peach james

Those that can, do. I’m merely Retired reg force PO of the RCN. Unlike the toughs I knew who did some of the special Ops training…I’m thinking of one of my mates, who tried out for CJIRU, the Canadian Chemical Warfare response unit. He’s a wizard at CBRN, a bit of a PT nut, and failed on the shooting part. There were others who went off to play with JTF2 that I know…it’s 90% heart for all those sorts of jobs. Similarly, I worked with a couple of failed prospective SAR techs…hey didn’t know the meaning of the word quit. PO2 Barrett for sure…

Did you hear? The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested the entire workforce at Kitchens in Kits? They charged the lot with being counter fitters.

I think there is something fishy going on here, I haven’t quite cod onto it though.

RCN UOR system was equally as messed up (insert squaddy language here…).

So, coal availability- it was available in Toronto as late as 1990, from the merchant on Mount Pleasant Ave... I know, I bought at least one bag from there, though it was fairly near useless for live steam use. (the blue bags from the place in Hamilton were far better...) https://jamiebradburnwriting.wordpress.com/2020/05/07/past-pieces-of-toronto-dominion-coal-silos/ I'd suggest that perhaps reach out to the US modelers, as they will have good gen on what to do. Trevor's web page ( https://themodelrailwaydotshow.wordpress.com/port-rowan-in-164/ ) has a bunch of interesting info on modeling a rural (SW ontario) area in that sort of time frame.

there were at least three operational (or awaiting a boiler…) n Canada, last.I knew. Allan Crook in Hope had one (I think it has gone to the UK), there s a Ruston in Duncan, and I think a Fowler in Blyth, Ont. There may be a couple more, I don’t remember if Milton has one donated from Charles Matthews or not. There had been one Fowler ex Toronto area as well, perhaps with Duffern Pavng. Im not sure what the TER shows, ts not always right for over here, James

I know that our fearless leader had a bit of a run in with him, but I’d feel a bit remiss not to link, as he was active in here at one point, James

At irk with Scotch fire tube boilers, try to open vents at 5 PSI. There is the same weight of water in a 600 hp boiler as we had for 14 000 hp on the ship. James

I’ve been sorting several lifetimes of magazines that came to me, and thought mostly of Chris L, and the shock of MRC going away…

I thought the first Welsh rocket was made from an old winding engine found in the Rhondda and powered with coal?

Given that you have addresses up to 999 available for points, I'd first try moving them by 10-16 from where they are, to see if that fixes the problem. There are a couple of quirks of different systems particularly with leading 0's (Digitrax does NOT accept a mobile decoder address of 0xxx as valid...). So, if it were I, I'd try at 1xx or higher for the address. I haven't had any real problems with the DS51K1's that I have, other than the 2 I cooked on install. Oops ! James

It all starts from my memory, in about the winter of 1979, when dad took me to the Toronto Society of Model Engineers show at Pier 6 in Toronto, where Art Ellis had the (2nd) circle of track set up, with a 2-6-4 T in 3.5" gauge (I think !), with a lovely chute that dropped the coal into the firebox, rather than using a shovel. I mean, I'd been around steam my entire life- I think I was the dummy in the pram when dad took it for a stroll pulled by one of his 3/4" traction engines (His Lordship, in showman's guise, BL engine...). There's cini film of it somewhere- not sure where (!) it is, but one of us has it. I certainly had experience with being a passenger behind the roller JPRoller80 by Peach James, on Flickr Before that, my sister had con'd my dad into giving her "Louis money" ( I assume a 1 pound note, with a cat on it) and getting the Faller railcar seen here: There's a bunch of extra track in that- I know the photo is taken in the house we were in 1980-82, and the track would have come from John's Photo and Hobby in Toronto. At that point, dad didn't have any railway engines at all in Canada- there was a loco in the UK that he had sold on when we moved (and I don't think I have any photos of it) in 5" gauge, as well as some Triang that was left with his mum. (Lord of the Isles, Rocket & a dock shunter). On the other side, Raymond Gordon Collins (my grand-dad) had a fair collection of stuff, had been involved in some of the Liverpool area clubs in the 1945-50 timeframe, then his collection was "donated" before I came along. I later got a box of stuff ex Rodrick Collins, my uncle who passed from Cancer also well before I came along. There's some Riverossi euro coaches, which are tat, but I'm loath to dispose of them. Total of stuff from RG Collins is a pair of Lord of the Isles, and a milk tanker...that's what had escaped being in "the shed" to be donated/disposed of. I think that the OO railway stuff started to be accumulated after about 1984, Because the US stuff that I got was...um...ick. It would have had XF4 couplers, and they don't do anything well. They didn't auto couple, they didn't stay coupled, they didn't uncouple. At least tension hook stays coupled !. So now I have everything from T- 7.x live steam...and I make a living with steam, having gotten my EOOW ticket in the Royal Canadian Navy for a "21000 shp cross compound steam ship" :) My grandmum (Molly Collins) was going to the UK on a regular basis, and started buying stuff from a 2nd hand store in Morecambe, as she had a school mate who lived there. Georges' Trains in Toronto also figures, as they had 2nd hand UK stock as well as a limited amount of new stuff. 1985, and the Thomas range, particularly Duck- $87, which I saved on my own to buy !

