Looking after number one

[user=2006]Barry Miltenburg[/user] wrote:

On a (sort of) related topic, has anyne got any ideas how we might simulate weather on our layouts?

I have seen layouts set in Settle & Carlisle country with moody backscenes (and they look good) and there was a 7mm SR layout some years ago set in winter (complete with snow) but I am thinking about changing weather - lighting effects perhaps?  Any lighting experts out there with any ideas?

Barry

 

I have a really easy answer to that problem either put the layout in the garden or have a roof on it thats retractable.
Problem solved   :pedal :pedal :pedal

Brian

Hi all

In all my 40-odds years of being a voter and through all of the political comings and goings, I can't say that I have ever felt that the promises I have been promised, or the doomsdays I have been threatened with, have ever really made a squit of difference to how I have been.

Maybe I'm just lucky.

I'm lucky that politics and model railways rarely collide. 

Douglas, as a big Iain Rice fan I am indebted to you for reminding me of that book - I shall have a read.  It does suggest a permanent weather state though and I was looking for lighting that might suggest sunny days and grey days.

Sparky - I like what you are suggesting - more details please??

Brian - in 1972 I read a Model Railway Constructor article on the Crewchester system (7mm garden layout) and they used a picture of the branch terminus taken just after a rain shower - absolute brilliance.  I still have the picture but not the magazine.  I will find it and share it

Barry

Found it - I love it when a filing and retrieval system works!!


Thanks to John L (Jack) Ray for the layout.  Photo from MRC May 1972 Ian Allen publications - used for education and recreation purposes only.

Barry

Now that is excellent!  On all counts….

Michael

Indeed. And its 7mm course scale clockwork 40 years ago.
Rather embarrases all the modern day "super fine scale" rtr stuff methinks!

Perhaps we are striving for the wrong thing?!?!?!

Now then - if I cut that tree down and can get a loop in around the pond…….
 :hmm :hmm

The old 7mm garden layout stuff was always brilliant Barry.  I remember, as a pre-teens, seeing a feature in an old railway magazine that really triggered my desire to have a layout.  I assume the magazine must have been Railway Modeller but, other than being "grabbed" by it, can't remember the article nor the layout.  I've always wanted a garden layout but my bank manager has always disagreed …………………..

I would love a garden layout too…. I think we have the same bank manager!  Mind you, being in the Southern region, it would never run - leaves on the line and all that!

Michael

Hot weather eh?  Some of us live in places which are normally very hot in summer.  Most of us have endured extreme heat somewhere sometime in our lives.  For 17 years I lived just south of Melbourne in Australia where a summer's day can reach 43C and occasionally rather more.  Not quite as much, nor usually for as long, as neighbouring capital Adelaide endures but when they have finished with their heat they send it east to Melbourne!

Hydration is essential.  Carry water and don't rely on the public drinking fountains and taps though they are often handy for refilling your bottle.  Not every where has them - they are few and far between in London for example though now being into my third year back home I know there are more than there once were.

Being sun-smart is a way of life with the need to cover, not bare, the skin plus wearing suitable head-gear widely respected and mandatory in schools and many jobs where outdoor work is involved.  Europe cannot be too far away from requiring employers to provide sunscreen and protective clothing, surely?  

Air conditioning is a mixed blessing.  It's great to get out of the heat into a nice cool building but the cost of that is astronomical fuel bills, often fossil fuels being burned, and the sudden change from 40C to 20C (and sometimes back again if, for instance, one is loading or unloading the car) is not at all good for us.  Another thing I learned in Oz is to not - never ever - get straight into a hot car.  The air inside can be 65C even if parked with reflective sun shields in the windows.  The seats can be bum-scorching (and leg-burning) and you touch the steering wheel or any other control at your peril.  You open the doors and allow the air to equalise with that outside for a minute or two.

