AndrewC

Is that what you call your boyfriend?

I'm getting mid life crisis red.

My bad. Apologies. A belated Happy Birthday to Mick. Your present is another completed trip around the sun.

Greetings all you groovy cats. (humans too) Its a chilly but not frosty morn in the boring borough. Went to thaw the bird bath but there was no need. John, the desire for bacon is a fundamental sign of improvement. Took the plunge and bought a new car. As expected it is a Land Rover Discovery Sport. All of it done online and a 2 week delivery. No sales weasels, no upselling, no show room "coffee". Pick and click. All the paperwork is handled online, the car is delivered to my door and they take away the old one. The part-ex was better than any used car valuation so win win. Some modelling may happen later this afternoon. Last day on this project. Shame, it was one of the best short term bits of work I've done in ages. Enjoy the day.

I'm convinced our local Horrorsons is either a stealth senior's home, or the company bus them in by the hundred at opening time, then ship them out at closing. Most seem to be able to find the narrowest point of any aisle and congregate there for a long chat. Others blindly push their carts into anyone and anything at random. I'm sure it is the company's method to slow genuine shoppers to a crawl in order to hopefully get them to shop for more than they came in for. Don't get me started on their near weekly game of musical aisles. Nothing seems to be in the same place 2 weeks running. The car park is mostly one way. 9 times out of 10 the person going the wrong way is an older driver. (as in driver's license chiselled on a stone tablet.)

Duplicated duplicate posting. Just one question though. Why do people here describe their shopping trips as the Sainsbury Grand Prix? I find the supermarkets more like dodgems at the fun fair.

Tony, I spent about half an hour @ Rockar in Stratford measuring the gate, width and length of every Land Rover and Range Rover model. The Evoque aka Ewok is as you say to small for my 4 full sized modules. My Freelander 1 is an exercise in frustration as far as the cargo area goes. The seats don't go flat but fold into the leg well of the back seats. That leaves less than 1200mm from the back door shelf to the back seat bulge. When transporting the current modules I actually remove the rear seats completely. They aren't designed to do that but it only takes 8 Torx bolts and about 5 minutes to get them out. That effectively gives me slightly more space than the Freelander 2. The other issue are the rear wheel wells intrude on the cargo area leaving a rather narrow space. The Disco Sport has about 1 1/2 times the space with the rear seats folding fully flat and a wider wheelbase.

Good moaning all from the boring borough. Quiet here but hives of activity on either side. The lovely Russian lady in the unlicensed HMO has moved out sadly. Talking to one of her housemates it appears the writing is on the wall for him and the only other remaining occupant. The council has stepped on the so called "manager" about occupancy, size of one of the rooms, no license, etc. Either she will have to get the landlord to spend a lot of £ to bring it up to standard (that won't happen) or she'll have to find a single family to occupy, or more likely she'll turn the place back to the landlord. Either way the place looks set for a change. On the other side, as mentioned yesterday it sounds like a building site. More furniture vanished into a van late last night. There is also very sad looking baby furniture in the back garden. In other news, yesterday was the 14th anniversary of owning my Land Rover Freelander. It's the longest I've ever had a vehicle. More than double the time of any other. Also by far the most reliable. It was used when we got it and so has been on the road for 16 1/2 years. After the notices from its last MoT and increasing small niggles it has been decided to retire the old girl. A new replacement is my research task for this week. Most likely in the form of a Discovery Sport as the Evoque is too small for hauling a layout or modules. That's about all from here. Coffee time and another day of quietly productive work. Enjoy the day.

Happy Moanday from the boring borough. For the first time in nearly 11 months I actually got to run some trains. (Don't tell Deb) Just under 6 weeks until the module's next outing. I'm also responsible for the DCC and WIFI for the whole meet so I need to make sure everything is running with no issues well in advance so I can concentrate on the wiring designs. SWMBO having a bad day already. Rushed for the train, forgot her lunch, train was cancelled in the 10 minutes between here and the station. Next train beyond rammed, as was the next after that. She finally rolled into work after 100 minutes. More than double the usual door to door journey time. To say she ain't a happy camper would be an understatement. Looks like the neighbour next door who lost his wife before Christmas is moving on. Lots of building noise over the fast couple of weeks. The back of the house has had all the rendering cracks filled and the whole wall repainted. Last night they were moving furniture out at 11pm. I'm just hoping it doesn't become another buy to let property. I've had my fill of asshat tenants from the other side. Then again asshat renters can be gotten rid of whereas new asshat owners can't as easily. We shall see what happens in the coming weeks. Back to work and another coffee. Enjoy the day.

Morning all. bird count here. for (int i = 0; i<1000000; i++) { console.WriteLine("Starling"); } Oh, and a couple of pigeons.

There are actually 2 different reds in use. Action red dates from the late 60s and is more orange. It was also very unstable with differing batches fading at different rates. Some locos faded to a pinkish orange. System red is not the same as Soo red. That colour has changed slightly over the years but like any red pigment it fades.

