stevenh « modelrail.otenko

11Mar/150

Steamers in the UK (London 2014)

Have always loved the A4; specifically the Mallard: the fastest steam engine on record and simply put, a beautiful engine. I was over in the UK for NYE and was lucky enough to be there for The Bittern Farewell Tour to Lincoln from Kings Cross. Unfortunately, the tour was all sold out prior to me even knowing about it. In the end this didn't matter as I happily settled for a few line-side photos.

Prior research

The A4 would run on the East Coast Main Line for the start of its journey and I therefore had to find out a good position in correlation with the sun. Turns out there's a great website called SunCalc which allows you to set the date/time and then browse the map to see where the sun will be. I also found a blog post by Jake Miille which gave a little more information on how to use the site.

It seems that, for the most part of the southern end of the ECML, the line runs north-south. This really isn't advantageous as the sun wont be at a good angle. I browsed around the line and had settled on either somewhere near Welwyn or a little further north at Arlesey. The viaduct just south of Welwyn North would've been amazing, but getting there on foot would've been a challenge. Also there was a lot of potential shadow around the stations, so I therefore chose Arlesey.

As I was researching, I stumbled across Trainspots. This sight has an amazing amount of detailed information. You're able to research any location in the UK to determine what travels through, when and where the best photo spots are.

The train was to leave Kings Cross at 7:51am, so the plan was to catch it there and then take a local train to Arlesey, hopefully beating the steamer.

The timetable

7:47 AM	Old Street >> Subway Northern towards Edgware [4 min (2 stops)]
	 7:51 AM	King's Cross St. Pancras
==== VIEW STEAMER ON PLATFORM ====
8:22 AM	London King's Cross >> Great Northern towards Peterborough [35 min (4 stops)]	
	 8:28 AM	Finsbury Park
	 8:47 AM	Stevenage
	 8:52 AM	Hitchin
	 8:57 AM	Arlesey
==== VIEW STEAMER PASS Arlesey Station ====

Seems there's also a site to tell you what's actually coming through a location!?

Kings Cross

Beautiful station. Had breakfast at the Savanna Cafe on the concourse as I'd gotten there too early. Tickets were purchased to Arlesey and then I entered the platforms... good to know that you can loiter without too much trouble. Great open space too... turns out there were already a lot of fans hogging the end of the closest platform.

So... I went to the next platform along. Turns out it's longer and provided a better side-on view!

And then they were off... I had thought the diesel that dragged them in would have been dead-attached, but it stayed behind at the end of the platform. Always good to see steam under its own power.

The race to Arlesey

The steamer left in a hurry... I was actually concerned it'd kick my ass and I'd not see it... turns out I was wrong. I caught the next north-bound semi-express and passed the steamer just north of London.

At Arlesey, a lot of others had the same idea. I must've looked like a regular, as quite a few people asked for information. They were all quite surprised to hear that I'd come on the commuter and beaten the train from Kings Cross.

A few high-speed expresses came through and then we all heard the unmistakable sound of a steam engine powering north.

The lighting was as expected... could've been better, but I was very happy to see my first ever A4... the fact that it was also pulling its own train made it even better.

Staircases

The tube was a pretty cool system. Very cramped rolling stock... felt like a rollercoaster between some stations... but nonetheless practical and efficient. I am used to escalators in Melbourne and therefore became fascinated with the staircases in most tube stations.

Back to Welwyn North

When travelling to and from Arlesey I'd seen this station out the window of the expresses. It seemed that, because of the tunnels and viaduct on either side, the line through this station is only double-track instead of the usual 2-up/2-down. This, of course, meant that all expresses (and there are a lot of them!) have to be timetabled in-between the stoppers. It also meant that the expresses would be full-tilt right on the platform. I was not disappointed...

Freight Trains?

I'd tried to determine the best locations to find freight trains around London by scouring flickr groups for pictures. One such group, Freight Trains in London, seemed to show quite a few pictures around the Stratford area. I tried to work out by the track layout where the trains would be, but I didn't do too well. An entire afternoon of hanging at stations around Stratford and to the east of the station resulted in zero sightings. As per usual, just as I was about to head back to the hotel a freighter came. I think it was at Canonbury, but I can't be sure anymore.

...I think I'll go back to London in summer next time...

