ejstubbs

I think Rouen was a better circuit than Reims, having rather more - and more interesting - corners, and some fairly dramatic changes of elevation. The other one from that era was Charade which looks bonkers. Dijon-Prenois looks fairly dull on paper but did have the benefit of being a bit uppy-downy, and saw some good racing e.g. Villeneuve vs Arnoux in 1979 (gotta love Villeneuve drifting his flat-12 Ferrari sideways out of La Combe - I thought ground effect didn't work properly if you were going sideways?) Paul Ricard was never that great, then they made it worse...

Is it just me, or is it a bit odd that they should apparently spend so much time and effort looking after an aircraft that crashed due to pilot error and all the crew survived with only one relatively minor injury? It's not as if it could reasonably be designated as a war grave (in the UK at least, such sites are not open for leisure diving AFAIK). I'm also surprised that no-one seems to have worried too much about pollution of the drinking water by leaking fluids and decomposing materials on the wreck. AFAICS it's basically military litter, and I struggle to understand how it can be regarded as a particularly "historic place".

On some of the other (not model railway related) forums that I frequent the mods are somewhat less tolerant than Andy and his cohort. The tone of some of the complaints that have been posted on this thread would have resulted, on those other forums, in the users being summarily barred from the forum (and if they had paid for a premium level service, having their money refunded). IMO we should consider ourselves very fortunate to have this forum, and to have it managed by people who work hard to keep it running against sometimes insuperable odds and who seem prepared to put up with sometimes unreasonable levels of aggravation from their users and who only very occasionally - and quite understandably - feel the need to resort to a slightly 'vinegary' response. I just hope that their management understand the great job they are doing, and appreciate their efforts as much as the majority of us users do.

Tell that to @AY Mod

If this farrago - and half the other things that you mention in that post - is even close to true (and I have no reason to believe that it isn't) then all I can say is how depressing it is to find such petty, stupid and disgracefully self-interested behaviour being exhibited by people whom one might otherwise regard with a degree of respect due to their experience, knowledge and expertise in the subject. This kind of thing is far from unknown in other fields as well (data communications protocols, and OSI in particular, being one that I have had experience of in the past - though my memories of the painful details have thankfully faded somewhat over the intervening years).

The classic example of precision vs accuracy!

Post WW2 my Dad used to work at the Solid Fuel Research Station in Greenwich, researching things like improving the efficiency of solid fuel stoves. The gas works was a handy source of coke, along with the odd spare sack of coal, for their research. He used to relate the story of a time when a gleaming white cruise ship came up the river past their lab and moored for a couple of days in the Pool of London. Two days later a very grey-looking ship, apparently of an identical design, was seen heading downriver out to sea... (He reckoned it was actually the lead in the paint that reacted with something or things in air - perhaps sulphur fumes?)

Amber isn't necessarily - or even primarily - an indicator of scarcity: it's considerably more nuanced than that: https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/uk-conservation-status-explained/. Primarily it's to do with long-term or recent trends in numbers of individuals or breeding pairs, although things like habitat loss or highly localised breeding sites also factor. As an example, the House Sparrow is on the red list, although there are still 5.3 million breeding pairs of them in the UK so it's hardly "scarce". The red status is due to the ~70% in breeding numbers since 1975: The Grey Wagtail had a sharp decline in the late 1970s but has been bobbing up and down a bit since then, although recently it has been on a noticeable downward trend: The number of species on the UK red list has doubled in the last 25 years. It now stands at 70, which is roughly one on eight of the 570-odd species on the "British List" maintained by the British Ornithologists Union (which includes rare visitors and "accidentals" - some of which have been seen in the wild in the UK just once - as well as the familiar resident and migratory species). The above graphs are from the BTO Birdtrends web site. I find that, although the RSPB web site is good for quick reference information, the BTO is better for in-depth data. The BTO also runs training courses in bird ID and survey methods, so that you can help contribute to their store of data (it also publishes some useful bird ID videos on YouTube to help with that). I'm going to be attending one of their virtual songbird ID courses from next week, as a matter of fact, and going on one of their field training courses soon after that (you don't have to be a BTO member to sign up for these). As a member of both the RSPNB and the BTO, the way I look at it is that the RSPB is primarily an organisation that campaigns for, raises funds for and actively pursues conservation activities for the benefit of birds and other wildlife, while the BTO is more of a scientific data and information gathering organisation, with both professional and 'citizen' scientists on its roster. The BTO collaborates and shares data with other similar organisations beyond the UK, and works with organisations like the RSPB to help inform their conservation work. The BTO isn't quite as 'slick' as the RSPB in its presentation - that's scientists for you - but it nonetheless performs extremely valuable work and is a virtually inexhaustible information source if you're a serious bird geek.

