FarrMan

On 19/02/2022 at 13:16, Headstock said:

 

 no more adding to the cue.

Is that how you treat sub-standard RTR!

Lloyd

4 minutes ago, great northern said:

Thank you Lloyd. I do try to get angles which would have been possible on the real thing, though it often isn't easy. I suppose that isn't surprising, considering the size that both myself and the camera would be if reduced to scale. If I was 23mm tall it would be much easier to stand where poles and oher such things weren't in the way, and handle a tiny camera, of course.

You succeed.

If you were 23mm tall, you would find difficulty getting clothes - and you would be buried by the snow here!

Lloyd

I do like both of the above photos. Just the sort of photos that would have been taken.

Lloyd

23 hours ago, Northmoor said:

I've never heard of scientists using Centimetres (in fact I've never seen them used since my GCSE Maths textbooks over 30 years ago), but training as an Engineer it was made clear that the only important units are every three orders of magnitude: Micron, Millimetre, Metre, Kilometre.

I have used scientific notation (x.y by 10 to the power of n), but had never heard of engineering notation until I had to teach it. It is similar to scientific notation, but you can have 1 to 3 digits before the decimal point, and n must be a multiple of 3 - hence mm, m, Km as you have said.

I have had a few experiences of mixed dimensions, but i think the strangest one was asx an undergraduate at Liverpool University during the changeover period. I think it was a soils lab. where we had to weigh samples. We had balances with weights to put on one side to nearly balance the weight of the sample, with the difference in weight being shown on a needle attached to the top arm against a suitable scale. The weights provided were in imperial, but the difference in metric! We this ended up with x ounces plus or minus y grams.

Lloyd

22 hours ago, john new said:

Problem with us oldies, is we can work in metric and do, but were hard wired in childhood to think in imperial. I will look at something and know instinctively it is, for example about 5ft, but would have to put the tape on it to get the metre.mm split. I don’t instantly think metre and a third or metre and a half.  Not helped by industry working without mentioning cms but other places quoting cm sizes.

 

Cms are used by scientists, mms by engineers. As an engineer, I detest cms. Architects can't tell the difference!

Lloyd

On 13/02/2022 at 22:20, john new said:

With the recent concentration on wagons I am thinking of adding a timber plank load to enhance an r-t-r 13T wooden bodied open. I believe the Oxford one to be a general wagon not a minerals wagon. I have looked at p26 of the loading guide at http://www.barrowmoremrg.co.uk/BRBDocuments/Booklet_BR20426_Issue.pdf so can see how to rope it.

 

What I can’t find anywhere on line is a guide to what a standard length of timber would be likely to be when going from sawmill to builders depot. Were there standard widths, thicknesses and lengths? 

Timber these days come in standard lengths with 300mm increments. I presume in pre-decimal days, that would be foot increments, starting at 6', maximum length normally available 16', though you may get specials longer. You should be able to get standard cross section sizes from the trada website, www.trada.co.uk, but I can't access it just now. Most of these are just imperial sizes rounded (usually down) to metric.

Lloyd

We always referred to DMUs derisively as Bug Cars, though you have to be careful to pronounce the C properly.

Now I have contributed to this sad discussion. Perhaps we should have a 'boring' icon!

Lloyd

13 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

Can you imagine a less likely shop steward?

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

Yes, Tony - Me!

Lloyd

On 05/02/2022 at 17:14, toboldlygo said:

I believe that's the first white rhino spotted in the wilds of Devon - thought you where extinct  

That's a black rhino by the looks of it. It is not easy to tell them apart as they are the same colour! White is a variation of wide, so the white rhino has a wide mouth. The much rarer black rhino has a narrow mouth. Trivia I picked up in Zimbabwe.

Lloyd

4 hours ago, Regularity said:

Judging by the tail hanging out, you appear to have a metal rodent inside your panel…

So that's what happened to my armoured mouse!

