zarniwhoop

On 05/03/2024 at 11:32, melmoth said:

 

Build two (or three) identical models of each structure/feature on the layout and finish them in an increasing order of decreptitude. Swap structures according to which era you're operating.

 

It sounds really easy if you say it quickly.

That would also mean that the signage could change over the years. I think there were one or two places still with green signs when almost everywhere else had gone over to black on white railfont, but if the HAPs will be in NSE livery then white on green sounds extremely rundown.

6 hours ago, Tony_S said:

The Aborts on the  Rűgen narrow gauge railway train are not at all Luxus, you get a lovely view of the ballast. 

The Rhätische Bahn used to be like that.

47 minutes ago, Porcy Mane said:

Hand turned. You could always time this one.

 

 

Looking at the you tube timings, I make that about a minute for the actual 180 degree turn - and that is with 4 guys pushing it. Preceded by a stop for the fireman to get off first, then about 20 seconds while the loco crawls to the middle of the table.

6 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

I suppose it all depends on how much beetroot you intend to eat at one sitting?

 

I don't eat beetroot anyhow, it tastes like a mouthfull of earth!

 

You've obviously never eaten Swiss chard!

7 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

I have never been to Wigan. Is it a nice place to visit at this time of year?

I'm told the pier is nice.

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

In some ways the Anglo-American coup to oust Mosaddegh is the one with the most far reaching consequences. That led to conditions which resulted in the Islamic revolution with everything that followed. We're living with the consequences of that and will almost certainly be living with them for many years to come.

Yes, it led to my parents being expelled (my Dad worked for BP, as did my Mum, as a nurse, until they married) from what was known as Persia, only to return a few years later when the Yankees were in charge. My Mum came back to Sussex to give birth to me after my elder brother had been stillborn while they were both in England, and although I lived there for a short time afterwards. I don't recall any of it, obviously, although I've still got my Dad's Standard-8 Cine films of it somewhere.

Oh, and I still recall one of my Mum's comments about a  nurse friend of hers who was on a plane flying out with a troublesome toddler - "Come and have a sip of Aunty's lemonade." (gin)

Different times.

And yes, my parents were conservative enough (with a small c) to believe the government about Mossaddeqh, although they later learned not to implicitly trust our politicians.

We will certainly be living with the consequences for years to come (if we live for years to come). Recently  I was watching one of the Joanna Lumley BBC4 episodes about Iran and its history - I cannot imagine such a program with a British presenter being permitted to be made there nowadays.

4 hours ago, zarniwhoop said:

Hmm, got to find time to catch up with the Ski-Flying too - this might be a very late night.

It was (is), but Saturday was a very good day for the Slovene's - after winning Friday's "Super Team" ski flying (2 competitors, it was originally to be 3, but reduced because no training nor qualification on Thursday) they got first and second on Saturday and first in the men's Omloop cycling. Their professional cyclists have come on in leaps and bounds since Roglič stopped ski-jumping.

Still time for the Austrians, Germans, Norwegians, Poles and Japanese to try to pull something out of the hat in Sunday's Ski Flying.

Thanks. I used to make home brews more than 40 years ago, using yeasts from bottled Worthington White Shield and Guiness (bottled in Ireland, if my memory is correct, but maybe it was from Park Royal). But apart from when I was at Uni in the 70s (a beer festival with what was claimed to be a "proper" lager, and it was OK) until recent years I only purchased lager when in Europe - and that was all filtered.

I don't recall seeing any unfiltered lager in the past.

Back story: I used to be a cyclist, now I just watch cycling on Eurosport - but I like to refresh my memories of some of the places where (road) cycling happens in Europe by drinking the local brews and wines when I can. So for this weekend (the start of the Classics or Semi-Classics in Belgium) I bought some Stella (can't buy Jupiler here).

But in the supermarket there was a large amount of unfiltered Stella. I went for the normal version (not wonderful, but it will do). Now, I've had the time to look up the unfiltered version - I see they claim it has more flavours, but it is stronger and seems to have more carbs in it.

I've long liked Hefe Weißbier (cloudy from the yeast. I was introduced to it in the Tirol, and led to believe that the correct way to drink it is with a slice of lemon (is that shandy ?) although when I looked on Wikipedia that was said to be a 'Mercan variation), but I'm having difficulty getting my head around why anyone would want cloudy lager ?

48 minutes ago, SteveyDee68 said:

I’m catching up (not visited for a few days and there’s pages and pages to read!) so possibly a little late but …

 

If you type in the phrase “Fix damaged doors around hinges” into Google then rest assured even if you don’t look at the results you will shortly thereafter see advert posts in FaceBook* for rather neat little metal plates that fix over the damaged area and allow your hinges to once again securely hold your cupboard doors. Might be something to consider if the epoxy doesn’t work.

 

I’m speaking from experience!, by the way -  those bl@@dy adverts kept appearing for weeks afterwards!!