Grey Wagtails aren't all that rare: we certainly see a fair number on river walks around here, although to be fair we are in the right part of the country for them. The RSPB does say that their distribution within the UK varies according to the season: "Scarce in central and eastern England in summer and from upland areas in winter" is what their web site says. It's true that there are significantly fewer breeding pairs in the UK than there are pied wagtails, though. The least common UK wagtail is the yellow wagtail, which people often claim to have seen when in fact it was a grey wagtail, which also has quite a lot of yellow on it, as you observed.

There some rather optimistic exaggeration in that thread, IMO: "...in the age of steam, there would always be at least a couple of Clydesdale or Shire horses around the depot that could pull the wagons around." Yeah, right. The responses in this past RMWeb thread seem to be helpfully considered and nuanced: I suspect that the Stationmaster's initial answer in that thread sums up the situation up fairly well: I guess if you're modelling a real location then the presence of a prohibition sign would be a strong clue as to the operational rules in effect there. (Though there could equally well have been staff who believed that "rules are made to be broken"!)

As I suggested before: given the effort they apparently put in to making the physical surroundings in which the action takes place reasonably convincing - leaving aside whether the actual storylines are even remotely realistic or believable - it seems to be uncharacteristically sloppy to make such a howler with the railway scene. Then again, given the very much "they all lived happily ever after" ending of the episode in question - and that it was the last episode of the current series - I suspect that there will be no more series, so perhaps the production team was just getting a bit demob happy towards the end.

Except that Grantchester never had a station so that would have been historically inaccurate as well! There was Lord's Bridge station where the Varsity Line crossed the A603 - where the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (which of course uses part of the route of the Varsity Line) is now - but Cambridge station is actually marginally closer by road from Grantchester than that. One reason for that is because the University didn't want the station to be too close to the city centre - allegedly because, amongst other things, it might encourage the students to spend too much time away from their studies in the fleshpots of the Great Wen. It's roughly 50 miles from Elstree to Chinnor vs 40-odd from Cambridge to Peterborough - though heading in the wrong direction I guess, if you're starting from or heading back to Elstree. Then again, an additional 80 miles to go to Peterborough from Cambridge and back vs a 100 mile round trip to Chinnor doesn't make it sound like an overwelmingly convincing factor. But suspect you're right that the apparent convenience of - and likely familiarity with - Chinnor might well have been influential in the rather unfortunate choice of filming location.

The location sequences in Grantchester are mostly filmed in the places where the action is supposed to take place i.e. Grantchester & Cambridge. There are a good few preserved lines within a reasonable distance of Cambridge that aren't yet another homage to the bucolic GWR branch line. The Nene Valley Railway is only 40-odd miles away (half the distance from Cambridge cf the Chinnor and Princes Risborough railway, which was the location actually used) and is used a lot for filming - its web site actively solicits such business. Given that the series is set in the mid to late 1950s they don't need - in fact should actively be avoiding - a pre-nationalisation "feel" (the pannier was carrying its pre-nationalisation number) and it should not be beyond the wit of man to find a preserved railway in that general part of the country that could rustle up a reasonably appropriate loco and more than just a couple of carriages. That scene did make me laugh, it was such a ridiculous choice of location. Of course one doesn't know all the constraints within which the production team had to work but a pannier tank in what looked like little more than a sleepy village did rather smack of laziness on the part of the locations team, along the lines of "this is where we go if we need a steam train". It could be that the location filming in Grantchester and Cambridge is so cheap* that the general location filming budget couldn't stretch to paying for time on one of the slightly less "twee" heritage railways. Or maybe the C&PRR is just handily close to where Kudos Productions is actually based? About as much less obvious as "Inverness Midland" or "Norwich Caledonian", I'd say (from some of the comments on here I get the impression that a fair number of folks don't have much of an idea where Cambridge actually is). And, as I pointed out above, there hadn't been a GWR for roughly a decade in the time that Grantchester is set. It seems a shame, given the apparent care that they seem to take over things like the cars and motorcycles that appear in the programme**, that they couldn't have put a little more effort in to making the railway scene slightly less ridiculous. * Though the colleges can be quite sniffy about letting film companies inside their walls. For the filming of "Chariots of Fire" Gonville & Caius (Harold Abrahams' alma mater) and Trinity College both refused access, and the Great Court Run scene was filmed in the School Yard at Eton (which is a reasonable architectural stand-in for Trinity Great Court, though significantly smaller). I can remember seeing a TV news crew being summarily turfed out of Trinity by the porters on one occasion - though to be fair they probably had strolled in without seeking permission first. ** With the caveat that my knowledge of 1950s motor vehicles is sadly lacking, so I'd be more than happy if someone wants to point out all the automotive anachronisms committed in the series!

