Edwin_m

Maybe the seven wives were giving him grief.

I've seen several similar stories, and this one mentions he drove the same tanks 40 years ago (possibly a little exaggerated for a 55-year-old). I guess they're re-enlisting those that served with the Soviet army in Afghanistan or wherever, rather than training up new recruits of that age. Combat experience may be more valuable than youth.

The casual observer might conclude that if they have the time to do things like that, they probably don't have enough to do and perhaps the cuts are justified.

Is it an older house without a proper lintel? In that case the window may be trying to support the brickwork above - usual sign is a triangle of brickwork that has settled above the window, leaving a crack in the mortar in the shape of an inverted V. The photos suggest the closed window isn't seated correctly on the draught excluder in the frame.

But what you see is a meteor, it only becomes a meteorite later on... I wonder what is says for "pedant".

That would require the energy lost in burning the previous coal to be restored somehow. A quick search has turned up the link below. When pumped into basalt, CO2 reacts to produce solid carbonates. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/02/19/solid-carbon-macarthur-foundation/

At least in theory, in some geologies it reacts within a few years to form a solid. If that can be replicated on a large scale then those concerns may go away.

Much of the point of the S&DR seems to have been for the Midland and LSWR to avoid putting traffic onto the GWR, so there wouldn't have been much interest in a curve that relied on the goodwill of the GWR to be useful. And in later years when that was less of an issue, the Midford and Kelston connections would have had the twin advantages of avoiding Coombe Down and letting a Bristol train call at Bath without reversal.

With the marginal nature of the S&D, I doubt they would have wanted any of the through passenger trains to miss the important traffic objective of Bath. It was also a convenient place to change locomotives, considering the train had to reverse anyway. I can't speak for freight. I read many years ago of a plan (1930s?) to provide a single integrated station in Bath for the Midland/S&D/LMS and the GWR, but can't remember any details. Did it involve a connection at Midford for the S&D to approach on the GWR route via Bathampton?

While the other three were totally new, wasn't the GWR a perpetuation of the pre-Grouping company with some relatively minor additions?

Generally railways don't hug the sides of motorways, mainly for this reason. Think of the long section where Eurostar runs parallel to, but 100m or so away from, the motorway in northern France. But using the central reservation has its own problems, such as the geometry of railway curves being a bit different (with transitions) so it wouldn't be straightforward unless the motorway was designed with eventual addition of a railway in mind. This would be less of an issue with freight at around 75mph as for faster passenger trains. The reservation would also end up probably around 20m wide once allowance was made for the tracks themselves, necessary clearances, access walkways and sturdy barriers to guard against vehicle incursion. This would probably mean any bridge spanning the combined route, even perpendicularly, needing intermediate piers - not now favoured because of the risks of an errant road or rail vehicle colliding with them.

If you have to do that then please put it to the side - either cycling or waiting for a train/tram in the middle of a motorway is pretty horrible.

Or just recognise that widening roads adds more traffic, clogging up other roads nearby, and isn't a long-term solution. Isn't the whole point of HS2 to get people out of cars?

Also allows the use of vehicles with only one cab and doors on only one side, which is probably the case for the majority of trams in continental Europe. But this sort of vehicle never caught on in the UK, I think only Rotherham had them. Perhaps that might have been different if steam trams had been widespread and the necessary turning facilities had been built for them. They are of course less flexible in that all stops have to be on the same side, and space has to be found for the loop anywhere trams are to be turned back.

The street entrance was in Manchester though! An office I often visit is about to move into one of the new buildings on the site, which someone mentioned upthread they worked in. I've yet to work out if what is described as the Manchester office is actually in Manchester. Back on topic, 10+ years ago I was working on a project to add two platforms at Salford Central. Seems to have died a death.

The Bolton line carries the frequent service of longer-distance trains. It was never four-tracked (except for short sections) as the L&Y built a connection off the four-track Walkden line to carry its fast trains towards Preston instead. So each stopping train takes up scarce capacity, and of the local stations Clifton is particularly poorly sited. So it's not really surprising that stopping trains are tolerated rather than encouraged, and I would guess most locals use the bus rather than the train.

I think if we did that Gizmo would just upend the traps to get the biscuits out. My piano teacher used to encourage me to play a much simplified version of this (Lizst, Second Hungarian Rhapsody) because he claimed it was used in Tom and Jerry. Thanks, 45 years on, for proving him right!

These IDs don't have to be unique across the network, just sufficiently separated to avoid confusion.

In case anyone is heading from T1 to Atocha, there is a direct bus that's far less hassle than the Metro and takes cash so no need to bother with the card system (which I last used in 2018 and struggled to understand despite having passable Spanish).

Also I believe the origin of "no room to swing a cat in here".

That was the original plan, but they later decided all the initial fleet will be captive. Presumably having a separate subfleet for London to Birmingham isn't economic or doesn't allow for interworking. I think the plan was to buy some captive sets later for Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds and cascade the original fleet to serve off-route destinations, but I'm not sure what they now plan after the amputation of various branches.

HS2 infrastructure components should be fully compliant to European specifications, with the exception of higher platforms, but you don't try to buy those in standard designs anyway.

A British example is Metrolink Phase 3 in Manchester. By having a clear plan, commitment to continued funding, and keeping the same contractors throughout, they were able to deliver a lot more tramway at lower unit cost than Edinburgh, which was building at the same time. This is something of an oversimplification - there were some hiccups such as the abortive electrification of Werneth tunnels due to funding U-Turns - but having been involved in the programme it was interesting to see how the contractors made some mistakes early on but by the end they were delivering several months early.

Probably mostly a case of Pendolinos taking over their passenger work, and their freight work diminishing to a very small amount for which a few of them remain. 86 and 87 had electromechanical control via a tap changer, and couldn't do regenerative braking, but could possibly have been re-engineered with a solid state traction package had there been a need for them.

The below is something of an oversimplification but I think explains in general terms... Transformers have been around for many years so AC could be transmitted at high voltage through the overhead (greatly reducing losses) then stepped down on board to a voltage suitable for the motors. When these systems first appeared there was no good way of converting AC to DC on board the train, and AC motors aren't very good at running at a variable speed unless fed with a variable frequency, which wasn't possible until many decades later. However, if I remember this rightly, a brushed motor while essentially a DC machine will work on low-frequency AC. When the supply voltage changes polarity, the current reverses in both the armature and the field coils, so the forces between them continue to turn the armature in the same direction. (Separately the brushes change the polarity of the armature only as it passes each field coil, so that the torque continues to pull the armature towards the next coil). But because the coils in the motor are inductors, their impedance increases at high frequency so a greater proportion of the energy goes towards heat in the coils (the same reason DCC users are warned about using a DC loco on address zero). Clearly this was too much at industrial frequencies but acceptable at 16.67Hz, which could be produced by a trackside rotary converter (motor-alternator set) with a 1:3 ratio between its two sets of coils.