BR60103

Cats know what the rules are. They just don't care.

Weather has turned very fall-like. The pipe band gave a concert tonight and commented how it was like Scotland. The event was free-ticketed to limit attendance. About 50 may have been there. It started at 6:30 but the ticket said we should have our chairs set up by 6:50. Big bookstore chain still trying to sell MRJ from about January. We bought a new plastic mat for the computer chair. The previous one seemed to have developed a slippery surface in places.

I don't know about ERs, but I think they used to run a hobby shop near me.

There is a town called Paradise in Pennsylvania where the Strasburg RR meets what used to be the Pennsylvania. Te souvenir book of the SRR is called The Road to Paradise. If you look for it on maps, check out other nearby towns for interesting names.

I'm using cab control and common rail with 4 controllers. One thing is that I'm using household insulated wire to take the current around the layout -- what we call lamp cord. I found that I could get several colours of thick wire at the hardware store. With common rail you can run locos across blocks which are assigned to different controllers as long as the direction switches are set the same way.

The Gas Company we dealt with is one of Canada's largest and even has controversial pipelines in the U.S. We now have a working vacuum cleaner again. Last week the central unit refused to shut off. It was taken away, had a circuit board replaced and was returned late this afternoon. At 6:00 there was a performance rehearsal by The Lady and the Gramps -- our local Dixieland group. Thunderstorm held off but I hear it's going through the north part f the county.

When we first bought our motorhome we took an extended holiday in Florida. During this I needed to pay the gas company. I tried to phone the -800- free number but it only worked in Canada. There was no local number that I could call long distance. I ended up calling my sister at work and she created a 3-way call. My sister commented that when she set up the -800- number for their company, full North American access cost very little more than limited.

Toronto (Canada) Union Station for the better part of 100 years had platforms numbered from the station building, 1 to 12 or 14 (I forget exactly). Most of them alternated a passenger platform with a baggage platform and odd and even tracks were accessed from opposite sides of the underground (undertrack?) walkway. Since I retired the station has been (is being) majorly rebuilt and the commuter area moved from one end to the other. Platforms 1 to 3 are now in the subway station (3 is a streetcar line) and the numbers seem to go up to the 23 range. Nobody in authority will tell you which platform to use until the train appears on the display by which time the regular users have filled all the seats. (We now only go there twice a year.) (Note: station building is on city/north side of the tracks. Tracks were on the lakeshore or possibly on fill in the lake.)

In one of the novels continuing the Lord Peter Wimsey series, there is a discussion of a school IQ test. (I can't locoate my copy.) The question is Which of four substances is the odd one out. The adults looking at them say first "3 are solids, one is a gas". Another says "3 are fuels, one isn't." The one is different in each case. If anyone has it handy, can they tell me waht the four substances are? (Jill Paton Walsh The Attenbury Emeralds, I think.) Further discussion: Can we come up with a group of 4 items where each of them could be the odd one out?

Comic strip plus its follow ups https://www.gocomics.com/poochcafe/2020/08/24

My father told me that some of my mother's aunts (?) had the family tree looked at . Since they were Stewarts they were hoping to put a claim in on Edinburgh Castle or something. The search was terminated when they reached The Black Douglas and Rob Roy. The other side of the family apparently had to flee some city in north England for union activity.

It's like an article on making your own miter box -- If I could make a square vertical cut, I wouldn't need a miter box.

When my father was researching for his coat of arms. he found a few errors in the government's records. He reported them and was told that they could be fixed for a fee. They've been promising us thunderstorms "tomorrow" for a week. Last night at bedtime there was thunder but no apparent precip. SWMBO reported it was opressively humid for her morning walk. Our central vac. is acting up. It won't shut off. I've unplugged it. Tried the ohmmeter but there is no short circuit there. I heard that when WW2 was coming up there were two attitudes towards tanks. The British remembered what a cumbersome nuisance they were to operate. The Germans remembered how terrifying it was to see one coming over the trenches.

(This may be a repeat) There was a major flood warning and the army sent its trucks out to collect residents. One lady refused to leave, sayin "The Lord will provide." When the water reached her front porch, a boat came by, but "The Lord will provide." Later she was sitting on the roof and a helicopter offered to take her. "The Lord will provide." A bit later, she was knocking at the Pearly Gates. She told St. Peter "I thought the Lord would provide." St. Peter said, "We sent a truck, a boat and a helicopter. What more did you want?"

