Medical Monday; Bleurghhh! (simulated vomit)

Something different again, for this Medical Monday, and simulating vomit (both regular, and Upper Gastro-Intestinal Bleed).

We have quite a few scenarios where the patient needs to have been sick. And I did work out a rather good recipe, using NHS-Issue Digestive Biscuits (well, nobody was ever desperate enough to eat the damned things), milk, handwash, teabags and the like. The trouble was, whilst it looked good, and smelt realistically awful, it had downsides. Quite apart from nearly making the medics sick, it was a swine to clean-up. And when it's balanced precariously on an out-of-warranty  100-grand training robot, it can make you somewhat paranoid when sat in the control room.

So, I decided to draw on the experience of making model ponds and rivers, and do some bowls of realistic-looking vomit with resin.

First-off, out with the polymer clay.

Making up some food. Beef, peas, beans, and sweetcorn.

Excuse our old, rather colourful, table-cloth which had been relegated to model making. Working from Home is all the rage isn't it? Bluntly, I needed an oven for the clay, so this is what I did on my Christmas Holidays in 2023...

Spare teeth from one of the adult robots, for realistic chew-marks.

Back at the job, and out with the two-part resin.

Adding some colouring- a mix of the supplied colours, and some acrylic paints.

We also needed some bloody vomit (we get a lot of alcoholics with Upper-G.I bleeds). So it was out with the powdered blood.

Mmmm...

Bit of texture with fake snow, of all things, mixed in.

Two layers poured in and left to set on the stylish terrace garden outside the lab (ok, metal fire escape).

Then the food set inside, and another layer poured to seal it in.

Two bowls done, one large, one child-size. Must have been Thai Curry for lunch that day.

...and two bowls of upper G.I Bleed flavour. Looks nice and realistic for short sims, and acts as a visual clue for diagnosis by the medics, without risking getting slopped everywhere. Lov-er-ly :)

 

Railway Research Trip; Locomotion, Shildon

So, after our... disappointing visit to the National Capitalist Exploitation Of The Visiting Public Museum in York (sorry, 'Railway Museum'... Hells teeth, I hate that name and all the Ad Agency Re-Brand Baggage it carries with it), my faith in the museum was restored by a trip to Shildon the day after.

We hadn't planned this- we were going to Vectis Toy Auctions to pick up something for a future Hornby build, and then onto the Barbour Coat Outlet Place further north, because we have Middle Class aspirations, on a working class budget, and can only afford nice things like waxed jackets at outlet prices as a very occasional treat. On the way back, we wanted a brew and the loo (not in that order), and Shildon was pretty much on the way.

OK, so it trades under the name 'Locmotion' which is still a bit painfully 1980's Ad Agency Speak, but the place itself is superb. A downside being that, rather than being somewhere central like York, it's a bit out in the back o'beyond at Shildon. Historically significant for railways in general, yes, but the adjacent station is a bit Oh Mister Porter for train frequency.

This was what I wanted to see, because when you've the likes of "Flying Scotsman" outside, of course I'd be drawn instead to the 1980's unholy union of a Leyland National Bus and a freight wagon chassis. I really like the LEV railbus, and the design rationale of British Rail being told 'close that branch line, we only love cars' by the Government... and instead building this on the cheap to keep the lines open. So this isn't just a railbus, this is a statement. Two-fingers waved at Thatcher.

Expect a model soon; I've been planning one for a while, for the garden line.

Now here's a contrast and a half. The Port Carlisle Dandy (last horse-drawn railway service on the British Mainland) and the Birmingham Maglev. I've been to Port Carlisle (lovely place actually), but I've actually ridden the Maglev.

Back from that weird period when Birmingham was some odd, concrete vision of the future, and rocking Science Fiction technology. This linked the Airport to the NEC and International Station, and I remember my Dad taking me for a ride on this, just to say we'd done it, in what must have been the very late 1980's or start of the 1990's. Imagine an alternate world where we had these gliding around the city on concrete viaducts!

