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The thoughts of Chairman Q


TheQ
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Friday evening and things got a bit weird,

Back in the early 80s I was a founder member of an RAF Station model railway club, within weeks the RAF posted me to the RAF posted me to the Outer Hebrides and that put a stop to model railways for me until about ten years ago.

Then about 3 years ago my old club moved to a premises just 3 miles from my house, having been turned into a civilian club on the closure of the RAF Station. They've moved twice since due to problems with the premises. On the last move they outgrew the building they were in, the club voted to move to to our current site. Which they did, but then some members in an acrimonious move, stayed at the old site. For a while there were 2 clubs with the same name, but eventually they changed their name to that of the nearest BR shed.

Then comes the weirdness, last night on arriving at our club on an industrial estate, I spied a sign on the next unit, yep the other clubs insignia!! They've moved into the next unit that even shares a wall!!!!!

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Saturday, Diss MRC, show.

I had a beautiful drive down and back, about an hour in warm sunshine, hedgerows all in flower.

We assembled the layout, in plenty of time and after a bit of Cleaning and graphiting of the track it all ran well all day. We were in a marquee and it got quite hot but not unbearable.

The show was very well attended, especially as we were in a village outside Diss. There were a range of different layouts in different gauges, one Hornby doublo, several micro layouts N gauge OO and 0.

And a couple of larger layouts . we were in the middle with a 12ft end to end layout.

I would say there was nothing fabulously outstanding, but nothing poor either. Even the micro layout next to us, which was a model of a 7.5 inch model railway in a garden. just a wavy oval of track round a garden shed was well modelled with flower beds and chickens, cats on the wagons, a dog lying under a bench with its owner sat on the bench.

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One of the problems I have is the lack of assistance for anything from SWMBO. It's not that she doesn't want to help but she is officially 50% disabled. Her hobby is art painting, which she is good at. But her paintings take months to do as she can only do them on good days, even with all the painkillers she takes.

Today was a good day, so I thinned down some house paint, ( normal thick house paint is too painful forr her to brush and she started painting the wood on some small park benches we have. After a few minutes she had to sit down as her back was complaining. Once sitting she was alright for a while and then her arms started complaining because on a good day she might get her arms level with her shoulders but not repeatedly. So I had to take over, she hadn't completed one side of three bench's. I finished the one side of the third, the fourth and then turned them over to do the backs.

A few years ago when the government put the squeeze on the disabled / pretending to be disabled. SWMBO was one of the losers, the ATOSsers, operating the scheme had twenty tick boxes to fill in, you had to score 15 to qualify. Trouble was most of the points were single occurrence items such as "can you pick up a pen", which yes she can, but not all day. Or mental question like do you know where you are. We worked out that Professor Steven Hawking, would only just qualify for the money. We were lucky it happened just a I paid off the mortgage or we would have been in financial trouble.

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Have a friend who had trouble with the same people, he was unable to attend an assesment and they stopped his money. When he complianed they said there was no excuses for not attending. He then pointed out that he was ringing from his hospital bed after major surgery to his spine and was was in was in a body cast so could not move for at least 6 weeks. It took over a year to get it back and they even had him followed at one point and produced phots of him standing in his front garden. It was only when questioned that the "photographer" admited that the picture did not show the zimmer frame he used to get there and that he had taken 10 min to walk 15ft.

He likes to point out that his neigbour has depression because she is obesse has not worked for years gets a motorbility car and disabled parking permit, neither of which he can get as he does not meet the criteria.

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Coming back with another 1/3 of a ton of gravel and cement for the raised patio I had a different route that passed two secondary schools.

If they were my girls it would definately be a case of "YOU'RE NOT GOING OUT LIKE THAT!!!!, Girls in school uniforms with wide belts as skirts they were walking along tugging them down!!!! In my day if a girls skirt didn't touch the ground when the knelt on a mat they were in trouble.

The problem is many looked much older with the girls all done up you can't tell if they are 12 or 20!!

