Castle Aching

[Edwardian]

Moving on, thank you to everyone for thoughts on, and examples of, tare weights.  For a series of numbers in a very small and relatively hard-to-read font that no-one will notice, read, or care less about, I think we've done as much as we need.

 

The outstanding issue for the wagon transfer sheet is running numbers.  How would the WNR have arranged this?

 

Well, when it was something about the size of the K&ESR, 1 to whatever would have done.  Since then ambitions have soared and we have opened a line to GER Magdalen Road then south to Bury St Edmunds ,and a line to Norwich. adding a branch to Fakeney and developing Birchoverham-next-the-Sea into a major resort. 

 

We have 27 locomotives in the roster, plus 3 for the tramway, and 9 dedicated goods/mineral locomotives with at least 1 mixed trafic type likely to be rostered on goods working at any given time.

 

Wagons will be predominantly general merchandise, with a 4:1 ratio in favour of opens.  There will be a number of open minerals, mainly older wagons, a reasonable number of livestock wagons, bolsters for Baltic timber etc. 

 

My thoughts, so far, are:

 

In the 1880s, when the WNR started to build its own goods stock and opened its diagram book, it probably instituted a numbering scheme.  I suggest this could have been by blocks, and that it could have gone something like:

 

Brake Vans:  1 to whatever

Pre-diagram/old/second-hand wagons: 0 prefix, thus available numbers 001-099

General merchandise opens (including bolsters?), available numbers 100-299

Covered wagons, available numbers 300-399

Livestock wagons, available numbers 400-499

Mineral wagons, available numbers 500-599

Special/fitted wagons, available numbers 600-699

 

Is this at all appropriate as a scheme?

 

How might departmental stock be numbered?

 

 

[Hroth]

14 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

How might departmental stock be numbered?

 

In the spirit of minimal complication, might not departmental stock be a D prefix with either incrementing numerals for new stock, or if Departmental stock is old stock taken out of revenue earning service, D followed by the number originally carried by the stock.  You could run both ideas together as you wouldn't have that many pensioned-off brake vans.

 

[Edwardian]

2 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

In the spirit of minimal complication, might not departmental stock be a D prefix with either incrementing numerals for new stock, or if Departmental stock is old stock taken out of revenue earning service, D followed by the number originally carried by the stock.  You could run both ideas together as you wouldn't have that many pensioned-off brake vans.

 

 

So, for example, a wagon given over to ash is unlikely to be purpose built and is likely to be old.  it would, therefore, be in the 0001-099 series, but would now be prefixed D, e.g. D027

 

For something like purpose-built ballast wagons, a sequence of D1, D2 etc

 

A sand wagon might be a conversion of an old 0-prefix wagon, a loco coal wagon could be a new build or from the mineral series, e.g. D505

 

We might consider a different livery colour for departmental stock.

[Hroth]

Sounds good. Given your proposed brake van numbering sequence, you might like to start the "new" departmentals sequence from say 20, just to allow a number of old brake vans in the departmental fleet.

 

Rather than a complete re-livery, a distinctive colour panel on the sides, with a big D in it?

 

[Nearholmer]

Can a modest railway like the WNR afford to have a clear distinction between departmental and non-departmental stock?

[Buhar]

If they were branded or in a different livery you could introduce some prototypical confusion by having a parallel list for departmental (non-revenue) stock.

 

Alan 

[Hroth]

10 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Can a modest railway like the WNR afford to have a clear distinction between departmental and non-departmental stock?

 

Perhaps stock that is unsuitable for venturing off the WNR but still has a couple of years life left in it might become "Departmental"?

[Buhar]

7 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Can a modest railway like the WNR afford to have a clear distinction between departmental and non-departmental stock?

Even the WNR will have an accountant lurking who would have an interest in such distinctions and want returns to analyse. Also you don't want your departmental wagons loaded with potatoes and wandering off to foreign parts like Norwich. It would cause questions from the RCH.

 

Alan 

 

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

16 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Sounds good. Given your proposed brake van numbering sequence, you might like to start the "new" departmentals sequence from say 20, just to allow a number of old brake vans in the departmental fleet.

 

I thought I would have Goods Brakes 1-12, but with "No. X GOODS BREAK" on the sides, so you know what they are, and then do the same for Mineral Brakes and Ballast Brakes.