Lloyd

14 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

That's a ludicrous statement. I would have expected Sharman to know better. A glance at a GA will immediately show how absurd such a degree of movement would be. The thermal expansion coefficient of steel is around 10 ppm/°C. The boiling point of water at 250 psi is about 205 °C; taking that as the temperature of the boiler plates, from an ambient temperature of say 5 °C on a cold day, that's an expansion of 0.2% or about ¾" over 30 ft. 

 

The boiler cladding will be at a very much lower temperature so will move very much less - depending, though, on how it's attached to the boiler plates.

Thank you for that clarification. Firebox temperatures would be rather higher, but I had thought that the comment that I quoted sounded far too much, but am glad to have it confirmed. I just had not bothered to work it out from the coefficient of expansion of steel. I know that it can be significant at high temperatures - One of the buildings that collapsed at the World Trade Centre was due to a steel beam (above a fuel tank that was on fire) expanding sufficiently to push the adjacent beam off its supporting column. Perhaps Mike Sharman was meaning to refer to the length of the expansion slide plate?

Lloyd

17 hours ago, 4630 said:

It's the too intense (saturated) colour that irritates me.  My perception is that colours in the real world under 'normal' lighting conditions are rarely as saturated as they appear to be presented in some magazines.

Colour saturation could also depend on the location. I remember (nearly 35 years ago now) that in the Antipodes, the sun being so much brighter, the colours looked so much more intense that we are are used to in the UK, especially here in the Highlands of Scotland! Perhaps a scene set in Southern US, for instance, should look 'too intense' to our native eyes.

Lloyd

12 hours ago, gr.king said:

I wholly take the point that boiler expansion has some bearing on this relationship, but would it change things by as much as a couple of inches?

Mike Sharman in 'A Guide to Locomotive Building', p.8 states 'Add to this the fact that the boiler/smokebox and firebox units were only usually attached at the cylinder end, the rest expanding and contracting rearwards some 6" in length in a big Pacific - .....'

Lloyd

1 hour ago, great northern said:

Can you say where the photographer would have been to get the shot below please Lloyd?

 

 

Photo copyright of AC Ingram, and published here for research purposes.

 

This is what I'm trying to reproduce, sadly without the Midland running lines.

Gilbert

I would guess on a stepladder, a little to the East of the West end of the parapet. From memory, the parapet stopped just West of the West abutment. Looking down at the Westernmost midland line was not far off vertical. Of course, what one remembers as a child/youth, may be quite different to what one would see as an adult. One's view is related to one's size. Things appear bigger to shorter (or altitudinaly challenged) people. I remember thinking as a child that the beach at Barry Island was huge. When I went there 5 years ago, it looked quite small - not at all how I had remember it.

Regarding the AC Ingram photo, I cannot recall seeing any other photos taken that far along the parapet, but that is not saying very much.

Lloyd

11 hours ago, great northern said:

Having parked on Midland Road, our man has lugged a stepladder along Spital Bridge, so as to be able to see over the higher part of the parapet, and get us this view,

 

 

I think he would have needed his stepladder for the previous views as well, unless he is VERY tall.I could only see from the West end of the parapet, just West of the Midland lines, but then I am altitudinally challenged.

Lloyd

11 hours ago, Mike 84C said:

I worked on the railway in the 1960's, I was Beeching in our village pub and to lots of my "friends". Did'nt shout about model railway interests. Times have changed, my stepdaughter is a track Engineer for Network Rail, both sons of a longtime pal work on the railway. No mickey taking of those three young people. They only have to wave a pay slip!

Reminds me of someone that I once worked with, who used to work on the Railway at Kyle of Lochalsh station. He was known there as Beeching, but he was stupid. When he left the railway, a month later the line was repreaved! We all put it down to his leaving!

Lloyd

11 hours ago, Headstock said:

 

Evening Lloyd,

 

no such engine.

What is Tony's photo of Humorist a wee bit above then?

Lloyd

8 hours ago, Headstock said:

 

Good morning Tony,

 

He he, obviously aimed at the average Railway modeler?

