AndrueC

Yes, I always reduce mine to 25% original size before posting.

This has been ongoing for a while now. I'll often find that the space set aside for the image is flashing before eventually being replaced with the smaller 'no image available' link. Refreshing the page usually loads all images without issue.

Announced now? Might be available to actually buy in 2025 then based on their current track record. I'm still waiting for the Super Voyager and retooled HST to reappear.

So they both dealt in crap?

I think education should be about the stuff you can't work out for yourself (the three Rs), teaching you how to be a functional member of society and teaching you how to work stuff out and how to find more information. I see little value in rote learning of random facts unless you intend to specialise in a discipline which requires them (in this case becoming a historian).

But we haven't forgotten where we came from. When the subject of Stephenson's Rocket came up I was able to access all the information I might have wanted in a fraction of a second just like anyone else would be able to should the need arise. There is just no point clogging our minds up with such esoterica until/unless we need it. Edit: Spelling of name corrected ;)

Meh. Stuff changes. If you don't adapt you die. That's how nature works and it's at the heart of human civilisation as well. Clinging on to old beliefs for the sake of it was never a good survival strategy. As a species we have an excellent record of Stephenson (and Stevenson, lol) and his work so there is no need for every member of our society to have a personal record of it. We need to be embracing the future not clinging to the past.

I'm going to be contentious here but - so what? Kids have enough to learn just to keep up with modern life. What value is there in knowing who designed a locomotive over 200 years ago? If they are choosing to become a railway historian then fair enough but for 95% of children that information has no value and is just a distraction.

The joys of summer. Currently sitting around mid-60s MPG for my Corolla.

No more stone walling! For a long time now I've had a section of cliff around two of the slopes leading to/from Wilf's Junction. My intention was to make it look like the track beds had been carved out of the cliffs. To be honest I'd never been really happy with it. It looked too orange and the fissures between the rocks seemed to deep. It was okay but disappointing for what was supposed to be a major landscape feature. Anyway this week's project was to finally install a stone wall along the top edge. I decided to use this because it looked good. It's also remarkably cheap. But then I realised there was a problem. My track sits on Gaugemaster underlay and because it's code 80 it meant the top of the rails was about level with the top of the stone wall which didn't look right. The only solution was to increase the height of the cliff edge. After a bit of trial and error I settled on using Sculptamould. This is plaster with shredded paper mixed in. I'd bought it a while back for making rocks with moulds and didn't like it. But for hand moulding plaster it's pretty good. Damn' good in fact. It looked okay and even 'rock like' when it was hardened. But then I painted it and quite frankly it's almost impossible to tell where the original rock ends and the extension starts. Anyway with that in place it was time to install the wall. It was fairly easy - just put down glue then hold it in place against the landscape until the glue has set. I was quite impressed as I laid it. The next and final stage was to cover any gaps or joins with flock and put down some static grass along the edges and in a few select places along the cliff. Then I stood back..and my jaw dropped. My somewhat odd looking 'thing' had become a rock face. It's even a rock face that stands up to close scrutiny. It's some of the best scenery I've done so far. And an overview of the area:

Ah ha! It's always worth digging around in your bits and pieces drawer! Turns out at some point in the past I'd bought a split power supply from DCC Concepts. I've also found a collection of their ground signals which I can butcher to suit my gantry purposes. Would it be possible to power the three wire signals from one of the split outputs? I already have a transformer for that but it would mean two signal buses (one for the two wire LEDs and one for the three wire LEDs) if I do that. Presumably I can only use one of the outputs which results in an unbalanced load. In case anyone is wondering the reason I have two kinds of LED is that the three wire LEDs are already mounted into lineside signals with ladders, the two wire LEDs are just moulded light units or in the case of the ones I've just found intended to be ground signals).

Just did a test with a coin battery. Connect the wires one way round the green LED lights. Swap the wires and the red LED lights.

Thanks for all the replies. I haven't had a chance to test the LEDs but it's two LEDs (one green one red) in a plastic moulded housing with two wires coming out. I assume that polarity one way lights one of the LEDs and the opposite polarity lights the other one. I'm going to have perhaps a dozen of these signals to mount so it sounds like the DPDT route is more trouble than it's worth. I have some pre-built signals that I can just connect to the SPDT because they have three wires and they do sell ground signals I could use. It just seems a shame and a waste of money not to be able to recycle these LED signals.

I am looking to build some signal light gantries and connect them to my turnout controllers which have an SPDT switch I can use. I have some old LED signals that I'd like to repurpose but there's a catch. The LEDs are only fed by two wires (black and red). I assume it's a pair of LEDs wired together in reverse. Can I just connect red to one output, black to the other output and red+black (with an appropriate resistor) to the common? That sounds far too simple to be correct.