 

Quote

Rather than a complete re-livery, a distinctive colour panel on the sides, with a big D in it?

 

 

Oh. a big, big D!

 

What never?

 

 

15 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Can a modest railway like the WNR afford to have a clear distinction between departmental and non-departmental stock?

 

Yes

 

2 minutes ago, Buhar said:

Even the WNR will have an accountant lurking who would have an interest in such distinctions and want returns to analyse. Also you don't want your departmental wagons loaded with potatoes and wandering off to foreign parts like Norwich. It would cause questions from the RCH.

 

Alan 

 

 

 

 

 

Good point

[Hroth]

1 minute ago, Edwardian said:

Oh. a big, big D!

 

What never?

 

Ok

 

A big Dodo for the illiterate....

Symbolic too!

[Regularity]

12 minutes ago, Buhar said:

Even the WNR will have an accountant lurking who would have an interest in such distinctions and want returns to analyse. Also you don't want your departmental wagons loaded with potatoes and wandering off to foreign parts like Norwich. It would cause questions from the RCH.

A common method was to write-off the stock, and indicate this with some form of cipher, for example a leading zero.

[wagonman]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

 

All of which is no reason for us not to howl at the moon occasionally!

 

Every four weeks usually...

[Edwardian]

21 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Ok

 

A big Dodo for the illiterate....

Symbolic too!

 

Something like this, probably in a circle, or, I thought, a shield. 

 

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I'll get back to you on that one in a few kiloseconds.

 

The second is thoroughly metric. One of the 18th-century proposals for a definition of the metre was that it should be the length of a pendulum whose period is 2 seconds. (The proposer was thinking in terms of the time interval between successive passings of the mid-point of the swing.) The geographical variation in gravitational acceleration killed that idea off; it took a while to get round to re-defining the metre in a similar way, this time in terms of the distance travelled at the speed of light in a vacuum, which is invariant with location.

 

In fact the second is the basiest of base units in the SI, since the definitions of the metre, kilogram, ampere, and kelvin hang off it.

 

Wagon numerology:

 

I think you're trying to be far too tidy-minded and systematic. The usual approach was, additions to capital stock take the next available new number, renewals take the next vacant number in the series, vacancies having been created by the withdrawal of old stock.

 

So, you need to work out the complete history of WNR wagon stock, the order in which wagons were built/purchased, what withdrawals there may have been either through age or accident. The relatively small size of the WNR wagon fleet together with lockdown makes this a practical proposition. 

 

By and large, service vehicles were numbered in with the revenue stock (certainly Midland, GW, LNW) though they might be distinguished by livery and/or lettering. The LNW Engineer's Department kept a separate number list of its ballast wagons, so those bore two sets of number plates, but that's a bit extreme.

Edited May 6, 2020 by Compound2632

[Hroth]

So marshalling a departmental train would be "Getting all your ducks in a row"?!

[Regularity]

17 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

The second is thoroughly metric. One of the 18th-century proposals for a definition of the metre was that it should be the length of a pendulum whose period is 2 seconds. (The proposer was thinking in terms of the time interval between successive passings of the mid-point of the swing.) The geographical variation in gravitational acceleration killed that idea off; it took a while to get round to re-defining the metre in a similar way, this time in terms of the distance travelled at the speed of light in a vacuum, which is invariant with location.

Not true. It is defined with respect to the decay rate of caesium-133.

Distance can’t be used, as it is not invariant with location due to gravitational and relativistic effects, etc.
 

Quote

In fact the second is the basiest of base units in the SI, since the definitions of the metre, kilogram, ampere, and kelvin hang off it.

Yes, but only if the second is not itself defined in terms of metres: you have created a loop here where time is defined respect to distance, and distance is derived with reference to time.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Never lived in the Fens, then?

 

hat .. coat...

 

 

 

The fundamental problem for remnant populations afflicted with polydactylism is that a simple task like buying a pair of shoes becomes too expensive 

[Edwardian]

22 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

So, you need to work out the complete history of WNR wagon stock, the order in which wagons were built/purchased, what withdrawals there may have been either through age or accident.

 

 

Yes, so I had thought, but this is precisely what I need to avoid, especially as I have a designer waiting to know what numbers we need.  The block system get round this. 

