zarniwhoop

Well, I'm starting to think I'm making some progress - not yet close to the forbidden things, but in sight of spending more time trying to play me guitars. I usually keep such late hours that it would be unfair to the rest of the street to practice. Long post, feel free to ignore and please don't offer me supportive emoticons, I'm just writing this down to get it out of my system 😀 And the reason for this ? In the early 2000s I started using what I will call a linux distro - it's actually more of a glorified How To, with the emphasis on learning. In those days, the usable software you could build and run on a desktop was limited. After a while I got into editing the main book. Later, there was a shortage of people to handle the "other things you can build" (desktop and server packages). I got snuckered into that and gradually stopped updating the original book. So far, so good. But I've never done computer studies. Gradually I picked up TeXLive (a programming language for creating prints or PDFs) after somebody noticed that the way we bootstrapped it left a few binary programs. Managed to find (old) examples of using those parts, created test files, and ended up doing all the updates for those. About three and a half years ago, with another guy, I instituted Security Announcements so that people who actually use the distro can avoid vulnerabilities. I'm pleased with that part. Then about 3 years ago one of the main toolkits went to "releases are for paying customers only, becoming public after 12 months" (they needed to persuade users to move to their latest version, but the main free software user has only just done that). In the meantime, the engine of the web browser was a fork of chromium and therefore had to be available under the GPL license. And web browsers, along with the infernal javascript processors, are things which need to be up to date in the current Wild West of the internet. But no releases, clone the main part and the sub-tree whenever it looked as if they were ready for a release, then try to get it to build on a current (arguably bleeding-edge) system. Much of the hard work had been done by other distros, otherwise I would never have got anywhere with it. Now, that is all over, back to using releases. But meanwhile the number of packages and releases has grown astronomically and there are knock-on effects from updates to the rust language (one of the guys seems to be up to speed with that, but I don't understand the fixes he finds) and that slithering language (Python-3.12 - that really is bleeding edge, it breaks a lot). In the end, I could not keep up with it and I started losing track of which steps in a process I had, or had not, done (e.g. did a final security advisory this afternoon, forgot to pull the current git tree, created the advisory, tried to push it, discovered I was out of date. Fortunately I was able to renumber it, fix up the links, and push. I'm now on extended leave of absence, and learning to ignore things. Now to turn one of my guitar amps up to 11 😈

I tend to keep very irregular hours, often reading here between 11pm and 4am or "later" , and I see the slowdowns from time to time even at 3 a.m. In particular, ERs is often very slow to go to the next page, other topics are only rarely very slow. But late afternoon (I suppose from about now for maybe the next 6 hours) is also a busy time and I think the worst delays or 'content unavailable' happen in the evening. I'm sure that the whole site being busy (several people clicking on different topics at the same time) plays a part. I'll mention that on the machine I mainly use I try to keep ERs, TNM, and the main page open long term, and look at another page or another site if ERs is slow. But I've got 100+ tabs open in this browser (I had to close a few last week, it was getting slow). Somebody suggested starting an ERs v2 the other week, I think doing that and making ERs v1 read-only might be the answer.

I think he was avoiding the site nanny. https://www.fatbastard.com/ Let's see if this gets through (age check to click on, then picture of a hippo acting as a parachute or balloon to carry a bottle,

Best Wishes to Dave Hunt.

Thanks for the suggestions about expanded polystyrene sandwiches. I'm very dubious about foam boards - I know some people use them successfully, but I'm clumsy enough to be wary. But on re-reading I could not let that quoted sentence pass in silence - the Ybbstalbahn was closed after large parts of the track were washed away (in the summer, if my memory is correct). And I think it had happened before. So not too much allowance for winter ran in a model ;-)

Trains are also Blues or Blues-Rock or Rock or maybe even Rock'n'Roll oh, and Jazz, Reggae, ... I was going to quote a few titles from searching my index of the flac files I've got, but there are just too many! As far as my music goes, horses are probably Heavy Rock or Progressive although I've got one track on a live outdoor recording of Bach's Brandenburgs, 'Driving in the Horse-Drawn Carriage to Coethen' which I did not assign a genre to (it's just an intro before the music, which apart from the fireworks is Baroque Orchestral).

My parents got double glazing when the Hangleton Link Road went down Benfield Valley (i.e. the road which passes the superstore and joins the A270) because of expected noise. Now (maybe 30 years later), the Link Road is surrounded by lots of trees which probably reduce the noise. But that was a long-term build. Trying your search in google only gave me the current 'one lane closed. last updated 2 days ago', and a lot of totally irrelevant links mentioning roadworks or gas somewhere but not the A270, although some did mention the A27 which is a looong road and at this point is the Brighton bypass. Of course, A270 matches the A27 substring. Please send some search-fu 🙄

I'll have you know we are the good folk of Portslade, not Hove! The boundary on the South side of the road is some way to the East (the Station Road I mentioned a few pages ago), and the first house in Hangleton ((which is part of Hove) is opposite that.