Greetings from the frosty confines of Ice Station Zebra boring borough. John, catching up on your blog. Really looking forward to a happy conclusion. As for your vanishing pastries. I think your patisserie fairy must be related to the ice cream fairy that lives in our freezer. Nanny State has improved greatly from when BD first launched it. Back then it was like hop brewed tea. Brian, congratulations to Shelia. That is quite an accomplishment. As you said a good start to the year. AndyRam, nice to see you back and posting. Keep that damn dog locked away. In the news today, MiL and BiL are headed this way in May for 5 weeks. The temptation is to barricade myself in the shed. BiL has a list of places and things he wants to do and see. Trouble is fitting them all in and the cost. (Berlin, Praha, Paris, Amsterdam, Inverness for a concert, Manchester, York) I've come up with a partial solution with a 7 day 6 night trip. Boring Borough > Brussels > Köln > Berlin > Praha on trains then fly back on QueasyJet. Getting to Köln is the easy part with Eurostar and Thalys (as I have points on both) Can anyone suggest the best way of booking the trains from Köln to Berlin and Praha? Cheap tickets, DB or through another? Would a rail pass be best? Meanwhile the siren's call of the coffee makers (yes, plural) have become too seductive. No pods in this household. Fresh ground only. I must not resist any longer. Enjoy the day. TFIF

They've changed the definition a few times over the years. Last time I looked it was either. If you read the current page it is vague. In one paragraph it says "out of the gene pool, dead or sterile". Further on it says "self selection, causes own demise".

Not quite. It is awarded for removing themselves from the gene pool. Death is the usual way, but survival and removal of their ability to reproduce has been rewarded in the past. For example the classic idiot that managed to blow his squishy bits half way to Jupiter with a dodgy firework down his pants. The terms snowflake and douchebag were common in my school back in the mid 70s. Nothing is new anymore.

Not sure to be honest. Most likely it is a generic 40' that has no actual prototype.

Decals: Microscale set number 87-221. The action red will be more difficult. I get mine from Canada via the MiL. Normally you can't get it shipped legally anymore. Model Junction used to stock it in the Poly-S range but they haven't had it in ages. There is the Badger modelflex range and Model Junction has stocked the pack of Canadian railroad colors but currently out of stock.

We are now #Neverspoons and boycott the chain. Martin's political propaganda (regardless of what side he is on) is not something I want when I sit down to enjoy a pint and or a meal. 'spoons seem to have been going out of their way to p*ss off their customers lately. Political propaganda, limiting their menu, forcing brewers to accept stupid low prices for beer or get black listed, keeping fewer ales, poor cellarmanship, shutting down of all social media to hide from any criticism, loss of community involvement by removing local fund raisers from their pubs, total ban on dogs, and the list goes on. So many better pubs out there. Even Greene Thing pubs are preferable these days.

The proposal was in the flyer that everyone supposedly received before Christmas along with the holiday collection schedule. Basically: waste - once every 3 weeks garden waste - once every 3 weeks kitchen waste - once every 2 weeks Mixed recycling (glass, tin, plastic) - once every 2 weeks Paper - once every 2 weeks. You'll end up with 4 full sized wheelie bins and the kitchen caddy. I predict a lot of fat foxes around the boring borough.

Bachmann did both a white and a pale blue box car. Both liveries are fictional. (and ridiculous) Sort of like the Bachmann U-boat in action red. CP never owned any. Canadian Pacific had their own colour coding prior to the corporate multi-mark implementation. Some were carried over into the CP rail period. tuscan & grey - locomotives oxide - most box cars yellow* - heat insulated black* - gondola, flat car, mow green* - newsprint silver* - refrigerated or express passenger. CP multi mark colours. green - CP ships & containers blue - CP transport / Smith transport (trucking) & containers orange - CP air action red - CP Rail * with the addition of the colours above. Fording Coal - no multimark Pan Canadian Petroleum - no multimark CNCP telecommunication - no multimark Marathon real estate - no multimark. CP hotels - no multimark

Greetings from the boring borough. Fairly quiet around here apart from the gentle rustle crash bang of the bins as it is garbage morn. Sadly our useless excuse for a council will soon be making the event a rare occurrence. Plans are afoot to move to 3 weeks for general waste, and 2 weeks for recycling. This is to be accomplished by eliminating the 3 smaller recycling tubs and replacing them with 2 full sized wheelie bins. That means some households will have 4 full sized wheelie bins and a smaller kitchen waste caddy. At present we have space for 2 bins or 1 bin and the 3 existing tubs. Our option is to either dump the new paper bin and just throw all paper into the general waste, haul the paper bin through the house, or haul the paper waste to the local tip. (council removed all the paper recycling units apart from the ones at their main centres, asshats) Most likely we will just stop recycling paper altogether. Good thing we don't have one of their garden waste bins as well. That would be a large chunk of our front garden taken up by oversized bins. In other news the Calgary Model Railway Society is celebrating their 25th anniversary in April. I may have mentioned it before but the CMRS was a coming together of 6 clubs and around 100 individual modellers in order to promote the hobby locally and to create a model railway exhibition out of the ashes of the old general hobby show. There was a lot of politics involved and conflict of interest with a certain shop owner / wholesaler. Suffice to say the society now runs Canada's biggest model train show (13k average attendance) which benefits the exhibitors and local food bank. As one of the founding board members I've been invited to the anniversary dinner in April. Sadly I won't be able to make it as the airfare are stupid expensive for what should be offseason. That's about all for now. Work, coffee, work, coffee, codeine, sleep, repeat. Enjoy the day.

Co-codamal is a pain killer combo of paracetamol & codeine. The only side effect I get with the full strength co-codamal is the usual codeine induced constipation and stomach upset. Generally I never take it more than 3 days in a row as my quack suggests.

Keeping it legal, I’d go for the PR 3/4 or a Locobuffer connected to a Raspberry PI running headless JMRI. That is good for about 4 or 5 smartphone throttles. Another option would be to use a Digikeijs DR5000 as a command station with its built in Z21 WiFi service. That way you can connect the Zeypher as a throttle / booster and still use any other loconet devices.

Would that be De Brabantse? (the cafe off Spui) Still decent last time we were there. The station used to be a wasteland for decent food but there is now a Little Delirium cafe at the far end by the river along with a couple of other half decent places.

Are you painting a floor or the Forth railway bridge? Asking for a friend.

Now you are just bragging.