Absolutely! I've always followed the mantra 'use it or lose it'. Muscle loss is harder to counter the older you get and eventually it becomes unavoidable. I've always planned to start off with more than I need so that toward the end I still hopefully have enough. That's one of the reasons I took up golf. It's not the most physically demanding of sports but if you walk rather than ride you're getting a lot of benefits. Today I'm playing a course that is officially 6,300 yards from the normal tees and with my usual amateur's standard of play I'll probably end up walking nearer to 7,000 yards including up a couple of steep hilly sections. I won't even be out of breath at the end of it. It's sad to see that most people riding buggies are young people. The older generation only use them if they are injured or frail. I also always use the stairs (and run up them) rather than taking a lift or escalator. Although I did once regret doing that on a rare visit to London when I was exiting St Paul's. I'll confess that was a bit much 😁

I agree. I don't think have to understand the technical details when you're young. All you have to understand is that if you want a decent retirement you need to be putting money toward it out of every pay packet and the more money you can put in and the earlier it goes in the better.

Actually they are enjoying a resurgence at the moment and I might be buying one. It will only be for ten years and the bulk of my pension will be kept elsewhere but annuities are offering good rates at the moment and for me will provide a useful guaranteed income for the first decade while I find my feet.

An 82 year-old at my golf club has just been told that he has two months to vacate his rental property. This is in the South Northants area so it's anyone's guess how he's going to find somewhere else for him and his wife. Apparently the council won't house him unless he gets evicted. So now he faces an almost impossible challenge to find somewhere else or the extremely unpleasant experience of forcing his LL to evict him. I am very, very glad that my Dad told me to get on the property ladder ASAP. I now own my home and don't have to worry about keeping a roof over my head.

Well so far my plan is on track. The first day of full-time employment I went into town and set up a private pension. After a few years I changed the monthly payments to have an annual increment of 10%. I kept that in place for the remaining 20 years. My pension payments have always been the biggest single monthly expenditure - considerably bigger than my mortgage payments. I never married or had kids (which wasn't really a plan just never found the right woman) so at age 42 I all but paid off my mortgage. I'd already switched it to an offset arrangement so wasn't paying any interest. I left it with £300 on the books knowing that my current account would mean I'd almost never pay interest and hopefully it would annoy the hell out of the book keepers at the bank :) Actually it occurs to me that my mortgage period ends later this year. I wonder how much they will try and charge me to wind it up? The documentation only says something about 'the going rate' so isn't specific. It's not like they can do much to me if I only offer to pay a token £25. So here I am at 56 and it looks like a comfortable retirement is now possible and may indeed soon be starting. This is the bit of my life that's harder to plan. But I'm up for the challenge and I've not yet met anyone who regrets retirement :)

Exactly my position. I thought management had understood that when they agreed to let me switch to a four day week earlier this year. Me and my (now ex-) boss are the two most technically knowledgeable people in the company. Maybe they do know it. Perhaps this is their cunning plan - decimate the team and use contractors. Good luck with that.

And in a timely manner things get weird at work. Boss resigns, senior management apparently want us back in the office two days a week (screw that). Maybe I'll be retiring six months earlier than I intended. It's not so much the working in an office that bothers me. It's someone thinking they can bend me to their will just because they pay me a salary. News flash: I don't need their money.

Depends on the individual. A lot of people hate having to beg the government for money or justify their circumstances. It's thankfully something I've not have to do since I got my first job many decades ago but I'm pretty sure there aren't many people who love the DWP or their experience of dealing with them.

Yes. It's not as mad as it sounds though. If the payment were only made to 'those who really need it' time and money would have to be spent working out who needs it and how to assess them then more money would need to be spent administering the system. It costs the public purse less to just give everyone over a certain age a lump sum. It's one of the reasons why a universal income could be a good idea. Do away with all the means testing for multiple benefits which is degrading and expensive to operate. Eliminate the opportunities for fraud by saying that everyone gets it anyway. I think that would still require a bit of administration to vary it by age but basically extend the pension system back to everyone over the age of 18.

Ha ha. My retirement plan is play as much golf as possible. Then play some more :)

I love the main part of my work - computer programming. It's interesting, it's challenging and who doesn't love a good mystery? :) But what I hate are: The increasing bureaucracy so that management can create an illusion of control to make themselves feel better. The unreliable and unstable developer tool that Microsoft Visual Studio has become. Watching those younger than me slaving away on the same treadmill that I'm about to get off.