Hmm, that seems to be sort of size, although mine would have a longer length of water. Thanks.

Interesting ideas. Thanks. The intention was that there would be stone piers either side (not yet decided on the type of bridge, since I'll probably have to scratch build it) and the width of the stream maybe 5 to 6 cm.

I assume it will be very noisy - there are houses and flats. But who knows.

To the optician. 3 pairs of specs (distance, distance with 'intermediate' - what I use to read computer screens, should work for reading the Satnav and for reading the LED items on the controls, and intermediate plus close-up : those are NOT bifocal, which can only have distant at the top. Some amount of confusion along the way, and had to go for narrower lenses for these. Only the equivalent of a current Hornby d.c. 4-VEP was sacrificed (not sure what that is in Deltics, but slightly more than a forthcoming Roco HOe Engerth). Speaking to the assistant, she apparently lives along where the gas roadworks on the A270 are at the moment and she'd been asking the bus driver: Buses will be routed down Olive Road, Hove which is most of the way to Hove Cemetery - a long walk for her, and it's the the first part of the A270, from Benfield Valley to Southern Cross, which will be closed 8am to 6pm - for about a month!

As always, I probably ask the wrong question, but this has helped me clarify my thoughts. To try to clarify my original posting - I want a bridge crossing a stream which exits at the front of the baseboard. If I have an open frame of normal height, that will exit at the top of the frame. I then need to raise the track (for open-frame, on ply, for a board held rigid by a thin ply top I was thinking about WS foam in the visible section (perhaps 8cm high?) since there will be nothing fixed to the visible track except power connections, and no points on the visible part). But for the hidden storage I want to use surface-mounted point motors, and it seems to me that I will need thin ply (4 or 5mm) to hold the point motors. Doing that on a solid baseboard will require skilled carpentry to get the supporting posts in position and level. All I have found for pre-made baseboards or kits of parts are frames where the ply top holds the board rigid. I can see that I will first need to sacrifice one or two 4'x2' baseboards to do things like working out how long my desired storage loops will be, and testing how far the various locos and DMUs will run on once they hit an unpowered piece of track. I will also need more detailed plans to work out where the tracks should go, and hence how long and how wide the boards need to be.

I warn you, it's easy to get sucked in to this ;-) https://www.quora.com/How-are-Mary-marry-and-merry-pronounced-in-different-parts-of-the-English-speaking-world

I think that is common when listening to sounds you are not familar with. In the past I've listened to various wikipedia sound files in their phonetic examples, and often almost all the variations for any specific letter sounded alike to me

More background on this at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_〈wh〉 As with all changes in how things are pronounced, I find it fascinating and could easily waste hours following all the links.

There are so many individual items that clicking on each "multiple items in this location" to get details is problematic (look at one of the multiple item lists, click on first item, close that, place is lost). But I think I've now got a reasonable idea of what is going to be going on: An LED sign at the roundabout by Saint's buries - road closed daytime from 2nd to 4th April (I think that is gas, towards the Holmbush roundabout where Tesco is). Short-distance lane closure after getting onto A270 (gas) continues. At next crossroads, where you could normally turn down to get to the coast road, closure from 29th until somewhen - electrics, I think they are putting in more car chargers on a road parallel to the railway, and need to dig it up for reinforcing the supply. On the way back I had time to get details from the sign after the same crossroads - closure from 29th until (I've forgotten) - that's the council, for power cable conduit and signs where they've resurfaced and perhaps altered the pedestrian crossing. Meanwhile, massive road closures in Southwick south of the A270 - nominally around the village green, but in practice widespread (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3g4l0zlw2ko), little chance of turnng down there to get to the coast road. I started down there, took what would be the route to get to the road leading up from the coast to the A270 just before Holmbush, but could not get through (and no sign, from the way I was coming, that anything was closed until I got to the first closure). Which seems to mean that the alternatives after Easter are to go down Boundary Rd, Hove (aka Station Road, Portslade) which is always backed up during the day because of the level crossing), or to go out to the bypass, travel to the Shoreham exit and then head back, taking the exit to Holmbush. Sounds like fun!

