Simond

17 hours ago, Ian Smith said:

Also of interest is the full name company branding across the tops of the notice boards.

is it possible that the receiver of the advertising revenue was somehow connected with the advertising board branding?

On 13/01/2022 at 14:10, Dave John said:

An old rule of thumb for the consideration of transport ( such as the busses shown above) I learned a long time ago was;

 

"Sixteen inches one bum, sixteen bums one ton" 

 

The idea was that the average person was sixteen inches of a seat, and that on average sixteen people weighed a ton. I doubt it is sixteen these days but for the period it might be a useful approximation. 

perhaps more up to date, at least on the weights, 83.6 kg for men and 70.2 kg for women.  Assuming equal numbers, that would be 6.5 couples per ton.  Or, if you prefer, 12 men or 14.25 women to the ton.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjq0fqNtLH1AhWClFwKHeQrAyMQFnoECAoQAw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk-11534042&usg=AOvVaw3aH9rsMfO0sFl8JPW9VD6_

You want “tedious and boring”?
 

Try slates.
 

try about 0.27 square metres of slates…
 

Florists use soft iron wire, which is a cheap alternative.

for example;

https://www.easyfloristsupplies.co.uk/wire/stub-wire/stub-wire-19-gauge/green-stub-wire-19g-10-inch-/p1413.html

On 29/10/2021 at 23:01, Compound2632 said:

On 29/10/2021 at 22:50, MikeOxon said:

The steel protection bars around the huts look surprisingly like modern crash barriers!

 

They look to be made of old rail - so rather lacking in the cushioning effect of a modern crash barrier!

a walking pace collision between a horse drawn cart and a building would be bad for the building and the cart (and possibly the horse), if it were heavily laden, but the energy dissipated doesn’t compare with a half-wit-controlled GTi ploughing into something solid from an illegal velocity…

Exquisite work, especially in 4mm.  Delightful!

Aha, good to see Miss P posting again!

atb

Simon

I think a selection of 3DP livestock would be a useful addition to many cattle trains. 

And, I'm not at all sure they need to be any more detailed than your print.  A little de-flashing, and a bit of paint, maybe.

not too heavy, and dead cheap.  Keep the expensive, showy, heavy cast whitemetal ones for where they can be seen!

atb

Simon

Indeed, and if you read through all the options that site provides, and watch dogs, cats, sheep, etc., you’ll find there are essentially three ways a four-footed creature moves:

walk (diagonals more or less alternately),

pace (each side - lateral more or less alternately)

or canter (two rear legs together, the front two providing two independent points of contact).  

Lizards etc., do the diagonal thing but are more articulate in the middle.  

You could argue that frogs are cantering, but I think that’s stretching things a bit…

I’m pretty sure that the only sensible gait for a draught animal is diagonal, pacing would lead to the horse falling sideways, so that’s not going to work.  Cantering sounds rather cavalier, and likely rather dangerous!

on which basis, would a pair of crankshafts work?  They would rotate such that the bottom of the crank was going forwards, and the legs would be slotted so they could move up & down as the big end (at the top of the leg) moved with the crank.  I must sketch something.

atb

Simon

What splendid fun!

I have been gently ribbing @Giles Favell about a “radio controlled shuntin’ ‘orse” for a while, so this brought a large smile to my face.  
 

It would indeed be a boon to the space starved modeller, if remote control and motive power could be achieved in anything less than 5” gauge…

possibly casting the body in whitemetal might get the centre of gravity up a bit, which might help, but, does the “non scale appearance” model that you have, pace, or walk?  Most horses walk with diagonal gait, left front & rear right then the opposite, whereas camels and some ponies pace, with both limbs on the same side moving in unison.

I suspect that in order for it to walk, the two pivots must be able to move independently.  If they are fixed parallel, the weight cannot transfer diagonally.  Does it need links between the legs?   Mmmm, have to think more about this…

keep up the good work!

Simon

I’ve seen magnets for roof retention, indeed my Dapol 58xx is so fitted, and I’ve discussed using them to retain things like tool boxes and other stuff that would make painting a loco difficult, but making the sides removable is a very nice idea.  I hate building coaches, and I’m sure this would make it much easier.  Nice one!

simon

Mikkel

an idle thought prompted by your post on euro boxes, which stack, I believe.  
 

invert them!
 

