Nick C

I was reminded of this one by the Carnival Horizon thread: Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision. Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision. Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course. Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course. Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that's one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship. Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

But as the wikipedia article in @009 Micro Modeller's post points out, the coins are neither melted nor broken up, so it is legal - the law doesn't actually mention squishing them (nor glueing them to the inside of a model wagon...)

Ah yes, the car-forum favourite of "all <comapny-x> parts are crap, you should only buy OEM" - regardless of whether the OP had mentioned company X at all.

Which direction are you heading? If you're going north, they are - Scotland is rising by around 10cm/century due to the springboard effect following the end of the last ice age - with no glaciers weighing it down it's literally bouncing back up...

No problem! Two set of independant 2-shoe brakes is exactly what the photos show. I'll be needing several of these for my IOW layout, so I look forward to them being available to order!

Cyclist. noun. Someone who rides a bicycle. Or are you suggesting that there's also a difference between "pedestrian" and "person walking", or between "motorist" and "person driving a car"? I usually see quite a few cyclists around. Some of them ride in an exemplary fashion, obeying all the rules and being courteous. Others don't. Similarly some of the motorists I see drive correctly and courteously, others don't. Generally you tend to notice the people doing stupid things more than you notice the people behaving correctly - regardless of whether they're in a car, on a bike, walking, etc. Fundamentally everyone should be courteous to everyone else, regardless of the mode of transport they're using.

They look good, very clear. One question though - when discussing the brakes, you only show one side. Will the kit include parts to do brakes on both sides (all four wheels)? All the photos in the OPC book from SR days or later show them on both sides - freighter type according to one of the captions. (Sorry for mentioning SR in the pre-grouping section!)

I don't think anyone here is saying that, indeed that's exactly where you should be going. What you shouldn't be doing is using shared use paths for going fast... On a related note, possibly one for the 'driving standards' thread - half an hour ago (full darkness) I passed a cyclist riding through the middle of Basingstoke. He was dressed in dark clothing, had neither lights nor reflectors, and was riding with no hands on the handlebars...

It's not just cyclists that the irresponsible dog owners have no respect for, it's pedestrians as well - My wife has a phobia of large dogs, and many of their owners just let them run around with no control. I think many of them are utterly unaware of how powerful a large animal can be.

I've just checked the Highway Code, rules 13 and 62 apply - but there's no guidance as to which side to use, merely that pedestrians should "Take extra care" and cyclists should "Take care when passing pedestrians, especially children, older or disabled people, and allow them plenty of room. Always be prepared to slow down and stop if necessary."

I'd say walk on the right, for exactly the same reason as you do on the road - so you can see oncoming vehicles - even more important with bikes as they're likely to be quieter than cars...

We try to do our bit for the environment, which includes trying to reduce/reuse/recycle as much as we can - and one of the key things they keep telling us is that single-use plastic is bad. So why is it, then, that a significant proportion of the stuff that goes in our normal bin is plastic packaging that is perfectly recyclable, but can't be recycled for the simple reason that the council refuse to take it? What makes it even more strange is that they state they can recycle plastic bottles - so I asked them what types of plastic they can take (given that everything is numbered to make it nice and easy) - their response was "just bottles" - so trays etc, even though they're probably the same plastic as the bottles, will be refused. I can't understand the logic of that, other than lazyness on their part! Are other councils more sensible with this? You're never going to persuade the general public to recycle more if you make it hard for them to do so...

There's always an alternative route though - it may not always be parallel, and it's not always convenient, but there is always a way to go that isn't on the motorway. Huntingdon to Peterborough is quite good actually, the B1043 parallells the A1M most of the way - further north you'd have to go through Doncaster and Darlington etc. Asking Google for directions from Hatfield to the middle of Newcastle gives 273 miles / 5h53 avoiding motorways, compared with 255 miles / 4h28 via the A1M. I certainly agree with your second point though.

Motorways will always have the former road in parallel - they have to, as some road users aren't allowed to use motorways, so they need an alternative. Of course, that doesn't have to be a convenient route, so might well go through the middle of the town/city that the motorway bypasses! I've noticed an increase over the last few years in conflict between roadworks/closures done by Highways England (motorways and some trunk routes) and those done by local authorities - possibly as a result of HE (like Network Rail) putting in huge, long running works that go on for miles and last for years. The M3 "smart motorway" roadworks had around 15 miles of 50 limit for several years, and quite a few overnight closures. There ought to be a limit on the length and duration of the works so they do it in short stretches instead of blanketing the whole length for years.

