Nick C

10 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

They use their size - if a lorry pulls out you just HAVE to slow down.  Size of your vehicle does impact how people behave towards you; people will frequently pull out and turn left if a motorcycle or small car truck is coming from their right, but very rarely if it is a bus or HGV at the same speed.  It's instinctive, we don't perceive the same threat from a small vehicle yet ironically it is more likely to be able to slow down quickly and controllably.

Unless, of course, it's one of the people who like to submit clips for YouTube dashcam videos - in which case they will floor it onto the roundabout as a large vehicle is entering on the next junction to their left, then slam on the anchors and whine "he pulled out in front of me" - errr, no, he was already moving before you entered!

1 hour ago, MarcD said:

"I model the 1950's your stuff is nice but to old"

As someone who models the 1950s, I have to say your site is very good (and I must get round to putting an order in) for showing which wagons did last into BR ownership. A lot of purveyors of pre-grouping kits don't, which is fine for local stuff as I can look them up, but I don't have the books for every company in the country to check - and as has been discussed many times in this thread, a good variety is essential...

39 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Since it's pretty much all LEDs (for new) now anyway it's a while since I've seen "but they're much better because they're brighter" even though it wasn't the technology but the law created for a very good reason that kept the brightness down.

 

This might get be a bit of abuse but I'm fed up with bike lights now. Thanks to LEDs they can be as bright as car headlights now. That on it's own certainly isn't a bad thing, but they're rarely adjusted accordingly, and I find flashing at that brightness level is disorientating, especially if it does a strobe-type flash (beats me how anyone can standing cycling with that). When the law was changed to allow flashing bike lights it was probably a good idea, when they were nowhere near as bright, but they've changed.

Bike lights? As in lights, on bicycles? That'll never catch on...

19 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Not bad. You could have got Plywood in as well for a full house. Better luck next time.

Polperran Perfectly Prepared Plywood Point Panel Prop Prevents P!ss Poor Plywood Point Panel Propping?

1 hour ago, chiefpenguin said:

Q : What action could you have taken to avoid the collision ?

A : Been somewhere else.

Apparently in Thailand if there's a collision between a local and a tourist it's often automatically deemed to be the tourist's fault, on the basis that if they weren't there, the collision wouldn't have happened...

On the subject of parking, there's one further up our road this evening - SUV, half on the pavement, facing against traffic, and on the opposite side of the road to all the other parked cars. Just about enough room to weave a normal sized car through, but no way an ambulance or fire appliance would fit...

2 hours ago, CameronL said:

Has anyone else noticed that the Kremlin seems to be running out of Putin lookalikes? They seem to be looking less and less like the original each time...

21 minutes ago, ianathompson said:

The "standard" arrnagement which I worked with in manula GER boxes was black for point blades and blue for FPL.

The GER practice was for the FPL lever to be out of the frame when the points were locked.

On some other railways I underdtand that the FPL lever was in the frme when providing the locking.

That certainly matches the LSWR practice that I'm more familiar with.

Brighton practice seems a bit more varied when it comes to FPLs - Looking through the Pryer book on West Sussex lines I see 8 stand normally in, 5 normally out, and 7 don't say.

2 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

To this day I still check over every train I see, almost subconciously, for anything that would cause concern, including tail lamps, and would not hesitate to contact the railway by whatever means available if I saw anything wrong, including tail lamps...  Can't help myself, it's been hammered in to the point of becoming instinct. 

Even as a heritage volunteer that soon becomes second nature. 

As for the brightness of lamps, the signal in my avatar is lit by a modern LED, and even that's invisible in daylight...

The "thanks" on the last two posts is from Mrs C, who went to university in Katowice - she says those photos bring back a lot of memories. 

10 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

For the Midland, Midland Style gives:

• distant signals - olive green
• stop signals, ground signals, and discs - red
• points - Oxford blue
• ground frame controls - yellow
• level crossings and wicket gates - brown
• spares - white

Unfortunately, LNWR Liveries and North Eastern Record are only concerned with the outsides of signal boxes. But it seems to me probable that lever colours would have been agreed on nationally, presumably through one of the RCH committees.

Not black for point levers? I'd assumed that was pretty universal. Release levers were blue over brown later on...

It does seem logical that colours would be standardised, though I guess not essential as signalmen from one company wouldn't generally operate a box from another? 

