SM42

The velcro baby idea comng to a supermarket near you.

The alternative is to vacuum pack them ( maintains freshness) and leave them by the door for collection later. 

Andy

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

An interesting concept, SM42.  It sort of ties in with the Ironbridge industrial heritage stuff, and the main line connection would have presumably been at the power station, which would be a connection to the Horsehay people.  Not likely to have ever happened, of course, given that the track was already gone north of Bridgnorth Tunnel and still in good condition all the way down to Kiddy when the preservationists moved in; in fact it was still in use as far as the colliery and there were still passenger services to Bewdley via Kidderminster in those days.  Ironbridge gorge is attractive scenically and of course the bridge itself is a major attraction.

 

The current SVR is a well-run and competent organisation that would be well capable of restoring the Bridgnorth-Ironbridge section, but it would not have been as capable of doing that in the early days.  Under Gerald Nabarro (it has not always been best served by it's chairmen) it seems to not have been quite as well-run, and did not have the resources anyway. Incidents like the Sterns washout would have sunk it.

I was presuming  the colliery remained linked from the Ironbridge end ( handy bulk customer) and the Kidderminster end was lifted beyond the sugar factory at Foley Park. 

The section south of Bridgnorth falling into disuse when the collieries closed, but the infant SVR not having the funds to reopen  it  for some years after securing the Northern section and priorities being getting to Ironbridge and an end on junction with the national network. 

Quite recently the SVR opened a new terminus station on land acquired behind Madeley Jn signalbox following the closure of the Ironbridge Power Station. At some point, when funds allow, the new station building will be completed with the opening of the restaurant wing. 

Replacing the demolished Victoria Bridge would be a major obstacle along with various embankment failures on the southern section in the intervening years 

Another alternative scenario being the Hartlebury - Stourport- Bewdley section remained in use rather than the Kidderminster- Bewdley section 

We could go one further and forget the real and above imagined histories and presume the line to Tenbury remained lingering on into the 70s. 

Shropshire coal mining having ended in the 50s ( quite how my paternal grandfather would make a living through the 60s is open to conjecture,) killing the line towards Arley and Ditton Priors MOD remained, the reason for the line to stay open, (till the depot's closure, in the mid 70s)  after a limited passenger service to Tenbury  inevitably succumbed to the financially inevitable in the late 60s, despite BR's best cost cutting efforts.

The line between Cleobury Mortimer and Tenbury lying intact but moribund for some years until the SVR raised the funds to extend through to Tenbury.  

The Ditton Priors branch then remained in use with the SVR with limited services traversing the line from Bewdley, priority being given to running a more intensive Kidderminster - Tenbury service 

Andy

6 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

Does it have a P mode as well?

Yes but we aren't sure what that's for.

It might be a variation on S

Andy

19 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

Aditi had a Renault Clio that only ran nicely on  super unleaded. Her  Ford Fiesta isn’t at all fussy. Both our cars normally get fuelled with Shell E10 from our nearest garage. 
Aditi refers to the S setting on my cars auto gearbox selector as S for Silly. 

I find Mrs SM42's ride works well in Day mode,   wont move in the dark in Night mode and when you put it in Race mode it goes backwards. 

Andy

9 hours ago, Tony_S said:

My car had a bit of a present yesterday. It got topped up with the E5 super duper Shell instead of the normal E10. Qualified for £5 off so not too bad a mistake. At least the pump nozzles don’t  allow diesel to be put in! 
It was really quiet out today. Huge car park outside M&S Food was quite empty. Screwfix car park was too, and it only took a minute to collect my DiY bits and pieces that I had ordered online.  No queue in the pharmacy either. 
Perhaps everyone had gone away for the weekend. 
Tony

Mrs SM42's ride is always filled with super. 

It's about 5% dearer but hje car goes 10% further per litre so my man maths says that's a good deal.

It's also a lot nippier. 

Quote from Mrs SM42 when I first put some in," What have you done to Henry? ( for that is his name.)  He's gone silly."

We are currently  part of the weekend away set.

I am currently  looking out over Manchester as I type, just back from the pub down the road where proper beer is available and it doesn't cost the earth.

We've been on a coach trip to the lakes which we had bought us for Christmas and it started from Manchester, so we've made a weekend of it. 

