Titan

I am starting to wonder if the 'n' key on my keyboard is working intermittetly....,

Yes it should. And even more anoyingly it was not the trap I set for the even more pedantic to fall in to!!!!!! Damn typo....

Being exceptionally pedatic - but what the hell this is the joke thread!! - Should that not be 51 times bigger if you count AA, BB, CC etc. etc. ?

I almost self linched myself - I told my daughter about the bus on bridge cliche and now whenever we go to a show when she sees one she points and says in a loud voice "LOOK DADDY ANOTHER BUS ON BRIDGE" I wish the ground would swallow me up sometimes!

Well I was wearing my engineers hat instead of my anorak, so just rounded it up to the nearest 10% !!

I always find Christmas comes quickly.

So a scale 125mph in OO is 20% faster than the speed shown in the video above.

Its true, I think too many people overcompensate in trying not to go for the trains racing round like an 8 year olds trainset look. To see something renowned for its speed like an HST, Deltic or even an A4 plodding along at what is something like a scale 60mph somehow does not represent how we remember them, and the excuse that they often did run at that speed does not really cut it with me when they are running along a section of high speed railway. Years ago one of the Club members I knew specialised in HST's and made sure he ran them at an accurate scale 125mph. It was a lot faster than you'd think!

I remember some did, some did not. One of those variations during the build depending on which bearings were used. Another variation was some had axle mounted disc brakes, some had wheel mounted.

Tenuous link alert! The Boys' Brigade gauge?

Looks like it should be 23, as we appear to be included in the countries invaded, unless we somehow invaded ourselves?

Early 90's you would not normally see any EMU's north of Shenfield with a class number below 309, pretty much only 309/312/321 by that stage. I don't think that 309's were ever diagramed for four cars except after Thorpe-le-soken where the train might split - minimum would be 8, unless of course there was an extreme shortage of units or ECS between Ilford and Clacton (saw a 309/312 combo once!) but then usually the first causalty would be to reduce 12 cars to eight rather than providing only four cars instead of eight. For something a little different there were the 302/9 parcel conversions, which would get absolutely hammered running non stop between Chelmsford and Liverpool street, using the purpose built depot in the former goods yard at Chelmsford. I think the faded canopy is still there, along with the cut outs that went around the now removed OLE masts. Freight is mostly Containers, although there used to be a sand depot near Marks Tey which was served with old 4 wheel hopper wagons, can't remember when that finished. There was frieght on the Braintree Branch too, a Fertilizer depot next to Braintree Station. Not realising there was freight on the branch at the time I was quite surprised once to see a blue 47 coming off the branch with vans in tow! Probably a once a week flow I should imagine. There were still 16 ton mineral wagon trains running in the early '80s at least. One of them wrapped itself around Witham station Road bridge, which still has the scars in the brickwork. looked like half the train wanted to go to Braintree whilst the other continued on the main line. I heard about it and went to have a gander, lots of very bent wagons upside down and generally piled up! The other mishap I remember was a class 31 that I think ran through the trap points in the loop near Boreham. Ended up leaning over on the cutting. It was there for a little while before it was recovered and I don't think they bothered reinstating the loop.

So the bouncing was not train induced on that occasion?

I think the seats may have been coil sprung, I did not get to ride on them in service, but did hear tales of how when hurtling down Brentwood Bank you could watch an entire coach full of people bouncing up and down in unison like synchronised Zebedee's!!

If it gets any worse the beach will end up being on line!

I tended to find that fully laden the ride was quite good, but empty was decidedly lively! I would not have thought an extra five tons or so of passengers per coach would have made that much difference when compared to the tare weight but still...

With the exception of Grantham...

Well it has to be said thart the Severn Tunnel is way off my patch and other than how long it is and its location, I pretty much know nothing about it! However in tunnels, particularly twin track there is usually enough room for clearance to the OLE equipment, the difficulty is keeping the pan low enough so the horns don't get too close where the tunnel profile comes down at the edges. So fancy solutions like conductor beam, which is only suitable for low speed are unlikely to be used, but if its tight some form of track lowering and/or slewing may be necessary.

Whilst the ringfield motors may be crude, they are simple things that are pretty difficult to break beyond repair unless excessively worn. Maybe you could make one good one from the three?

I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

To be honest, I don't think the strength of the supports and there closeness together would be a problem as far as water is concerned - even quite a large deposit of spray is unlikely to have as much effect as a large gust of wind, although admittedly the chances are that they would both occur together and the wind would be strong and necessitate close supports anyway! All it is is an awful lot of water droplets close together, which due to the air gaps between them do not offer a path to earth. The worst problem would be if salt were to build up on the insulators, this would reduce the resistance to earth and might cause a flashover. But the salt would be washed off any time it rained anyway. Maintenance would have to pay particular attention to greasing and corrosion which would be adversely affected, probably an increased maintenance and inspection frequency too.

Would that not be 28.083mm gauge in this case?

The masts for the Two track cantilevers and most portals are very very similar, at least for the new design - I notice some older style ones creeping in to the pictures at Reading! If they are masts for the new style TTC's they will have a sort of ratchet like arrangement on which the boom sits, whereas the portal masts are completely plain as the boom is simply clamped. So yes, it will get a little more interesting when the horizontal bits are added!

Its much more than just veering away, more like completely kicked in to the long grass! Post privitisation, headspans are to all intents and purposes banned for new works. There are some rare exceptions, but generally they are avoided like the plague. Even portals are on the hit list - The preferred method for four track areas on the GWML is pairs of two track cantilevers. The new design is very quick to install, once the mast is up it takes as little as 2 mins from boom on the ground to fixed in position and ready to have stuff bolted/loaded on to it, you only require two tracks under possession rather than all four, and you can use a smaller crane. The emphasis is much more about minimum disruption, both in construction and operation. The more substantial portal structures you can see are anchor structures. The new system uses Tensorex constant force spring tensioners, which are not unlike in both looks and operation to a large measuring tape. Gone are the balance weights on the masts. Because of their compact size, it means that the wires can be terminated above the tracks. This means that we are returning to structures that are the modern equivalent of the old Mk1 A frame anchor portals, only without all the angles and pulleys. The operational advantage is that even on complicated junctions the layout can be designed so that not a single wire crosses another, either in running or out of running. The idea is that if one wire breaks, it should not be able to affect anything else. Edit: Unlike the picture above!

I guess that beats 'bus on bridge'