On 13/02/2024 at 22:50, uax6 said:

A tail lamp is really only of use to us Bobbies, to tell us that the train is complete. Its not really there to stop other trains hitting that one (though of course they do, especially on permissive sections and in yards etc), which seems to be the misconception that the general public seem to live with

 

There have been many things used as tail lamps over the years, from newspapers to bog roll!

As long as the next box knows what to expect, I don't see an problem with that - though I'm not sure how you'd keep a newspaper on a lamp bracket!

18 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Oil lamps might have been easier for signallers to see in daytime than illuminated tail lights. 

They are - in bright sunlight the red lights on a 60s Diesel are pretty hard to see unless you're almost directly behind it.

17 hours ago, Edwin_m said:

The real crime to me is seeing a model locomotive with tail lamps lit when hauling a train.  Any rail staff seeing this should report it immediately*, because if the train should become divided behind the loco in an Absolute Block area, the next signaller will consider the line as clear on seeing the tail lamp lit.  

 

*I once did so by shouting across to the driver on the avoiding lines at Derby.  He replied that it must have been like that all the way from St Pancras.  Oh well...

IMHO that's worse than no tail lamp at all - as it increases the risk of a wrong-side failure. Better to assume the line is blocked when it isn't, than to assume it's clear when it isn't...

10 hours ago, Caley Jim said:

Just out of curiosity, why green for the distant?  In my experience they were always yellow as they are in that video.  Was that an LBSCR practice?

 

Jim

My understanding is that distant levers changed from green to yellow around the same time that the arms changed from red to yellow - early 20s?

40 minutes ago, chris p bacon said:

But it’s not the developers, it’s policy from central government that says we should use other means to travel than a car. 

But fails to actually do anything to make that possible! 

On a different note, what idiot thought it a good idea to cone off the outside lane of a roundabout, halfway round? Especially a roundabout that's only just finished roadworks lasting nearly three years, and now has spiralling lanes and traffic lights...

This just cropped up in my YouTube feed - 1:33...

On 12/02/2024 at 13:16, airnimal said:

I did try and buy some Brown paint for this LSWR wagon and ended up with a RailMatch colour that isn't correct. It is to much like a red oxide and not chocolate.  I tried spraying it over a red oxide base as well as a grey base. I also sprayed it direct onto some plain white plasticard but the results were not any different.     

I've not tried the Railmatch, but that's why I suggested the Precision one, I've used it on several 4mm wagons and know that it looks right (at least to my eye).

There's a photo of a suitable Brighton prototype here: https://www.kentrail.org.uk/horsted_keynes.htm - looks like a wooden beam sat on a ledge of brick, with a couple of vertical lengths of rail bolted on (presumably to keep everything the correct height)

3 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

 

Well, its a business expense

1 hour ago, kevinlms said:

Why just self-employed? Any one that needs to attend, is going to have the same problem.

The posts I was quoting were referring to vans parked over the weekend/not on a job, i.e. tradespeople taking their work vehicle home - for many self-employed people (e.g. a plumber or electrician) home is often their only premises, so where else could they park? Adding extra expenses for someone who is already struggling to get by isn't going to help much, especially when things like insurance are going up at record rates.

A bigger problem is people with huge SUVs when they only really need a hatchback, and households with multiple cars in areas that don't have space for them. I used to live in a Victorian terrace like those described by @cctransuk above - one neighbour had three cars, all on the road - even though they had room round the back where they could have made a driveway.

6 hours ago, lezz01 said:

Do you know who built that engine? It looks like an E B Wilson product to me.

Regards Lez.

This page suggest Sharp Stewart: http://www.gwr.org.uk/nocamrys2.html

I'm not sure you need the slots for the rear legs of a bufferstop - I think they'd just use a beam bolted to the wall.

12 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

Then there is the van/bloat issue.  My suggestion is that there should be the option to impose restrictions on parking vehicles over a certain size.  Fair enough if a tradesman/delivery driver/whatever is working at a property but if you want to park a van on the road over the weekend, no, its a commercial vehicle so pay for somewhere to park it.  When I lived in Bristol the local paper made their delivery van drivers take the vehicles home rather than provide parking.    SUV's ditto

12 hours ago, NBL said:

The estate my brother lives in has a ban on any commercial vehicles being parked in the road, unless there on a job. 

 

It works, the few residents that tried to park a commercial vehicle they were responsible for were fined, and one taken to court for non-payment.

 

That makes things rather impossible for self-employed tradespeople...