Not that any of them would be interested in a K.O.S. like me.

Today I was looking up the aerated concrete blocks and noticed the abbreviation TLMB after the name after a bit of research I discovered this means thin layer mortar B. Or as a rough translation glue. You can glue these blocks together with a 2 or 3 mm layer of waterproof glue which is good news as you can produce a very neat join on something detailed.

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TLMB. Thats what l like about this group you learn something new every day. Bet your a whizz at pub quizes!

As for school uniforms after many years of driving school buses nothing shocks me. Best l have heard was when l asked one girl did her mum know she dressed like that she replied "It is my mums".

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PAT testing, yes I know I've just said Portable Appliance Testing, Testing, but it's not even that now, it's called " In Service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment"

A fairly pointless invented by health and safety / insurance companies.

A few made lot of money out of it, but done properly, few can make any money now as rates are so low, I've seen rates less than £1 per item.

Yesterday I went down the sailing club to do their equipment, 67 items and 5 1/2 hours, 7 hours including travelling, that would be £9.6 hour before expenses, before taxes.

Though all I got was unlimited coffee and a free lunch since I was volunteering, we are a self help club. There are no paid staff, except for a cleaner once a week.

Boy is it boring, luckily I only do a couple of PATs a week on stuff coming into my lab at work.

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After the work at the sailing club yesterday, I really needed to get to work on the raised patio my parents are coming in three weeks.

So after 6 Barrow loads of soil dug and positioned to support one side, it was time to drag out the concrete mixer. 3/4 ton sand gravel and cement later and the main concreting of this section was done. Next week I'll just have a 1 inch levelling surface to lay. During breaks in the day I also fitted a door handle to the alleyway door.

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Good news, 3 Barrow loads of fireplace ash used in a lean concrete mix as more patio support.

Bad news, well there wasn't any, it worked.

Good new, 1/3rd of a ton of concrete laid

Bad news, that's only 3/4 of what I needed to do.

Good news, got to try colouring concrete,

Bad news, you need so much dye it would cost a fortune to make any real change.

Good news, got to try using old emulsion paint as an additive to concrete, (It's how they officially get rid of old paint in many countries )

Bad news, it makes bugger all difference to colour, and made the concrete crack up while setting.

Good news, SWMBO permitted a trip into town to get more sand and cement .

Bad news, SWMBO insisted that other shopping being done.

Good news, 1/3 ton sand and cement bought £31).

Bad news total cost of trip in excess of £150!!.

Good news, got a large bacon butty at a van in BQs carpark,

Bad news, none really , SWMBO had a small bacon butty as well.

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I finished the section of patio I was working on, and did a couple of other areas that needed filling in. That was 200kg of sand and cement used. We then had a general tidy up of the area so I set a small bonfire off, on top of elderberry stumps I want to clear and that short message took 8 hours!! I'm knackered!!

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We have been discussing kits!

Kits?

Yes 3 large boxes of plastic railway wagon and van parts 4mm scale. My model railway club has inherited them and SWMBO has been sorting. They are from a long defunct maker.

Unfortunately the MRC believes we may be missing a box, which would explain why we have in excess of 500 van rooves, but only about 350 van side pairs.

The parts had been stored in a damp garage, so packs of axels had rusted together and wheels have rusty rims, so now they have been living in a jar of cheap coke cola.

There are no van or wagon floors so I've just ordered several big sheets of plasticard. When they arrive I'll make a couple of the kits up and then i will know what size to mass produce the floors.

I've just noticed there are no coupling hooks not prototype nor model.

Wheels are the biggest problem we've found 53 sets of 3 hole wheels, we haven't counted the spoked / split spoked sets. And there appear to be a large amount of disc wheels but did LNER use those on wagons?

After much research I think both kits are ex LNER, the van diagram 014 and the wagon a wooden chassis 6 plank.