I think I'm in love.  This gorgeous loco looks like it ought to be clockwork, made in Bavaria, and hideously, hideously expensive.

And now, for some arty close-ups. Simplex petrol tractor...

...NER snowplough...

...modern snowplough.

...wagons, various.

These were all in the new hall. I thought it a little odd, building a structure not in the least rail-connected to the rest of the site, but you know what? This works. And the stock inside looked good- all stored safely indoors, nothing getting rusted or rotten outside, but treasured, even humble freight wagons. This is what the National Collection should be.

Personal Opinion (rant) time again. Whereas the York site is the more prominent, and ought to be the more impressive, it's a retail and catering outlet with some inconveniently obstructive trains clogging up the place. Nothing is themed, nothing is looked after (oh the dusty locomotives) and it all looks so tired. That late-80's leisure centre roof is hideous, and each time I've been I've come away with the impression it's a railway museum that's slightly ashamed of itself. It's like the kid at school who likes trains but is terrified of being called a nerdy anorak. Me in the 1990's in other words.

By contrast, Shildon is me now- likes trains, and doesn't give a stuff what the cool kids say. This is a railway museum that -shock, horror- is stuffed FULL of trains. Yes, it has a shop, and yes, it has a cafe... both on the sides of the building, so the first thing you see are the locomotives, not the obstructing retail opportunities. There's a workshop and trains being restored, not hidden by hoardings but where you can SEE the work that needs to be done to make these iron monsters pristine. And things are properly laid out too, sensibly telling stories if you can be bothered to read the interpretation, or just assembled logically if you can't. A Sentinel diesel shunter stands at the head of a rake of period appropriate goods stock. The Lev Railbus is next to the APTE, both of them experimental prototypes from a time when BR was innovative and fighting for Government cash. Trains that need to be glossy and polished are, whilst if something is dirty or covered in graffiti, it's because it's telling the story of the battering it got in industry.

What's genuinely baffling is these are both parts of the same organisation. Shildon was opened because York needed somewhere to put all their trains. If you want to be charitable, to display and safely house all the stuff getting weathered in the open air outside. Or, if you want to be more cynical, dumped out of the way in a relatively obscure part of the North-East so all those sidings in central York could be sold for prime redevelopment. And yet- just like the LEV Railbus was made into the successful Pacer which kept dozens of lines and services open in the face of Government disinterest, so Shildon has been made into a brilliant museum, in spite of the neglect seemingly shown by the London end of the Science Museum Group (who not all that short a while ago said we could either have York, Bradford, or Manchester museums, but not all three... but it's ok, as there was no risk of little Tabatha, Tarquin, or Jocasta losing their trips with nanny to the London Science Museum).

Potentially litigation-attracting rant over. Not that anyone from the Science Museum Group will be reading this blog, I think there's only about 10 people ever look at this. Who even blogs anymore? Probably ought to start a podcast.

This is also getting done as a model, incidentally, he says desperately trying to drag things back on theme.

So this was the only other downside, really, and the creeping sense of potential being cut-back. Less obvious than with the way the York site is being cut about, but the demonstration line goes out to this beautifully restored (and surprisingly not graffiti-covered) goods shed. There's an impression this was developed as a station for a park and ride to the museum.  Except... this end of the line is looking a bit 28 Years Later, overgrown rusty tracks and all. The car park was empty, but for skips full of rubbish, and the line blocked, if not completely severed. If that's because there's a footpath crossing that needs vols to operate it safely and it's easier to not run the line than sort it out (hello, Elescar Heritage Centre from 10 years ago who suffered the same fate!), or just to give a shorter more economic run, I don't know. Anyway, I photographed the hell out of it for the next Hornby article.

"Flying Cash Cow" was doing demonstration trains outside. Can't really see this as being value for money for the taxpayer, given the astonishing amount of cash it took to restore, but it was drawing the crowds as it pottered up and down.

