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  • The Plug Track functions are experimental and still being developed. Some of the earlier pages of this topic are now out-of-date.

    For an updated overview of this project see this topic.   For some practical modelling aspects of using Plug Track see Building 3D Track.

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    Some pages of this and other topics include contributions from members who are creating and posting their own CAD designs for 3D printing and laser-cutting. Do not confuse them with Templot's own exported CAD files. All files derived from Templot are © Martin Wynne.
  • The Plug Track functions are experimental and still being developed.

    For an updated overview of this project see this topic.   For some practical modelling aspects of using Plug Track see Building 3D Track.

    The assumption is that you have your own machines on which to experiment, or helpful friends with machines. Please do not send Templot files to commercial laser cutting or 3D printing firms while this project is still experimental, because the results are unpredictable and possibly wasteful.

    Some pages of this and other topics include contributions from members who are creating and posting their own CAD designs for 3D printing and laser-cutting. Do not confuse them with Templot's own exported CAD files. All files derived from Templot are © Martin Wynne.

What are you drinking this weekend ?

Quick reply >

Hayfield

Member
Location
Essex
Rather than interrupt another thread, we have had a quick chat about our tipples with weekend dining. I am no expert and certainly do not buy anything expensive, getting older I rather go for quality over volume and a bottle lasts a few evenings. Having tried several white wines , but I have stayed with the Beaujolais in their "The Best" range with red wines, I thought as with the white wine I would give Italy a go

Previous weekends saw me go through a few of Morrisons white wines from France and Italy. Well with Chicken this week its back to a bottle of white wine, and have a Falanghina in the cupboard,

Last weekend we had beef so today it was back to Morrisons to replace the Beaujolais villages wine. I decided to have a change of red wines, good job as they had sold out of Beaujolais villages so chose a Valpolicella Ripasso which caught my eye, still in their "The Best" range, but it will have to wait till we have something a bit more suitable to go with it
 
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Just have, We pay at least £4 tax per bottle Apparently the cost of wine in a £5 is about 30p the rest is tax and associated costs, this shoots up I think to £2 for an £8 bottle. We have a high alcohol tax regime, so a small rise in price increases the quality a lot
 
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For the last 15 years i make my own wines from our own grapes.
In my experience you can buy top shelf wines and they will taste very good.....
And here is the enjoining but:
The lower shelf/cheap wines are the young wines, not matured yet.
Those wines are usually 4 to 6 months of age.
The more expensive the wine gets, the older they are, the older a wine gets the better it is going to taste.
We still have bottles of own harvest wine of 15 years of age in the basement(3 left from the 60)
They get better every year.
What brings me to the following point/experiment:

Buy 3 to 5 cheap wines in glass!! bottles, put them under your floor, house, basement, shed or even dig them into the garden.
The keyword is temperature stability.
So sudden changes in temp are a big nono, keep the temp between 10c and max22c to avoid making vinegar.

When they are one year in your possession, buy the same cheap wine new and get one of your own stock.....
You will be very surprised how the flavor chanced.
But you bought 3 to 5...
Repeat this after a year.....

How to start to choose your wine:
There are 4 main basic wines.
From sour to very sweet.
Since you are not a red wine drinker you dont have no worries about softening up the tannin.
Red wine goes only good with meat, white can be used with all.
With red wines you have a afternoon wine table wine and after dinner wine, all with there own alc % and are climbing up in the taste "punch"

Next option is to choose your "barrel" taste.
The type of wood the wine was getting his maturity in.
Oak pine ect burned inside or even second hand sherry barrels....

You can buy all the expensive wines and still not know what your personal taste is, there is simply to much.
There is not one good wine.
If you open a bottle with a real cork, keep them, store them dry.
In the event if one cork brakes you have spare or in case a bottle has a screw cap.(most cheap ones)
If you open a bottle of wine, let it breath for 6 hours minimum 8 hours max, drink something, enjoy and put the cork back into the bottle to prevent "rusting" of the wine.
Before you place the (dry/old)cork back on the bottle let it sock in fresh water.(or even salt water 5gram per liter max for extra taste, store it for a month).