All the schools in Southampton have those (or had a few years ago at least) - painted in the colours of the appropriate school's uniform. As you say, they look really creepy!

That's no excuse for not acknowledging the mistake and apologising for it though, is it? It doesn't take a lot of effort to write a letter saying "We're sorry for the inconvenience this caused you" AKA guilty unless proven innocent, which is the reverse of how our legal system works... We don't have a TV, therefore we don't have a licence. We do, however, support the BBC by buying their DVDs...

This kind of thing seems to be common with those companies - One of them was recently prosecuted for dumping people's cars in fields and public car parks (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-44981231). Unfortunately Gatwick doesn't have any proper parking other than the official airport long-stay which costs a fortune - all the rest there are hand-over-your-keys type places.

A few years ago exactly the same happened at Brockenhurst - similar situation in that there's a junction right next to the crossing, and the driver in question (another elderly lady if I remember correctly) turned onto the line instead - straight onto the live third rail... The same thing happens if you drive across Europe - if you're going on a road trip there's quite a lot of research needed to find out what you have to take (and, indeed, what you mustn't take - radar detectors are illegal in some countries, dash cams in others...) and what the speed limits and other road rules will be in each country... AFAIK, if it has the number in a red circle then it applies at all times - those that don't will be clearly signed as such, with the hours that apply (and as mentioned in another post, usually flashing lights) There's one village round here with a 20 limit, and I can almost guarantee whenever I drive through it I'll have someone driving agressively close behind me within about 200m of the beginning of the limit. 80% of the time, I get to the end of the limits* and go back up to 60, and they swiftly drop behind as they carry on at 45... (or the other way round, I'm stuck behind them doing 45 in the 60, get to the village and they shoot off into the distance as I slow for the limits, then I catch them up again in the next 60 stretch). *there's actually a short stretch of 30 either end of the 20, before it goes back to 60.

300 miles up and down the M3 and A31 this weekend, with a lot of traffic but fewer idiots than I expected - the worst was a caravan towed by someone who hadn't bothered to fit extended mirrors, and so had no idea what was behind him...

The one that got me fuming was when people objected to, and managed to stop, the proposed wind farm at Bullington Cross - they played the 'unspoilt countryside' card despite the fact that it was 100 yards from the junction between two major trunk roads, and the noise card despite there only being one house within earshot - and that was the farm that was selling the land, so he was in favour!

Statistically the best thing you can do to reduce your environmental impact, by a huge margin, is to have one less child - 58.6 tonnes of co2-equivalent/year, compared with 2.4t/y for not driving a car... https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/children-carbon-footprint-climate-change-damage-having-kids-research-a7837961.html

So it isn't - though demand is pretty low at the moment (33GW) - what will happen the first winter we don't have the coal plants available? Also the biggest share at the moment is Gas, which isn't much better from an environmental point of view... Or more scarily - someone who relies on electrically-powered medical devices (not all are in hospitals) - you'd hope they'd have some kind of back-up, but I suspect many don't...

The whole concept that people will switch to using appliances when the power is cheaper is flawed anyway, as most people don't have a choice. Take the washing machines mentioned above for example. We generally run ours on a Saturday morning, so we can then hang the washing out to dry all day (while we've still got reasonable weather!) How is telling me to run it at a different time going to help? I can only run it when I'm going to be there to take the washing out when it's done! I'm not going to run it at 3am, only for the washing to sit there wet for several hours, at which point it will stink and will need washing again... Similarly with the oven. I'm not going to cook my dinner at 3am, for the simple reason that I need it to be hot at dinner time! (Ok, so the dishwasher probably could run overnight, but even with that, quite a few things need to be removed as soon as it's finished to avoid tarnishing...) We are going to have a massive shortage of electricity in the next 5-10 years time, as the existing coal plants come to the end of their lives, and nothing is being built to replace them. The industry has to do something to alleviate this, and we, the consumers, will be the losers...

Similarly, some of the supermarket own-brand wine is getting pretty good these days - Morrisons have won quite a few awards for theirs recently. SWMBO used to work for an upmarket wine merchants, and we found that the mid-range stuff from Majestics/Morrisons/Sainsburys is generally better than the posh stuff with the fancy labels...

Oops, I read the standing charge instead of the unit charge - so yeah, 12p/kWh gives 3p/mile, so £720 saving over the UK average 12k miles...