ejstubbs

You can register your contactless card with TfL and get a record of your trips, including the amount charged, via their web site. You can even do it retrospectively, in a sort of: "That debit card that was used for a few journeys last week? That was me," way. I've never used Oyster so I don't know how its system compares with what you can see online using a contactless card but I would be surprised if it's much different. I assume it would work the same with Apple Pay and Google Pay, since AIUI they still use the payment card details for the actual financial transaction. (I don't know the technical details of how the apps work but I would imagine that, fundamentally, they're just a different way of presenting the card details contactlessly.)

I can't help thinking that, if the judge feels it appropriate to accept the "exceptional hardship" argument for not actually banning the driver, they could at least increase the remaining 'hardship' from a trivial £253 to a suitably punitive but non-'exceptional' amount. If £16,000 would wipe out the guy's profit, up his fine to £6,000 so his profit is cut to £10,000. A bit of enforced belt-tightening might help to bring home the message - and reduce the feeling that he "got away with it".

May well be the same in Edinburgh (certainly the signals displayed on the single aspects are the same). I've never hung around long enough to find out TBH. I once saw a bloke on a bike follow a tram along the westbound platform line at Haymarket, then pull out to pass the tram when, predictably enough, it came to a halt. This manoeuvre meant crossing the eastbound tram lines at a very acute and therefore dangerous angle. Which was bad enough, but the tram tracks turn quite sharply left and downhill just west of the tram stop, which meant that with a westbound tram already in the stop and him on its right, he had absolutely no way of seeing whether an eastbound tram might be approaching. If one had been, he'd have found himself stuck between a stationary tram on his left and a raised tram platform on his right, with a tram bearing down on him from directly in front. Why on earth he thought this would be a sensible position to put himself in I doubt even his god would have been able to explain. Basically, he was an idiot, and a lucky one. Bear in mind that there is a perfectly good road running parallel to the tram tracks just the other side of the tram platform. There is no need for these people to break the law in order to get where they want to go. Mind you, I have seen motor vehicles happily drive along other clearly signposted tram only sections of road (although not against the direction of the tram, with no way of knowing whether a tram might be approaching, with no ready means of escape to the side). I have recently noticed that the incidence of people riding bikes along the actual tram platforms seems to have declined, which (speaking as someone who walks that way twice a day at least during the week) is nice.

In Edinburgh they do have separate signals for the trams, but at most junctions they simply operate in sync with the traffic lights. For example, this set of lights at the Princes Street/Mound/Hanover Street junction. (The tram signal is the single aspect one sharing a pole with the pedestrian light and press button. Notice also that the tram track has no stop line.) At each end of the Haymarket tram stop there is a pelican crossing which has only tram signals for road traffic. That's because the tram stop has a clear no entry sign at each end, with an "except trams" sign beneath it. This is all fine, until a cyclist decides to ignore the no entry sign and ride through the tram stop (between the raised tram platforms, and running the non-trivial risk of getting a wheel caught in the track...but that's another rant). Not having the slightest clue what a tram signal means, some such cyclists see fit to breeze through the pelican crossings even when pedestrians have a green light. One nearly took me out the other morning. I'd have remonstrated with them if I hadn't been so shocked at almost being run in to (not unlike a day or two earlier when an impatient van driver had mounted the pavement to pass a car waiting to turn right, nearly running me down as I walked round the corner of the junction on the left immediately following).

More than once I have been tooted at angrily by a cranio-genitally enhanced person because I had the temerity to stop at an amber light when they were up my arse following me, very often with less than the recommended two second gap between my vehicle and theirs.

Generic e-mail sent over the 'net has no guarantee of delivery - just having a copy sitting in your sent items folder is no proof of receipt. I'd suggest that the best way to get proof that the local authority has received the report would be to submit it through the appropriate portal on their web site (if they have one - most LAs do these days even if it's a generic one), and either keep screenshots of the submission process or (and better, assuming that they provide one) the acknowledgement e-mail they send back to you (although that might also get eaten by a bit-gobbler in the cloud on its way to you, of course!)

IME if you tighten the screw connector on to a soldered end of wire too much, it can crush the soldered end so much that it breaks in two. A crimped ferrule will 'give' a bit as the screw is tightened, and allow the individual cores to rearrange themselves as the pressure increases, making the whole assemblage a bit more resilient and reducing this risk. Up to a point.

Facing points on passenger-carrying routes introduce a risk: points moving under passenger train. The risk can be mitigated by putting additional controls in place, which in the csase of facing points would be an FPL. If the mitigating controls are unreasonably expensive, or unfeasible due to other constraints, then the facing point would be ruled out. On the other hand, other constraints - such a space, as indeed seems to be the case in your situation - may mean that a facing point is the only option, so the mitigating control has to be put in place. This post by Stationmaster Mike is a fairly succinct summary of the situation over time on the real railway. The rest of that thread is worth reading through to get more background on the subject.

For a moment I mistakenly thought that this thread was about model Audis...

