bbishop

Evening all.  Someone, no names no pack drill, forgot to renew his television license, so I have pulled the plugs on both my sets and am rather relying on RMWeb to provide entertainment.

Two church services today, then a brisk walk around Greenwich Park.

I have the classic exhibition layout backscene problem, an unnatural vertical line where the baseboards join.  The answer has to be trees painted across the joins.  I've sized some ply with "White Tundra"; I'll let it dry before calling up my inner Constable.

Over 50 years ago I worked over a Christmas in the laboratories of the Whitbread brewery in Chiswell Street.  And the lab was probably built in the nineteenth century - linoleum, wooden benches and the rest.  One of the jobs was to test the volume of carbon dioxide in a bottle of beer.  This was done using a Martin Machine, balancing the level of mercury in open apparatus.  Of course there were spillages, with globules on the floor and in the sinks.  I knew mercury was a poison, so was very careful and was grateful I was only there for three weeks.

Lez,  I was taught that the benzene bonds were all interchangeable so I drew it as a hexagon with a circle inside. Not my favourite bit of organic chemistry,  much preferred organo-phospherous which was good for clearing a train carriage in the rush hour.

Jon, have a look at www.muellers-bruchbuden.de

I have a resin kit of his Spur Null wooden goods shed.  He does a similar one in HO.  

Bill

So yesterday was spent at Lord's - becoming an ER.  This doesn't mean a conversion to the dark side of RMWeb but a requirement to take four modules to become an Emergency Responder.  Two modules were patient handling in the Warner Stand, in the freezing cold with a brisk north wind.  

It would have been a blade of grass on the cricket square, with an electric heater trundling back and forth keeping them all above freezing.

6 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

I sub contract to a sub contractor who sub-contracts to a certain UK defence company who had a bit of a sticky situation involving brown paper bags and  Saudis. As a result I and my sub-contracting fellows have to undertake a yearly ethics training course. Which is a powerpoint presentation where we get to role-play the various characters. 

 

"Dianne notices that Bill is sending mysterious emails that contain classified documents  and also has recently bought a Lamborghini.

 

Should Dianne

A) Ask Bill where he got the money?

B) Tell Stan, her supervisor about her concerns?" 

C ) Ask Bill for a ride in his Lamborghini?"  etc etc ....

Got that question today.  On line course called "Counter Fraud".

Walschaerts?  Belpaire?

Cesar Frank?

Tin-Tin?

4 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

So remember:

 

My edict is that Pannier tanks are wonderful machines.

Only the Belgian ones.

I was watching a cat walking along a six foot high fence at the bottom of my garden and thought of my two pets of some 40 years ago.  The fence has a cap about 1 inch wide.  

Harvey would sway and wobble along.  He would never actually fall off but at times it was a damn close call.

Toddy would happily march along the fence although he would need someone to catch him when he jumped off.

Harvey was a big, fat tabby cat.  Toddy was a Jack Russell Terrier. 

Bill

15 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

No, Gordon my Gopher.

 

A very able modeller who gave up 7mm scale to concentrate of rebuilding a For Pop.

 

He brought around some welding kit for me this morning that he no longer needs.

 

I now need to learn how to use it properly.

More digits flying into the ether.

... and I spent today preparing for a brace of Medicine Management modules.  Doesn't one have fun when one is retired.

I just charge for fuel for the Yeti.  My operating team is fairly widespread, so my quote will also include their train fares.  Knowing Chris M will read this, the "profit" we made at Warley was spent on coffee and cakes on the way home.

A couple of other possibilities.  I would treat demonstrators in the same way as layouts.

I would provide a relevant society (ie model engineering or local line society) with a free table (plus tea/coffee) on the condition they only sell their own products (ie journal and monograph) and not compete with the second hand bookstall paying trade rates.

Funny old day.  I completed three on-line Safeguarding courses, written an e-mail to an acting Archdeacon, put the seats back into the Yeti and chatted with a gentleman residing in Switzerland.  And now to bed.

It only ran a few times.  However it was the last train, collecting the remaining wagons from the yard and departing as a mixed train.

10 hours ago, Tim-Hale said:

... please note that the DB was not averse to using the Kof with a 4w coach on rural lines, eg Falls etc.

 

At the Tonbridge exhibition yesterday, we were operating a train on Blindheim comprising a Köf and one Donnerbüchse.  Bill

Blindheim packed and ready to go.

About 15 years ago my O Gauge British exhibition layout was running out of invites.  So the question was "what to do next?"  At the time Lenz were developing their Spur Null products and I had visited the Dampfbahn Fränkische Schweiz preserved railway.  I decided to build an O gauge model of a Franconian branch line terminus. 

Historically there has been very little scratch or kit building on the continent, so I was committed to RTR stock.  This meant that the infrastructure and trackplan had to be correct.  I had to revise my very rusty German in order to do the research.  Höchstädt was born which spent a few years on the exhibition circuit.  Audience reaction was varied - a few were very interested, the majority spent a few minutes in front of the layout, again a minority were downright hostile.

About 2018 I began the "last great project", a junction in Upper Franconia.  Unfortunately the pandemic struck, I can't manhandle 4' x 2'8" boards on my own and so I built the last stage of the project, a 12' x 1' Endstation blocking one of the fiddle yards.  So Blindheim was born.  There is no possibility of an accurate trackplan in that footprint but all the buildings (some scratchbuilt) are valid for Upper Franconia and the stock is correct for location and era.

Conclusions.  Foreign layouts are committed to RTR models, but that doesn't mean that infrastructure and stock cannot be correct.  Bill

Ye gods!  The Bing screen saver is an aggressive looking Hippo!!

Brian, my reading of LNER Wagons Vol 4A is that they either had separate brakes each side or that they had the Morton arrangement with brakes on one side and levers on both sides.  The clutch is on the brake side so the action is reversed and you are pushing the brake on.  Bill 

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

We have a Yeti as well, “Swiss Edition” no less and made to our configuration.

Mine is bog standard Czech, including the various plates.

I asked the corner garage how they go about maintaining it; "treat it like a VW!"

They are executing pancakes?  Sadists!

By the by, don't look at the Early Riser thread if you are squeamish.  They are discussing the most effective way of killing off each other.

I have a Yeti.  No clever switches, paddles, etc.

But I feel like Ronnie Corbett in the Corbett, Barker & Cleese sketch.

4 hours ago, whart57 said:

 

A very good layout I saw a few years ago was an British outline one built by modellers in the Netherlands. Though I did think it was a little unambitious of them to choose the Great Eastern in the flattest part of the country ........

....... but that is where the owner was born!  He just happens to live in The Netherlands.

 If you come to the Tonbridge show this Saturday, you can see Obbekaer in P87 by Geraint Hughes - simply some of the best modelling on the circuit.  You can also see Blindheim by yours truly - constrained by circumstances but an attempt to represent a Franconian backwater in Spur Null.  Bill