jcm@gwr

I'm amazed, and disheartened, by this unnecessary obsession with hygiene. There was an article in one of the daily rags that I read (the day of the tube bombings, as I recall) that pointed out that the gut immune system of an your typical construction industry worker was 10 times more efficient than that of a typical office worker. It went on to explain that it was because you tended to ingest some dirt at work, in amounts that your natural defences could learn how to cope with. Whereas, in an office situation, the excessive cleaning regime meant your immune system was isolated from reality, so when it did encounter some iffy bugs, it either didn't know what to do, or it over-reacted, meaning you became more ill than you would have done otherwise. Lets be honest, when was the last time you watched a builder really scrub his hands to eat his lunch, more likely he'll just wipe his hands on a clean bit of his T-shirt! And before anyone starts wittering on about this, I'm currently a plumber (20+ years), have done general building, shopfitting, loft conversions, ran a car repair workshop and started my working life as an engineer. I've not had a day off sick since 1985!

Clouds! Looks more like a sea fret, rolling up the river from the harbour!

But hopefully better than nothing, and (fingers crossed) with few side effects/problems.

But it also depends from where you are looking, unfortunately, when we observe our models/layouts we have the effect of looking from a hot air balloon, far higher than we are used to. If we are trying to recreate a 'normal' viewing point, we have to consider that most of us wouldn't usually get higher than an upstairs window, (some exceptions being roofers, and owners of larger 'posh' houses), certainly for villages. It's a different set of parameters in towns, with office blocks etc.

I think that removal of all the backscene will enhance the overall look of Little Muddle, if you are in any village on even a slight hill, you only ever see sky behind any buildings, plus a few trees, just my thoughts on the subject.

I only enter the forum via 'View New Content', and by ignoring all the threads that don't interest, or bore, me, it saves a lot of time scrolling down/loading more activity. Life is too short!

You missed the ugly ones, Q1

Well I found that 'certain kind of tedium' yesterday, and re-ignored Football Focus!

What I've done with a number of my older customers, and those that struggle with that kind of system, is to set the clock 30 minutes out, ie half-way between GMT and BST. You don't need the clock to be that accurate, and you hardly notice if the heating is coming on slightly later or earlier, the heating timing is irrelevant, so long as you have hot water!

There's a link to his layout thread at the bottom of all of his posts, it is definitely Little Muddle.

You should do it as hard as you can, just before the point that your arm hurts, which is right for both options!

Leaving the model on a (working) radiator also works, and don't forget to shake the can enthusiastically for at least 2 minutes, after warming.

I think that there are multiple reasons for this problem getting worse. Firstly, the operators at a lot of sites seem to enjoy lording their power of veto over anyone with a van, treating anyone with a van like a criminal, it's almost always their opinion that if it's in a van it's commercial, even if it's a bit of garden waste out of a hired van, driven by a woman (happened to my neighbour). But they'll accept anything out of a car, doesn't matter what it is! Secondly, the waste license you have to have hasn't been thought through, as usual, it was meant to cut down on scrap metal theft, but has encouraged more fly-tipping, as some want to avoid the cost of joining the scheme. Then the councils complain about the cost of clearing up the dumped rubbish, but don't seem to realise that it would cost a lot less to make it easier to provide better facilities for disposing, which should encourage less fly-tipping. This is down to giving accountants to much say in day-to-day running of councils, and their creative accounting methods, one day we might realise that it's all money from the same place, you can't separate it out into different categories, just to justify your job, at the expense of real efficiency.

But it's a step in the right direction

They need to automatically print the reg number on all the food packaging that you get in a drive-through, that might reduce the problem, or at least make it easier to find and fine them!

There are various alternatives to PVA, for ballasting you have the choice of Klear (now called Johnsons floor polish) or Copydex. For fixing lead, as a weight in locos, either UHU, or cheap super-glue.

After both world wars, there was a huge surplus of trucks/lorries, which were sold cheaply to the public, who then set up haulage companies (in competition with the railways), and also accelerated the need for a bigger, better road network.

I used the yellow sweet wrappers from a certain 'road' based box of chocolates, made to a very good standard, normally available at Christmas! It gives a better, more muted colour, more appropriate for the age/era.

You might get a better response if you mentioned the scale!

But if they hadn't been so arrogant about never needing winter protection for their power stations, and hadn't opted to be 'stand-alone', because they didn't want to spend the money to comply with the safety standards set by the rest of the 'grid', they wouldn't have had the black-out situation in the first place, and (potentially) no-one would have died!

But they might have had a single post lift outside, not uncommon, but rather dangerous, banned after at least one death!

On our 0 gauge club layout we have 2 lifting sections, main entrance with 4 main lines and a narrow gauge, and another at the other end for access to the w/c, and back door, that has 4 main line, 1 branch line and 1 narrow gauge track. I fitted heavy duty micro-switches (salvaged from central heating motorised valves) to trigger a set of relays, because the tracks are set up to be switchable DC/DCC, to cut the power to the approach curves. We worked out the length needed by running a 12 coach train flat out, then cutting the power, and measuring the length it took to stop. It doesn't stop someone reversing a long train off the edge, but you can't fix stupidity!

He's a friend!

Their definition of 'resolved' is that they tweaked the design on the later models to stop it happening again, nothing about fixing the models affected, or helping the people who had bought them!

That I wasn't aware of, but makes sense, but one of the main reasons that AZ jabs are more readily available has to be the ease of storage and transport.