I would tentatively suggest that a more effective way to 'challenge' it would be to build a model railway of your own to showcase your particular philosophy, rather than trying to explain at length why everyone else is doing it wrong ("it" being a personal hobby, after all, which ultimately has minimal impact on the wider world). It's OK, you don't have to watch it if you don't like it. I used to think that Horizon was an informative and educational science documentary series but, since it seemed to stop being that some time ago, I stopped watching it. Being an IT professional, not a TV producer, it was unlikely that anything I was in a position to do would result in the programme changing simply to satisfy my own personal taste. I'm sorry that it went downhill the way it did but there are other programmes to watch, and indeed other things to do to pass the time rather than vegetating in front of the telly, so in the grand scheme of things it ranks about the same as Eagle comic's decline and eventual disappearance from the newsagents in the 1960s i.e. very, very far from earth-shatteringly important. So far, in fact, that even my Dad wouldn't have suggested driving there for the summer holidays (and believe me, that's a long way).

Grand Designs evolved from property porn in to little more than a drinking game many years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/nov/13/kevin-mccloud-grand-designs-drinking-game https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/11229505/Kevin-McCloud-my-secret-Grand-Designs-drinking-game.html (Note: I'm not suggesting that a drinking game can not also be exciting, challenging and rewarding.)

I believe that there are different cities represented on each side of the power car. On one side are (reading left to right): Edinburgh represented by Edinburgh Castle (specifically I think St Margaret's Chapel and the small cupola'ed turret from near which the One O'Clock Gun is fired), and the Royal Scots Greys monument in Princes Street Gardens; Stirling represented by the Wallace Monument; Glasgow represented by the Finnieston Crane and the Squinty Bridge. I presume the landmarks on the other side represent the other four cities: Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen and Invernes. I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with those cities to identify any of them. (Full disclosure: I've never been to Dundee or Aberdeen. I've never really noticed anything during my rare visits to Perth that I would regard as being a landmark, and although I've been to Inverness twice it was only to collect and drop off someone at the station so I was concentrating on driving most of the time!) EDIT From what I can gather, the landmarks on the other side of the power car are (reading right to left): Inverness represented by Inverness Castle and the statue of Flora MacDonald (should probably have recognised those from the final episode of The Biggest Little Railway in the World); Dundee represented by the war memorial at the top of Dundee Law; Aberdeen represented by the statue of William Wallace* in Union Terrace Gardens; Perth represented by the view south-west along the River Tay from Smeaton's Bridge, with the spire of St Matthew's Church on Tay Street to the right of Queen's Bridge. END OF EDIT The coaches have various landmarks on them as well, including the Forth Bridge and the Falkirk Wheel. Sad that neither Abellio ScotRail nor the design company involved seem to have been particularly motivated to satisfy interested people's curiosity. * So William Wallace gets in twice, and Walter Scott not at all despite there being monuments to him in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth (and quite possibly some of the other four cities as well). To say nothing of Rabbie Burns, William Henry Playfair, James Watt, Thomas Telford etc etc. So five out of seven of Scotland's cities get represented by a nationalist military leader (twice), a castle (two different ones), a war memorial, a military regiment and a member of the post-Culloden Jacobite resistance. References to the country's artistic, engineering or scientific culture and history are vastly outnumbered by its military history. Boo.

I suspect more because of the shiny new cars that got trashed than the rusty old railway bridge* that might have been knocked out of alignment. And FWIW the road that is crossed by that rail overbridge is actually King's Place - although to be fair it does simply change its name to Marshall Place just a couple of blocks to the East. There's no clear delineation point as you drive along it, but Google Maps, the Ordnance Survey and OpenStreetMap all agree. * Although it actually looks like it got a fresh coat of paint not too long ago.

Is that what the sets I saw at Haymarket with the ex-FGW coaches are being used for, or is there still driver training going on too? Will the slam-door stock be re-liveried before going in to service? Or will they not bother since it'll be going for refurb sooner or later anyway, and its place taken by fully refurbed and reliveried stock?

Passing Haymarket yesterday on the tram, there seemed to be two HST sets in the yard. Each had a power car in "seven cities" livery, but both were attached to purple/swooshy lined (ex FGW?) coaching stock. I couldn't see the other end of either train, so I don't know if either one had the second power car attached. Didn't get the numbers of the two power cars I saw, unfortunately. Would I be right to assume that these are being used for more driver training, and awaiting refurbed coaches? I assume that the HST services running now are using a fully refurbed and Scotrail-liveried set (or is there more than one set in service now?)

In other words, we think "they built things to last" because most of the stuff that they didn't build so well hasn't survived for us to see. A fine example of Survivorship Bias.

