chris p bacon

All those stepladders...you'd think a steam special was due I wonder if someone like Rolf harris was due that day...

See how many submit an invoice?

The trouble with laying that junction is that you'll be taking it up in a month and building a completely new layout.........Oh hang on....wrong owner....

You've been in the briefs of short counsel...... M'lud....the verdict can only be guilty.....send him down.......

Making a sarnie at lunchtime I look out the window and see a pair of wood pidgeons making their own porn film...... Here a a couple taken from the living room window over the last week or so. LTT bopping about, I had about 3 seconds to grab this shot. Lady Bacon caught this BT And the last time we went to Peterborough we popped into Ferry meadows for a wander about and snapped this Kingfisher from a bridge, saw a 2nd one later on.

You've obviously stayed at "The Royal Sportsman" in Porthmadog........

I'd say the latter is a large part of it. When helping to dispose of the estate of a P4 modellor a couple of years ago I met many of his friends and was lucky enough to see many P4 layouts of all shapes, sizes and era's that ran spectacularly well. His own layout was 35'x9' and portrayed Welwyn North 1930's, built to a high standard it was set up and run before dismantling and didn't display any of the perceived problems that P4 is accused of. Watching a long Tom with every piece of freight stock available on the up while an A3 romps along on the down with 12W Sheffield stock showed what one person can do building everything himself.

You have to be confident that whoever you employ will take the drawings you have and convert them into a workable building, part of that is flagging up any problems that might appear. What some of us have noted is that some will just build what you ask for, not what you need. Funniest one was an architect from Bedford who started to fly his own team in from Poland for projects, as they were so much cheaper. After problems started to appear and confusion he found that although they had reasonable English skills none could actually read a drawing or the details, his "Cheap team" ended up costing him 6 figures and they put him in hospital when he wouldn't pay them. There are cowboys everywhere and they speak different languages.

Going off topic here but this cheeses me off no end. It is a falacy that the Polish are somehow better than a tradesman from the UK. You only have to ask the local building control office of the problems they have with "builders" from other countries who do not bother to even find out what the standard is here let alone adhere to it. My own experience of seeing some of the work carried out by so called "Polish builders" is 2 flooded properties, a fire and countless structural problems, but people will keep using them because they think they are cheap.

I have a lot of sympathy for the people running a small business in any hobby. They most probably got into it because of something they wanted but although they were probably taught how to do CAD/ Casting/ mould making/ etching they were never taught customer relations. And from my experience, for every genuine customer there are 3 timewasters, I can't imagine it's any different in this hobby. Something I learnt very early about customers was how they think, working for a builder in the late 80's he was the most miserable b*gger ever, he would snap at customers and give short replies. Sometimes if they were asking a long or complicated question he would just walk away and ignore them. Plasterer and I were always telling him he should be more polite but he said "you can never satisfy customers so I don't bother". The lady who's house we were working on asked what his mood was like one day, we said "same as usual" she moaned about him for a bit and said how he got on her nerves, so we said "why do you use him" her reply "He's really good and I can't find better" He was right, no matter what your attitude is like if the product is good people will put up with it......if you don't believe me, travel Ryanair.

Could you rerphrase that........my PC has just scrubbed the hard drive..... Being handed a batten by someone cottaging...I ask you ...what has this thread come to....

Maybe sharpen it yourself if it's only a HSS one ? it's just a file.

I just looked for a piccie but couldn't find one. Essentially you take a piece of board say 400 square and about 6mm thick and run it halfway into the saw then back it out a few mm's, clamp that to the saw bed then when you rip the PCB there isn't a gap at the side of the blade. Does that make sense? if not I'll pop in the workshop and do an example

Maybe they were sexting each other......

This is why I suggested a sacrificial bed, get a piece of MDF/Ply and run it into the saw at the required width then cut the PCB over the top of it, it means there isn't the gap at the side of the blade, I'd also reduce the height of the blade so that there is less chance of it picking up the cut piece as it passes by.

All those days they were hoping to gain... page per day or page per week?

Understand where you're coming from but who are these people that are going to bring replacements to modern standards?

I'd be wary of cutting something so thin but if a sacrificial bed is run through first it might be ok (covering the rather large blade opening), The problem I can see with material such as this is when it passes by the back of the blade in which case I wouldn't have the blade so exposed and would only have it 3mm high.

Try passing a motion.......

Don't forget that PD include wheels and bearings which IIRC Coopercraft don't. The problem with (Coach) kits I have is that no one has ever produced the items I want, so it's build it yourself or model something else.There are a few D&S wagon kits that come up on Ebay but when people are silly enough to pay £40+ for a wagon when it can be scratchbuilt for a fraction then they're not an option. For coaches it's scratchbuild or get together with others for limited runs (as has been the case recently for some GN rigid 8 wheelers)

iPod. You see them on runners and cyclists around here, they have no idea what's approaching from behind and are generally in their own world. As an aside to this, I've helped marshall a 10 mile road race for a few years (17!) it's organised by the local athletic club (son is member, now chairman) and has 650 entrants, a few years ago they issued a notice to every entrant that iPods are not to be worn and that disqualification was the penalty if you did. For the first year they just made all aware that wore them that they would not tolerate it the following year, and showed them how much they were distracted by them. Since then I think only 2 have been disqualified for ignoring instructions due to iPod wearing and now most members at the club agree that they don't actually help and they are too much of a distraction from traffic around you.

Dad was Chf Eng and was on the bridge at the time. He did say that in the 50's they would port at Cape town on the way back round Cape Horn and find bits of net but had no recollection of hitting anything. from 60's onwards radar was much improved and they could spot a small rowing boat from miles away.

Just a quick one on that. 1971/2 British Surveyor, loaded and making a transit of the channel from the Gulf to Europort (Holland), as she gets nearer to the narrowest point over the radio comes "Steam gives way to sail"... there are a couple of small sailing vessels. Radio officer replies "Unable to manouvre, please alter your course" the reply comes back, "you must give way to sail" this time the Captain (Lenny Pugh? IIRC) says on the radio "Please put it in writing, until you do, alter your course" They were a small group of yachts out sailing, Brit Surveyor was a 200,000T+ tanker. The yacht owner registered an official complaint to BP, (I think I've still got a copy in dads things) needless to say he was made aware of just how much room she needed to manouvre (5 mile stop, 2-3 miles to turn).

These are cold cured moulds so might only make 10 at most, could be more but you don't know until they fail, in the case of what's on the bench at present there are 3 different moulds. I want to make 3 coaches of a specific diagram so I'm trying to cast the sides as seperate items, the ends are generic across other diagrams so I will cast as many as poss from the mould but as I have the masters I can cast another. For cost, the actual cast part isn't much, I reckon for a 53' coach I'm doing the resin would be £4-5, the mould is the costly part, so far that's cost £20+ and will probably be £30 when I finish (I thought of a different cheaper way after I'd started!) if I only get the 3 coaches they'd be £15 each but as I should be able to get more ends and rooves then the cost per item will decrease. The reality is that if you want to make money to re-invest then they've got to be high quality, from a cold mould they'll be fine but you'd be expected to have to do some modelling to make something of them.

Here's a thought. There are obviously some here who make their own items and are willing to share (castings, CAD drawings etc) When something is available put something to that effect in your sig strip at the bottom or open a thread making it available, I'll probably put something in my own thread for anything I produce, as it's only people looking at GN who might be interested.........More moulds curing as I type.....