Just hoping there are some trains home tomorrow. It is a Sunday so might be a bit hit and miss

Andy

Father was also Home Guard and spent many an hour firewatching from the roof of the local cinema. 

He didn't get called up till late 1944 ,I think , and saw out the war in Libya and Palestine in the REME. 

Not enough service to get his WW2 medal but was in Palestine when the King David hotel was bombed and was lucky not to be there that day.

 Andy

7 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Khyber and to a lesser extent, Cowboy are much the best of the Carry Ons. The dining room scene in Khyber is a classic piece of dead-pan slapstick. 

A colleague recently asked if I would like to try some ( home made)  tiffin 

It did make me smile, for reasons other than free cake 

Andy

20 minutes ago, Willie Whizz said:

Back in the 60s and 70s it was often the case that it wasn’t just “the best actor for the job”, but that X was “the only actor for [that sort of] job. 
 

You want an oily-looking, smarmy-sounding gent of vaguely Levantine appearance?  You need Steve Plytas!  You want an Eastern European, rather sinister looking, Putin before Putin type?  You want Vladek Sheybal!  A cynical, coldly calculating Nazi? Anton Diffring is your man!

 

A look at the cast lists of many of the series dramas of the day will see these guys appearing time after time. 

 

 

It seems slightly different nowadays 

An actor,/ actress suddenly becomes the in thing and are absolutely everywhere and in everything. 

Then a few months later nothing. 

They disappear and maybe pop up once or twice a year if they are lucky. 

Andy

HH is now appearing as crossword puzzles answers in a left wing paper. 

It all a conspiracy I tell you. 

Andy

I've always wondered what would have transpired over the years if the SVR had gone north rather than south from Bridgnorth. 

Maybe it may have got as far as Highley after many years of fundraising

Andy

56 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

I know not of the lady of which you speak  BUT we did get the unfeasibly shaped Sabrina paying a visit down here in 1961. She appeared in ads promoting a brand of high temperature automotive  grease -  those advertisers back then  certainly knew the way to an average Australian blokes heart and wallet.

 

 

 

Not the Sabrina I was thinking of.

I think she may have been Italian

Andy

1 hour ago, Winslow Boy said:

What really galls me with restaurant customers are the ones who make reservations and then don't show up or even ring to apologise. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised as good manners seems to have gone right out the window nowadays - everyone scared of offending if they use the wrong pronoun if they say thank you.

Mrs SM42 has a family trait ( or it could be a national thing, not enough information to establish that with certainty  but it looks possible) that essentially means that if you have to be somewhere at a certain time, then that is the time you leave the house, or at best you leave 30 minutes after the time your spouse advises would be a good time to leave for the airport, station or anywhere a timetable is involved.

Thus we are often late for our restaurant bookings. 

OK, mostly around 10 minutes, ( we eat local)  but I do wonder how long they leave it till you are considered a no show. 

Not so long ago we were outdone by a couple who arrived 45 minutes late, but they kept the table. I appreciate that they may have phoned to let them know.

Andy

28 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

I had an outbreak of weak solder g iron disease a couple of years ago along with slow running trains on the layout.  I eventually traced this back to a faulty inverter that was supposed to be converting three phase current to single phase 230v AC.  This had been installed by a French Sparky.  I eventually fou d the problem.  The voltage it produced was only 140 volts.  My previous sparky has done a disappearing act so I got another in, a Brit. He sorted the problem and put a new consumer unit in for me.  I now use the old three phase wiri g to distribute 230 and my soldeing irons actually solder.  I just need the motivation to use them. 

 

Jamie

I think it was definitely the iron. 

It was not in the best condition to start with and probably could have benefited from a new clean tip and probably one of  a different shape.

The person I took over from wasn't getting very far with it ( more lack of understanding of how soldering works, especially the clean bit) and  I'm surprised he got a far as he did. 

It took a good 30 - 45 seconds to get enough heat in to get the solder to adhere. 

We gave up after managing to tin some  wires as it was just too frustrating.

Andy

Finally some modelling activity. 

Well not much really

I tinned a bit of wire and the rail to attach it to,  but due to a rather weak ( borrowed)  soldering iron no  further progress in connecting the two items. 

At least I remembered the basics. 

Heat and cleanliness. 

It's been a while since I soldered anything 

Andy

A bear packing heat. 