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The coke thing I found the information on the internet, We've found if you put the steel items in for a while it removes the rust, if you leave them in longer the steel turns black which for axels and wheels is ok as where the tyre run the will gradually polish up. We also found they would start rusting again fairly quickly. So we after them out of the taking out of the coke, leaving to drain for a couple of minutes, we then dunk them in a jar of WD40 for a couple of hours to remove the acid in the coke and protect them from further rusting.

For track the blackening may be a problem. all I can say is try it, you can't make it worse.

I was lucky finding in a discount store, 2 litre of Non branded sugar free coke for 17P. I was looking for sugar free as I didn't fancy cleaning off all the Sticky sugar

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  • 2 weeks later...

This last weekend was devoted to my other hobby of sailing :D , It was The Three Rivers Race, which is classed as the third toughest :twisted: mass participation event in the UK. This year there were 98 boats entered meaning 200-300 competitors, there have been nearly 150 boats some years. This year there were 13 starts at 5 minute intervals. We have entrants from All over the country who come for this event.

I personally have competed about 20 times in the last 40 years, best place 15th :) , a couple of times I have failed to finish in a very slow boat :cry: , the slowest completion in 23hours 57minutes 7 seconds, which is engraved on my brain, as we ran aground :shock: 50ft from the finish line, on handicap that was 60th.

The race is:

Up to 54 miles of course is set on the Norfolk broads, ( can be shortened if very light winds)

There are three Bridges to go under twice, two are only 100 yards apart so you are allowed to paddle between them, it still means you have to drop the mast 4 times.

One of the bridges (Potter Heigham Medieval bridge) is only 6ft 6Inches high :shock:

You Have 24 Hours to complete the race from your start time.

The boats can be from 14ft long to 40ft, note that the Rver Ant may be only 30ft wide in places which makes it interesting tacking!!! :lol:

There are Four points on the course which you have to pass in YOUR choice of order. :?:

The rivers are tidal so you may have 8 to ten hours tide flowing out but only 2 to 4 hours flowing back in.

So not only is your sailing skill tested but also your navigational skill, get it wrong and you could be sailing against the tide for much of the time. :(

The record for the course is just over 7 hours :) , the worst was when only 13 boats finished :cry:

The race is on the boats handicap, so the first over the water this year actually only came in 14th on corrected time.

This year I was on Guardship duties, there are 10 guardships around the course, each with their own rescue boat, we are in radio contact with the sailing club and report the boats passing back to control. Each boat has to call out it's race number as it passes and leave a tag in a bouy at two of the turn points.

We started setting up at 08:30 had the Guardship set it's place on Hicking Broad for about 10:30, we then had radio problems :o not sorted till 11:15 which is, 15 minutes after start time.

Being one of the furthest points from the start we didn't see our first competitor till 14:01, but by 16:30 we had seen half the fleet. We didn't see our last competitor till 02:20, others behind it retired, as they had missed the tide. during the night our bouy got rammed, we had to send out the rescue boat as one of the flashing lights on it started floating down the broad, meaning the flowing competitors got a bit confused :!: the light was recovered as were some floating tags, we had to wait until dawn at about 04:20 till there was enough light to pack up. Then back to the club for our free Full english breakfast, available to the competitors, but they have to pay, most take it as it's very cheap, there are no paid staff, we are all volunteers. The competitors were still drifting in at 07:00 when I left for home.

Should you be interested there is information on the following sites.

http://www.horningsc.co.uk/

http://www.threeriversrace.org.uk/index.php5?title=Main_Page

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/uk/three-rivers-race-norfolk-broads-sailing-a7061301.html

and lots of pictures on here

Three Rivers Race 2016

There are also pictures on the Horningsc site/3rivers/photos.

