N Scale Hi Rail - Retro Hollow Core Door Layout

[marklin-au]

    Ah    , we still use smoke signals & the occasional tin can & string trick   down here .  I used to be a comms tech   for about 24 yrs & thought I was fairly up on new gismos  but after that  24 yrs of torture I saw the light & jumped ship & became a trainee Train Driver  / Locomotive Engineer   down  here  on the east coast driving everything [well almost ]  from the Indian Pacific[ Aust train  #1 for seeing the country  thru to Suburban trains taking the cattle to work n the morning & bringing them home at  night  .


   Cheers  Tom in Oz .

[peteski]

    Ah    , we still use smoke signals & the occasional tin can & string trick   down here .  I used to be a comms tech   for about 24 yrs & thought I was fairly up on new gismos  but after that  24 yrs of torture I saw the light & jumped ship & became a trainee Train Driver  / Locomotive Engineer   down  here  on the east coast driving everything [well almost ]  from the Indian Pacific[ Aust train  #1 for seeing the country  thru to Suburban trains taking the cattle to work n the morning & bringing them home at  night  .

I would also like to leave my high-tech computer job behind.  Getting tired of the ever-faster-changing technology.  I used to be a geek - now I'm getting geeked-out.  Unfortunately retirement is still about a decade away.

The latest needlessly complicated thing I have encountered (just because "they" can) after dialing a phone number is a voice announcement stating "your call cannot be completed as dialed . . ." at which point I'm thinking "what the heck?"  Did I dial a wrong number?  Is there a problem on the line?  Did the phone I'm calling get disconnected? But after that slight pause which made all those thoughts rush through my mind, it continues ". . .  because the line is busy".  WTF!?  That stupid announcement made mind go through all those scenarios, just to tell me the line is busy!? WTF! WTF!   You made me waste 20 seconds of my life listening to that stupid message, when a simple busy signal would have told me the same thing in couple of seconds.  Beep, beep, beep.  It was good for a 100 years, why complicate things with a long voice announcement with a scary sounding beginning.   Stupid!! Stupid!
There, I feel better!

[CRL]

I wondered what was up with that announcement… I hung up before it finished.

[MK]

Maybe they can't do beep, beep, beep with VOIP?   

[marklin-au]

      Peteski,   Some one got paid  big money  for that change  on what used to be a mechanical tone originating from the  tone  machine .   " At the third stroke the time will  be  10:27 . "   the good old KISS principle  . We had a large flat record  with every  30 seconds  laid into it , worked for almost 80 years with no problems apart from a occasional dust off.  Then you see some idiot out of Uni keeping the seat warm in the bosses office  designing a solid state program that will supersede the original recording  so that  management can boast what marvelous progress they have made  since last year .     Nup   I changed jobs when I turned 40 & loved every minute running trains   apart from where some stupidity in management when they want to change practices just for the sake of it , just walk away  shaking your head  . Now back to a room  9 5 meters  full of Marklin models where I can only blame myself .

[peteski]

. . .
   Nup   I changed jobs when I turned 40 & loved every minute running trains   apart from where some stupidity in management when they want to change practices just for the sake of it , just walk away  shaking your head  . Now back to a room  9 5 meters  full of Marklin models where I can only blame myself .

I love it! Good for you!

[wm3798]

Did some more work on the station.  The safety gates are installed between  the tracks.




And a vintage touch to keep it real.
Lee

[glakedylan]

very fine looking detail
it is always fun following your retro-hi-rail postings
thanks


sincerely
Gary

[nscalbitz]

Did some more work on the station.  The safety gates are installed between  the tracks.
Lee

I'm not sure what it's called in grammar, but surely you are referencing the 'fence', a wall; not the 'gates', an opening?
 

[wm3798]

First train of the day or the last?

[davefoxx]

First train of the day or the last?

Ooh, can you give us a hint?  Are we facing north or south. 

DFF

[wm3798]

Well, I busted the lens on my phone, so my pictures have been coming out a bit murky.  Now it's acting up on the auto focus, so it's not really working for close up model photos anymore.  So what do you do to photograph your vintage models?

You get out the vintage camera!


It's my 15 year old Canon Power Shot, originator of almost all of the pictures I've had published over the years.  It's a lot more fiddly than the phone, and at only 5 mp, not nearly as crisp on the big screen, but perfectly functional for magazine work and other such adventures.  While it's a bit clumsy to set all the settings, wait forever for that 10 second delay and 2 second exposure at F8, then of course, pulling out the SIM card, plugging it into the old laptop, transferring the files, uploading them manually.... well... you get the idea.  But the results are very pleasing indeed!



The long exposure turns regular room lighting into a really nice daylight feel, and the small aperture gets far better depth of field than the phone can achieve.  All the stacking programs in the world can't beat a pinhole and a couple of seconds.



This one floored me.  It's a bit washed out, and the immediate foreground is distracting (mostly because lazy bones hasn't finished the scenery) but look at those locomotives!  3/4 viewing angle on two different planes, and they're both acceptably focused from nose to cab.  The detail of the bridge vaults all the way back to the background trees is clear.

It's good to be reunited with an old friend!  Now if I could just get it to stop eating batteries like candy!!

Lee

[DKS]

Now if I could just get it to stop eating batteries like candy!!

Give it all the candy it wants... it's doing a great job. That second photo is t!ts!

[wm3798]

Thanks!  I'm going to have make with the ground cover and stage up something more suitable!
Lee

[nkalanaga]

"Now if I could just get it to stop eating batteries like candy!!"

For indoor use, is there any way to replace the battery with an external supply?

I did that, years ago, with a portable radio.  It needed 4 D-cells, and they didn't last long.  It also didn't have an adapter socket.  So, I cut a block of wood to fit the battery compartment, attached brass strips to both ends to match the "end" battery contacts, and wired it to a 6-volt lantern battery.  Working for the railroad, my father could get those for free, and one would last months in the radio.

Today, the same idea could be used with a wall-wart power supply, and it would work as long as the power was on.  The "plug" could be removed, and the battery reinstalled, for outdoor use.