I hope this small essay will help you in your further endevours and is appreciated.
My two cents, with best regards Igor, enjoy dont drink
 
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This is somewhat thin ice for me, but i suspect if you would use a cork it will last longer.
Close it with a cork so it can consume a bit more oxygen, if you would make it a vacuum i suspect the much needed oxygen will disappear(from the wine itself).
With a cork it will get the change to mature further, it will and can regulate his own intake.
Yes, wine bottles with cork and a long storage are kept at there sides, to prevent the cork drying out.
There will be some wine leaking out over the years, but what must go out must go back in.
This is a major part of the taste maturing process.
I suspect if you have a well moistener cork you can close the fresh opened bottle(6 hours open, that is) after you take your consumption out and close it with the cork, i suspect this will be better.
Again this is thin ice for me and i suspect it will be better and longer lasting.
Further more, the sulfide what is often added (Always to much!!)to red wines will get a chance to evaporate.
Except the real expensive wines will have a minimum to no sulfide in them, only the tannin must be softened up due to berating.
And the tannin is THE taste maker or breaker in curtain red wines, i like tannin to be there, just enough to taste it, but it can not be ruling! over the added taste of the barrel and flavor of the grapes(species and eventually soil!!!dont underestimate this one) themselves, and a very small hard to trace pinch of salt.
To sum it up:
I like my red wine matured in second run smoked oak barrels and the wine must come from a sea area, but very heavy in the grape taste.
But this is my personal taste, i can not decide this for you.

infact red wine tastes better the next day, I assume its been able to breath

Yes you are absolute right about that one.
When wine gets the chance to breath it will improve on taste, that is why i stated a minimum of 6 hours before consuming open the bottle.
The wine needs to "oxidize" and the sulfide needs to get to evaporate, with young ones, the different flavors will get a chance to bond better also.

Wine is just like a good whiskey, but with one major difference, dont let you whiskey breath, and that is a warning if you would like to buy a whiskey over 20-30-50 years of age....
Yes i throw one down the drain...a Macallan 35 years....just had 2 glasses(n):(:sick: waited 4 months....taste was awful..

With best regards and enjoy your drink of choise
 
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Lot's of good advice Igor. Many thanks!

We have a lot of good vineyards in Idaho. Not at this end of the state but further South and at lower altitude. We are at 650 meters ASL here which makes the growing season a bit short. It can freeze overnight here through all of April.

My only venture into wine making was many years ago. Our garden in Renfrew sur Clyde had a prolific elderberry tree so we decided to make elderberry wine. It was disgusting! I gave a couple of bottles to a friend and he put it away in a dark cupboard and forgot about it.

He rediscovered it a few years later and decided to open a bottle. What a transformation! It was actually quite good.
 
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will be a lovely accompaniment
Hi John,

I'm about to accompany my boiled egg with a mug of Batchelors Asparagus Cup-a-Soup. :)

Martin.
 
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Hi John,

I'm about to accompany my boiled egg with a mug of Batchelors Asparagus Cup-a-Soup. :)

Martin.
Martin
Here we are, getting all serious about wine and you bring us down to earth with a thump... but struggling to get the high ground back, were you drinking your wine/soup out of the correct Riedel glass/mug?
Andrew
 
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were you drinking your wine/soup out of the correct Riedel glass/mug?

I've posted a picture of the Templot mug before now -- were you not paying attention? :)

guildex_mug.jpg


GAUGE O GUILD - GUILDEX 1994 (at which I was an exhibitor).

27 years -- which is about how long that boat kit is going to take. :)

Martin.
 
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Well obviously not!

I rather like the look of the boat kit though, there is something quite beguiling about it, the sort of thing that could easily distract a railway modeler from railways! How far have you got with it, but it occurs to me, why have a boat kit at a railway exhibition.... why not I suppose, railway modeling is a broad church?
It would be nice to see any pictures you have of your progress or the completed model.
Andrew
 
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but it occurs to me, why have a boat kit at a railway exhibition

Hi Andrew,

Some confusion here. The picture was of the mug, which is 27 years old, from a 1994 exhibition.

The boat kit is a lockdown project which I purchased on a whim last year, and posted about here:

https://85a.co.uk/forum/view_topic.php?id=3228&forum_id=5&page=13#p29431

27 years is also the length of time I was given to build it in, see:

https://85a.co.uk/forum/view_topic.php?id=3228&forum_id=5&page=13#p29491


2_012351_070000000.jpg


https://aero-naut.de/product/moewe-2-fischkutter/

The picture shows total progress to date. :)

I'm up to my neck in Templot at present, so I can't see it getting much further any time soon.

cheers,

Martin.
 
