BR60103

The line through Philadelphia is 40N. This is south of most of Europe except half of Spain and Portugal, the toe of Italy, and half of Greece. (and some Mediterranean islands). It's also south of the northern border of California. (I used this because it shows on my world map).

When I first saw sundried tomatoes, I thought of the sundries that Hornby used to list in their catalog, and pronounced it accordingly.

A question. What is Copydex? I gather it's the brand name for something. (Look,I just found out what Fairy Liquid is a few years ago.)

The Toronto Transit Commission is decommissioning a rapid transit line at the end of the year (Scarborough Rapid Transit) but it has been closed down because of a derailment a few weeks ago. The line is an orphan with unique cars, a different propulsion system (linear induction) and a different track gauge (56.5") from the rest of the system. The small number of cars means that no one is interested in making replacements, and the line was built with clearances that preclude any other vehicles. They have been debating what to replace it with for a couple of decades now, with any decision reversed by a change of government. There are newer vehicles in the TTC's historical collection and the local streetcar museum.

A cartoon many years ago had a shopman saying "Thank goodness for metrication; we've made about all we can from decimalisation." (or vice versa)

Isn't it in that cluster of states that begin with I -- Illinois, Indiana, Inner Mongolia?

I remember hearing about a film director (Hitchcock?). He had an actor go though a door and turn behind the wall. The cameraman wanted to follow it, but the director resisted. When the film was shown, at that point the whole audience leaned to the side. Director turned to cameraman and said "See?"

You could try an experiment. Take an 8-foot board (straight) and lay track up it. Then raise one end an inch. See how your train copes with that. Then add another inch. Each inch is roughly one percent (close enough) to see what your loco will cope with. There will be all sorts of variances when you factor in the curves (mode drag, better grip from the drivers).

I wondered about modelling a branch line terminus on a Saturday in real time, where the train of the day departs at 8:00 am and returns at 6:00 pm.

You have violated unwritten rule of modelling #1: Thou shalt not model the prairies or any other site that would be comfortable on a sheet of plywood.

Our motorhome gave us a fault light on our last trip west. The second garage we went to put the diagnoser on and there was some problem with the "downstream emissions" but they couldn't fix it. They felt it would last until our next big stop (2 days later). We camped for 2 weeks and then went to a garage. It seems that the wires for the sensor after the converter had been lying on the exhaust pipes and melted through. They fixed it. My real worry is always, what happens if another, more serious fault happens and we don't know because the light is already on?

Had a phone call earlier this evening from the niece of a lady across the street. Lady is in hospital and would like us to pick up her mail. As I'm already doing that for her neighbours, I agreed. She came around later with the key and we had a few details. My (late) sister-in-law knew famous people that we'd never heard of. We have 3 bins. Large blue for recycling; almost as large grey for garbage; small green for compostable. The green goes every week; the others alternate. Our compost seems to be almost entirely Kleenex and kitty litter. They used to have one truck that picked up both bins; now there's two trucks. We are having an intense rainstorm that just started.

Almost half a century ago, one of our club built a layout called Camelot, which was located west of Land's End. He had a lot of documentation up about it. At least one person was heard saying that they didn't realise that England went on beyond Cornwall.

I remember a (children's) story from long ago about some crooks who set up a fake pillar box to steal the mail. They ended up doing a lot of work because after steaming the stamps off they had to deliver the letters.

We were on our first trip with a GPS and had managed to get to Los Angeles and were coming back. In one town we set it and were told to take the first exit at a roundabout. It seems that since the GPS had been programmed, they added a new exit. Some years ago, in the Doonesbury comic strip, one of the characters had a job recording famous personalities as GPS voices. Route 66 is no longer continuous from end to end. Parts have been covered over by Interstates or other roads; parts have been paralleled by other roads and left in small segments.

One of my wife's cousins was an accountant at Ford. His favourite part of the job was auditing executives' expense accounts. He was known as "Max the Axe".

I talked about this once with a late member of The Platelayers who had been a BR driver. He said that they would use the lighter coupling.

We were crossing to go to a cousin's cottage in Michigan. When we told the customs we were going to Leroy, he said "No one vacations in Leroy". (Leroy is a small town, the nearest to the cottage.) He was laughing. One time we were in the motorhome and the agent got in, I think to check for aliens under the bed. I went to close the door to keep the cats in and was told off that we couldn't close it while the agent was inside. Then the time that I went with the Dutch folk dance group as the needed extra male dancers. The agent read the invitation letter and then asked where born. The dance instructor was Scottish. One of the other ringers was Finnish and his girl was Serbian. My first vacation on my own, I went to Maine by bus. The leg from Toronto was so full that I sat on the tunnel between the last seat and the washroom. After we crossed the border, I had a seat to myself.

Where I grew up (Eastern Ontario) the platform was raised to about rail height. The baggage trucks were then at about floor height for the baggage and mail cars. I understand that the US Mail had a standard layout for the inside of the mail cars.

With the weather for Dayle's birthday tomorrow being mainly thunderstorms, we made an event today. She wanted French Fries under the bridge in Sarnia (her parents moved there for her last year of high school). We did the morning trip along the motorways. There were stops at a British shop and a book store in Sarnia, then under the Bluewater bridge to the USofA. Fries and hotdogs -- the fries were generous and we shared a "small" one. One half of the bridge is currently closed (I forget why). Signs on the approach promised a 75 minute delay for cars; N/A for trucks. Having seen excessively heavy traffic in the opposite direction, we decided to take lesser roads back. Assorted problems as what used to be the Queen's Highway 7 was divided up by a government a while back and can't be properly traced anymore. Extra problems when my chosen route turned out to a gravel road and another road was temporarily closed by the police.

A little question: What colour paint for sheep? There aren't that many around here to check on. I have a packet of metal cast ones. (Region preference? The layout is Perth and Exeter.)

Today's weather prediction was thunderstorms over most of the area. Then we started to get tornado watches and warnings. We had one very heavy downpour with lots of thunder but no tornado (that I've heard of). I have to sneak off somehow and find birthday cards for Dayle (from me and the cat).

Watfor, and before that Forgo.

I just looked at a box of stuff that I saved from work. There were little templates for WordPerfect and Lotus 123 that won't work because the F keys are no longer in a little block. Books on WP. Microsoft Basic -- anyone know how to start that in Windows 10? Lots of floppies that I don't have a drive for. I learned Fortran on 4 different systems for work (Univac 1108, IBM 360, DEC VAX, and PC). Plus a couple of versions that the university wrote. The DEC version was the most versatile. Two of the guys were out sailing boats on the big pond here this afternoon.

Ontario Licence plates are exclusively government supplied. In the time I've had a car, they have been of the non-expiring type, getting a little sticker with the date each year. The current government stopped that when, just before the last election, they removed the charge for renewing (and refunded the previous 2 years worth). But you still need to renew and print out a certificate. Recently introduced were police cameras that can look at a plate and check its status. Some plates issued a while back started to lose the paint. This happened on our motorhome, but it was too old for a free replacement. It's illegal to repaint the plate yourself. The same government changed the plates to what some thought were the party colours. This was nick-named the Q-Tip scheme. This was abandoned when the police reported that the numbers were difficult/impossible to read at night. (How many will read this before it's suppressed as political?)