Still, decent inspiration for this upcoming Hornby project.

Not exactly express loads. Anyway, this led to a final negative, though not Shildon's fault. Waiting for this ensemble to trundle past delayed us leaving, and we got stuck for an hour and a half on the motorway home after a few cars in front had an argument at 70mph.

So let's end on both a jollier note, and a model-related thing (on a model making blog, who'd have thought it).

Winning the prize of 'thing I want most from the museum' (yes, even above the LEV), this Hornby Dublo layout.

It's all gone a bit early-Grand Theft Auto. But this is direct inspiration for a model project that's planned to be underway early next year.

All this reminded me I have a ton of Dublo in a box in the cellar... might be time to make myself a proper train set, all metal and plastic trains clattering noisily about the place.

So that was Shildon, the Railway Museum's slightly upstart, yet somehow massively more endearing, little sibling. Who knows, maybe all the building work at the York site will result in a better experience in the future, but at the moment, I know which museum of the two I'd rather return to.

Railway Research Trip- The National Railway (Cafe, Building Site, and Softplay) Museum, York

Amy and I ended up in York recently, a planned overnight stop before catching a steam special to Carlisle in the morning as a joint birthday/anniversary celebration... which got cancelled a few days before, because West Coast Railway Company can't organise a railtour for toffee, broke several of their steam engines, and couldn't/wouldn't hire a replacement loco. Rather than spend a day and a considerable amount of money on the excursion, we had a day shopping and walking about in York instead, and because we're railway enthusiasts, we ended up ambling over to the National Railway Museum for a brew and a sit-down in the afternoon, because we're middle aged now.

Well, I say the National Railway Museum, because that's what it was most of my life. But some advertising agency got paid a presumably obscene amount of Government money a few years ago to rebrand it, and they dropped the 'national' as being too old fashioned/right wing/some other reason, delete as appropriate.

You know, it takes some real confidence to have this be the first thing visitors see. An overgrown, empty yard, rusting and severed tracks, and a single weather-beaten and neglected crane.

Look, I'm going to have a rant here. It's Rail 200 year!  A celebration of railway heritage, technology, and future, and this is the nations main railway museum, in one of the busiest Northern tourist cities, in the middle of the school holidays.

It takes some wonderful planning to have two thirds of the 'premier' railway museum shut for refurbishment, with the only access from the city being a long, lonnnnng walk around a building site, with a marvellous view of the ex-museum outdoor spaces which have been cynically sold to become a massive new housing estate instead. But it's ok, because there's a lot of isolated infrastructure for cyclists, and a level crossing to nowhere for, some day, some demonstration trains to run.

Given the amount of cyclists who complain about the dangers of the level crossing/street running in Porthmadog, I can only imagine there'll be some interesting complaints in years to come. And the homeowners with the new houses backing onto the museum will have a thing or two to say as well, I'm sure.

Finished with the slightly bitter attitude? No, not quite. Because I've started openly calling this place the National Cafe and Softplay Museum.  Going inside the one remaining hall, slightly tatty as it now looks (all those nets on the roof to catch any falling glass), there are two large spaces given over to cafes. Within 30 feet of each other. And two shops, within 100.  Oh and a few trains, several of which were surrounded with hoardings to stop you seeing them, and most of which were covered in dust.

There's no 'narrative' (urgh, buzz words), just a few random trains. And you definitely get the impression that the museum are a bit annoyed they have to have a load of inconveniently large lumps of metal getting in the way of the important business of selling two small mugs of tea for £5.20.

The old workshops and engineering space is now a kids 'push button and make things spin/glow/move' play space, with paid entry. I get the importance of encouraging S.T.E.A.M, I really do (Scout Leader and ex-School DT Tech hats on), but was there really nowhere else on this massive site they could have built it? Oh right, they've sold a big chunk of the site to be housing land, whoops. There's a certain irony in obliterating your heavy engineering space to create an area for getting kids interested in technology and engineering.