No Comments

5Mar/150

A quick note on interfacing with JSON services via C#

I'm sure there are 100s of ways to manually create classes for JSON objects and then decipher them upon web-service response, but I've just stumbled across a fantastic site called 'json 2 csharp' that creates the classes for you. Just slap in your response (try to get a fully-fleshed out one with as fewer nulls as possible) and it'll generate the class structure.

You can then use the NewtonSoft JsonConvert deserialiser to populate it.

An example

Here's a link: jsontest 'date' example. It produces the following response:

{
   "time": "05:13:02 AM",
   "milliseconds_since_epoch": 1425532382121,
   "date": "03-05-2015"
}

From here, you just copy the entire response and paste it into the text field on the json2csharp site.
Hit 'Generate' and the site will spit out the following:

public class RootObject //rename this!
{
    public string time { get; set; }
    public long milliseconds_since_epoch { get; set; }
    public string date { get; set; }
}

Note that 'RootObject' is a little boring... rename it to 'DateResponse'

Add a helper library to your code to easily pull JSON responses (and POST):

public static class JSONUtilities
{
	public static string GetJSON(string url)
	{
		HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
		try
		{
			WebResponse response = request.GetResponse();
			using (Stream responseStream = response.GetResponseStream())
			{
				StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(responseStream, Encoding.UTF8);
				return reader.ReadToEnd();
			}
		}
		catch (WebException ex)
		{
			WebResponse errorResponse = ex.Response;
			using (Stream responseStream = errorResponse.GetResponseStream())
			{
				StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(responseStream, Encoding.GetEncoding("utf-8"));
				Console.WriteLine(reader.ReadToEnd());
			}
			throw;
		}
	}

	public static Tuple<HttpStatusCode, String> PostJSON(string url, string jsonContent)
	{
		HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(url);
		request.Method = "POST";

		System.Text.UTF8Encoding encoding = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding();
		Byte[] byteArray = encoding.GetBytes(jsonContent);

		request.ContentLength = byteArray.Length;
		request.ContentType = @"application/json";

		using (Stream dataStream = request.GetRequestStream())
		{
			dataStream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);
		}
		long length = 0;
		try
		{
			using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
			{
				length = response.ContentLength;
				using (var reader = new System.IO.StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream(), encoding))
				{
					return new Tuple<HttpStatusCode, string>(response.StatusCode, reader.ReadToEnd());
				}
			}
		}
		catch (WebException ex)
		{
			// Log exception and throw as for GET example above
			Console.WriteLine("ERROR: " + ex.Message);
			throw ex;
		}
	}
}

And now you can bring it all together:

private bool Get()
{
    var result = JSONUtilities.GetJSON("http://date.jsontest.com/");
    var dateResponse = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<DateResponse>(result);
    Console.WriteLine("Got Response: " + dateResponse.date + " [" + dateResponse.time + "]");
}

Too easy!

No Comments

25Feb/150

JR West Thunderbird

I just happened across an eBay auction for a "Thunderbird" 7-Car consist in JNR red/beige livery which very much looked like a JR West Raichō or Kitakinki. After digging a little deeper, it turns out that the seller actually directly translated the Kanji of 雷鳥 to "Thunder bird". This, whilst literally correct, is a mistranslation of the train name which is, of course, the Raichō.

Little did I know that the JR West Thunderbird actually steals its name from the Raichō, which means "thunder bird" in Japanese. The bird is actually the Rock Ptarmigan, a native to the Tate[yama] Mountain Range of the Toyama region (which is where the train[s] travel to.)

Interesting to know that JR West first called the Express the 'Raichō', then released a 'Super Raichō' and then created a new service to the same area with the same name, but this time in english: the 'Thunderbird'.

Going through my galleries, turns out I have more shots of the Thunderbird than I care to remember!

The Thunderbird just happens to be one of my favourite EMUs. It's colour-scheme is a little dated, but the design and practicality (opening end-vestibules) is awesome. Not surprisingly, it also reminds me of the Dutch NS Koploper.