Whereas my experience with both 71 and 92 Detroits is the opposite- the 71-12-NA (500 kw) (so not turbo'd) worked like a champ, even with only 9 cylinders firing after someone (cough cough, NOT me !) tried to use it to motor a 1 MW TA up to speed in 0 seconds. The lightning flash of the generator breaker opening was visible around 3 corners into my shop, and I arrived with a CO2 after the 2nd one... (yes, they tried x2). DSC_0001 by Peach James, on Flickr That was a rough day- we arrived in Hawaii with 4 working generators, left with 2, after I spent ~36 hours getting the parts together to fix said detroit's cams, because it barred over clean at first, then locked solid at about 345% of rotation... Root Cause: Port TA had a exciter bolt sheer, so it lost excitation on the rotor, dumped the load to the stbd TA. Stbd TA tripped at >1 MW. Port TA was still on the bus when it dumped the load. GT came up, loaded onto the Emergency bus (up forward) just fine. Port DG was started (~14 seconds delay, IIRC), and then the Chief ET tried to put it on the #1 bus x2 without checking that the TA breakers were both open. (it was a known flaw that they wouldn't always open). After opening the TA breakers, they put the Port DG on load, and it wouldn't hold Hz @ 400 KW. I think we went to Shore Power (we were 99% tied up at the time), and then (my now boss) went down below with a thermal imaging camera to see what he could see- 9 cylinders firing, 3 not...Oh, this is going to be not a thing of beauty... When the Stbd TA took the load, it moved the turbine endways into the labyrinth seals too- so we had an oil spray incident, very similar to what caused the fire in 2014. 2 generators done in ~30 seconds. Port TA was repaired easy enough, just needed a new bolt. Stbd TA not so much, and Port DG needed a new power pack in the end, along with a bunch of shim/attachment bits for the 3 cylinders & several cam followers. (we had the shims, camshaft, cam followers, but no spare power pack, and not enough hours to figure out what power pack was hosed) James

Glad to see you back- I thought it might have more to do with the workload that you just vanished to deal with your fellow MM who needed a way home- COVID did a number on a lot of things !

I too would recommend a separate power supply, pain in the back side that it is. I would suspect that it is using a voltage multiplyer internally to charge the capacitors. Might a pair of ds52s work? (And they do charge off track). Or can you find any NOS DS 64’s? ( no, I don’t have one…my spare is running my floor level N layout) TBH, I use torti for the most part. James

So what’s that, about 5 2*4”s now ? Im terrified of what the next batch of ties for CPS II is going to cost. They are plastic 2*4 *16”, and I suspect I won’t get change from $500 for the 70 I need. I went out and did some clipping to find the 7 panels of curves I finished in March, then mucked around with Lego trains today. I’ve got some more wiring to do, then I will try the spiral, I think. Jeff, the Sulzer sounds fantastically unlike the V engines from GM.

Not Hudswell Clark, but Hunslet. There were 5 of them, this is one in 2010: SSC_0182 by Peach James, on Flickr

Where in BC? I take it neither southern Island(s), or Vancouver area, as both have fairly active communities. I take it you are aware of the TT support from Central Hobbies ? James (look west, far west, on the island...I'm to the west of Sooke)

