emt_911

Work tomorrow. Night all.

Hi Andy Trying to catch upon your posts for the last couple of weeks is an interesting task. I really like the paintings and like others prints of those would be great. The progress on the layout is certainly worth while. Another Andy P masterpiece. Enjoy the break

An easy though wet and foggy journey to Wycrail. As I was ahead of time I stopped at the services for some breakfast. Caught up with some ER's and a couple of others. I also managed to quickly catch up with Ray Norwood of this parish. Some decent layouts on show even though not all were to my taste. A few modelling tokens were spent but not as many as expected. I even managed a decent journey home despite numerous cockwombles on the road and got back just before the rain started. An enjoyable day which is something that I needed. Back later

Morning all. A bit later than planned but not too late. Wycrail today so I should catch up with a few ER's and others from this forum. Another coffee first though. Have a good day everyone.

Night all

See you tomorrow Ray

Evening all. POETS definitely was not achieved but I did finish early enough to make Wycrail a confirmed entry in my diary. This does mean however that I will have to work part of Sunday. It could be worse. Lots of modelling tokens available to spend tomorrow as long as there is something that I want. Time to charge the camera batteries. Back later

Morning all. A decent nights sleep but I feel worse for it so now I really don't feel like working today. Hopefully I'll be able to POETS and get home at a reasonable time depending on the traffic. Have a good day everyone

Night all

Finally home although dodging stealth ninja cyclists seems to be the order of the day in Croydon. The students have overcome the first hurdle but they now have several more before I let them loose on unsuspecting clients. Rick - Congratulations Another early start tomorrow to change a major control system. An ideal job for a Friday I don't think. What could possibly go wrong. (Definitely a rhetorical question). As long as everything goes well, Wycrail will be visited on Saturday with lots of modelling tokens. Back later Edited because for some reason I had the wrong location

Morning all. The final day of this session of teaching. I have enjoyed it but it has been very tiring. At least I end up at home tonight but I do have an earlier start tomorrow. Have a good day everyone

A good day with my students on site and it appears that what has been taught has been retained (mostly) An in house written exam tomorrow written by me followed by some faults on test rigs to deal with. Home tomorrow after all of this before a trying day on Friday to get some equipment replaced on site before configuring it. If everything goes to plan it should be an earlyish finish ready for Tolworth on Saturday. Absolutely shattered. Night all

Morning all. A day where I find out how much information has been retained so far. Have a good day everyone.

Night all

Another good day of teaching which went to plan again. Tomorrow could go horribly wrong though as two of my students are on a real site for the first time. At least I'll be with them if anything goes wrong. My thoughts are with Debs. Bob - Wycrail is in the diary as long as I finish early enough on Friday Dom - Happy Birthday

Morning all. A dry and warm start to the day. Another day of teaching ahead of me which after yesterday I'm looking forward to. Have a good day everyone

Night all

A successful first day of teaching with only a couple of minor changes to make to tomorrows sessions. Even though I've found teaching to be extremely tiring, I'm actually enjoying it. Could this be a late career change? A chilly night ahead but at least no frost forecast. I may be back later

Morning all. A terrible nights sleep for a change which means that I really don't feel like dealing with today. Chilly outside but it could be worse. Have a good day everyone.

All my lessons for the week are prepped and the training rigs working (not) as they should for fault finding. An early start in the morning to head up to the Midlands until Wednesday evening. At least I can fine tune lessons for later on in the week during the evenings. Happy Birthday Jamie. Night all

Afternoon all. I won't trawl through 11 pages of posts but I send generic C&C's as appropriate. Although I've been back at work for just over a week, I've found it extremely tiring. They days haven't been long or difficult but the heavy cold took more out of me than I expected. Yet another challenge on the horizon is getting ready to train new engineers. We've given up trying to recruit externally and I have three to start training this coming week. This has meant that most of my weekend has been putting together lesson plans and technical training rigs. As I haven't taught for several years tomorrow could be quite interesting. Back later

Morning all. A good nights sleep and now I feel great. Another easy day of not doing a great deal except tackling a mountain of ironing. I'm looking forward to going back to work next week for a rest.

Hi Andy I thought you told me that there wasn't a lot to catch up on It's taken me most of the day to read the posts and watch the videos. An amazing amount of progress with the track work sitting in the landscape. I have to agree with many of the comments above about the standard of this layout. Absolutely stunning. Hope you're feeling better soon

Thanks for all the Friendly/Supportive ratings as well as the posts. Well, the care packages seem to be working well and hopefully they can be slowly reduced on the run up to the festive season. Dad is recovering well but still needs help at the moment and obviousely can't care for mum. Fortunately, I haven't had to work over this period which would have been far too much for me. At least I'm starting to recover which means that I will probably return to work next week. A day of pottering around and not a lot else is planned which should help my recovery.

Although some of you are aware of the reason for my absence, I thought that I'd give a brief explanation. My dad who is/was the main carer for my mum ended up in hospital for a while and got transferred away from the local one. Several weeks of caring for mum and also travelling on a daily basis 2 hours each way for her to visit took far too much of my time which meant that I didn't even open up the laptop. Once he was discharged, it's taken a couple of weeks of fighting to ensure that they both have the right care packages in place. I honestly couldn't believe how much of a complicated fight this has been. Everything eventually started working properly last Friday and the relief and exhaustion finally took its toll on me with a heavy cold that also gave me a sinus infection and a chest infection. This is the first time since Friday that I've felt well enough to open the laptop. Fortunately my MD has been understanding. Any posts are likely to be sporadic for the next couple of weeks until everything has settled down.