No Comments

5Feb/1511

Model Railway Shops in Osaka

To make the guesswork easier, here's a list of terms that should help you on your never-ending-search-to-find-model-trains. To translate things, use Google Translate. To convert from Romaji, Hiragana, Katakana or Kanji use J-Talk's Kanji Converter

English	Romaji	Hiragana	Kanji
Train	resshya	れっしゃ	列車
Electric Train	denshya	でんしゃ	電車
Steam Train	kishya	きしゃ	汽車
Diesel Train	kidoushya	きどうしゃ	気動車
Model	mokei	もけい	模型
Model Train	mokei resshya	もけいれっしゃ	模型列車
Railway Model	tetsudou mokei	てつどうもけい	鉄道模型
Gauge	geeji	ゲージ	--
Shop	shoppu/mise	ショップ/みせ	店
?-Shop	?-ya	や	?-屋

Den Den Town, Osaka

Poppondetta (ポポンデッタ)

One of the most well-known Osaka hobby shops. A place you simply must visit. Has everything.
(Note that their Tsurumi shop is closed!)

Super Kids Land (スーパーキッズランド本店)

A large toy department store with a floor dedicated to model railways. A good selection of HO-scale too!

Hobby Land Pochi (ホビーランドぽち)

A cute little shop with a good selection of consists. Also a good bargain-bin for second-hand items. Note that they will be graded from A-D where D is quite broken!

Volks Osaka Showroom(ボークス大阪ショールーム)

Another toy department store; you'll find the trains on level 6.

Shinsekai

Rail Workshop Higeshin (レール工房ひげしん)

A small store on the north-west corner of Shinsekai. I walked in and couldn't communicate, but there's glass cabinets of nice stock, both N and HO. The owner is usually there building models as well. Seems to have a 'club' atmosphere with regulars often hanging around to chat to the owner.
Note that Shinsekai is a relic of Osaka, planned/built as the 'suburb of the future' back from 1903.
Address: 大阪市浪速区恵美須東１－２２－１

Uehommachi (East Osaka)

Ikoma (いこま工房)

There's a good story behind this shop. I visited it in 2010 with a friend from university; her uncle actually works there. Back then the shop was south-east of Kintetsu Osakauehonmachi Station and it was a confusing walk from the station to get to it. The shop was small, full of glass cabinets and cutting boards. It had a great selection of N-scale and HO, specialising in paper kits. I remember that there were a lot of full N-scale sets, some 'custom made' and painted to prototypical awesomeness. I bought a DE10 and a set of passenger cars, beautifully detailed.

The shop has now moved here and, although I haven't been back since it moved, it seems to be a bigger and better presence with full layouts for demonstrations. It also seems a lot easier to get to!

Umeda

Hobby Land Pochi (Umeda)

Haven't been to this one, but can only imagine it's just like its brother in Den Den Town.

Yodobashi Camera

Another department store... trains are on B2. I always end up going here since it's so close to Osaka Station and I can send my friends to other levels if they don't want to check out trains.

Mach mokei (マッハ模型)

This shop actually seems to be pronounced ma-ha mokei; but for some reason they've translated that to 'mach'.

Minamikata

H&Y Model Trains

Someone go and check this place out!

Awaza

Rail Craft Awaza (レールクラフト阿波座)

Review to come....

Hanakawa (North-East)

Hobby Land Pochi (Hanakawa)

Haven't been to this one, but can only imagine it's just like its brothers.

Toyonaka (North)

Ichifuji Model Shop

Review to come....

Takastuki

Recycle Shop (Ryouhin Kaikan) (HobbyDo!)

I accidently stumbled across this shop. I'd bought a bike for my 4-week stay in Shinosaka and had been riding east towards Kyoto. The Tokaido main line and Shinkansen are both out that way and can be seen up quite close. Anyway, this shop is walking distance from JR Takatsuki Station, but closer to Hankyu Takatsuki-shi Station. Head due-east from either and then north-east along 国道171号線 (Japan National Route 171).
The shop has a great selection of new and second hand goods. I especially loved rummaging through the box of B-Train Shorty odds-and-ends. It seems that they had many split up boxes of B-Trains and each component is individually priced. Just remember, when you get to the counter things always add up!

Facebook Page

Matsubara

Mokei-ya (Model Shop) (もけいや松原)

From the website, this place seems to have a lot of stock. Has anyone been!?

