course.

 

Stay safe everyone.

 

Andy

[newbryford]

46 minutes ago, Barry O said:

I too have sighted HH..he came and chatted to me on my demo stand at Warley  a few years ago.

 

Baz

 

He said he was coming to see me also.

 

I hid........

[Kingzance]

For the benefit of BrianUSA, a decent trickle charger will maintain the battery in good order and give it a desulfating cycle if necessary. I have had one for years and keep it ready for my motorcycle (which has a charging receptacle already installed for easy connection and disconnection). Mine is the Optimate but that is a UK make. It must work as the battery is now over ten years old and the bike only gets out from spring to autumn.

 

Our fish man is still planning on visiting the village every Tuesday and I bought a nice piece of plaice for her Ladyship’s whilst I had a piece of haddock. I missed going to the pub tonight to play crib but it is something that I can endure and is better than having that bug!

[newbryford]

There are three distinct areas at work where we can effectively self-isolate from each other - so I've re-jigged the rotas for my department (2 of us) at work to minimise contact between ourselves. The other sections are doing likewise.

 

As it is now, we have 12 days out of a 28 day cycle where we are both in the office. 

By shuffling a few days around, we now have 6 days each where we can to work from home. and we will not be in the office together.

 

Thursday will be decision day if we proceed with that plan.

 

In the meantime, the NB household has been panic buying [*] cars................................

 

Stay safe folks.

 

Cheers,

Mick

 

 

[*] if two can be considered panic buying and one's actually a lease car.

Edited March 17, 2020 by newbryford

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. It seems that since the corona virus started theres a lot of people signing up to a couple of groups that I administer on Facebook. One is a (none-railway) modelling group and the other is a local history photo group. Spoke to my brother earlier, no apparent harm done but my sister had already spoken to him read him the riot act.

2 hours ago, brianusa said:

With not much travelling these days, I find my car's battery goes flat;  'Dead' for all others than locals.   The charger is doing extra service so isn't there something that would keep the battery charged up,  I have heard there might be such a device.

     Brian.

 It might be that you need a new battery. Modern batteries in good condition should hold enough power to start an engine after being idle for a couple of months.

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[BSW01]

Good evening everyone 

 

Well, I’ve also come to the conclusion that the world has gone f**king mad! I’ve never seen so many shelves in Sainsbury’s empty before, no milk, no pasta or pasta sauce, no flour, very little in the tinned food stuff, but there was some bread, but not a lot. Thankfully (apart from milk) we didn’t need any of the stuff that had disappeared. But ironically there was plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables! Antisocial media (and the media in general) has got a hell of a lot to answer for! The amount of people walking about with JUST a pack of bog rolls and nothing else was unbelievable, talk about behaving like sheep, I did look around to see if there were any sheep dogs herding them all towards the car park, but there wasn’t! When you regularly shop in the same place and same time every week, you get to recognise some of the regulars, but today there was a lot of people who I didn’t recognise. I suspect they don’t live in the local area as they didn’t seem to know where anything was. They all appeared to be looking out for No 1 and seemed to be there just to scoop up what they could get, with the f**k you attitude. Then to top it all off, I went to the pharmacy to collect my prescription and the f**king surgery hasn’t sent my prescription to the pharmacy, so they couldn’t dispense my medication, this is despite me putting in the request last week! So that means I’ll have to go out to the pharmacy again before the weekend!

 

After we’d done the Sainsbury’s Grand Prix, it was home, put the shopping away, grab a quick brew and then off to completed the Waitrose Grand Prix too! This is something that Sheila has wanted to do for a while, but has kept putting it off. Importantly, we managed to get milk from there, (they had plenty) so we now have enough to last us until next week when no doubt I’ll have to do it all again. However, I did have to keep reminding Sheila that we don’t need to panic buy like all the other ‘sheep’

 

We heard today that Ava’s school trip, which she should have been going on this morning has been cancelled. A wee bit eleventh hour, but not wholly unexpected. We’re expecting that Evie and Max’s trip next month will also be cancelled at some point in the future.

 

After dinner, which was a little later than usual, I decided that it wasn’t worth doing anything outside, so I sat at the dining room table and played with all the circuit boards I’ve been building recently. They’d all been tested individually and some of even in pairs, but not all together. So with lots of bits of wire and some temporary connections I connected all the components together. Everything was checked and double checked and then power was applied, the first half (point operation) worked fine, but the second half (point position indication) didn’t! So after a few more checks and tests, I disconnected the micro switch on the solenoid and the problem was resolved, resulting in me having a grin like a Cheshire Cat! So the system finally worked as I’d designed/hoped it would, the point operates by a single changeover switch and the position indication follows the actual point position. I even managed to simulate a faulty solenoid successfully by holding the point as I operated it, so that the point didn’t move, the indication continued to the show point as it was and not how the switch was indicating. So all my scribblings and redesigning wasn’t all in vain. 

 

Goodnight all 

[Ozexpatriate]

4 minutes ago, BSW01 said:

talk about behaving like sheep ...

 

(From Men In Black)

Edited March 18, 2020 by Ozexpatriate

[The Stationmaster]

6 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I think I'm going to have to come out as Species fluid!

Is that some old fashioned stuff that was used in the past for soldering?

