Reorte

Those subtle variations in the grass really capture the look and feel well.

Already brilliantly modelled, of course!

At least my "favourite" dangerous junction's changed, M6(N) J34. That was a very tight turn on to the motorway, right on to a bridge (with no hard shoulder), and no acceleration lane. Cars having to stop was common. As part of the Heysham link road that's all changed to remove that nasty bit of road.

And those are the people who cause most of the problems, and whose behaviour cannot be changed by a change in the law - if they're already ignoring the law it seems unlikely they'll start obeying a new one.

The implication being that it doesn't revolve around my personal behaviour. It's not a discussion about what I'd do. To be frank I'm rather puzzled about why you're pushing this in response to a post that had nothing whatsoever to do with my personal behaviour and opinions. I think it's unbelievably unlikely that any road designer is thinking "The key thing about this proposed scheme is 'what would Reorte do?'" I've not said anything that can be reasonably interpreted as I wouldn't comply.

No it's not, the key question is whether or not there's overall a problem at a location. It's not much use if I comply but hardly anyone else does. Road designers and planners need to understand how people behave in the real world, and whether we like it or not "in accordance with the rules" isn't how they behave. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it is not, and it's necessary to understand why that's the case in some places and not others if you want the desired effect. You'll always get the highest level of compliance when things are arranged such that the majority wouldn't behave much differently even if there were no rules (still need the rules to deal with those who'll go out of their way to be a problem).

I believe (based on no more than "what I remember hearing somewhere," so feel free to take with a large pinch of salt) that slapping low speed limits on roads that the majority of drivers would drive faster on without the limit is inevitably going to result in a low degree of compliance. The nature of the road needs changing to get a change of behaviour (which is still less likely to affect the ones it most needs to, i.e. the ones who who'll ignore the limit regardless).

The problem with that thing that'll never happen is that there are so many of them, each individually extremely unlikely but there are enough of them that every now and then one will crop up (well, assuming you've not got completely useless types in control of everything who seem to actively invite problems).

That's surely always been the case, at least once you get past a certain limit. A bit of extra acceleration can be nice but it's not essential, and I've never really seen the point of lots of power unless you intend to go to track days. Although you were hinting at automatics too. Admittedly I've not got any experience of the difference in powerful cars but in ordinary ones I prefer to stick to a manual simply because I don't like automating things I can do myself well enough, and I find the operation of the clutch and gears to be pretty much subconscious - nothing really gained by automating it. On something with a big engine though I could see that that could just result in thrashing and trashing it and getting a lot less than its full potential if you don't really know what you're doing.

The operational reasons for the shift to the sort of trains we've got now are understandable but if there's a choice I'd take a loco-hauled, non-electric train every time simply as the most pleasant way of travelling by rail (well non-traction differences notwithstanding). Engine away from where I am - an electric one in the carriage is still a little intrusive, no irritating flicker of OHLE posts out of the window (although all that means is an uninterrupted view of the prison fencing and lineside jungle).

Could go either way. More concern for the things going wrong seems to be in fashion, but another fashion is that any form of redundancy is seen as wasteful and inefficient. Personally speaking, whilst I understand why it's all moving in the direction it is (and it's not as if I don't understand the technology either, at least as a generalisation and basic concepts level), I just find the end result a more depressing world. Give me a more local, hands-on, human world any day.

Diluted Copydex. It's not rock solid and if you don't like the results it can all be peeled out again with a little bit of work. I've used it on "conventional" ballast and ash mixed with powder paint (messy, probably a bit acidic, so maybe not a good idea), the only downside is that it tended to lift the ballast a little when applied so it never looked quite as good as before I applied it. That might just be my poor technique.

Price of everything and value of nothing thinking. It's caused plenty of damage already. Obviously there comes a point sometimes where maintaining might become prohibitive and sadly there's no choice other than something like filling it in, but that's a last resort, not a first one if people value the bridge even just for its own sake. The whole thing smacks of shouting "safety!" to drown out objections, which I find odious in its own right and leads to a tendency to dismiss genuine safety issue. Which I can't rule out is what I'm doing here of course, knowing nothing else about the bridge and not being a structural engineer, incidents like the Musgrave bridge though will naturally make people very sceptical about other examples.

Older stock can be modified, and some heritage railways have done a pretty good job of it, but you're only ever likely to get one vehicle in a train modified like that.

There are also things that you could mitigate against but in reality it just makes more sense to deal with the consequences when they happen.

It was that long ago?! Thanks for making me feel old!

Sadly true. I'll give Monaco a pass simply because of historical precedent (although it would be mad to suggest a race there now if there never had been one), but the rest, urgh. Well, Baku occasionally throws up something interesting, and I really rather like the utter craziness of the castle section. But generally I do find them all pretty much lacking, although to be fair I mostly lost interest in F1 long before this trend started. If they want races to be events there needs to be fewer races too IMO.

Been a while since Kyalami last hosted a Grand Prix, would it be possible to change it to current standards?

This may be of interest, had a quick flick through "The British Lead Mining Industry", Roger Burt, and found: "In Shropshire, for example, the cost of carrying pig lead from the smelting mills at Pontesbury to Burrs lead works in Shrewsbury was reduced from 6s 8d per ton road carriage in 1831 to between 3s 6d and 4s 0d per ton by rail in 1863; representing a charge on the railway of less than sixpence per mile."

Probably continued until rather more recently, the sort of stuff unscrupulous traders got up to in the 19th century.

Off the top of my head Dent, Horton and Ribblehead can't be. Technically you can get to both platforms at Horton via footpaths but it's a very long way around! The current platform layout at Ribblehead isn't original, so there might've been access before (would need to look that up). Garsdale might've been one too when it was still a junction (the up platform was originally an island - did it once have a subway?)

If it's the ore then the silver will still be mixed in with it, nicking eight tons of ore for the silver content, which you'd have to refine out yourself, seems like quite a big job. The lead in total would've been more valuable, silver was a nice by-product for mines with enough silver in the lead. I've a vague idea that about 12 ounces of silver per ton was about the minimum silver content that was economic to separate (but I've not got a great memory for numbers). Never knew whether that was tons of raw ore or concentrate from the mill, the latter sounds more plausible though.

The current situation (unless it's changed in the last few years, which I doubt) still has several of them accessed via foot crossings, and in the case of Horton it's a public footpath. Kirkby Stephen and Settle have acquired footbridges since, and either platform of Kirkby Stephen at least (don't know about Settle, never got on or off there) can be accessed step-free from the road*, although it's a bit of a faff from the car park. * well I think the track up to the down platform is step free but I'm not 100% sure. I seem to remember a bit of work being done on it a little while back so I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

Interesting signal there - why that rather than a more conventional bracket?

Yes and no. The impact of solar storms is a known problem, and one that's caused some major issues in the past - the article mentions the damage caused in Canada once. But because it's known and there are ways to mitigate against it, which I believe are generally used already, the risk would seem to be pretty small and thus not really worth worrying about (which isn't the same as saying those mitigations aren't useful - they're why the risk is small). All in all it looks like another case of getting too worried by "but what if...?" and "but it could happen!" (something which needs to be discouraged due to the boy who cried wolf effect it can have when genuinely serious issues roll around).