Kobe

Tamtam Hobbies

(This used to be in Amagasaki, but that closed)
庫県神戸市東灘区青木1-2-34 サンシャインワーフ神戸１Ｆ

Hobby Land Pochi (Kobe)

Haven't been to this one, but can only imagine it's just like its brothers in Den Den Town and Umeda.
2 Chome Sannomiyacho, Chuo Ward, Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.

11 Comments

2Feb/150

EMU Staging Yards, NE Takatsuki

These photos were taken back in January 2008. I'd hired a bicycle and had been dawdling along the Tokaido Main Line from Shin-osaka through to Takatsuki. I'd made it all the way to the staging yards just north-east of Takatsuki (Google Maps seems to indicate the area is known as 'Amanishinocho') before turning around to return to Osaka.

I stopped and took these shots from the pedestrian crossing visible in the map above. I can't quite believe that it isn't an overpass. I don't know if this crossing still exists today.

Towards Kyoto...

And towards Osaka...

No Comments

28Jan/150

My Favourite Shinkansen: 300 Series

This photo was taken with a second-hand (and then damaged by me) Fujitsu Finepix back in 2006. It was my first meeting with the 300 Series and it was love at first sight.

I can't believe they've already chopped this model up.

No Comments

21Jan/150

Regional Rail Link

The Regional Rail Link is the Victorian governments answer to traffic congestion between Footscray and Werribee. The goal is to build a new line to Geelong via the north of the area and bypass it entirely. Of course, this will just move the regional trains, the sparks will still service the bypassed area.

On the capture below, you'll see a V/Locity testing the tracks at full speed. This happened this morning. It's interesting to see that there are data points missing around Deer Park.

The same consist then returned via the loop. A fellow fan mentions that this was to keep the drivers memories of the route fresh and to keep the rust off the rails.

The entire section is expected to be in operation in April this year.

No Comments

21Jan/150

Battered EF66s at Suita, Osaka

Continuing the trend of top-rated pictures, here's a couple of EF66s (one of my favourite japanese locomotives) light-engine through Suita Depot in NE Osaka.

No Comments

11Dec/140

Oigawa Railway’s Zoom Car 21000 Series

This has been my wallpaper for a few years now... was a complete fluke to get the shot and is prized as one of my favourites.

If you're ever in Japan, then the Oigawa Railway is a must visit. Heritage stock, thriving in an absolutely beautiful setting. Frequent steam services also! Turns out they (recently [I lie, 'recently' is just me excusing myself for not checking their site often enough]) acquired 3 ex-Seibu E31 Class locomotives. Hilariously similar to the locomotive that my Kato Amtrak 'fake' is based on?

No Comments

5Dec/141

Vaio Duo 11 – 1TB SDD Upgrade

So, the latest in my Sony collection is a Vaio Duo 11. This 'convertible' tablet is a charm... I really love the form factor, resolution and horsepower. I had bought it with the intent to upgrade the 256gb SSD to a 1TB Samsung EVO 840 for for AUD$500.

Step 1: Duplicate your current disk to the new disk

The goal from this entire upgrade is to have more space, not change the OS or existing data. The first step is therefore to clone the source drive (existing 256gb internal SSD) to the newly acquired Samsung 1TB SSD. To do this, you'll need to have them both plugged in at once. The Vaio Duo 11 only has one internal slot for the SSD, so an external enclosure was required.

Do be careful with the enclosure purchased. It turns out that there are warnings across the web indicating that SSD are liable to overheat inside these tiny airtight boxes. This is exacerbated when doing a full drive clone as you're trying to read/write as quickly as you can.

As for the cloning, there's quite a few methods available, all with their own quirks. My goal was to do an exact 1:1 copy to ensure that the recovery and boot partitions was all intact. The first thought was something like gparted. Instead I stumbled across Samsung's own 'Data Migration Tool' which promised to do exactly what I wanted. This was a 4-click process and the copying started. After it completed, I checked out the disk in drive management and all was not as it should have been. The partitions didn't look 1:1... but I still then tried a reboot with the USB as the boot disk. Windows still booted and so I went with this.

Step 2: Get the new disk into the new hardware

Sony are usually pretty tricky when it comes to internal product design. They're not as 'closed' as Apple when it comes to making products as un-openable as possible, but they're not far off. There was nothing short of 20 overly-difficult screws in the bottom of this unit to remove!

