Nick C

A pair of GBRF 73s leave Alresford propelling the LT 4TC set during last month's Diesel Gala - 73136 closest to the camera, I didn't note the number of the other. and yes, it is showing double red blinds - they're not clear in the photo!

We switched to getting supermarket deliveries quite early last summer, and certainly won't be going back unless we have to - even without Covid worries, it's so much more pleasant to not have to fight your way through the crowds. Neither of us enjoy shopping, so anything that can reduce it helps!

I can't believe it's 6 months since I last posted on this thread - that's bad even by my slow standards... The shed has been re-roofed, dried out, painted externally, and flooring and insulation laid. It;s much nicer out there now - I've not tried it on a really cold winter's day, but on the few hot days we've had this summer, it has been quite pleasant in there, wheras it was unbearably hot before. I've since built a workbench, which I'm quite proud of - 3x2 framework, with the top recycled from the side of an old built-in fridge cabinet. I then built a framework for the layout to sit on (which I've not taken a photo of) - I took great pains to get all the legs exactly the same length and build it perfectly square, only to have to add shims under most of the legs as the floor isn't level! I'm now onto baseboards - I've cut the tops from 9mm ply, and have attempted to cut the sides and ends 100mm deep from the same - but I've no hit a problem, as my carpentry skills clearly aren't as good as I'd like, and some of the sides aren't perfectly square, I suspect the saw moved slightly. Which makes me wonder - do I make some kind of jig to hold them exactly as I trim off a few mm from each to square them up, just live with a slight difference (mostly about half a mm max, except for two longer ones that vary by about 2mm over their length), or junk the dodgy ones and cut new? Also how much bracing do all-ply baseboards need? The station throat board is 54" by 24", so I'm thinking two crossbraces 18" apart for that one, and one each for the shorter boards (36"). Do people recommend diagonal bracing as well? I don't want to make the same mistake I did on the previous layout and have boards that aren't strong enough and warp...

I think you should leave it as it is now - adding too much more would start to hide the detail you've put in. The bulkhead can be leaning against the wall of the shed...

Not if their job is to be a deterrant, then they want to be seen... I've seen side-by-side comparisons on OS and Soviet maps from the 70's. The OS map of Chatham dockyards just had a big blank area. The Soviet version had every detail right down to the depth of every dock marked...

Where do barns fit into the shed/hut/etc hierarchy? They are frequently used for storage, or for accommodation (of livestock). And engine sheds for that matter...

Something that's not been mentioned so far is the use of perspex shields around layouts, as are commonly found around the tills in most shops at the moment - they'd have the double bonus of not just protecting the exhibitors from the crowd, but also stopping the fingerpoking... Mind you, with the selfish attitude shown by some people in this thread, I think it'll be quite a while before I'm comfortable attending any indoor event, unless it requires proof of full vaccination.

Given that it's owned by the same group who own the 09, I'd assume it'll also be green.

I feel your pain with the transfers - I finished off a handful of wagon a couple of weeks ago, got the transfers how I was happy with, then gave them a coat of matt varnish - which it turned out was knackered, and left white streaks on all of them. Shoved the lot to the back of the workbench in disgust and now hoping I can weather them enough to hide it...

Phoenix do two shades of Malachite - listed as "pre-war" and "post-war" - to my eye the pre-war one looks better, the post-war one looks too bright to me. Admittedly that's based off preservation-era memories of Isle of Wight stock as I wasn't around in the late 40's!

Wouldn't a SII be almost new in Ladmanlow's time period though? Or is this for a separate diorama?

That tank of course shows it to be a SWB civvy version. What era will it be? I have to admit I've never seen a S1 chassis bare to know what's different to the S2/2A/3 version, other than the length.

I believe it used to be the case, but changed to the more sensible option quite a long time ago, except, for some reason, for the arc de triomphe...

Which is exactly what today's announcement will cause!

I had a SIII on which half the rear wiring had been replaced with various lengths of bellwire, held together with sellotape. We ended up ripping out the entire rear loom and making a new one! Trouble is, this and @Mick Bonwick's thread are making me want another one! Despite knowing that they're slow, thirsty and unreliable, and that I have no need for a 4wd living in the middle of a town (and more imporantly, nowhere undercover to park one)

From my experience you sit there with that in one hand, and the loom from the landy in the other, and try and work out what on earth the various previous owners have done to make the one not resemble the other in the slightest!

I knew there was a proper equation, just couldn't remember what it was called!

Wheras Basingstoke is 'doughnut city'. We must have more fattening roundabouts down here...

If you consider the number of stars in the universe, the proportion of those known or believed to have planets, what we know about the conditions required for life to exist, and the sheer distances involved, you end up coming to the following conclusion: 1. There are alomst certainly multiple, probably thousands, of other planets out there with life. 2. They are all far too far away for us to ever communicate with, or even know for sure of their existance. I've probably mentioned it here before - we've been pumping out radio noise (and been able to listen to it) for around a century. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, so the furthest we have managed to reach is 100 light years away - the diameter of the milky way is between 100,000 and 200,000 light years. It'd be a bit like an ant standing in London with a lit ant-size match, trying to see another ant standing in Sydney.

Nope, it's £135, as the discussion is about items being imported into the UK, not the EU - https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty. It'd be €150 for stuff going the other way.

Whoever made that one up presumably doesn't actually know much about flight - 2000mph is roughly the speed of an SR-71 Blackbird, to even get into space you need to be going much faster than that, with average orbital speed being around 17,000mph and Earth's escape velocity being roughly 25,000mph. If you wanted to actually travel interstellar, you'd need another couple of orders of magnitude on top of that - the distance to the nearest star is about 4.37 light years, or 25 trillion miles - that's 4 and a half years at 670,616,629 mph.

It certainly was in my old housemate's E class, which had cream leather - awful in hot weather. And there's a reason professional rally cars have flocked dashes, and it's not for looks - it's to stop glare which can distract the driver - admittedly, yes, the rest of the interior is out of your sightlines and so won't make a difference - but then equally that means you can't see it, so why not have a nice, practical colour instead of a light colour that needs cleaning every five minutes! As for giving the choice, I'm sure they would if there was demand. I'd be more concerned about how few choices of exterior colour there are though - most new cars seem to only have one choice of colour that isn't some shade of grey.

I don't like any colour of leather for car seats, really uncomfortable when it's hot and you want to wear shorts. Making the interior darker is a good thing though, it reduces distraction. And shows the dirt less!

A friend of mine used to work for an ISP, which had a huge block of unallocated numbers- ones which had never been used at all. Their boss decided one day to connect them all to a robotic answering service, and record any incoming calls. There were quite a few, and some took a while to twig that they were talking to a machine...

The state of Victoria, Australia, had a large cull of feral cats a couple of years ago. They now have a huge rat problem, and don't know how to deal with it... Cats are natural predators, it's what they do. They don't kill for fun. The vicious and destructive vermin are the ones on two legs who insist on meddling with nature...