Talking Pictures TV has a catch-up web site now, if you really want to check: https://www.tptvencore.co.uk/Video/The-Bridal-Path?id=715cb4cd-a6a8-421d-b0be-14de02bb37c1 Not tried it myself, mind. Apparently you need to register to see any of the content. No idea whether the streamed content includes ads (though I suspect it will, given the nature of TPTV's operation).

Strictly speaking you can't renew your Road Fund Licence at all, and haven't been able to since 1937 when the hypothecation of the revenue from vehicle excise duty was abolished (although the Road Fund itself survived - more as a Treasury accounting mechanism than anything else AFAICS - until 1955).

Apparently pothole repairs are being impacted by a shortage of bitumen arising from Mr Poo-tin's unfriendly visit to his next-door neighbour. https://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/fears-over-pothole-repairs-to-scotlands-roads-due-to-bitumen-supply-shortage-3628243 The article specifically says Scotland's roads - but that's probably just The Scotsman for you. AFAICS similar reports can be found for other parts of the UK*. There certainly doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why it would only be Scotland that was affected. * I thought it was Berwick-upon-Tweed - which is in England - that was supposed to still be at war with Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwick-upon-Tweed#Relations_with_Russia.

I suspect it's more to do with what URLs Google has stored in its unbelievably large and complicated index, and how often its crawlers re-visit the site. Sounds like that is happening slowly if some are now correct. Other search engines might give different results - Bing, anyone? Oops, no - that seems to have the same problem, but affecting different individual search result hits i.e. some Bing hits work where the same hit with Google fails, and vice versa. (AFAIK DuckDuckGo uses the APIs for the "mainstream" search engines in the background - it certainly seems to trip up on the same search hits as Bing, based on a tiny sample.) It might be that @AY Mod or one of his minions could somehow arrange a redirect that would automatically correct the outdated reference to the "/community" URLs (which might also address some of the other glitches that one or two folks have been reporting) but I suspect he has other things on his plate ATM, especially given that there is actually a minimal-effort manual workaround. (Hmm, maybe a suitably skilled individual could craft a Firefox add-on that would automatically remove the offending string? Not that I use Firefox myself, mind you.) I know the site has its own search engine but TBH Google is still my go-to, if only because I can usually get to what I'm looking for by typing a single search string and scanning a shortish list of search hits (plus it quite often finds relevant hits on other sites as well, which can be handy). RMWeb's own search engine is still my backup on days when my Google-fu is weak, though.

Embarking upon a loft clear-out, I uncovered three large cardboard boxes stuffed with old VHS cassettes - some pre-recorded, some home taped. There are a very few that hold content that I would like preserve, most likely by transferring to DVD. The rest are just taking up valuable room for no reason. The second-hand market for such things on the 'bay and elsewhere seems to be more or less dormant and, unsurprisingly in the circumstances, charity shops don't seem to want them either. There are quite a few of the things, and they take up a fair bit of space - not the sort of collection of awkward rubbish I can easily fit in the wheelie bin alongside our normal weekly two or three bin bags, never mind the environmental issues that might arise when they go off to landfill. I can easily remove things like cardboard sleeves and paper labels from library cases for recycling, but the cassettes themselves appear to be pretty much unrecyclable, being a mix of different types of plastic with a few bits of metal thrown in. Just wondering whether the RMWeb hive mind might be able to offer any useful suggestions?

I did actually mention this in my post.

You see this a lot, though, even just in ordinary driving. Fact is that most drivers of cars and vans don't have much of an idea how wide their vehicle is. So you see people leaving unnecessarily large gaps on their nearside when passing obstructions, and giving way to oncoming traffic at a slightly narrow point when it's perfectly clear that both vehicles could easily pass through. (See also drivers who let their vehicles drift over the centre line towards the opposite lane on right-hand bends - although I admit that could also be down to being too lazy to turn the steering wheel a few more degrees. And by the way I'm not referring here to drivers "taking the racing line" provided that their path is visibly clear to do so - or "offsiding" as I believe the IAM call it.) * Perhaps just about understandable if the obstruction is a parked vehicle which might have an offside door flung open by an unobservant occupant (although observation of the vehicle can also give a clue as to whether there is actually anyone inside who might wish to disembark) but otherwise not so much.

Or they could just do away with DRS altogether. Given that it was originally introduced to provide a wholly artificial way to overtake the car ahead back in the days when the aero rules made it more or less impossible to do so, it would seem only logical to get rid now that the new rules are supposed to have fixed that problem. There was no DRS during the previous ground-effect era, remember. I suppose if they really feel it's worth keeping then another solution would be to just allow drivers to use it when they feel like it - perhaps up to a maximum number of times, or for a maximum amount of time, during a race, rather than restricting it to certain parts of the track. I'd even suggest in that case that the driver ahead could use it too, since they would also be using up their 'allowance'. But IMO it's fundamentally a load of rubbish that feels more like it belongs on a Scalextric track rather than a full-size F1 circuit (not unlike the Formula E 'power boost ' nonsense). Does any other motor racing formula provide such horribly artificial ways to turn a procession created by the regulations in to a fake race?