Thanks for the suggestions. I know I'll need to lay some track out somewhere as a temporary step to check required space for storage loops and to confirm details of the visible part. But I want something "acceptable" for train size (B-B diesel, 3 bogie coaches) and to run the Austrian 5090 railcars (which are not short), and trains alternately running clockwise and anticlock. A minimal layout for short stock will not teach me a lot, nor be satisfying - I've got a 4'x2' first layout with a station loop at one end. I was surprised how much timber I ended up adding below it to support it on a table and to take a plug-in controller and switches for point motors. Getting it from stored-on-end to on-the-table was difficult, something lighter would be needed to be able to put a board on legs, and then to join a second board - and 2' depth will only allow one up and one down train to be stored, and the track would have to be at the front of the board at both ends. My impression for Heathcote was that the products could do it, but stopping distances might vary between different locos, setting up the autostop at a halt for bidirectional track looked as if it would need a lot of extra hardware, and solid trackbed (ply) to mount the sensors, with quite a depth below it was going to bump up the wait unacceptably. It's the total height (including below baseboard) and weight which make things unmanageable, hence my thought of foam for the elevated part. A couple of old small pics of that initial layout.

Doesn't it save you going to the swimming pool ? My first thought was to wonder why you're posting here so late, given your normal hours. And then I realised that although to me it only feels like 2 a.m. (normal time to be up) I'm still winding down after making a decision to reduce the time I spend on something else, and asking a question on another topic here, and I'm somewhat late in going to bed. Doh!

I'm finally starting to cut myself loose from things which have prevented my from taking more steps towards the layouts I'd like. The least-impractical of those layouts is a smallish (roundy-round with several storage loops) Austrian HOe narrow gauge layout loosely based on the Ybbstalbahn. Compared to other lines, a major feature of the "main" line was the number of bridges (mostly, over the Ybbs, some over smaller streams). I particularly want a short section beside a minor road, leading to a bridge over a stream, with a cutting at one end leading to a tunnel, and the other end hopefully disappearing into trees. When I first thought about this it seemed obvious that I would need open-plan baseboards to get height for a river below a bridge, even if the river surface was not very far down. But my abilities for carpentry have not progressed, and I really need something less than what I'd like, maybe 2 boards each 1 metre by maybe 0.8 metre (or perhaps a bit bigger, up to 1.2 metre by 1 metre). I'm starting to think about professional (so, flat-topped) baseboards, maybe with Woodland Scenics foam to support embankments. But the rear storage sidings will need to be level with the elevated parts at the front. And weight, in terms of what I can manoeuvre to put the two boards together, will be a problem. No, I don't currently have space to put something up permanently. And the weight of scenery (cutting at one end, valley side at the back, lots of trees) is not going to help. Am I overthinking this ? I started out thinking about Heathcote automation (I have d.c. stock) but that would need a lot of experimentation to find how much space different stock needs for triggering sensors and stopping. What I really want is just to sit and watch trains run. So, probably up and down storage for 2 pairs of trains, and another line for a railcar running both up and down, or for just leaving a train running, e.g. when running in. The ideal would have had sidings for a pair of railcars to run auomatically up and down, and a joined pair of railcars for the main line,but I guess I don't have space for that (probably needs 12" radius curves at the back - ideally I want gentler visible curves, and I'm thinking of Roco settrack 10" curves at the back. Any alternative ideas ? I've been thinking about this, on and off, for about 15 years and with Brexit I've probably got as much suitable stock as I'm going to get, but I don't yet feel confident about this. TIA ĸen

Tracksetta are good, but they limit you to set track distance between tracks. Fine if you want to model the empire based at Paddington (as an enthusiast for the Southern I tend to use a more derogatory phrase for it). But in 7ft by 4ft you don't have a lot of choice. And laying even code 75 Streamline on 18" radius for my test track was still "interesting" so you do need to take care with the apparently more fragile Bullhead track. Good luck!

You win some, loose some, It's all the same to me.

Tried it, eventually zoomed in and looked at the next 2 weeks. Nothing new on this road. Some more work on the Eastbound carriageway (local authority ducts, signage) but nothing Westbound until almost at the roundabout for Tesco - and that part is not new. Will keep the tab open, maybe something will show up next week, or perhaps I'll have been able to read the signs before then (the last lot of advance notices were for overnight work). Thanx

For the current roadworks today (gas digging up one lane of the dual carriageway I can agree panic is a possibility. But for closing all, or one side of a dual carriageway with some advance notice, I think it has some degree pf planning.

Went out to Tess' late afternoon - sign about A270 road closure on exit from roundabout at Saint's buries, something about from 29th. On way home a sign about Westbound closure at beginning of April - but the signs are always sited where you only ever get a brief glimpse if there is no traffic obscuring them. So after I came home I googled to find out when it will be closed. Nothing. Nada. Nix. Lots of past reports about closures, links from distant local new sites which claim to have something. but were for the beginning of this month. I blame bluddy 'defund the BBC' government measures - a few years ago it had up to date and forthcoming information on road closures. Now it seems impossible to get anything anywhere except current delays and closures. I'm sure that next week I might be able to find out what is going on, but the chances of being able to get advance information to plan changes for local journeys seem to be a thing of the past.