The Relics of St Anthony of Padua

I've repeatedly referred in this blog to my desire to have on my layout a passenger train pulled by the Nord Express 232S.

One reason being that the layout is based in the north of Paris and serves regions and directions to the  north - from the suburbs to the nations of Northern Europe.

In particular I would like an HO scale model of this locomotive.

But the only model available is long since out of production and the manufacturer, JEP, is defunct. In any case the JEP was made to operate on 3-rails and it's way beyond my capabilities to convert a 3-rail loco to a 2-rail loco.

Perhaps you can see the central third rail

With the upper body removed.

Therefore, several weeks ago I purchased a kit which allows you to build a loco from matchsticks.

The rationale being that I would become an adept with the medium of the matchstick and then build a Nord Express 232S from 5,000 of the  little beggars.

No wonder I put the idea on the back-burner - fortunately, I possess quite a large back-burner.

But last night whilst trawling the internet, I came across the upper body of the JEP 232S for sale on eBay. So, I bought it for £15.

When it arrives, it too will go on the back-burner. But I think there is a greater chance of my being able to convert another version of the 232 locomotive (perhaps one that I acquire 2nd hand) by replacing its upper body (in some way) with the JEP 232S body part, than building an entire loco form matchsticks!

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Currently listening to:

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Last night's dinner:

Take-away vegetable pakora from the Shenaz Restaurant, Glasgow

Plus their Chicken Curry

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Currently reading:

Back to Kim; for next week's philosophy class we are to revise the first 4 chapters on Mind/Brain Identity theory - which I'm becoming ever more sympathetic towards.

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Miscellany:

The relics of St Anthony of Padua are on a tour of the UK at the moment. This afternoon I cycled to a very crowded Mass at the Church of John Duns Scotus in the Gorbals, Glasgow where the relics (his finger) were on display.

The Church

Perhaps you can see the finger inside the little glass pagoda. At the end we all traipsed up to kiss it.

Before that we sang one of my favourite hymns.

Yahweh, I know you are near,
standing always at my side.
You guard me from the foe,
and you lead me in ways everlasting.

Lord, you have searched my heart,
and you know when I sit and when I stand.
Your hand is upon me protecting me from death,
keeping me from harm.

Where can I run from Your love?
If I climb to the heavens You are there;
If I fly to the sunrise or sail beyond the sea,
still I'd find You there.

You know my heart and its ways,
you who formed me before I was born
in the secret of darkness before I saw the sun
in my mother's womb.

Marvellous to me are Your works;
how profound are Your thoughts, my Lord.
Even if I could count them, they number as the stars,
You would still be there.




Author - Dan Schutte

Paste this link for a youTube version.

http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=Z76Z7NNX

Spend, spend, spend!

I believe that this phrase derives from a British tabloid newspaper headline about the Football Pools winner, Viv Nicholson, who went on a famous spending spree when she won just over £15,000 in 1961.

Anyway, following her lead, I decided to lash out on eBay last night and buy an additional two carriages for my recently acquired Budd train.

I feel that three coaches makes too short a train.

One carriage was bought outright for approx £15 on eBay and the other one I've had to put in a bid for on eBay. It's possible that neither will materialise, because in the former case, the seller wants paid by personal cheque and, since he lives in France, I'll have to go to the bank to arrange that. That can be problematic. In the case of the latter, I might not have bid enough.

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Currently listening to:

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Last night's dinner:

Cod risotto

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Currently reading:

Nearly finished this exceptional book.

Another laughing fit last night.

When dangerously ill in hospital with pancreatitus, he had the following interchange with one of the consultants.

Arthur:  Will I have to have a colostomy bag?

Doctor: Good God, no.

Arthur: Well, can I have one anyway?

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Miscellany:

On the way back from PC World this afternoon, I was overtaken by a chap on a home-made bicycle; ie one he had made himself from sections of timber.

He kindly agreed to be photographed for this blog and then shot off into the distance at considerable velocity.

Z5100 vs Z6100

The Budd 3-part train that came through the post this week continues to delight me.

But, a few questions have begun to niggle me.