You also never turn the air-con (I mean real air-con not the European cool blower) to maximum either.  Do that and the seats and controls cool steadily.  So does the inside of the glass.  But the outside is still searingly hot.  While it's designed to cope with that difference it isn't always able to cope with a sudden change.  Blow cold air onto a very hot windscreen and six times out of ten it will crack.  Allow the car and the glass to cool by driving away with the windows open for five minutes or so first.

My model was outdoors though under a polycarbonate roof.  It too suffered from the weather. It was built tough to last and in the ned it proved to have been over-built as it refused to be broken up when its time came.  Peco Streamline track coped magnificently with an air temperature range between 0C and 45C.  The actual rail-head temperature was checked before running in extreme heat and clocked 57C on three occasions.  The layout area could be extremely hot and was approaching 50C on many a summer day as it retained the heat.  On the dramatic Black Saturday - when bushfires ripped through the state claiming 173 lives, thousands of homes and some towns and villages in their entirety the backyard air temperature peaked at 52C though the official figure was 48C.  Trains still ran.  I had to replace several sets of points which, being less robust, suffered from the heat and distorted enough that they failed to throw fully or reliably.  But the plain track never let me down and neither, by and large, did anything else.

Many of us here will have followed the story but for those more recently arrived the fullest version is over on RMweb here https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/6296-penhayle-bay/&tab=comments#comment-52564  

We seem set to endure more extreme weather as time passes, some of it hot, some of it stormy, some of it dramatically cold.  We can all help each other to stay safe.  And to keep the faith.

Keep calm and model on.

You forgot to mention branding yourself with the white-hot seat belt buckle once you were in the car, Rick.

Guys
After reading all this I think I'll just take the wonderful unpredictable too-hot, too-cold, leaves on the line, wrong lind of snow British weather!!!

 
Barry

[user=321]SRman[/user] wrote:

You forgot to mention branding yourself with the white-hot seat belt buckle once you were in the car, Rick.

And of course the acquired skill - acquired out of necessity to avoid burns - of steering with a single finger-tip on the wheel and changing fingers every few seconds 

[user=1753]Gwiwer[/user] wrote:

And of course the acquired skill - acquired out of necessity to avoid burns - of steering with a single finger-tip on the wheel and changing fingers every few seconds 

 

And I thought you Aussies were just terrible drivers ………………….. :roll:

We do all those things here - or at least we do this year.  Normally, (is there anything "normal" about the weather these days), it's not as hot for as long as it has been this summer. 

 The heatwave in 2003 was apparently the hottest on record since around 1540 but, whilst in Europe, we were particularly badly hit, it only lasted 2 weeks here.  This year, it's been hotter and, although it's "cooled" to mid to late 30's, it's still "rather warm"…………….

It will all end in tears - or more likely, a tremendous thunder storm.
 

When working on the car or boat outside in Saudi, keep the hand tools in a bucket of water….

We placed a Thermometer, on a chair in the shade behind a packing case, parked on the tarmac of an airfield. We left it there while loading the packing case.. The thermometer went off the scale 70C!!!

When building a small sailing boat in Saudi (there wasn't a lot else to do… ) Each day off, out there, in semi shade (target towing banners hung over a framework). I took a water container carring 2 gallons of Ice and lemon squash. At the end of the day the now empty container weighed, with me, less than the combined weight at the start of the day by several pounds..

Yep it can get real hot inside cars in summer
check out this video taken on Sydneys Bondi Beach
[yt]Og-t_74sQ78[/yt]

Excellent advice there….. an hour and a half for a loin of lamb was clearly too long!!!

[user=1512]Headmaster[/user] wrote:

Excellent advice there….. an hour and a half for a loin of lamb was clearly too long!!!

 

But on a serious note, I didn't know this was a problem in Australia - nor just how hot the inside of a car can get.  I may moan about English weather, but it has its advantages….

Michael

Hi Michael,

Unfortunately even on winter days here in Sydney the inside of a car can warm up quickly resulting in serious dehydration for pets or small humans that may be left in a car.