Compound2632

My Bishopbriggs uncle and aunt, both from south of the border, for many years never voted as their votes would have cancelled out - he Labour, she Conservative. But once the SNP became a significant force, they both started voting - he Labour, she Conservative...

A modeller of the SECR clamouring for Midland opens - music to my ears! Although to be fair, balanced, and open minded, I think Great Northern ones would also be useful to you - there was a great deal of mineral traffic via both companies passing onto the SECR and LBSCR.

At your period, Evans and Bevan's sole colliery was Seven Sisters, Neath, producing anthracite: http://www.dmm.org.uk/company/e1007.htm. Headleys has an entry in Turton's Tenth. The Headley brothers were proprietors of Cwrt-y-Bettwys colliery ate Coed Franc near Neath, Brynwith and Raglan collieries at Pencoed, east of Tondu, and Garnet Colliery at Jersey Marine. The two Gloucester wagons of 1902 illustrated are marked Empty to Raglan Colliery Sidings. As far as I can make out, these were all anthracite.

In 1923, the directors of the Ruabon Coal & Coke Co. were Charles B.O. Clarke (Chair)*, H.D. Dennis (Managing Director), P.S. Godman, G.N.E. Hall-Say, H. Kent, and Sir Stephenson H. Kent, KCB: http://www.dmm.org.uk/company/r1004.htm. Clarke and Kent were also directors of Powell Duffryn among other coal firms. A partial list of Great Western directors reveals no overlap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Directors_of_the_Great_Western_Railway, which is not to say that at some period the two companies may not have had directors in common. *His parents must carry for the blame for the misery he undoubtedly suffered at school in consequence of his middle initials. It would appear that HRH was down one of the pits of the Wynnstay Colliery Co., whose directors in 1923 were L.E.W. and T.F. Edgerton: http://www.dmm.org.uk/company/w1043.htm. The Durham Mining Museum website is a really useful tool, though it does not have a complete list of collieries.

Yes, No. 10282 is in my little list! (Psst - the headstocks should be square-ended not slope ended.)

Paul Merton had the ultimate riposte to the Baconian, Oxfordian, etc. authorship fantasies: they are the product of snobbery by people who can't accept that the greatest poetry and drama the world has ever heard was written by someone who spoke with a Brummie accent. This was illustrated by a rendition of the "To be or not to be" monologue in perfect Brummie...

Schools are required to have a "British Values Statement" amongst their paperwork. These are unexceptional statements of what I would consider generally-accepted human values but I find they are increasingly un-British compared with the values espoused by those said to be representing us, or with Government policy.

Curiously, given its Danish origin, Lego is in fact resolutely Imperial: the basic unit of brick width is 5/16" and of height, 3/8" (or 1/8", with three flats or plates stacking to equal the height of a brick). Stud diameter is 3/16" and height 1/16".

To nail this one, No. 1 Son off the top of his head says:

It looks to me more like a fixed bar with latches; note the bolt heads along its length. How that was worked is a question, since it would seem to need a man on each side. At any rate, the latches or catches are on the end of the side-sheeting. The horizontal strap on the side is probably a washer plate for a more substantial catch on the inside. I don't think there is anything there extending out beyond the wagon side?

Mike Lloyd's Private Owners on the Cambrian (WRRC, 1998) - perhaps the book you are thinking of? - gives examples of wagons from the North Staffs coalfield (Florence Coal & Iron Co.; Midland Coal Coke & Iron Co., etc.) and Cannock Chase (J. Hawkins & Sons, Old Coppice Colly; Cannock & Rugeley Colly; Cannock Chase Colly). From Rapido's point of view, several of these firms' wagons were widely distributed, with examples photographed in the popular south-of-the-Thames area.

In a twisted way, I quite like it - it's the sort of maltreatment a preservation group might meet out to a poor unsuspecting semi-derelict ex-PO wagon.

When I started there, in 1995, the area around what was then the main entrance was recognisable in the film and the ship tank building was still standing, though disused. (The oft hear cry of the library staff was "Oh no the ducks have got in again!") We specified our new labs in 1997 and finally moved in in 2007, by which time that specification was well out of date. (Oh the joys of the PFI process and lack of engagement between designers, contractors, and final users.) Much of the stuff I was involved in has moved again to an Advanced Metrology Lab back in the vicinity of Bushy House, close to where it had been before.

By the time the real 2112 was that old, it had been a 3F for half its life! (According to Summerson Vol. 4, built Sharp Stewart Oct 1892, H boiler June 1904, reno. 3389 July 1907, G7 boiler (i.e. 3F) Jan 1924, reno. 43389 Mar 1950, withdrawn Jul 1962, just short of its 70th birthday. Allocated to Skipton, Hellifield, and Carnforth in Midland days.)

The Midland's North & West carriage marshalling book for July - September 1911 [Midland Railway Study Centre item 00615] shows this same pair of carriages from Bradford, except that the Midland carriage is allegedly a corridor composite rather than brake composite. However, most Bain 54 ft composites and brake composites had at least one half-compartment. The only diagram I can find with two first and three third class compartments (each seating four and six passengers respectively) is D472, ten brake composites built as lot 686 in 1909; these were to the reduced height of 12' 8" to clear the Met loading gauge. This has the Great Western brake compo as a corridor carriage whereas in your 1912 document it appears not to be. But two first class compartments seating 10 and four thirds seating 28 is strongly suggestive of a non-corridor lavatory carriage. The E39 Falmouth Coupe as seen in the Lime St photo above would fit, I think?

According to No. 1 Son, geologists and in particular glaciologists are highly sceptical of that very early date for the Happisburgh footprints, for highly technical reasons that I only half-understood when explained to me and have now forgotten.

It was in course of a series of tests conducted under Smith's direction that Class J No. 1517 achieved 90 mph.

4GWR-007 3 plank wagon with round ends and iron u/f - so the penultimate version. I think that's chiefly because it's translucent and has no below solebar clutter - i.e. brakes - but also it may be riding a whisker high.

Has been done... Best cure is to post something OT. He's my progress with @drduncan's kit: I stopped to think about brakes then got distracted onto something else...

Thanks, got me digging properly. Wikipedia tells me that John Southern, working for James Watt, invented the indicator diagram apparatus in 1796 but it was kept a trade secret - being used to improve Watt's stationary engines - until leaking out in the 1820s. So the technique was already there at the birth of the locomotive engine but I can well imagine that so inquisitive an engineer as Clark would have been among the first to make use of it. He would have been in his late twenties at the time of his experiments and only 33 when his classic Railway Machinery was published in 1855. That can be read online: https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_kpgOAAAAYAAJ/mode/2up See Chapter II, 'Of the Behaviour of Steam in the Cylinder; of the Indicator; and of the Steam-Diagram' from p. 63 onwards (p. 94 of the online document) in the quaintly-named section 'Physiology of Locomotives'.

It's not ornithology the cat has in mind...

As far as I'm aware, no physical adjustment is made to the clocks in the satellites. The frequency corrections are made in software, along with all the other corrections you mention. It's the comparison with the master clocks on the ground that enables this correction to be made.

Exciting! (Apologies for thread drift!) What does note A say? Equally exciting is that the Midland brake compo for Plymouth has come from Bradford hand-in-hand with a Great Western brake compo for Kingswear. What date is this?

There are really just two rules in physics: What goes up must come down. What goes in must come out. Experience shows they're of general applicability.

The corrections are applied in software - there's quite a bit of post-processing which results in a prediction of the correction to be applied in real time.