Run 

Andy

The beauty of Polish birthday parties is that there is always enough cake to feed four times more people than attend. 

Don't want to run  out you see.

Thus there are lots of left overs that get shared out. 

Guess what will be served soon with coffee. 

Andy

Livin' the dream

14 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Not Fresh Flour by any chance?

 

Dave

Not sure thats in the range yet .

Ti's only a matter of time

Andy

Well I thought about doing some modelling this evening but then was overcome by a bout of the cannawantos, so I just watched some snooker instead. 

I really must get on a bit. 

I have five projects on the go for other people and I need to see the back of them in the next couple of weeks ideally

Unfortunately I seem to have lost momentum since last November and have done very little modelling.  

Even going  to the club has seen little achieved there too, even though a new fiddle yard set up  is required for one of our layouts, all I've done towards it is buy supplies, dismantle the old one and drill two holes. 

My mojo seems to have gone on holiday of late, probably  not helped by my regular partner in crime being out of the game with illness for the last 8 months. 

Hopefully I'll find some motivation this week and make some progress even if it's just to try and get the lid off a pot of Railmatch paint that I'm going to need to use on one of those projects. . 

Andy

As you may have guessed we are back from thd BBQ, full of pork products and oodles of cake. 

The weather cleared up just in time and it was nice to see most of the congregation and the priest all together in a social setting. 

There is such a strong sense of community that I sometimes wonder where it all went wrong in the UK.

Andy

My father grew up in  a house with a communal toilet. 

5 seats and you could chat with your neighbours over the partition whilst you went about your business. 

Alcohol free beers seem to be a growing trend in the motherland as well.

A few years ago it was IP and APAs. 

 I've tried a few and have settled on  three so far that pass muster, namely Perla, Lomza and Zatecky Lezajsk. 

They make a change from the 5.8 to 6.0 % of normal beers and very useful if you are duty driver and fancy a pint. 

Andy

It's a wet start here. 

I'm told the priest has set up the BBQ underneath some sort of  temporary cover arrangement. 

Probably just as well. 

Andy

Turns our we ate off toast friends 50th birthday celebrations tomorrow. 

This will involve a BBQ at the church after the service, so an early start. 

I suspect the person cooking might be under an umbrella while the rest of us hide inside. 

Regardless there will be cake. 

Yay!

Andy

8 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

Well, the weather did indeed put paid to my hoped-for trip to Attingham Park this afternoon. Instead I tried to fix our ancient Technics record deck of at least 25 years of age which refuses to do anything remotely connected with playing a record. Sadly I was unable to find what is wrong so transferred my efforts to looking for someone who can fix it. I think I may have found one in Nantwich, which is only about 15 miles away so I've sent an email asking whether they can, in fact, help and hope to hear from them on Monday. My sons think that I should embrace new tech and get an Alexa or something rather than persist with vinyl records and such but although I have gone as far as CDs and even iTunes I still like playing my old discs.

 

Dinosaur, me? I've even got an electric soldering iron!

 

Dave 

I've got my old GEC set up (which I inherited from my parents in the late 80s) which I hoping to resurrect at some point. 

3 speed turntable, 33, 45 and 78. 

I last used it around 1991. 

Andy

32 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I was in a pub in a forest in Kent in I think in  early 1973.  A friend had taken a group of of us  there as he said it had Youngs seasonal ales. While we were there, someone came in and ordered a pint of Red Barrel.The landlord said they didn’t serve it. The customer asked for the nearest equivalent and was given a glass of water. The landlord was a bit of a “character” but didn’t automatically ban students or motorcyclists like some places not that far away. 

A friend of mine who hails from Kent once told  of a New Year's Eve event at his local pub. 

It was a fancy dress event and there were several competitions. 

One was a caption competition, the picture was of a man holding up and admiring a pint of the house beer in traditional advertising poster pose .  

One entry which went down well with all except the landlord  was 

" Even the water's come in fancy dress this  year."

Andy

Round here the Party 7 was a Worthingtons thing. 

Cut the top off the empty can and it was ideal for dropping the oil out of a Mini or Renault 16 at oil change time. 

The central part half of our  drive was unsurfaced for this activity. ( it also saved a lot of concrete)

Dig a hole. Insert can, remove sump plug. 

Store can about the garden for when you needed to get a bonfire going. 

Happy days

Andy