Was he thinking of modelling 60097 himself?

Lloyd

5 hours ago, Tony Wright said:

An interesting (as always) post, Tony.

 

Many thanks. 

 

I've been puzzling how to write something 'new' about Little Bytham for Hornby Magazine. I don't think 'new' photographs will be a problem, because I'm sure Mike Wild will find some very different views. In that respect, it'll be better to have someone else photograph it, since all my previous submissions have been illustrated by me. 

 

I think the 'basic framework' will probably be around the same 'aims and objectives', which were established when the layout was planned. I can't alter these - they are what they are; a model of an actual prototype, as near to 'scale' as possible, the subject matter being an ECML depiction in OO (yes, I know, it should have been in EM, but I didn't take the right(eous) path I should have done over 40 years ago) of my trainspotting heydays between 1956 and 1962, to be built by a highly-experienced team of modellers, pooling resources and working together by helping each other as well, my responsibilities being the construction of much of the scenery, making some of the buildings/structures, doing a lot of the wiring, laying all the fiddle yard(s') track, making (most of) the locomotives, making/modifying (most of) the passenger rolling stock and ensuring that it works well at all times (allowing for my operating incompetence!). 

 

I hope I'll be able to find something to write about in a different way.

 

Regards,

 

Tony. 

 

I like the idea of writing about how you research train formations. Before I saw that I was thinking, how about stressing the teamwork involved? This might be by concentrating on an aspect that someone else has contributed, either physical or operational? Perhaps you could even ask them to write the piece, or at least give you the information so that you could write the piece? There must be enough for many articles there. Or on the operational side, something on realistic operation, such as how to achieve realistic speeds, realistic stopping and starting, etc.

Lloyd

2 hours ago, APOLLO said:

Buy your coal soon as you probably can't soon. I got a bag from my local petrol station a couple of years ago - it'll last forever !!

 

 

Brit15

I still burn coal on an open fire. Plenty there for a tender. Perhaps I should crush some up and sell it! Though there is some dross in it already, so no need to crush?

Lloyd

13 hours ago, gwrrob said:

 

Is that me or the kit you’re talking about.

Perhaps it is both?

Lloyd

1 hour ago, great northern said:

Deltic roars off, but assault on the senses continues, as fish empties follow close behind.

 

 

not quite the full effluvia of a loaded train, but the memory lingers on.

And now the noses are afflicted!

Lloyd (I can't stand the smell of fish)

3 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

"Five and twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark -

Brandy Hornby for the Parson, 'Baccy Bachmann for the Clerk.

Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -

Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by!"

 

(with apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

I think that that is a lot older than Rudyard Kipling. I think it is traditional Wiltshire, and probably further West as well. It was Wiltshire folk who buried the beverages in the mill pond and were raking it out of the pond when the excise men came by. They played the daft laddie and claimed they were raking in the moon! Hence Wilts folk are known as 'Moonrakers'.

Lloyd

2 hours ago, Podhunter said:

Use print to PDF, then attach the PDF here.

My computer has a 'Print to PDF' option when I choose to print a document from Office.  If that doesn't appear on your computer then there are free PDF printers available.  A PDF printer is not a physical printer, but a piece of software that converts your Office document to a PDF file.

Just to add to that, if you print it to pdf as a 'handout', 6 slides to a page, the content should still be readable, but much shorter!

Lloyd

Re the discussion a day or so ago on containers in open wagons, I have consulted 'Freight Wagons and Loads in service on GWR and BR,WR, by J.H. Russell. Fig 119 shows a LNER 6 plank open (I cannot see a number) loaded with two small flat GWR SL containers, one on top of the other. These containers were used for 'ceramics, tiles, & similar earthenware materials'. The date is given as 1928, and the location as Paddington Goods. The next image, Fig 120, is of GWR 6 plank open 148250 with side door open, showing it loaded with an open bulk container, CB2948, for the conveyance of sand, gravel, etc. No date given, but location as Royal Oak.

Lloyd