Firstly, on eBay the product was described as this:

JOUEF 8710 SNCF BUDD EMU AUTORAIL RAME INOX 3 CAR SET

And in one form of packaging it comes like this:

As opposed to mine which came like this:

I noticed this word "RAME" cropping up and sometimes "RAME Inox" and wondered what they meant.

Google provided the answer: Inox is French for Stainless Steel ie inoxidable; and RAME is an acronym for reversible box ie the train is box-shape and symmetrical and can travel in either direction. I suppose that capability must have been a bit of a novelty when these trains were first introduced to France.

Secondly, what exactly did the American Budd corporation contribute to these trains? The French ones are certainly very similar in appearance to the ones you see in New York.

Actually, this one is in New Jersey

What all these trains have in common is a stainless steel body which is obviously "corrugated".

What I like about my new model is that it captures that corrugated effect.

I think that Budd patented the process for manufacturing corrugated steel carriages and so the French trains were built in France under licence from Budd. 

Budd's HQ is in Troy, Michigan.

Thirdly, is my model the same as the model I photographed leaving Paris last Autumn, on one of its very last journeys in service ?

No. My model is the earlier Z5100 whereas what I photographed was the later Z6100. Mistakenly, I've been eliding or maybe even conflating the Z5100 with the Z6100.

Not that I care too much, but my model, the Z5100 is of the right era for my layout ie late 1950s whereas the Z6100 didn't start working until a few years after that.

On the other hand, my model never seems to have seen the platforms of northern Paris (the location of my layout) whereas the later Z6100 most certainly did. Oh well, never mind.

Incidentally, whilst rifling through the web in search of answers to those questions I came across a picture of a Budd which looks as if it were made by someone other than Jouef.

Must find out more details.

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Currently listening to:

Six Preludes by Ryan Teague

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Last night's dinner:

Haggis, mashed potato and mashed turnip

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Currently Reading:

The same mix as usual: 

The profound:

The hilarious:

And the humiliating:

Got most of the exercises wrong at the end of chapter 3.

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Miscellany: 

Cycled to Port Dundas in North Glasgow to collect some stuff.

Passed Spiers Wharf - a bonded warehouse converted into apartments

I've always liked this piece of street art. It's on its last legs now (if you'll forgive the pun) but from the nearby motorway those silhouettes look like real people on their way up the hill.

Port Dundas

HO Scale Building Lights - aesthetic issues

Temporarily rigged up my LED lighting strip beneath one of the canopies of my pink ceramic building.

And turned on the power!

With the room lights on.

With the room lights off.

Verdict: technically, it's OK - needs a bit of repositioning to eradicate unwanted beams escaping eg that one against the back wall.

But, aesthetically, it's hopeless. The light produced needs to produce a cosy effect. It's meant to be a cafe not a squash court!

On the market there are available coloured LED strips eg warm white, yellow, green, all of which would make for a better cafe-effect.

Also, there are "flickering" LED lights available. The flicker is said to look more realistic and simulate real life interior building lights. And, presumably, the subtle movement  imparts a bit of life to the scene.

Before, I go down that route (ie spending more money - route), I might try to make a coloured filter for the existing LED strip from some of the leftover coloured acetate sheets that I used to make the stained glass windows of my church on the layout.

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Currently listening to:

Two reggae records that my bongo tutor has provided stroke-patterns for:

Whip them Jah by Rankin' Trevor

 (I wonder what admin cock-up led to the label having printed on it the name in reverse as if the singer was a "Mr Ranking"!)

Pressure Drop by Toots and the Maytals

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Last night's dinner:

Home made Hake curry

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Currently reading:

In today's passage, Arthur describes when he had taken his now elderly Dad back to Colditz where, among other places, he had been held as a WW2 prisoner of war.

The dominant memory that returned to his Dad was not of physical fear, poor conditions and captivity generally, but, rather, of the desperate hunger that ravaged all the prisoners. They even had to catch rats in order  to feed themselves. (Far cry from the TV dramatisations of Colditz and the like.)

Out of curiosity, Arthur Smith asked his Dad what rat tasted like.

Even now in his stand-up routine, he uses his Dad's answer  - an answer given, after some reflection and with no irony.

"I suppose a bit like dog."

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Miscellany:

This afternoon cycled across the Clyde,

The Clyde

To see the newly built Sikh temple in Albert Drive.