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As my family will tell you, reading instructions is not my forte, and if I can get the wrong end of the stick then it seems I will. Looking on the bright side, it provides amusement, sometimes to quite large numbers of people. It must be that I have strengths in other areas...?
Rather liked your imagined conversation between two cows discussion of their lunch that day, nicely understated.

Kind regards
Andrew
PS how are you intending to archive the old forum? I'd hate to lose access to it selfishly, as it's a great record of my track building exploits and loads of friendly discussion and banter?
 
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PS how are you intending to archive the old forum? I'd hate to lose access to it selfishly, as it's a great record of my track building exploits and loads of friendly discussion and banter?

Hi Andrew,

It's not lost, I have copied it all off the old server. Eventually it will all be available again at:

https://85a.uk/templot/archive/

https://85a.uk/templot/club/index.php?threads/old-forum-archive.105/

All 3,800 topics and over 7,000 images. But there is not a lot there yet, as you can see.

But at present it is all still available on the old forum at: https://85a.co.uk/forum/

cheers,

Martin.
 
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Thanks Martin,
I'm really quite relieved, which in a way surprises me, but at the same time, this forum is a 6 year record of my first layout built pretty well solo. So, a lot of blood sweat and humour is recorded in it, which I've never done before nor have I experienced the camaraderie of so many who have shown an interest. So yes I'm very glad it's not going to disappear.
Thank you for all the time and effort that you put into the forum and the program that's made this possible.
Kind regards
Andrew
 
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Hi Martin.
I would like to add my appreciation to Andrews', even though I chose to write up my epic on the Scalefour forum, my sentiments are very similar.
Regards
Tony.
 
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Previous weekends saw me go through a few of Morrisons white wines from France and Italy. Well with Chicken this week its back to a bottle of white wine, and have a Falanghina in the cupboard,

Last weekend we had beef so today it was back to Morrisons to replace the Beaujolais villages wine. I decided to have a change of red wines, good job as they had sold out of Beaujolais villages so chose a Valpolicella Ripasso which caught my eye, still in their "The Best" range, but it will have to wait till we have something a bit more suitable to go with it
Hello John,
I don't drink anything with a meal - I find it lowers my already low stomach acid levels and prevents the digestion of the meal.

However it is worth mentioning that Tesco have Smirnoff Vodka on offer at £16 a litre this week which is what I normally pay for the 'understrength' own brand stuff. Two bottles went straight in the trolley tonight - and double clubcard points to boot. A couple of mugs of that helps me off to sleep - my is it that time already :)

BTW Those Axminster/Vallorbe files you mentioned a while back are really nice. Thanks for the tip.

Rob
 
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Well it's not quite the weekend but it's heading that way quite rapidly. I just had a nice bit of slow-cooker pork shoulder. Pork can be a right pain to slice but we got an electric slicer some years ago and I'm really glad we did. It slices everything from bread, as thin or thick as you like, to waafer-thin roast-beef and ham without the slightest problem.
 
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Rob

Vodka !! that's the hard stuff and I keep well away. Its strange how cheap and good quality these files are, I will need another 6" smooth one again

This week replacing the white wine, this time a Vermentino from Sicily, on the label saying a light refreshing wine with a hint of citrus !!
 
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@ Martin.
For those topics like Andrew has would it not be a good idea to create them in a pdf file or something similar?
I must admit i am pretty impressed by his work and from my point of view it would be nice to have it as a easy read out.

And as a side note would it not be nice to create a "project page" for those kind of projects, or is "share and show" for this purpose?
With a addition for the "project manager" to only "show section" and a subsection for responses from and to forum members??


With best regards Igor
 
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Ps, regarding vodka, i can be very simple:
Try to find a Polish vodka named: white bison, very strait forward, very good in taste and it won't "put hair on your chest".

The original recipe for Polish vodka is with potatoes and carrots, distilled on a very low temperature ~84C but above 81C
 
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@ Martin.
For those topics like Andrew has would it not be a good idea to create them in a pdf file or something similar?

Hi Igor,

For this new forum we already have an option to do that:

export_topic.png


The topic will be displayed in simplified form as a single very long page. After waiting for the whole thing to load, use your browser's Print function, and on Windows10 select Microsoft Print to PDF as the printer.

(Similar virtual PDF printer programs are available for earlier versions of Windows.)