NOTE: The speaker grills need to be taken off. These consist of a mesh grill with a layer of sticky gunk that's also of grill-design. You cannot remove these without ruining them. Note that you also have to take off all of the rubber feet and the 'locking areas' for the extra battery. I'm still trying to find double-sided tape to put all these back in. I might just use glue.

In the second and last pics above you can see the slot where the SSD sits. I happened to take the photo of the unit after I'd spent about an hour trying to remove the SSD. All other sites say to remove the screws nearest the SSD and then simply pop it out. Turns out it's not this simple... that blue patch you see is a chunk of sticky spongy rubber that acts as a support for the SSD. The stickiness actually makes it VERY difficult to remove. As I'd had this unit for all of 1 day, I had no intention of breaking it and so was very gentle when tinkering with the internals. Either way, after a little more prying I realised that I had to lift the SSD off the support and then it came out. To anyone trying this at home: be careful, don't apply too much force and, if possible, find a thin utensil to slide under the SSD and release it from the gunk!

After this the new SSD slotted in very easily and all screws went back in place quite easily. As stated, I'll update again when I find a tidy solution for putting the feet and grills back.

Step 3: Booting up the copied disk...

Well, it booted straight into windows and looked good. I then went into the disk management studio and realised that I was in trouble. There were partitions directly after my main partition which meant that there was no clean way to expand it! I therefore considered and attempted to 'restore' windows. Doing this inside windows should have been easy until it told me that it couldn't find the recovery partition! I then rebooted with the assist key and it also said the recovery partition was missing! Thanks to the Samsung Data Migration Tool, all of my partitions were out of whack.

Step 4: The Samsung Data Migration Tool sucks...

I had no intention of removing the SSD again... so I decided to do this copy in reverse. The old disk was in the external enclosure and then new one internal. I downloaded clonezilla and attempted a copy but it failed miserably telling me that it couldn't determine the partition table type... meh... probably to do with UEFI?

So the next step was to go all low-level. 'dd' is the tool and it will byte-by-byte copying _everything_ from the given source to the given destination. I'd known my device names thanks to the menu options in the clonezilla attempt, so I entered the following command:

dd if=/dev/sdc of=/dev/sda

It started going... I went to make a coffee, got back and found it had prematurely stopped. I checked that the USB was still mounted, all good. Then I went to pick up the USB and nearly burnt a hole in my palm! The thing was red hot. It turns out that this Toshiba drive does not bode well in this external enclosure. It's all over the web... should've checked.

Anyway, I left it to cool for a few hours then came back with a plan.

My jug'o'water heatsink-cooler worked perfectly and the copy completed... I even had the running progress meter:

dd if=/dev/sdc bs=1024M | pv | dd of=/dev/sda bs=1024M

After a reboot, all partitions looked good and recovery started, but I didn't run through with it. I'd google'd a little in the meantime and realised that windows creates a recovery partition every bloody time you upgrade significantly. In this case it was from Windows 8.0 to 8.1. If I then removed a partition I'd kill my ability to recover.

Instead I just created a new partition in the space at the end of the drive and called it D:

Step 5: Actually getting that disk space back...

So, a little more googling indicated that there was indeed a way around the recovery partitions. The purchase of an 32gb (MUST BE THIS BIG) thumb drive allowed me to copy the recovery partition onto it and then remove them from the disk. I could then expand my main drive without too much screwing around.

1 Comment

« Newer Entries Older Entries »

Random Photos

DSC00751

Kyushu, April 2025
Photo Album Index

modelrail.otenko Trains, computers, vintage, retro, model railways… the lot…

Prior research

The timetable

Kings Cross

The race to Arlesey

Staircases

Back to Welwyn North

Freight Trains?

An example

Den Den Town, Osaka

Shinsekai

Uehommachi (East Osaka)

Umeda

Minamikata

Awaza

Hanakawa (North-East)

Toyonaka (North)

Takastuki

Matsubara

Kobe

Step 1: Duplicate your current disk to the new disk

Step 2: Get the new disk into the new hardware

Step 3: Booting up the copied disk...

Step 4: The Samsung Data Migration Tool sucks...

Step 5: Actually getting that disk space back...

Random Photos

Search

Tags

Ads

Archive

Meta