This could give you a layout on the outside bottom of a shallow box, the lid of which would need to be fixed from below to protect wiring, point motors etc, and a deeper box would then fit over the top to protect the scenic elements in storage.

it might be necessary to cut away parts of the protective box if track etc went over the end of the lower box.

but I fear this adaption might, in the end, prove more cumbersome and expensive that a purpose-made plywood affair.  There are suppliers in the uk doing laser cut baseboard kits from light ply.  I built the Greater Windowledge Railway on 4mm ply (which is only about 7 inches thick to scale!) so in the smaller scales, this would be more than adequate.  I’m sure there are laser-cutters in mainland Europe who will do the same.

atb

Simon

Minerva offer a model in 7mm, with etches to convert to the GW version.  A pal has one, it’s very nice.

Found it, December 2019, in Mikkel’s “Horse drawn float” blog.
 

Simond  7,657

Posted December 22, 2019

I think life for a working horse was quite hard, and littl3 to compare with today’s horses, which are, for 5he most part, hobby animals, in a far more caring society.

apart from the wagon loads of horse manure that was shipped out of big cities daily, (which has been a previous discussion in these hallowed halls) I rather suspect a fair number of beasts turned their toes (or hooves) skyward each day.  

Of course, the railways could afford convalescent horses.  Steptoe & son could not, and if the horse didn’t work, likely they didn’t eat.  And within living memory too.  I was born in 1958, so this is marginally before my time.  

“The horse was king, and almost everything grew around him: fodder, smithies, stables, paddocks, distances and the rhythm of our days. His eight miles an hour was the limit of our movements, as it had been since the days of the Romans. That eight miles an hour was life and death, the size of our world, our prison…Then, to the scream of the horse, the change began. The brass-lamped motor car came coughing up the road. Soon the village would break, dissolve and scatter, become no more than a place for pensioners.”
(Laurie Lee's description of village life before the motor car - Cider with Rosie, 1959)

There were about 3.5 million horses in the uk at the turn of the 1900’s. Assuming a twenty year life, that would suggest nigh on 500 dying each day.  That’s around 200 tons of dead horse to dispose of, daily!

I don’t know why I couldn’t just link the post.  Subsequent posts noted the effects of WW1, and that 20 years may be a rather generous lifespan for a working horse.  Still, it’s a lot of pies...

There is, as you allude, also the question of dead horses.  We’ve touched on this before, though I’d have to search for the discussion.  London exported significant wagon load quantities of dead motive power, though Farthing might be a little more genteel.

atb

Simon

If you find a source, I could do with some too (near Folkestone!)

Well, once the stationmaster, signalman and head porter had sorted out their roses, allotment and the station flowerbeds, I reckon there would still be enough for a wagon or two every so often.  Presumably they had a pit or midden, and emptied it every month or two?

atb

Simon

And in medieval days, urine was a major source of saltpetre, used in making gunpowder.

The volume (cubic feet) figure will be the more useful one I feel, the material has a relatively low density, at 65lb(24.26kg)    / 2.4ft3 (0.068m3)  = 357 kg/metre cubed, more or less around half that of coal.

Wagon capacity is thus more likely to be limited by the volume than the weight.

this is a most interesting rabbit hole.

btw, rabbits emit about 7W as heat.  Handy to know if you’re planning rabbit powered central heating.

atb

Simon

Very nice, exquisite work!

all my weathering up to about 5 years back was done with enamels and thinners.  I had some success, and if I had a failure, it was often possible to simply keep washing it off until I was back to base paint - particularly where I had painted my locos with cellulose, which is fab stuff, but a PITA to clean up, and the thinners are nasty, and getting difficult to get.

There's much to be said for water solvents & acrylics, not least that doing it in the house in the winter is a practical proposition, whereas too much thinners and the central heating is likely to lead to a bad headache at best.

Trouble is, acrylics don't quite behave like humbrol and white spirit! 

And I'm not sure how it would react with the newer Halfords rattle cans, which are clearly not cellulose.

atb

Simon

Darker, I’d assume?

I presume the sleeves are glued and the wire isn’t.

1 hour ago, Mikkel said:

Today's purchases. My wife doesn't wear tights but these were just £3. If the white pepper doesn't work it goes on the food

and if the tights don’t work, what are they going on?

1 hour ago, Mikkel said:

post-Brexit customs regime is tough on the wallet

It’s certainly a PITA for our business, and our customers too.  
I have yet to see a concrete example of anyone being financially better off.  
Funny how the “£350 million for the NHS” evaporated.  

never mind, we are where we are.