Sometimes remodelling is not adequate to meet modern needs (especially for something like food retail cf storage and maintenance of railway coaches). Or the cost of remodelling is so much higher than the cost of rebuilding that it's simply not justifiable for a business which aims to remain solvent. And sometimes the existing fabric is so far gone as to make preservation nigh-on impossible - you'd end up rebuilding most of it from scratch (see also 60103). Apparently, one of the latest designs put forward for the Aldi store does aim to reflect some of the brickwork and arch details from the old facade: A number of commentators on a.n.other rail-related forum have suggested that demolition of the fire-damaged building could easily be more expensive than if it had not been set alight. That's because of the likelihood of asbestos debris, and the risk of heat-related weakening of previously sound brick/masonry and metal structural elements. DevonLive has reported that the local fire & rescue service has confirmed that the fire was started deliberately. Unsurprisingly, no suggestion has yet been put forward as to those responsible. The article does say that youths had been seen in the buildings on Saturday afternoon. On the DevonLive live feed it was noted that a small rubbish fire had been set inside the building on Sunday, which the fire & rescue had extinguished. Looks like it could just be the local neds taking advantage of a building that was about to be demolished to have a bit of fire-raising fun. (Admittedly it's not completely outwith the realms of possibility that they were put up to it, but I do always try to keep Hanlon's Razor in mind in such situations.)

I bought one of these from Rapid's eBay shop. They work very well. Personally I'm not too keen on that crimp in post #6: those serrations look to me like they could be a bit weak and prone to failure under a fairly low bending load. The CK Tools one gives a uniform squeeze/crush crimp that slips neatly in to the terminal block; not had any failures to date.

In my experience the Dapol NEM pocket setup is not very reliable. The tiny screw that is used to attach the pocket and its centring spring to the soft plastic underframe seems particularly prone to stripping the (miniscule) thread inside the mounting boss. I received a brand new Dapol wagon the other day on which oe ofn the NEM pockets had a significant droop, to the point that the 'tail' of the TLC was catching in the sleepers. As expected, it was not possible to tighten the mounting screw because it had stripped its thread. As it happens, I don't use TLCs, preferring Kadees. On many of the Dapol wagons I've got, I've quickly given up trying to use a NEM Kadee in the flaky Dapol NEM pocket and resorted to surgery, removing the Dapol NEM equipment and installed whisker Kadees in gear boxes. I recognise that Kadees aren't everyone's cup of tea, though. In that case I would suggest looking at using screw-on TLCs in place of the rather poor Dapol NEM implementation. The Bachmann ones (36-025 or 36-026) might fit - and IMO the Bachmann TLCs are better quality then the Dapol ones anyway (as others have pointed out, the Dapol TLCs have a tendency to fall apart.)

This is the wagon the OP is referring to: https://www.track-shack.com/acatalog/Bachmann-37-932-3-Plank-Wagon-LMS-Bauxite681.jpg It says "LMS" on the side so I would assume it's supposed to represent something still in the ownership of the LMS, rather than something that BR has had its hands on. I suspect that the presence of the vacuum cylinder and star is just sloppiness/"artistic licence" on Bachmann's part. There are no vacuum pipes, after all. I don't know how long this wagon has been in Bachmann's catalogue - I suspect it could days back to Mainline days or even earlier, when perhaps less attention was paid to such details. (A bit like the Bachmann LMS vent van which I've read is also "a bit tired").

Was there ever more than one?

My recollection is that most (quite possibly all) of the ferry terminals around the west coast of Scotland and the islands have big multi-lingual reminder signs as you depart towards the normal road network. Which also goes to show how many non-UK visitors they do get round those parts. Mind you, the concept of "keeping left" on some of the narrow roads in that part of the world is rather more theoretical than practical!

Blue flags have been used to indicate that a faster driver is close behind (stationary) or is trying to overtake (waved) since the year dot, long before modern aerodynamics became such a hindrance to overtaking in the premier racing series. They're used in motorcyle racing which has no aero worth speaking of, and AFAIAA they use them in karting as well, which is about as un-aerodynamic as any four-wheel racing series I can think of.

To be fair, the W H Smith kiosk is a model - albeit in 1:1 scale (OK, a "replica": https://www.nymr.co.uk/pickering-station-trail).

Given that they apparently travelled some distance going the wrong way I think it's at least equally likely that they thought they were in the correct lane for driving on a three-lane road in the UK. You would expect to have traffic going the other way passing you on the right in that situation. If three-lane roads are more common where they hailed from then it wouldn't necessarily seem odd to them, especially if they failed to notice the traffic going the same way as them on the other side of the crash barrier. Even if they did notice that, it's conceivable to rationalise that away. (IIRC there is, or was, a section of the Paris peripherique consisting of multiple lanes all going in the same direction, with a barriered reservation part way along that splits it into two carriageways both going the same way. I remember it because I was travelling in convoy with a pal who changed lanes at the last minute, leaving me on the "wrong" side of the reservation. I initially thought we were going to end up at opposite ends of the country, but a mile or so later it all joined up again.) TBH I'm not sure how one could go about reaching the hard shoulder safely across two lanes of oncoming traffic, if one did ever did find oneself driving the wrong way along lane 3. Stopping as far over on to the central reservation as possible might be preferable (although it would potentially make exiting the vehicle very unsafe if it ended up too close to the barrier to get the doors open on that side).