[Ozexpatriate]

Words that are still worth listening to.

 

FDR's inaugural address, 1933.

Quote

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself; nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Ozexpatriate

[The Stationmaster]

G'night all.

[BR60103]

On 16/03/2020 at 23:53, pH said:

 

Absolutely! Our son and his family cut short a holiday in Hawaii when the Canadian government  advised that they should, arrived back here on Monday at 1 AM, and have started 14 days of 'self isolating'. Apparently CBSA haven't been too good about telling people arriving in Canada that they should be 'self isolating', but they're now being reminded that they should be doing so.

Had an eMail from them just now. They're in Monroe, Mich for the night and know that they have to quarantine.

 

Edit:  I'm talking about our neighbours. I think there's a continuity problem in my thoughts.

Edited March 19, 2020 by BR60103

[BR60103]

Dayle found out this morning that the grocery store has a "seniors hour" from 7 to 8. That fits in nicely with her schedule; I can still sleep in to 7:40.

The big bookstore chain has just announced that they're closing for the duration.  I thought they were an essential service.

One of the nearby universities last year had a St Patrick's day street party with 33,000 people and an overwhelming number of them carted off to hospital. This year there was a police presence (and possibly something else) and the street was deserted.

(Parties have been expanding for years.)

[AndyID]

6 hours ago, brianusa said:

With not much travelling these days, I find my car's battery goes flat;  'Dead' for all others than locals.   The charger is doing extra service so isn't there something that would keep the battery charged up,  I have heard there might be such a device.

     Brian.

 

Ten of your Washington Bucks (plus tax) at Harbor Freight. I have several.

 

https://www.harborfreight.com/automatic-battery-float-charger-42292.html

[TheQ]

Many quality battery chargers are float chargers as well. When you plug them in you can see the current slowly wind down,  then the L.E.D. switches to float..  That's what I'm plugging into the landrover regularly. 

As for travel.... 

 

[AndyID]

As it was a beautiful day yesterday I did go skiing but I played it safe and didn't go into the ski lodge. Some snow became slightly yellow.

 

Speaking of which I had to take another water sample to the lab for testing. It was another brill day and MrsID was getting a touch of cabin fever so we drove into town in the wee car with the roof down. It was only about 50F but MrsID was quite surprised at how effective the heater is. Not quite as "al fresco" as one of Neil's bikes but quite entertaining all the same.

[J. S. Bach]

Having just finished a Guinness Stout for St. Pattrick's Day, it is time to say good night owl from the somewhat cool (512° R) Piedmont.

 

Edited March 18, 2020 by J. S. Bach

[chrisf]

Greetings one and all

 

It is unfortunate that Area Group will not be meeting tonight.  It would have been the first meeting in a new venue that took a lot of finding despite being right under my nose.  A couple of hours in the pub putting the world to rights would have been just the job.  As it happens, the membership is more inclined than I am to observe the latest Government guidance.  A meeting in a pub involving non-essential travelling to get there falls foul of it on several counts.  The pub would have made us very welcome and enjoyed our company but it was not to be.  To judge by what other area groups have decided to do it will be some time before we are all gathered together again.  That means two or three free evenings and a free afternoon which I would rather not have had.

 

After the carnage comes the reckoning.  That ruddy virus has taken out [I think] seven events, my annual visit to Pendon and a weekend with my cousin 88C and his wife.  Two of the advance tickets will be usable next year while others may be reimbursed in the fullness of time.  I will have saved myself a good few £ on train fares and petrol but at the cost of not being able to enjoy the events for which the journeys would have been made and, of course, that priceless commodity, social interaction - priceless.  Some concerts also face rescheduling or cancellation.  What did I say about planning ahead? 

 

There is more news of that fine Welsh band Calan.  They managed to catch the last flight to the UK out of Minneapolis, only to find on return to the UK that the next bit of their tour had also collapsed, including their London concert in April for which I had not yet booked.  Ever ingenious, they set up a fundraising page.  One of the articles for sale included 50 signed copies of their new CD.  How could I resist?  My copy should be in the car in about two months.

 

If I do nothing else useful today I need to buy my lottery ticket.  This involves going out.  Brave or foolish?  Best wishes to all

 

Chris

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

Very early riser..woken by some beautiful singing from the blackbird..from the telephone wire by our bedroom window.

 

I wo der if the ex members of the Queens Royal Irish Hussars celebrated Padddys Day yesterday.."from dawn to dusk and dusk till dawn" and its not just about staying awake! Bushmillw cuasers... not for me!

 

We have closed the railway club as it makes sense...well Doris and co don't want the responsibility of doing a Macron.

 

Her indoors is off to get her car MoTd..early start for her anyway.

John (CB) ..looks good.. glad to hear the house changes are proceeding. Should you be turning an extension into a proper library with leather armchairs and reading stands?

 

Some friends have just arrived back from Oz/Singapore. They too were very unimpressed with Manchester Airport smelly and surly employees) They were told to self isolate by reading the notices at immigration, but got the train home as there was no other way of doing so. Logic??

 

Now get off on the right foot by planning your day. Write a list of things to do..then chuck it in the bin and just make sure you get the best from every minute of the day.

 

Baz