BR60103

We had a bit of snow this morning, both before and after I went out. The grounds crew were mowing the grass this afternoon. I don't know what all the fancy kitchen equipment is that you've been talking about.

I will admit that, while not having a shed, I have 3 workbenches. Two of them are a sort of furniture with drawers. The third is a door that had folding legs added to it; it was in the house when we moved in. I added to the door a set of IKEA measuring tapes (3 foot paper ones), two on each side. One side is inches, the other metric. I always have a way to make quick measurements. I will also confess to having had a pannier once. It was sold on about 40 years ago with the rest of my N gauge.

When we took the motorhome out to California, we found an establishment in Santa Rosa called Snoopy's Home Ice. This is an arena with a restaurant/coffee shop attached. It's next door to the Charles Schultz museum.

Another item I use is pre-moistened eyeglass cleaners. After using for their intended purpose and letting them dry, I use them to clean wheels. A few drops of track cleaner in the right spot, put them over the rails and run the rolling stock back and forth until no more black comes off. Or run a loco onto it and spin the drivers. The cleaners I have are made from a stiffer material than paper towels and don't snag the uncoupling pins on couplers.

Today was supposed to have ice all over from about noon. So we set off early (before I had my second coffee or read the second paper). We reached the mall before most stores were open. Back even before the bins were picked up. We never did get any ice. My cousins say that they have a movie of my father unwrapping a Christmas present that they did up for him. He very patiently and carefully undid the layers of giftwrap. When he came to the sucker, he undid it and ate it before continuing on to the next layer. I don't remember the event and I haven't seen the film.

There's another connected space -- all the places behind doors that say "No admittance" or "Private". (according to Tom Holt) I don't have a loft. There is an attic, but the only access is a hole in the garage that is above the garage door opener. An inspector for insulation looked at the hatch and decided not to check it.

I use a lot of T-headed pins. Woodland Scenics supplies them, but they also come in the sewing/dressmaking section. I use them for locating track on the roadbed, then in at an angle to hold the track down while the adhesive dries. They also hold foam plastic scenery bits together. Very basic, but alumin(i)um foil and wax paper. Wax paper as a base when painting and gluing kits. Foil as a palette for paints and glues where you glob a bit out and apply it with toothpick or brush. I tried wax paper for this, but the paint tends to mix with the wax. Watch out as a number of glues will add alum. foil to your model. These can be had cheaply from the kitchen. If you're lucky you can persuade the person in charge that foil, etc. dropped on the floor doesn't have to be thrown out as the railway doesn't care about sanitary. Sometimes I can get several feet of it this way.

The big street that goes past us has 5 different speed limits in 10 km (about 6 miles). They are (from the west) 50 60 50 60 80 kph. The road starts in a residential area, passes a commercial/office stretch, then goes between the university and residences, passes a marsh and ends up country. The city has added some 40 kph stretches to (what looks like) random roads. Some are in residential areas, but one is on the main N/S road on the hill between the Uni and the river. It seems to be generally unobseved. The motorway nearby has a 100 speed limit except for a stretch going up (and down) a hill that is 80, That was under construction for years and may be again. I don't remember anyone going 80 except for some heavy trucks. The expressway through town has speed limits of 80 on the south part and 70 on the north part. Again, not universally observed but there are regular reports of police catching cars doing speeds like 165. The charge is "stunting".

From Terry Pratchett, "your finger, you fool."

My best friend from school was a Mini enthusiast, eventually having a garage that serviced mine. He referred to the constant-velocity joints as "the clunkers".

This was dental morning. One tooth had a corner pillar come off. 40 years worth of filling came out, a bit of decay tackled, then all filled in again and filed flat. Another tooth near it with a bit of decay. (for the technically minded, teeth 26 and 24) In at 10:30, home about 12:30. Delayed lunch as the freezing had taken much of the dexterity out of my lips. Major job of the day was vacuuming lint out of the clothes dryer. There had been a hot smell at one point. SWMBO found a book about railroads for me. So far it seems to be about financial shenanigans by the robber barons. Story from about 50 years ago. There was a book written called The National Dream about building the Canadian Pacific. This was made into a TV series. The first bunch of episodes were all parliamentary/boardroom wrangling. My boss's 4-year-old son asked him, "Why do yo call this the Railway Show, daddy?"

My father used to have trouble with travel-health insurance. There was a question if your medication had changed in the last n months. Dad's doctor seemed to make minor adjustments every 3 months.