My Certificate 3 (Engineering Officer of the Watch) ticket oral exam- it was supposed to be a practice, but we were under the gun for time, so the plan was if it was OK, it was the board, if it wasn't it was a practice... Anyway, LCdr Ang Lopez was the chair, and my drawing was main lube oil on HMCS Protecteur. (not HMS Protector !) I just made 1 minor error with the drawing- I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how the levers worked for operating the main engine throttles. Like 100% brain fart- the oil drives the servo piston UP, and that lifts the valves up to open them...and I was like a totally stunned idiot and spent 10 minutes trying to think of how it worked. It's simple, the pivot is at the left end, the cylinder is at the right end...but for the life of me, I couldn't figure it out when I was doing the drawing. I got it, but it took me those 10 minutes or so to figure it out. The oral portion was always 4 parts, the drawing (Sketch and explain xxxx system), Duties & responsibilities of someone (roundsman-yourself), an emergency question, and then usually an describe and operate. I think it made for good tickets- the board chair gets better the higher you go, and the start of it was at the LS (S1) level for board members, that we'd be on the boards. It means that you had to know the systems to be able to ask intelligent questions. I have my Cert 2A (Pro) written exam, which we were _not_ to get a copy of- I got 83% on it, which is quite a high mark. Done on July 4th, 2004 in Pearl Harbor. It's all irrevelevent now, but a lot of effort goes into learning enough to be safely dangerous. James (EOOW qualified for 21000 SHP Cross Compound Turbine Ship, January 2012)

I've spent the last couple of Sunday afternoons working on an arcology project- emptying out one of our BRMoV's members house. It's been layers of stuff- I remember sorting some of it 2 decades ago (cor, when I was young...), and more layouts have been added since. (well to be fair, the main layout had been removed. (a Swiss HOm3 layout that at one point extended around the room). Suffice to say, it's a bit of a task. It makes my railway room look positively tidy in comparison. Even when I had the floor covered with stuff, it was no where near as messy as this has been. If anyone is looking for Bemo models, I know where there is an extensive supply...

Sister Mary, who worked for a home health agency, was out making her rounds visiting home- bound patients when she ran out of Petrol. As luck would have it, a Texaco Gasoline station was just a block away. She walked to the station to borrow a Jerry can and buy some Petrol. The attendant told her that the only Jerry can he owned had been loaned out, but she could wait until it was returned. Since Sister was on the way to see a patient, she decided not to wait and walked back to her car. She looked for something in her car that she could fill with gas and spotted the bedpan she was taking to the patient. Always resourceful, Sister Mary carried the bedpan to the station, filled it with gasoline, and carried the full bedpan back to her car. As she was pouring the gas into her tank, two Baptists watched from across the street.. One of them turned to the other and said, 'If it starts, . . . I'm turning Catholic.' 😁

OK, you have a spare DB150, right? Rig it up so the DCS 100 is ONLY being used to generate command signals, and feed the loconet bus, and the DB150 is feeding 2 tracks and the DB 210 feeding the other two. That way, when things go wrong...if it affects 2 tracks, it is the booster for those 2 tracks, if it affects all 4, then it is the command station. I always try to travel with a spare command station to shows which are not right near chez James', as that way I have the bits for when the magic smoke goes poof... but that is a $400 investment or so. I didn't see any for sale DCS 100's at my last show, but it might be worth trolling some of the North American companies who do 2nd hand to try and get a 2nd one, as it is a bit of a point failure. The DB150 is not a great replacement 1:1 for it. (Central Hobbies/Otter Valley/Credit Valley/Georges up here in the great white north) Other options: https://www.tamvalleydepot.com/products/dccbooster.html one each track, supplied with DCC signal from the DCS-100, and fed from independent wall warts. If I was building what you have, that would have been a good option at the start. Its rather more work now to redo wiring than it is at the start. (I know, I stripped our club layout and made it DCC last year...) I know- I hate spending $ on stuff, but at the end of the day, sometimes that's the best solution. It sounds to me like it is likely an overheating issue, that or the batteries are flat. Again, if possible, just use the DCS-100 as the command station, and the "spare" DB150 as a booster. That way, if it does go pear shaped, you should only have to remove the jumper from the DB150, and unplug the DCS 100 to be able to use the DB150 as a command station, leaving the DCS100 out of it. But the first thing is change the batteries... (PS: My show @#@#$ of the day was the throat entrance turnout servo not working...) James

7 more lengths of track done, I’ve got to unload them from the van. Next step is a short break then probably I will take Caribou II to work and make the feed pump and injector work.

Remember to shop around- the discounts can be fairly good for VIA. It used to go as high as 50% off, and when I brought Smaller Schmoe across camping class (Coach), it cost the princely sum of $21 for them in 2019 from Toronto-Vancouver, with a 2 train delay in Longlac. (we went to Thunder Bay). We leave on Wed for our trip- I will post what it was like when we get back and I have some time :). Photos may be delayed- I'm taking B&W film...

If you are thinking of model stonework, I highly recommend looking at what Jeff has done on Gill Head. ( https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/157977-gill-head-kirkby-lunesides-neighbour/ )