Steve S 

 

* How does FB know?! 🤔🫢🤣

 

What is this FB of which you speak ?

OK, of course I know what FarseBoke is, but some of us avoid it. The only worse "soshul meeja" site I can think of would be what used to be know as Twatter.

Since, it seems to me,I mostly post about food, "Today I have been mostly eating frites". I'm sure that @iL Dottore will be disgusted, because these are only cooked once and in groundnut oil (sorry, I forgot the warning if anyone here has a peanut allergy). And apologies to @polybear I've I've added to the pain of his diet.

The reason is that it's the start of the "real" cycling road season, De Omloop in Flanders. As a (veggie) ex-cyclist, I like to eat, and drink, in tune with the races if I can (while recording/watching them on Eurosport). Unfortunately, fans of beer will now be denigrating me because I'm drinking Stella. Get over yourselves 😄

Must remember to get myself some Mayonnaise.

At least I remembered not to watch the Calcutta Cup - as a self-identified Scotsman of a mixed marriage (Anglo-Scots) born in the deep South (Eastbourne), it never works for me to watch that.

Hmm, got to find time to catch up with the Ski-Flying too - this might be a very late night.

L8r

I have no interest in making marmalade - I'll use reduced sugar marmalade, preferably fine cut, on my wholemeal toast. I't the need for sugar in marmalade which is the problem. But some years ago I tried experimenting with unsweetened desserts using sour oranges (e.g. with crème fraîche or mascarpone or melted strong chocolate). But since seville oranges are sold by the Kilo I gave that up - one or two a year might be interesting, but from memory a kilo was 8 or 9 oranges.

Meanwhile, I 've now finished the last of this year's Moro blood oranges - all were good for the amount of red, some were very good. Last weekend I could not get *any* blood oranges at Tess' or Saints', now I've got some more described as Ippolitos. The first time I came across those, they were very big, and mostly orange rather than red. Wikipedia told me they were a larger variant of Tarrocco.

Now they are not big.  Had a few a month ago, not very optimistic that there will be much red in these, but I've got to go with what I can get - hopefully some Sanguinelli will be available soon (depending on inspections at Dover, and Spanish tractor drivers).

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

I bet you hid from the Daleks too...

 

I don't think I hid from the Daleks, but I certainly hid from the cybermen.

56 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

... tomorrow maybe a trip out to get the ears lowered. I’m getting past the shaggy dog look and moving into the Highland cattle look. ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2024/02/16/covid-and-flu-both-going-down-day-spent-chasing-people/

I went full-yeti years ago. Just have to keep remembering to buy hair bands for my ponytail.

So there I was, in my lounge after finishing a late dinner and then working towards finishing my drinkypoos 🙂

Local news on ITV+1 finished, BBC had hardtalk followed by the usual foreign programs, sky news was going to have extended coverage of Thursday's byelections (I used to be interested, as a champage socialist, now somewhat disheartened but still somewhat interested) but it's a bit early for actual news in those.

So I opened up my phone - a notification of a comparison between a real klon and the cheapest clone from Andertons on youtube [2] , interesting but I'll need to play it on my PC to see how it really sounds, and demos with Telecasters are not particularly relevant to me. So then I looked at gurgle news - as of 40 minutes ago, the link to BBC coverage of the by-elections implied they had closed around 2pm. Sure, but don't believe what you read [1]. Obviously that was when the beeb opened the page to cover the results.

Then I found an interesting page which was actually quoting the international, or perhaps 'mercan, version of theconversation - a suggestion that stories about what we call the seven sisters, or The Pleiades, date back 100,000 years to before humans left Africa. [ Today you will see at best 6 sisters ].

https://theconversation.com/the-worlds-oldest-story-astronomers-say-global-myths-about-seven-sisters-stars-may-reach-back-100-000-years-151568

1. The Boomtown Rats

2. I was under the impression that the EXR Soul Food was the cheapest klone - the review was a Warm audio Centavo which is way outside my price range, so suddenly I'm no-longer interested.

For those in this septic isle, I've always found Track Magic works well after cleaning the track. But I doubt it will be a convenient item to purchase in your country.

2 hours ago, VIA185 said:

I guess it must have depended on which electrified lines. Plenty of steam-hauled freight squeezed in between the electric passenger services where I lived on the line in to Feltham yard from Southampton and Reading. (CJL)

I was talking of Portslade on what is now the West Coastway. From about 1960 (when I was 4) to about 1972, so very limited viewing of trains - mostly when walking into town, or from a bus, in both cases stopped at the level crossing. From maybe 1970 I sometimes went to the station after school for an hour or so. I can remember seeing a diesel shunter at the local goods shed in what must have been 1964 or earlier, and mineral wagons. I also sometimes saw westbound trains of tank wagons (probably Esso, like the old airfix kit) hauled by a Crompton. At Hove, of course, and at Brighton, there were mineral wagons for coal and probably other goods vehicles. But seeing a goods train was unusual. I'm not saying I didn't, but I don't remember any. I now know there was a Brighton-Horsham afternoon goods train (later, Brighton to Beeding cement works) and from reading a WTT I think there was a westbound goods train in the early years, but after 5pm when I would have been home. I've a feeling there was also an eastbound goods at about 9 a.m. but again I was never near the railway at that hour.