From the old forum, all topics will be available in an archive in a similar single-page format, and will be able to be saved as a PDF file in the same way.

But it might be a while before I can get the archive available. In the meantime it is all still available on the old forum, and you can do the same thing. At the top of a topic on the old forum click the Printer friendly button (on the right) to see a topic as a single long page. Bear in mind that some topics are very long and will take a few minutes to load fully as a single page. The old forum is at:

https://85a.co.uk/forum/

cheers,

Martin.
 
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Ps, regarding vodka, i can be very simple:
Try to find a Polish vodka named: white bison, very strait forward, very good in taste and it won't "put hair on your chest".

The original recipe for Polish vodka is with potatoes and carrots, distilled on a very low temperature ~84C but above 81C
Hello Igor,
I have not tried the Polish vodka yet but I will try to find it in a shop. We have Polish food stores here in England so maybe I can find some. The price of 'bottom of the range' alcohol is very low in England as big supermarkets try to make you come to their shops :)

A lot of the cost of spirits goes to the goverment as tax of course:(

Rob
 
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I have not tried the Polish vodka yet but I will try to find it in a shop.
Be very careful on this one.
Try to get the real one and not the "export" ones. Ask for this.
A good Polish store will only sell you "there own", at least our does and we are regulars there.
For a really nice Polish beer to enjoy in the sun or bbq: Zywiec(again not the exported ones), but taste is a personal thing, if you are in the Netherlands try a "Hertog Jan" or a "Coninck"(both Brabants) or a "wickse witte"(limburg).
All 3 beers are from the region i was born, i must admit.
I was born and raised as a true Burgundian...spoil yourself, yes today the bbq is burning, on wood of course, oak and conifers.

If i my ask: Do you have some "local" specials?
 
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Thanks for the tip

I am a great believer of the own brand "Best" ranges however at the moment I am into a bit of white and at £7 this is a nice wine

https://groceries.morrisons.com/pro...g?identifier=20b0f5ddb90eee20ca2a9a85e4964a44

https://groceries.morrisons.com/products/freixenet-sauvignon-blanc-578065011
I've posted a picture of the Templot mug before now -- were you not paying attention? :)

View attachment 718

GAUGE O GUILD - GUILDEX 1994 (at which I was an exhibitor).

27 years -- which is about how long that boat kit is going to take. :)

Martin.

Martin

How is the boat kit progressing please ?
 
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How is the boat kit progressing please ?
@Hayfield

Hi John,

It was looking a bit lonely in the un-started kits cupboard, so I got another un-started kit to keep it company.

I had in mind that when not sailing on the canal, it might live on a small set-piece display, moored at a wharf. According to the instructions the scale is 1:25, but as it is a freelance fishing boat design I have decided that the scale is actually 1:22.59 .

A wharf often has a railway siding alongside, and that scale means I can have a play with a bit of Plug Track in Gauge 3. :)

Clearly such a siding will need a wagon, so there is now an unmade G3 wagon kit in the cupboard too. :)


G3W027.jpg

© linked from: https://slatersplastikard.com/linePage.php?suffix=JPG&code=G3W027

(It's big, about double the size of 0 gauge in each direction. Laser-cut plywood body with etched brass, plastic and lost-wax cast fittings, and steel wheels. From Slaters.)

The bad news is that one siding leads to another, and a turnout -- and the design for the "small" set-piece is now 12 feet long! Progress so far has been to get some timber for the baseboard. And some code 250 bullhead rail. But that's a step or two further than nothing at all...

Don't hold your breath.

cheers,

Martin.
 
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Hi Martin,

Next you'll need a loco kit, to shunt said wagon and then a few more wagons, it's a very slippery slope.

At least at G3 you should have no trouble seeing the chairs and loose jaws, or will you be using chairs and individual keys?

If you're really lucky a very nice bloke may be able to produce some useful 3d files that you could use.

Tongue very firmly pressed in cheek.
 
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At least you will be able to produce 4 bolt chairs rather than the clips on flatbottom rail, why not do the cameo in the garden, then the canal can have real water in it
 
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20221028_165748.jpg

Yes we are smokers, sorry.
But we are drinking some plain beer, a top brand of the Netherlands.
To celebrate the polish independent day/liberation day in 1918.
Probably one of the last evenings to sit outside.

With best regards Igor K
BTW when you do drink: keep safe and moderate, cheers fellow railroad fanatics/enthousiasts.
 
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