Jason just put an ad in the newspaper commemorating his 20 years of marriage.

The Americans came up with 3 variations on O gauge. 1/4" scale on 1 1/4" track. 17/64" scale on 1 1/4" track. 1/4" scale on 1 3/16" track (called Q gauge). One of my neighbours showed me a car body he built in 17/64. Lionel's diagrams of track cross-section measured the 1 1/4" to the middle of the rail (with the circular head). I don't have anything left to actually measure. We went to Stratford again today. They were having "Bargemusic" down the Avon river. Today was violin cello duet. SWMBO felt that Bach partitas were a bit low key for a public offering.

Many decades ago one of the magazines had an article on the effects of oil on plastic bits. They would soak a part in oil for a while and then show it beside an original. The usual effect was a non-uniform swelling. Soon afterward at least one lubricant maker came out with "plastic compatible" oil. One of my school friends found a cheap (free) source of oil in his mother's kitchen. Many of his Kitmasters never rolled again.

Last project of the day was learning to fold the pop-up tent. We did iy=t after 5 tries on the last trip but SWMBO wanted to make sure we knew how. There's a video: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=folding+a+pop+up+shower+tent&docid=608011466205695356&mid=53EE35C10A190402D76153EE35C10A190402D761&view=detail&FORM=VIRE It never seems to work like that.

We were supposed to have thunderstorms over southern Ontario today. There was a small sprinkle at the end of our drive -- wipers on intermittent. We took a drive around. Passed the streetcar museum which had the gate across the drive. Went to Guelph Junction Road where we changed drivers, but SWMBO didn't want to go far enough in to see the trains. Passed the old PCC car that's been out in a field for about 25 years disintegrating. The Procrastinators Club of Philadelphia decided, a few years after their bicentennial, to check on the crack in the Liberty Bell. They learned that the foundry in Whitechapel was still in business and contacted them. The foundry agreed to take back the Bell and make it good if it were returned in the original packaging.

I just checked and I have 6x32" shelves of LPs. There is another shelf of 78s (both 10" and 12") and a couple of toolboxes of 45s. I think my first record was a 7" 78 of I've been Working on the Railroad. The first LP I bought was one with the Kingston Trio singing The MTA Song. I also have Dukedogs and the City. The record collection is an amalgam of mine, my wife's and my father's. I did not measure the CDs. We took a trip to Stratford today (located on the Avon river, the other side of New Hamburg). This was the test for our test and thunderbox. It seemed to go well -- we parked in a shaded area with not too many cars near us. Worst bit was a disagreement about how the tent folded up again. This allowed us to go to a place 1 1/2 hours away which is the farthest weve been in 5 months.

The turntable pit is a cylinder with a lip on it. The straightforward way is to glue the lip or to drill it and pin it down. The hole, IIRC, is 12".

Douglas: A couple of the Lionel bits match ones from my first Lionel set (tank, caboose, transformer). We acquired a small fold up tent today. This was ordered 3 weeks ago, with a delivery date of September, possibly from a source in the far East, through W**Mart. The intent is to provide a place to use if bathroom facilities are unavailable or unappetizing. To go with it we needed a port-a-potty (Thunderbox?). The first one we bought turned out to be a toilet seat with 3 legs and no bottom. A plastic pail was acquired but was too low and not easy to detatch without a bit of discommoding. We found another one with a larger built-in pail and some "Double Doody" bags to line it. We may now go on some excursions that take longer than 2 hours.

Isn't that about the critical mass of uranium before it explodes?

Most of our appliances came with the house which is about 18 years old. The dishwasher snapped one of the springs holding up the door. Since it was leaving scraps inside mugs we looked for a new one. Very limited supply of those with white doors. Salesman told us to run a cycle with just a cup of vinegar and that worked. We also stopped putting mugs in the corners of the rack. We have had to replace the furnace, air conditioner, and water softener. Furnace had a crack in the heat exchanger but apparently the whole thing has to go. We have a freezer that is very old -- was MiL's and I think we got it in the 80s. One of the Lionel transformers running my layout is possibly 70 years old. We used to have a stove with timer on it. It went into a warmiing mode after cooking. Dayle once cooked a roast for 6 hours at 155 degrees. She then adopted a procedure called "neutralizing the timer". We believe that the more features, the more there is to go wrong. Both newspapers predicted thunderstorms for us today. Driest thunderstorms I've seen.

This is Rudi. Taken probably in the 1980s. No longer with us, of course.