As I said in my follow-up posting, those words were likely Andrew Benson's attempt to express the regulations as concisely as possible in the context of his article, rather than being verbatim quotes from the regulations. Now, thanks to this RaceFans article, it's clear that that was indeed the case. So there wasn't any ambiguity in the wording of the actual regulation about the meaning of the phrase "between the leaders", primarily because it wasn't used. I suppose a weaselly person (cough Christian Horner cough) might argue that the the phrase "the cars on the lead lap" doesn't make it clear whether it means any, all or just some of the "cars on the lead lap". But there's no question that such an argument would be taking sophistry to extreme lengths: it's pretty unarguable that, in the absence of a predeterminer, "all" is clearly intended. Likewise, any arguments about "should" vs "must" are also moot because those words do not appear in the regulation. What both versions actually say is "will be required to" which is pretty unambiguous. Quite why they've chosen to replace "via" with "using" (in regard to the way that the message is passed to the lapped drivers that they may now un-lap themselves) is far from clear, but it does't seem to make any meaningful difference. Can anyone shed any light on the "official messaging system" mentioned in the regulations? Do the cars have message displays on the steering wheel or something?

Can I just clarify: the text in my posting surrounded by quotation marks was quoting the wording of Andrew Benson's article. He put quotes around "any" and "all", which IMO would have been confusing if I had replicated them within a piece of text which was itself surrounded by quotation marks. Hence why I used the boldface for those two words to emphasise them as Andrew had in his article. The rest of the text I quoted may or not have been quoted by Andrew directly from the FIA regulations but, given how the article is punctuated, it's not possible to know for sure either way (although the logical default would be to assume that the words he didn't surround with quotation marks were not intended to be a verbatim transcript of the wording of the regulations). If someone wants to look up the old and new versions of the regulations and report back, that might well be helpful in alleviating any confusion.. FWIW I agree with Pete the Elaner's post (not least because he echoes a lot of the things I said in mine!)

Interesting that Andrew Benson seems to have decided to come straight out with it and say that Masi ignored the rules (about when the restart should take place). I don't recall him being quite so forthright in expressing such an opinion himself, rather than attributing it to others or saying "there are those who argue..." (I makes me wonder if he's maybe had sight of the FIA report, perhaps on condition that he doesn't reference it as such?) As for the supposed difference between "any lapped cars between the leaders should overtake and join the back of the field before a restart after a safety car" and "all lapped cars must un-lap themselves before a restart": AFAICS there is no practical difference. Either way it means that you have to check that all the lapped cars have un-lapped themselves before commencing the correct restart procedure i.e. waiting one more lap before letting them go. Or is there some additional subtlety involved that I'm not seeing? Am I right in remembering that there was at the time (or maybe at another race earlier in the season) a debate about whether it was actually necessary to allow the lapped cars to un-lap themselves before the restart? Since the change of wording seems to make no difference to what is meant to happen in practice, I can't see that that should ever have been regarded as an option - unless someone can cite the part of the old rules where it does say, or at least suggest, that. (And if such a potential conflict of interpretation between different sections of the regulations does exist then surely that should be fixed, rather than faffing about with what seems to be a pointless tweak to the wording of just one part of the regs.) To be honest I still don't really understand why un-lapping is even supposed to happen in a safety car situation. Why doesn't everyone just hold station in the track (i.e.not race) order they were behind the leader, rather than having random cars zooming round the circuit to get a lap back? Isn't the whole point about the safety car precisely that all the cars parade around in a controlled fashion for the safety of the track workers? It does smack somewhat of trying to inject a bit of drama in to what should be an absolutely drama-free, necessary if admittedly rather dull interruption to the race. IMO "the show must go on" should not apply when the personal safety of third parties is potentially at risk. Maybe I just don't understand safety car procedures enough to "get it". (And TBH I don't feel greatly motivated to do so, never having been much of a fan of safety cars in F1. They always seemed to me to be a rather clumsy adoption from US oval racing practice.)

Drive to Survive: Producers say Formula 1 is 'not run for Netflix' Has no-one pointed out to Netflix or the show's producers that even just its title - though containing a superficially pleasing assonance - is both misleading and unnecessarily melodramatic? Maybe they feel that the show itself has to try to live up to the warped expectations that the title seems to set. Interesting that Max doesn't seem to want to give them the time of day.