 

22 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

The relatively small size of the WNR wagon fleet together with lockdown makes this a practical proposition. 

 

 

 

No, you're as bad as the bloody Radio in imagining that my worst problem is finding things to do!

 

I don't qualify for any govt. support.  If I'm idle it's because I've run out of work and will no doubt then be pre-occupied by debt and eventual bankruptcy and eviction.   I certainly won't be worrying about wagon numbers.  

[Compound2632]

Just now, Regularity said:

Not true. It is defined with respect to the decay rate of caesium-133.

Distance can’t be used, as it is not invariant with location due to gravitational and relativistic effects, etc.
 

Yes, but only if the second is not itself defined in terms of metres: you have created a loop here where time is defined respect to distance, and distance is derived with reference to time.

 

Hi Simon, I evidently didn't express myself clearly enough. It is the metre that is defined in terms of the speed of light and the second:

 

The metre, symbol m, is the SI unit of length. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the speed of light in vacuum c to be 299 792 458 when expressed in the unit m s–1, where the second is defined in terms of the caesium frequency Delta nu_Cs.

 

The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency Delta nu_Cs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium-133 atom, to be 9 192 631 770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s–1.

 

[SI Brochure, 9th edition (BIPM, 2019).]

 

Note that the definition of the second is in terms of an atomic transition frequency - and hence can be realised with an accuracy of a few parts in 10^16 - not a nuclear decay rate; in any case, cesium-133 is a stable isotope. 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Having spent my basic education years in the pre-decimal days I can say with certainty that decimalisation was one of the more sensible things that any Australian government ever undertook. 

[Hroth]

11 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Having spent my basic education years in the pre-decimal days I can say with certainty that decimalisation was one of the more sensible things that any Australian government ever undertook. 

 

But pounds, shillings and pence, together with the various coins associated with it certainly sorts out the grockles from the natives....

 

I never had any problems with pre-decimal currency, though the transition from that to decimal currency certainly makes sense in the digital domain, otherwise currency calculations would become a special case of geometrical calculation...

 

[Guy Rixon]

3 hours ago, drmditch said:

Have you ever written computer code to deal with £Sd ?

I have, and although it can be written in a little subroutine it's a pain.

More importantly, mixed-base code is easy to get wrong and wrong code abounds in service. There is a similar problem in astronomy with mixed-base representation of angles. Everybody, from acknowledged demigods of astronomy down to plebs like me, codes this wrongly and has to go back and fix it. It's bad enough when 200 tons of telescope points in the wrong direction; you do not want this kind of cock-up affecting your money.

[Buhar]

While many railway companies numbered as @Compound2632 describes (the LNWR notably including locomotives on the same basis) there is no reason why a tidy minded manager around the turn of the century could not have decided to rationalise the system, having recently found employment in the arras end of Norfolk. Probably after being dismissed from the regiment after some impropriety involving funds. 
"Me and the regiment were marching along, you know, and suddenly, quite by accident, me and the regimental funds took the wrong turning."

 

Additionally, I am thinking that specialist items such as 45ft lengths of rail and maybe sleepers could arrive in suitable wagons from the company serving the foundry or creosoting works. This would save the WNR the expense of keeping such for permanent way repairs which are probably only done when unavoidable. 

 

Alan 

[Compound2632]

9 minutes ago, Buhar said:

Additionally, I am thinking that specialist items such as 45ft lengths of rail and maybe sleepers could arrive in suitable wagons from the company serving the foundry or creosoting works. This would save the WNR the expense of keeping such for permanent way repairs which are probably only done when unavoidable. 

 

Rails can be transported on ordinary timber trucks. There's a photo that I can't just now locate, of a long line of S&DJR timber trucks at Highbridge or Burnham, loaded with rails shipped in from South Wales and, I think, destined for the LSWR. For 45 ft rail, three trucks are needed, with the load chained only to the outer wagons; for 60 ft, four trucks, with loads chained to the first and third.

 

 

[Hroth]

16 minutes ago, Buhar said:

Probably after being dismissed from the regiment after some impropriety involving funds. 

 

His railway career might be foreshortened if he tried that sort of stunt on the WNR.

 

A dark night behind the drillhall and....