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Well this weekend was back to normal, more soilcrete laying followed by concrete laying, more digging in the area near the future viaduct. I also dug another 20ft of trench down to the clay, leveled that, and put in another 10 foundation blocks. There is 1 more non viaduct wall foundation block to place and then 40 standard blocks to cement on top to make that wall. Then it will be back to building the wall / viaduct for the railway :)

Just realised I haven't been adding the weight of water to the amount of concrete I've been saying I've been laying since that is 50%, that makes roughly half a ton I shifted yesterday

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have family in all parts of the UK, and many more round the world. Will one day I need a passport to visit my parents in Scotland?

Little work was done on the garden last weekend as I was in Scotland for nearly a week, and this weekend I'm assisting laying out the course for Our Sailing Clubs', Yeoman Open event, which follows on from another nearby club holding The Nationals last weekend. After that I'm rescue boat driver for the rest of Satuday and Sunday.

Meanwhile I've been building up a huge piles of Sand, Cement and gravel to:

A, Do another section of Raised patio.

B, Level the Barbecue area , which butts up to the future Viaduct, part of which forms a wall of the shed for the BBQ,

The barbecue area which has been lowered to provide soil for the raised area and to provide for weather like last night!!!

It will have a shed /cupboard for the BBQ to live in and be rolled out to use, in the centre of the area will be a chimnea on it's own slightly raised platform but with a small circular wall round it, to stop ashes escaping. That circle will form the centre of a correctly aligned compass rose with the points of the rose in decorated concrete, and between the points will be gravel to allow for drainage.

The BBQ area and the base of the adjoining viaduct / wall, provide the level that the majority of this bit garden will be built to, acting as a drainage area for the patios.

Off to the builders merchants in 3 hours for more sand, I note even BQ has almost run out of any blocks, a row of empty shelves except for foundation blocks and half a dozen standard size blocks left.

Because my viaduct / wall will be around 3 ft 6 inches tall I'm still considering how to build it,

If i use aerated blocks then it will probably have to use foundation blocks for stability, which will make each pier cost £6- £7 and then I've got to bridge the gaps between them. I had intended to carve the arches like Micks' Worsley Dale.

But to make it work I may have to cast the arches onto the piers to provide enough strength. So would it be better to cast the piers as well? Maybe even hollow piers to save concrete.

Edited by Guest
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Yes Q, the things that need sorting are vast. My own kids have lived and worked in Eire for many years as is their right as Europeans. Now they are in limbo with the possibility of suddenly being foreigners in their own homes. A friend here with a German wife is in the same position. I can see the two Irelands merging to remain in Europe, and in a funny sort of way, I can see Scotland merging with them to also stay in Europe.

We should get Mark out of retirement to start rebuilding Hadrian's Wall perhaps.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Another ton of concrete laid over the weekend and some progress closer to the Railway viaduct as I have been laying out the area adjacent to it.

Thought about brexit, had it been remain other than the internal political squabbles, it would have been all over by now...

Instead, we've got at least 2.5 years of the news being dominated by every sneeze a political idiot sneezes in the UK or EU....

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Friday a trip to Sheringham and Cromer, sadly as is all to usual these days the Sheringham model railway shop was closed with a sign be back at 13:00 ( this was at 9:30).

The new-ish model shop in Cromer was open however bought a few odds and ends...

Saturday dug a shallow trench parallel to the future viaduct, this will form one side of the footpath alongside the viaduct. I was using the soil to fill 18inch plant pots which will sit beneath the viaducts. SWMBO was on a good day today so she planted up the pots. Then I started filling the trench with concrete, that was half done when God decided to were the plants in a big way, SO I had to retire to the shed for half an hour and have a can of Cider Before finishing concreteing, while plodding thorugh the sticky mud.

Sunday, Started digging out some soi,l to lower the land for the path itself. the spare soil this time going into the raised patio Area.

Broke off after 3 hours, to take my parents and SWMBO to " The Late one" the nearest Car boot. Amazingly I bought some thing Myself....

A Farnell two channel 15Mhz Osciloscope, Full working order for......£5!!! it's quite a small portable one and will do anything I'll need a scope for.

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