'Parcels' of course (actually salad vegetables) from Chichester, Angmering, Worthing but only one train late morning (AFAICS the empties returned overnight). Looking at WTTs suggests there were daytime paths for westbound parcels, but using EMUs.

Obviously there were steam trains to the far west in the early years, and I've seen pictures of steam haulage in about 1965-6 for the Plymouth train when one of the hornbys had a boiler fault - but I never saw them. Similarly, it seems there were 6-PUL and later 4-PUL  services Victoria to Littlehampton - but I never knowingly saw a pullman car apart from the 5-BEL at Brighton or Victoria.

11 hours ago, Andy Hayter said:

One of the three major model railway publishers (RMF) has moved from monthly to bimonthly publication.  Is that lack of readers, lack of advertisers and/or lack of material to publish?  I do not know.

Looking at 'hobby' magazines in general, with the exception of UK model railway mags it seems to me that there is now much less advertising. And without the advertising, a publisher has to either cut back or raise the cover price. Several non-railway mags I used to read are no longer produced. I used to buy the main UK model railway mags, but now I rarely bother - nothing in them for me, after you've read them through a couple of years you can tell how the subjects (apart from reviews of new models) rotate through the months.

When I go to an exhibition, in general I will watch things which interest me. Many European layouts fall into that category, although the shiny out of the box appearance of the stock often jars. But US or Canadian standard gauge layouts almost never interest me, they are just too far outside my experience, and often with over-amplified sound.

And in general, while I like to watch trains running I'm less keen on N-scale and smaller: maybe if I took some binoculars with me ;-)

Conversely, any US narrow-gauge with Shays or similar is interesting to me. They are just exotic. And for British layouts I mostly have minimal interest in what has been called 'the gasworks railway' (far too much of it in the Muddler when I was a kid) and a lot of things which concentrate on shunting have minimal interest to me (I'm a Southern man, freight movements during the daytime were not very comon on the electrified lines).

1 hour ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

In 1973 you could  buy almost 4 porterhouse steak meals for the price of one modern choko.

 

Spaghetti on toast ? Yeughh!

As for the 'Rossmoyne Remembered', google only found a farsebook page and a link to the Daily Fail suggesting nobody knew what it was.

3 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

She also grew up eating Vegemite for which I have now forgiven her. Largely because she converted to Marmite.

I recently got p155ed off with the aggravation of trying to get everything out of a marmite jar, so I thought I'd try vegemite because of its straight-sided jar. After trying it for a few days - I like celery, but I don't normally want to spread it on toast. And at least I understood the passages in Sir Pterry's 'The Last Continent'. I've now relegated the vegemite to "use when making veggie casseroles, or perhaps pommes boulangères", and gone back to low-salt marmite which spreads more easily and might be easier to get out of the jar (or might not, but at least it tastes better).

11 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Don't forget that with RMweb, you can pay to not have ads from the Google feed. Is it any different?

 

The problem with YouTube ads, is that so often they are inappropriate and indeed they offer a 'skip ad' option, for a good percentage of the ads. Also they offer a 'premium' version, which if you decide to pay for, will block the ads. So does that not deny the content creator of income?

I use ublock, but it didn't seem to stop the repeating adverts - I was watching a series of videos possibly related to a glucose sensor I use, and got p155ed off by the totally irrelevant (for my type of diabetes) repeating adverts every few minutes. And for my main watching (music) it was similarly frequently interrupted - some ads I could skip quickly, others I could not. I'm not afraid to pay for things online, and can afford to do so if it is worthwhile for me, so at the moment I'm in the free trial phase on youtube - currently liking it (mostly following random music links, some potentially well over an hour - but it's finding the time to play them that is now the problem).

13 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

At least you know where the obstruction is.

 

My current pet hate is a local epidemic of "Road Ahead Closed" signs that carry no indication as to whether it's closed before or after my destination or the junction where I intend to diverge from the route.

 

John

My pet hate is the motorway signs which say something like 'A27 closed at A280' without giving you an indication of which direction (for those of us intending to get to the A27 in that example) nor where the closure actually is - as if we will immediately know every junction on whichever road is mentioned.

2 hours ago, N10 said:

Sorry to hear about the scam

I have four rules.

1 never bank on my mobile telephone.

Nice if you can do that. For stopping a standing order (remember them?) I had to use the bank's app, could not do it on my PC.