Reorte

1 minute ago, cctransuk said:

 

Surely, if the chippie predated the MaccyDs, the chippie had the right to trade under his own name?

Doesn't stop the big companies trying sometimes - they can often rely on the small business going along with stopping rather than risk fighting the multi-billion business with loads of expensive lawyers.

On the preservation front and the sheer number of them I expect time will weed them out. Better to start with too many and work down than the other way around, and as unpopular as they were a few do deserve to be preserved - they have their place in history, both as a representation of the railway at that time (shouldn't just be the nicest bits!), and because they probably saved numerous minor lines.

6 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Yes, the grockles have taken over Cornwall, so we'll charge Cornishmen extra to commute to work from Devon.

I'd have thought that most Cornishmen would regard having to live in Devon as worse than any taxes!

So my Fiesta is faster than a fighter jet (if it's parked in a hangar)? :D

1 hour ago, Steadfast said:

Mk4s on the TFW loco hauled for the last few years, which have always been power doors.

Hadn't realised they were Mk4s!

9 hours ago, LNER4479 said:

Like this you mean?

I just wondered when I saw the Manchester - Cardiff train pass by yesterday, from a not-very-detailed glance the doors looked pretty much like I always remember them being.

Odd-looking train though, appears to have been cobbled together from whatever was lying around, 67, four coaches (IIRC) and a DVT.

10 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

I have a little knowledge of horses and can say that as herd animals they react to each others' moods, hence mass-panic here, and as flight animals they run from the unknown if feeling threatened. That they ran into vehicles and damaged themselves is no surprise, as they really aren't very bright - my 6-month ownership of a donkey revealed he had twice their intelligence - so all the stuff they had already learned about traffic, streets and vehicles simply had no bearing on their behaviour. I hope their scars, mental and physical, can be healed soonest, but the former will take longer, I am sure.

There's a racehorse stables near my parents and for quite a while all these fancy racehorses were accompanied by a donkey because apparently being rather more intelligent they end up leading the herd and help keep them under control and behaving themselves.

I'm guessing the few remaining Mk3s still going around in regular service have had the doors converted to power?

13 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

When I was a lad a story like "Horse bolted in the High Street, stopped by Constable Jones" would be lucky to make it to the local rag.

Handling horses has always had its hazards.

Whether something's newsworthy or not is down to how unusual it is at the time, and these days horses running around central London out of control is pretty unusual.

Seeing a car would've been newsworthy once.

Last time I used trains with slam doors semi-regularly was early 2000s, when Manchester - Scotland services were still loco-hauled (then replaced with shorter, more overcrowded Voyagers, which in turn were replaced with even shorter, even more overcrowded 185s). I'd have been in my 20s then. At any rate I assume they were slam doors, I can't remember the doors but AFAIK no-one had converted any loco-hauled stock then, but I couldn't even tell you if they were Mk2s or 3s.

And from what I gleaned Twitter is the company he's about the most hands on with. Rumours going around that most of the other companies he's involved with have people devoted to keeping him out of the way.

37 minutes ago, Bucoops said:

 

I was about to say I remember mainline without CDL, then I stopped to think. Yup, in my 6th Decade... Dang.

When did all the Mk3s end up with it? I didn't think they were built like that and it was quite a late add-on, but I'm probably completely wrong.

11 minutes ago, Nick C said:

That doesn't always work though - you can easily end up in "Think of the children" situations (especially when the more excitable media get involved) - just look at the various attempts on a regular basis to regulate the internet - It's easy for a paper or politician to say "let's ban the kind of encryption the bad guys are using", but you first need to listen to the experts when they point out that what's being demanded is impossible...

That's why you have to gauge the general level of sentiment and consult the experts about how that can actually be achieved in reality. Public opinion should rarely decide the details, but there's no other acceptable way of assessing what the appropriate general level of risk acceptance should be. The alternative is a small number of people imposing their own opinions on where the lines should be drawn on everyone else (there's no such things as an objectively correct answer to this).

The way that's done is by governments coming up with appropriate legislation. If the public doesn't like the legislation, whether they think it goes too far or not far enough, there's the opportunity to vote for someone who'll change it. I'm not talking about consulting the public over every rule.

16 minutes ago, 30801 said:

 

Well Tesla have doubled down and made the gear selector a slide control on the touchscreen in the Cybertruck.

Considering quite a few of my posts I think it's fair to assume that there's zero chance of me ever buying a Tesla.

1 hour ago, franciswilliamwebb said:

Yes, I saw the poor things earlier.