2 minutes ago, Reorte said:

I'm not in London but the last couple of years has been a right PITA for getting stuff done due to people not being available on site, it being much harder to work through issues when people are scattered all over the place - remote calls are no substitute for face to face discussions when working through complex technical problems.

That must depend on the industry, as I find it much easier to work through complex problems on a call, as everyone can have "eyes on" the problem instead of having to look over someone else's shoulder to see a screen. We tend to reserve office-day meetings for higher level discussions. Flexible working also makes things much easier when dealing with clients/suppliers in different timezones - I can easily dive onto an occasional call at 7pm from home which would be miserable from the office.

2 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

Anyway that sort of proves my point I think. Why aren't those offices in Basingstoke then? Businesses don't operate on sentiment (to be honest the level of rejection of it is frequently more of a curse than a blessing, but that's a digression). They've centralised to London, leaving other places not much more than dormitory towns. I'm actually against faster travel because it  exacerbates that effect. Businesses the idea for pretty much the same reason.

Probably the same reasons that see companies spending millions on outsourcing their back office functions one year, only to then spend more millions bringing them all back in a few years later...

According to this one it's finally starting to go the other way though: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/02/half-of-uk-firms-open-offices-outside-city-centres-study-claims - albeit we're not seeing much of it in Basingstoke yet, and the council seem madly keen on turning all the town centre offices into poor-quality dormitory flats - which of course only makes the problem worse as the M3 corridor has been running well over capacity for years.

2 minutes ago, Reorte said:

School runs? Need smaller, more local schools then. Which costs more...

Or stop people driving their kids when they live under a mile away - except of course they'll tell you that they have to drive as it's too dangerous to walk, due to all the other parents driving...

2 minutes ago, Reorte said:

That always seemed more stick than carrot.

Exactly my point - the media decided to conflate "Low traffic neighbourhoods" (the stick) with "15-minute city" (the carrot) - the original proposals for the latter never included the former, merely making sure that residential districts ought to have everything they need locally.

2 minutes ago, Reorte said:

It's simply that it's more economically efficient, so that's what survives. It's not been forced by vested interests in selling cars and fuel.

I disagree - look at the huge push to get people back into central London. There's no way that's more economically efficient, London office space is way more expensive than elsewhere (A quick google finds this link suggesting that, per-desk, London is 4 times more expensive than Basingstoke), not to mention that staff need to be paid more to afford London living or commuting. A huge proportion of our traffic problems are caused by commuting and school runs, so anything that can reduce the number of cars used at these times has to be a good thing. 

8 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Definitely.

 

It's all very well people going on about things like "it's a privilege, not a right to have a car" but the simple fact is that we've built our current world around easy car availability, and it's simply not possible for most people to get buy practically in this day and age without one. Yes, it's practical for some to manage, and a lot could change their circumstances so that they're one of those some, but only at the expense of someone being shifted the other way.

 

Centralisation of jobs, services, shops etc., unless that's all somehow reversed then a large proportion of car usage is here to stay. And it's hard to see how that can be reversed when the reason most of the local shops, jobs, and services have vanished is because they simply can't compete with the efficiencies of scale brought on by the centralisation. I don't think that's a good thing at all but I can't see what can be realistically done about it.

Which is of course what the concept of 15-minute cities was intended to alleviate, before getting hijacked by the hard-right...

Plus as we've seen with the push-back against remote working post-Covid, there are too many influential people with a vested interest in centralising everything and selling more cars and hydrocarbon fuel...

4 minutes ago, petethemole said:

This estate was built in the late 20s-mid 30s in the 'Garden city' style as social housing, now about a third freehold. It had no provision for parking except on street.  Subsequent provision of garages on former allotments and parking spaces cutting into green areas probably sufficed for the 60s.  Now many houses have two cars or more, and some a LGV van, and some of the garages are used for storage.  Parts of the green areas are regularly used for cars, paved front gardens are common and cars are frequently parked too close to junctions. The junction SWMBO uses to exit our bit often has a van parked right on the corner, obstructing the view to the left.  This is a problem because that is the one dead straight bit of road on the estate and the BMWs and hot hatches often tear up it, hidden by the van.  It's not the same van all the time, but it's a handy spot for delivery vans, tradesmen etc to park.

Ours is mid-60s and has similar problems - the point I was making earlier, and is clearly shown up by @30801's last post, is that they're still doing it despite knowing modern car ownership patterns - in fact it was, for some time, general planning policy to deliberately restrict the number of parking spaces - it appears from our local council's documentation that this only changed in 2015.