Anything positive to say? Thank goodness the archive is still there; one of the best things they ever did here was turn the museum stores, all those models and smaller artefacts, into an exhibition space.

Then there's stuff like this. The Freightliner brakevan/pod. This spent years out in the yard rusting and falling to bits, so it's lovely to see it brought indoors and tarted up.

And nice to see things like the Class 84 on prominent display, given the museum has a few celebrities that hog the limelight. I suppose when you have fewer trains, just doing everything about the likes of "Mallard" is the easy option than celebrating the lesser exhibits.

So yeah, I was very disappointed. I get it, I've worked in the heritage sector- the country has no money, and suddenly all those commercial stuff like gift shops and hideously expensive coffee are the only ways to keep the lights on. And selling off the yard outside to be housing land? Well, this is technically a national museum in the Science Museum Group, and exists outside of London, so selling the museum spaces off (yes, also looking at you, Science Museum Manchester) is a fact of life.

And yes, the museum did need a bit of tarting up and building work clearly needed doing. But could it not have been done before, or after, the Rail 200 celebrations? 

York Railway Museum left a bitter taste in the mouth... but it was very much washed away (spoiler alert!) by an unplanned trip to their out-station facility at Shildon the day after, of which, more in another post.

 

Medical Monday; Break a Leg!

Continuing the sagas of a Medical Education Technician in the NHS, building things on a budget of tuppence ha'penny and a bag of wotsits, because we're not (yet) privatised like the Yankee Health Service.

Oh yes, slightly more graphic Trigger Warning this time:

Yeah, something a bit more medical. As well as the Lab stuff, the main bread and butter of the job is in simulating medical scenarios with the Robots. Now, before I joined the job, I had no idea these things existed, but welcome to the world of High Fidelity Medical Simulation.

This is Hallie; The Myth, The Legend, The Robot Girl (From the Future!). She's not a Cylon, Terminator, Doll (living, killer, or otherwise), and you don't spell her name H4LL13 or any other Leet nonsense. She is, however, as close to getting a real child to practise treatments on as possible. She cries, talks, looks at you, changes her expressions, and simulates a full range of medical conditions with variable blood pressure, heart rate, organ sounds, and more. About the only thing she can't do is get up and walk about.

Anyway, one of the scenarios we do a lot of is the good old fashioned Trauma one, with a broken leg or arm. As a parent of three Catastrophe Magnets, two of whom have snapped limbs during their carefree childhood years, yeah this is all pretty familiar.

The original simulated leg break I made a few years ago was two lumps of fibreglass under a kind of belt of latex skin. Not bad, but sticks up a bit too much, and our Old-As-God's-Dog Thomas Splints wouldn't go properly over it.

So, I raided the spare parts boxes. And a scrap bone used previously for I.O Drilling practise.

The plastic air-filled bladder sits between the latex layers, to give it a bit of flex. The top part of the bone is glued in place, the other one pivots ever so slightly. 

The net result is a bone that flexes and moves, simulating two ends of a break rubbing together.

The first test in the field, as it were- part of Hallie's Summer From Hell, and in in-situ training session in the main hospital A&E Department.

The wound was fitted under her leg skin, and more makeup was applied, bruising atop, and grazed knees (complete with dirt and grass). The bruising is rather crude, done with vaseline, fake blood, and eye makeup (we're now investing in some proper wound makeup, as doing sessions like this have provided some justification in opening the department purse to buy the proper stuff).

Note the bulge at the top of her left leg, where the wound is. I also neglected to warn the Faculty that the bone moved and grated realistically. Whoops.

All turned out alright in the end though!  Succesfully treated, wound sorted out, and (simulated) transfer to the trauma unit at Leeds arranged. And with a quick clean-up and a reset, Hallie lives to fight (and plot the downfall of us meatbags) another day.