 

I was unimpressed with the headline “Runaway horses gallop past Post Office inquiry” - really BBC, is that what you take away from this? 🙄

Unfortunately the BBC seems to have gone rather tabloid in its headlines these days.

Come to think of it I'd be more nervous about doors not staying closed on modern Boeing planes than on old BR coaches...

I'll get my coat.

1 minute ago, Nick C said:

I fitted a dashcam after one of my wife's colleagues got caught up by a 'cash for crash' scam - they didn't have one, so had no evidence to dispute the lies told by the scammer...

Several years ago there was one of those in the news not far from here. It got in the news because the perpetrator was a bit of an idiot and kept crashing outside the same office, making the people in the office rather suspicious.

Agree very much on touchscreens in cars, and not simply because of my dislike of excessive electronics everywhere. They're a very bad idea for exactly the reason you say, can't operate by touch (there's an irony there I suppose).

Haven't some manufacturers started to move away from them?

10 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

After more than 40 years of doing its job to everyone's satisfaction, to suggest that the bridge design was wrong is unlikely to succeed in court. The designers of the WTC did not seem to be pilloried for failing to make the structures proof against a C21 aeroplane. This is much the same. 

I wouldn't go that far - a ship losing control when passing under a bridge that ships routinely pass under is a more foreseeable risk than someone deliberately flying a plane in to the building. There's also considerably less you can practically do with a building for the latter. Personally I'd argue that it depends on the frequency of sea traffic too - if a ship large enough to cause this much damage passing under was a once in a blue moon event vs a regular occurrence then things may be different.

2 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

Sounds as successful as the Melbourne Star! Except that it hasn't been dismantled yet, due to the cose.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Star

Manchester had its big, spikey piece of "art." Unfortunately the spikes started falling off...

Just now, GrumpyPenguin said:

Two issues here ;

1) I don't want my entire journey recorded (there are enough ANPR & other cameras that do that anyway & that data is saved) - my Dashcam only saves a limited amount & woiuld only be downloaded/saved in the event of an incident.

2) AFAIK it is a condition of vehicle insurance in Russia to have a working dashcam fitted.

On the first one I don't fear an incident enough to feel a need for one. There's always the chance of course, the risk isn't zero, but I hate the idea of going through life with a "but what if? Better protect myself!" attitude. There's a time and a place for that but the concern has to be rather higher.

On two, well, that's sort of the point. We shouldn't want to be getting more like Russia!

1 minute ago, Jol Wilkinson said:

Ironic that there is such concern over car date being shared with the manufacturer/dealer.,when your mobile phone is doing it all the time.

Are you assuming I have a mobile phone?

Anyway the presence of other bad stuff doesn't invalidate complaints about this lot, and since this is a thread about driving it's the things in the car that'll get mentioned here.

4 minutes ago, GrumpyPenguin said:

However, in my car I feel it is an extention of my home therefore private. I drive responsibly & have an operating dashcam - that's enough thank you.

I don't have a dashcam, it would be a bit rich to complain about being recorded if I then went around doing it to others.

Cast your mind back quite a few years to when there was a widely-observed meteor in Russia (don't worry, this will get to being on-topic!) There was a lot of dashcam footage of it, and I remember hearing a lot of people here surprised by that, thinking how iffy a place Russia must be if people felt the need to drive around with a camera in their car like that. Yet here we are doing the same.

3 hours ago, StuAllen said:

I do know what you mean about the headlights though, my previous car had auto dipping and could be sluggish, probably one or twice a week I needed to manually take over as it didn’t react. Can’t say I’ve noticed with my current car, its reactions are very quick.

Even then of course it's still not quite as good as dipping the headlights before you come face to face with the car coming the other way. I usually dip mine before the other car gets around the corner or over the brow of the hill.

3 minutes ago, StuAllen said:

My car shares the data automatically, had the brake wear warning come up the other day, the following morning had an email from the dealership saying would you like to book it in. TBH I’m not sure how I feel about that, what else it’s sharing and who with.
 

I do like some of the driving aids though, are they needed - almost definitely not but I wouldn’t go without now. Automatic gearbox, dynamic cruise control, multi beam head lights (these create a gap in the lights for the car in front, or the car coming towards you - best lights I’ve had in a car for visibility).

I quite like the idea of dynamic cruise control, not sure about the rest though. I've noticed more often people come around a corner with full beam right in my face before doing anything, and I've wondered if that's down to those sorts of lights.