sharris

I still have a couple of boards to build - currently they have imaginary numbers.

I get those sometimes, with a password I haven't used for ages stolen from a site hacked many years ago. I just delete them unread.

I didn't know that Viz was still going- I used to read it over 25 years ago, and felt like they'd run out of new jokes then.

Apparently it will officially be able to do uploaded images next month, but there is a hack to do it already https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams/custom-background-images-for-teams-meetings/m-p/1283219#

Indeed, since posting this morning, I had a meeting this afternoon and we discovered the option too - and spent half the meeting playing with the backgrounds!

We use Microsoft Teams for our work meetings - sadly the only special effect it seems to have is to blur out the background which has the side effect of making you look badly photoshopped. I might have to be creative with some props. If I can synchronise the sunshine with my meetings I might see if the wifi will stretch as far as the garden.

Since that means the light from outside must be falling directly on the screen, probably the worst arrangement for actually seeing what's on it.

If you have any LNWR loco shaped scrap, preferably with motor and wheels... (seriously, thanks, although at the moment I'm quite well off for brass sheet)

Thanks for the offer, for the moment I'll give the soldering iron a whizz. The windows factory opened for business this afternoon. I managed to get a bit of a head-start as in my scraps box I found the remains of a window frame etch (Ambis?) With a little bit of fettling of the openings, the 8 3x4 frames are a reasonable match for the 8 high up windows on the end building. As for the rest, I built a little jig with pins on a bit of hardboard left over from IKEA packaging. The outer frame is made from strips of 5 thou brass - the first few I made 5mm wide, but have reduced it to 4mm to save a bit of brass. These are soldered into a rectangle defined by the pins. Starting with the centre, I then solder pre-tinned 0.33mm brass wire to the frame, aligned with lines scribed into the hardboard. After doing the 3 horizontal pieces, I run a file across the back of them, and repeat with the verticals until I end up with At this point I can tweak the horizontals and verticals to straighten any off-true. Then I wipe the grid with a bit of flux and a touch with the iron to lock the horizontals and verticals, and rub the back along the direction of the verticals on a file. Cleaning up, trimming and flipping over I end up with 10 down so far, only another 60 or so to go in this size, then 10 smaller ones.

Having finished cutting out all the main parts, I laminated most of the walls yesterday and left the glue to go off, keeping everything flat under a jenga-ish pile of 18mm ply blocks - intended for cross-bracing the Willington boards when I've worked out clearances for point actuators. So, excited to see how it fits together I've spent the morning tacking the pieces together with bits of masking tape and setting it up in the lounge - overall it's just over 700mm long (longer than the table I set it out on!), about 280mm deep and, excluding the boiler room chimney, about 260mm high. rail-side view of the main building. John Usher's drawings (in the linked archive article in the previous post) show the water-side view. I've estimated the opposite side to be similar but with doors in the centre of each arch. Usher's drawings show a winch house in the arches, could be just one, could be two - I've gone for symmetry. Looking towards the rail-served shed. The sides of the shed are down to imagination and guesswork - the overall size is estimated from the survey. The end of the shed is based on Usher's drawings. The opposite end of the mill - Usher's drawing shows the boiler house (between the main building and the lower building at the end, but not the very end - I found a couple of grainy photos online that I based this on https://www.blunham.com/Blunham/WebAlbums/OldBlunham/South+Mills_Mill_Early_60s_1=56.html Water-side view - on this side some of the walls descend into the mill pond - I've made these 40mm below ground level. The blank area area on the wall is where the housing for the mill wheel would go - currently I haven't laminated the back wall as I intend the viewing direction to be from the rail side, and will stop flush with the back wall - it's big enough already without making a proper mill-pond! The whole building will get a coating of Howard Scenics embossed brick paper. Now to work out a reasonable way of constructing 85 window frames! (What was it I said on Dave's Sandy thread about my blood pressure going down since the lock-in?)