We spent much of today digging Christmas out of its boxes. There are now two trees up in our front room. I'm of the Christmas Eve persuasion but SWMBO isn't. I believe they should stay up until 12th Night. One of the items is a Hogwarts Express by Lionel. Not the big version. It's battery operated on plastic track (15" radius) with a 2-6-2 and 4-wheel tender. The couplings are tension-lock but, since I'm not using any of the straight track, they are a ****** to couple (body-mounted on the coaches).

The original concept used two boards. The different orientation of the grain let the warping effects fight to keep everything straight. The girders were screwed together, then unscrewed and glued. Screws re-introduced until the glue set, then removed again. I damaged an expensive drill bit by forgetting to take out the screws. To keep them square for working, I make a solid box of 4 boards clamped together. The rest of the construction has crosspieces on edge joining the girders. Shorter (usually) sticks go up from the cross pieces and have the roadbed mounted at the top, using a brace. Scenery can dangle from the roadbed or have its own verticals. The crosspieces do not have to be evenly spaced and at 90 degrees to the girders. They may be shifted to avoid complexities and set radially to follow curves. Crosspieces can be mounted with screws through the flange of the L. The flange should be wide enough to get the chuck of your drill in. Grades can be made by fastening the ends and fitting the risers in the middle. I modified the system by replacing the legs with IKEA shelving. The Ls were put on top with the vertical board on the outside. (I have built 5 layouts over the years using L-girders. The best book is How to Build Model Railroad Benchwork by Linn Westcott, but it's not kinda old.)

I was up a half-hour early this morning so that we could go to the Remembrance Day service at McCrae house. (John McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields.) It was pretty well attended for a residential plot. We passed up the big service in the hockey arena. We did go out to the airport to see the Warbirds take off. They did a flypast over a couple of cenotaphs in the area, but we saw them up close. Later we saw them fly over Guelph, but so far away that they looked like a collection of mosquitoes. (Birds reported as T-33, L29, Vampire, Harvard.)

Do you need a choreographer for the musical numbers?

I can't locate my book on benchwork tonight. I used 1x2 (poplar?) for mine. I have used larger -- 1x3 with a 1x2 top when I had longer spans. I'm not sure about plywood as part of the process involves screws going into the edge of the board. (I just saw DCB's post.)

My father reported, after one of his trips to Britain, that he'd been constantly overtaken by traffic that he hadn't seen coming. He realized that he was looking up to the right for the rear-view mirror. He did survive it.

Hooray for New Math, New-hoo-hoo Math; It won't do you a bit of good to learn New Math. It's so simple, So very simple, That only a child can do it! --Tom Lehrer

Today we had a trip to the tip. (two trips, actually) SWMBO declared that the plastic chairs on the deck were at the end of their lives due to discolouration and moss. I managed to get a par at a time in the car. The tip has been slightly reorganized. We were weighed, drove to the bin, and chucked it in. Going out, we were pleasantly surprised that the charge was $0.00, not the $10 minimum. "Recycling" is free. On one of the trips we were stopped by the local railway. Rest of the day cancelled for rain.

Did they want all of them? verse 1 15 (one repeat) chorus 10 (One repeat) I have the music in front of me and can count the rest if you want. (I don't have the second version)

Well over half a century ago, Model Railroader had an article about a working hump yard. The builder was using compressed (blown) air as retarders. The air ran for a given number of seconds. A fast car would get the full effect, varying down to a slow car not getting any at all.

We don't have to change the clocks yet. Due to trying to keep up with the Yanks, our Standard time is much shorter than it used to be. I will have to see how the new car's clock does it. The old one could be reset while SWMBO backed out of the driveway. We used to be told (by the Fire Department) that we should change our smoke detector batteries when we changed the clocks. Since that change, I now do it on the equinoxes. As the smoke detectors are now mains powered with battery backup, I have a lot of "used" batteries with 9.00+ volts still on them. I do have a model gas station with 9V lights.

I neglected one observation about malls. Our local mall used to be 90% ladies dress shops. It's now 60% ladies dress shops and 30% cell phone stores.

We managed a day out today. We visited old friends/ex-neighbours in the Niagara area. This is about 2 hours away by car. We had a stop at an outlet centre. This came up to my complaints of being "95% ladies dress shops". We did find a Lindt shop. Had a nice visit and then went off to a Greek restaurant. I think I lost a bit more tooth in the meal, but I didn't mention it. We travelled on the section of highway where the speed limit was raised by 10 kph (110 from 100). Most of the time we were at the old limit because of the trucks ahead of us. One motorcycle went past everyone playing in and out the windows. Off at 9:00, back at 16:00. Saw one train.