PatB

Interesting to see the Bedford CAs, presumably off to the body builders. I wonder what they became. Ice-cream vans, minibuses, walk-thru vans?

I dunno. Most (all?) of the railways in deeply colonial Australia adopted knuckle couplers and continuous brakes on everything very early on.

There definitely seems to be a bit of a "get Elon Musk" trend at the moment. Sure, the man's a bit of an egotistical git but, presumably, he always was. I don't really see what's changed in the last 6 months or so barring one (admittedly seriously out of turn) comment. But everyone loves a good pile-on, eh?

On a very basic level, given what it's cost them, I'd be very surprised if the A1 Trust just shrugged their collective shoulders and said "s#%£ happens". Ditto the other players (NR, assorted insurers, any engineering subcontractors from the initial build and subsequent maintenance). As I and others have said, those who need to know will know as much as can be determined. That's hardly a cover-up. The general public, even the enthusiast general public, has repeatedly, over the years, shown itself to be, on average, unable to understand the engineering concepts involved in anything more complex than, say, a wheelbarrow. I can certainly understand putting out technical details to those not directly involved as being a low priority when allocating limited resources.

Money laundering scam?

Oh, I agree that the powerful vehicle will ultimately outrun the torque one, all other things being equal, and I also agree that, when the opportunity arises to play, stirring the gearbox to maintain revs just below valve-bounce is huge fun. However, I'm definitely getting lazier as I get older and I generally find greater pleasure these days in covering ground briskly but without fuss over a sustained period. A good example was when I took my BMW K100 (bike) to a track day. Although completely outclassed by 99% of the other machinery there, I found that the old dinosaur let me use its near flat torque curve to get around the entire circuit quite respectably in 3rd and 4th, only needing to hook top briefly down the back straight. The more modern sports bikes needed probably twice the number of gearchanges each time round. OK for the riders who knew what they were doing, but I passed a fair few less experienced folk who'd wrong-slotted their revvy 600 and let the engine fall off the boil, or run out of revs halfway round a corner and upset the bike by changing up.

I've long been of the opinion that, under most real-world driving conditions, a torque engine can do a pretty decent impression of a powerful one. My old Beetle, nominally 50 bhp but probably nearer 40 given its advanced state of wear, was great fun to boot hard in 2nd and 3rd away from near walking pace, with the rear swing axles squatting most purposefully. OK so it ran out of puff towards the legal limit but so what? Most of its life was spent on much slower roads where it was a match for most moderns if you paid attention. Autos I see as a case of horses for courses. IMHO the old style 3-speeds (BW35, Ford C4, GM Trimatic etc.)really need a decent sized engine to work well. By which I mean 2-litres and up as a minimum, with 3+ being better. As slush boxes have become more sophisticated the desirable minimum engine has come down. I don't mind them but I still tend to pick manuals for vehicles I'm buying with my own money though.

What a charming little loco. I'll be watching the build with interest.

Well it beats a Pacer .

I don't really have a problem with it. I still got the joke and found it amusing. Just assumed that nanna or nana was a sufficiently well known term in the UK that there must be other reasons for the objections of others.

As someone who found school sport rather traumatic, to say the least, the supposedly doom laden line "He will never play football again", which I remember being used in presentations on rail, road, building site and firework safety, generally had me wondering where I could sign up for disabling injury .

I think the objection is more the differing pronunciation of "tuba".

I'm just waiting for my Arduino, motor shield and some cheap, basic decoders to turn up in the post so I can have a go. I've already got an old laptop, running Lubuntu, that I can dedicate to the task. The DCC++ does relate to the fact that the coding is in C++. I did some coding in C+ a couple of decades ago so I'm moderately comfortable with the idea.

Nah, it'll just go banana shaped. I think I need to devise a hogging truss https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hog_chains .

Perhaps more at the toy end, but a newsagent in Westover(?) in Bridvwater had possibly the last two new Novo/Big-Big 0 gauge sets in existence on a shelf for years back c1980. There was the Blue Flyer set and the narrow gauge diesel set. Cheap too, IIRC.

I'm reminded of the unfortunate mouse which got into our washing machine and bridged the mains terminals. When I finally discovered the source of the smell of hot electricity both its front end and back end looked rather surprised, but of its middle portion nothing remained.

A search on cast copper slag turned up this. The photo of the coping stones on Compton Dando churchyard wall shows exactly the stones I'm thinking of so I think we have a winner.

That sounds like it, or something closely related, might be the stuff. A quick Google for Cattybrook bricks suggests that this isn't the origin. All the Cattybrook images I can find indicate a yellow or reddish shade. The material I'm thinking of was very dark, almost black, but with (usually) a purpleish tinge. I initially thought it might be an engineering "blue" brick material but the swirly internal structure was unlike any clay brick I've seen and suggested that the material had gone into the mould as a viscous liquid, rather than the more usual brickmaking technique of pressing a soft solid into the mould cavity. If it helps, the most common uses that I came across were coping stones with a profile like a tall isosceles triangle with the point rounded off (very common on the stone walls in the areas north of Clifton Downs), and a sort of path-edging tile. That is, a tile with a plain "blade" to bury in the ground and a decorative top edge (scallops and rope twists seemed most common) to form a decorative edge to a path or lawn.

I've successfully sunk one end of my (timber framed, on timber stumps) house by 1"-2" by lining it with bookshelves. Whoops. Time to get out the trolley-jack and make up some shims .

I'm hoping that the broad range and depth of industrial and building knowledge on RMWeb might be able to answer a question that's been puzzling me for quite a while now. Way back, when I was landscaping around Bristol, I noticed that a lot of 19th and possibly early 20th century buildings, walls and garden masonry included things like tiles, wall coping stones and other manufactured "masonry" products made from a dark, shiny material that I initially thought was a variety of brick or similar ceramic. However, examination of broken examples showed an internal structure with lots of swirly flow patterns not unlike solidified lava. IIRC it was also very hard, chewing through cutting discs in my 9" angle-grinder at a phenomenal rate. I speculated at the time that the material may have been cast foundry slag or similar. After all, there must have been an awful lot of it around as an industrial by- product. What better way of disposing of it than to turn it into saleable building materials? I thought that, if it was slag, it might have been brought in from the South Wales steelworks. Anyhow, I wondered if anyone familiar with C19th building materials in the Bristol area might be able to confirm what this stuff actually was.

Peco seem to be the exception that proves the rule that, to succeed in business in the C21st you need a great online presence. Terrible website(s), highly successful business. If they could do IT properly they'd be well on the way to world domination .

Wonderful bit of film. Quite instructive, too, for those who believe driving standards have fallen since the '60s .

Whilst I'm not experienced in loading rail wagons, I've had some professional involvement with the loading of road vehicles. In general, there's no inherent reason why a properly secured load that is within gauge needs to fit within the confines of any fixed parts of the vehicle (sides, bolsters etc.). However, that phrase "properly secured" is key and certain load arrangements may make it impossible or, at least, impractical to achieve satisfactorily. Long, straight, smoothish things, like the pipes illustrated, for example, whilst easy to secure laterally by chaining them down, regardless of whether they're within the bolsters or not, might be difficult to clamp sufficiently tightly to prevent movement when subjected to longitudinal shocks, such as are likely in a loose-coupled train. The bigger the stack, the harder it is to ensure that every piece of the load is adequately secured.

I dunno. I've worked for a government department (admittedly in another country) that supposedly had such a thing. Their grasp of the legislation relevant to the department's work didn't appear to even extend to the ability to read it, let alone apply it in any kind of logical manner.