In a slight diversion from Willington, my attention has shifted about 4 miles to the east, to a mill outside Blunham. A line branched off from the East end of Blunham station to serve the mill. South Mills no longer exists, but when it did produced bonemeal fertiliser. A previous incarnation of the mill processed linseed. Bedford Borough Council archives have a few pages on the mill: http://bedsarchives.bedford.gov.uk/CommunityArchives/Chalton(Mogerhanger)/SouthMills.aspx From this archive article and a couple of grainy photographs I've estimated the sizes of the main buildings (the article includes notes from a survey that helped with some of this), and with a bit of imagination I managed to create what might be a plausible approximation. Drawing it out, the facade of the main building takes up most of a sheet of A3, these old Mills weren't small buildings! Up til now, most of my modelling has been in plastic or wood - for reasons described elsewhere, this time I've decided to use mostly card, and luckily I'd obtained a couple of sheets of 1mm A1 just before the lock-down. Having drawn out what I thought would be a plausible building, the last few days have seen me transferring the drawings to the card. Most walls consist of a base layer and an overlay to represent the two depths of brickwork apparent in the archive drawings. I've now got to the point of cutting out all the walls and their overlays, although the window openings need an arch added, and I still need to cut out all the windows and doors in the main building. I now have quite an extensive flat-pack of all the walls: The parts closest to the camera are a railway-served shed - a line runs right through it, which I intend to be inset into cobbles and will probably construct with the minimum amount of thin copper-clad I can get away with. Floors will come from the leftovers, roofs I might have to dig around for some thinner card. One thing I'm not trying to think about too much is the number of windows, all of which need frames and leading, and with the lock-down not much chance of getting anything etched! Hopefully it will all all make more sense as it goes together! The intention for the moment is to create it as a diorama - operationally a single track isn't that exciting, although if I extend the model there is the option of a passing loop.

Does anyone happen to know if Freestone are still operating in the current situation? I'm running low on Howard Scenics embossed brick paper.

Stay at home: stay elfy.

Model railway PWM controllers often use the mains waveform as a timebase, synchronising pulses to 100Hz full-wave-rectified half-sines. Some industrial PWM controllers I've used, on the other hand, have pulse frequencies measured in kHz.

You are referring to pre-made modules using the LM317 or buck converters, The LM317 and buck-converters are single chips which are 'programmed' with a few discrete components for the output you want - the size of the pot or presence of a display are niceties of the module manufacturer - you could knock up your own with the appropriate regulator chip and resistors and capacitors on a bit of veroboard for a couple of pounds, with your preferred size of knob.

Whatever it is you found in the spares box, you're doing a good job with it!

After a weekend with the drawing board, I now have a set of drawings, based on the linked article, a couple of grainy photos and some imagination - turns out to be quite a big bu99er - the facade of the main building pretty much fills a sheet of A3 in what I've estimated is about right for 4mm scale. I guess it won't qualify for a 'cake-box challenge' - unless I bake a very large cake! I'll put further progress in my Willington thread. In other news, SWMBO is very much better now.

I've found the same for different reasons - since SWMBO is recovering from asthma related breathing difficulties, I've stopped using any solvents (and stopped sticking models together with them too) until she's properly better. In the mean time I'm drawing up plans for some card modelling (not something I've worked in much since I was in my teens!) - strictly speaking it's not Willington, my main project, but still of local interest. Fortunately I had the foresight to buy card from my local art shop before the lock-down. http://bedsarchives.bedford.gov.uk/CommunityArchives/Chalton(Mogerhanger)/SouthMills.aspx

I'm in London on the border with Surrey - I don't know if they will deliver to your part, but check out some of the suppliers operating out of New Covent Garden, usually to the restaurant trade, but now to the public- SWMBO ordered a food box which arrived yesterday with some very nice looking fruit and vegetables, a selection of herbs and 30 eggs.

My first thought was that it was more likely to be a problem with the inlet filter on the laptop power supply (Phil, were you trying all the different laptops through their own power bricks, or just using the same power brick for each laptop tried?)

I remember having to design a pedestrian operated traffic light controller (can't remember now if it was a simple crossing or a road junction) using discrete logic as a question in one of my Electronic Engineering BSc exams in the mid 1980s. Sounds like traffic lights were the in-thing in 1980s education!

I'd always expected that private owner wagons would most likely be seen somewhere near home ('home' being the line serving the PO company) and almost all the ones I've made have been lettered with companies on the line, or somewhere close to the line I'm modelling. However flicking through a couple of local reference books, I happened across a couple of LNER trains in the vicinity of Sandy containing PO wagons including examples from Swansea and Birmingham (I.e. The opposite side of the country) - pictures from the mid-1930s. Is there any limit on how far away a PO wagon is likely to come from?

I work for a UK university - we closed the doors almost two weeks ago and have been pretty busy working from home ever since.

Had a bit of a close call this week. SWMBO had breathing difficulties as a result of her asthma earlier in the week which she couldn't control with her usual medication or nebuliser. No fever or coughing, but couldn't be sure it wasn't aggravated by the coronavirus. Called the GP who said to call an ambulance. Good news is having spent the night and most of the next day in hospital in a room of her own and with steroids and antibiotics she is home again and much improved now, and her coronavirus test came back negative today. Bit of an emotional rollercoaster for me not being able to be with her through it, although luckily I could keep in contact by text message. Just 24 hours for us, and a happy ending, but how much more unimaginably awful for those separated for weeks from loved ones not knowing if they'll come out.

I worry about the Americans. We've spent the last 50 years getting to grips with SI - they're still on Imperial.