ejstubbs

There was a thread about wrong/unsigned routes being set on a "real railway forum" the other day*, following an incident during the recent Thameslink 'meltdown' when a train was routed on path that the driver didn't sign. As others have said in this thread, it happens now and again, and there are rules and procedures for dealing with it, including how to work out who to blame (and, inter alia, how to apportion the lost minutes for "delay repay" purposes). The thread linked to a rather amusing story from a London Underground driver to whom it once happened - while he was supposed to be doing route training for a new trainee! http://www.districtdave.co.uk/html/confession_time.html * It's here if anyone wants to have a read.

It was certainly fitted on 6021 Princess Elizabeth in the early 1970s, along with synchrosmoke. That was the loco that came in my "first proper train set", the Express Passenger Set (RS.609). It also included two panelled and lined LMS coaches, which didn't seem to survive very long in production.

Our HR department isn't relying on consent for employees, either current or ex. For current employees the lawful basis of processing an employee's personal data is clearly contract, since one is in place. For ex-employees it's a combination of legal requirement (eg financial records having to be retained for seven years) and legitimate interest (in particular, retaining records of employment until after the period within which the ex-employee can raise a case with an employment tribunal - I can't remember what that period is, but HR know!) After those periods have expired then the GDPR principle of storage limitation* applies, and we have to get rid. I can't really see why any other company's HR department should need to be much different. * Which was also part of the 1998 DPA, so it's not new - although far too many companies have been extremely lax about complying with it up to now. The more severe sanctions regime under GDPR is making everyone sit up and take notice, if not actual action...

That's two different things. You have the right to request that a data controller erases your personal data (the "right to be forgotten") at any time (though there are conditions under which the request can be declined eg if the data controller is legally obliged to keep such records). That is new under GDPR. Unless claiming an exemption, the data controller has to comply with the request within one month. Storage limitation was a core principle under the DPA as well. That's the one that says you can't keep personal data for longer than is necessary for the purposes for which the personal data are processed (which, again, may depend on other conditions such as the legal requirement to retain financial records for seven years). The retention period of the personal data (or the criteria by which the retention period is calculated eg "twelve months after we last hear from you") must be documented in the privacy notice issued by the data controller when they first obtain your personal data.

Just for clarity: you can't be "deemed" to have given permission. GDPR Recital 32 states that: Consent should be given by a clear affirmative act establishing a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her, such as by a written statement, including by electronic means, or an oral statement. This could include ticking a box when visiting an internet website, choosing technical settings for information society services or another statement or conduct which clearly indicates in this context the data subject’s acceptance of the proposed processing of his or her personal data. Silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity should not therefore constitute consent. Article 7 section (1) of the regulation states that: Where processing is based on consent, the controller shall be able to demonstrate that the data subject has consented to processing of his or her personal data. What this means is that if the data controller (which would be Hornby, in the case of the OP) has previously obtained consent but cannot demonstrate it ie provide evidence of your consent, then they have to ask for it again. Simply having your name on a list of "people who have consented" isn't sufficient: they need to be able to evidence receipt of your consent eg by keeping a copy of the e-mail from you, or a record from the web server of the checkbox having been ticked on a web page. (My company is using an online survey tool to gather and record consents.) Equally, if they have been operating up to now on the basis of assumed consent - sometimes called "soft opt-in", which includes things like pre-ticked consent boxes, or statements along the lines of "by continuing to use this site you are are agreeing to these terms" - then they now have to obtain explicit consent per Recital 32. Note also that consent has to be given freely: if the terms are "consent or you won't get xxx benefit" then that's non-compliant. Any consent thus obtained is not valid and cannot be used as the "lawful basis for processing". There are other lawful bases for processing which do not require consent, such as to satisfy the performance of a contract, or what is called "legitimate interest" (to use which the data controller must be able to demonstrate that they have carried out an assessment of the balance between their legitimate interest vs possible impacts on the data subjects' rights and freedoms - a bit like a risk assessment in the H&S sphere). Too many people seem to think that consent is a magic bullet which means they don't have to think about difficult things like legitimate interest assessments (which are actually pretty straightforward*), while overlooking the downsides to consent-based processing (not least the administrative & operational overhead involved in obtaining and recording it). * Again, the similarities to H&S regulations are not accidental, and most mature organisations should already be doing this kind of stuff as a matter of good business practice. Which is the real meaning of the often wheeled-out old saying "Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools" - ie if you know what you're doing then none of this should be a surprise, but if you don't then stick to the rules and you should be OK. "Fool" in this case having its OED meaning: "A person who acts unwisely or imprudently" - which not the same as an idiot. (I say it's an old saying but it's unclear exactly how old. Some attribute it to Douglas Bader, although the author of 'Reach for the Sky' [the book, not the film screenplay] cited WWI RFC fighter ace Harry Day as the source. However, it's also attributed to Solon of Athens, who died in 558 or 559 BCE.) They can pass your details to third parties provided that they have told you that they are going to do that in their privacy notice (which is one reason why it's worth reading the things). Any third party that obtains your personal data from another data controller rather than directly from you has to send you their own privacy notice, and tell you where they got your data from (GDPR Article 14). It should no longer be the case that you get e-mails from random companies with no idea how they got your e-mail address. One of the major aims of GDPR is to give data subjects (ie us) more rights to control what companies like Google, Facebook & Twitter do with the information that they gather from us without our clear knowledge or active participation (eg, off the top of my head: gathering personal data about you and your contacts, to be used for targeted political campaigns, under the guise of an online "personality quiz"). Tracking, monitoring and profiling of online activity was barely thought of when the previous directive was written in the 1990s. It's everywhere now and, up until today, there was no effective regulation of such activities. Those companies make billions out of activities which were previously barely regulated, if at all. That's the main reason why the sanctions regime under GDPR is so much more severe: up to €20 million or 4% of total worldwide turnover in the preceding financial year, whichever is the higher (GDPR Article 83). By my calculation that would be $1.6 billion for Facebook, based on their 2017 turnover (although, given that their revenues increased by $13 billion over 2016, they would likely still regard that as not much more than a bump in the road; put it this way, if they'd had to pay a fine like that in 2017 their profits would still have grown by more than 40% cf 2016).

Or even vegemite on toast. I think the fact that they've basically thrown in the towel and walked away speaks volumes. They don't seem to have tried particularly hard, if at all, to work out what they were doing wrong and recover from it. That smacks of inflexibility, and a certain arrogance.

Is the platform road not a running line either, then? I press the point because there seems to be a tacit acceptance of the run-round loop being an exception to the rules which might otherwise be interpreted as applying, depending on ones understanding of the terms "running line", "loop" and "siding". If the rules don't specify an exception which covers a common configuration then it seems that it must be down the nuances of the terminology. I find it difficult to believe that railways were commonly allowed to bend the rules in this one specific instance "because it saves space and materials". There appear to be a few concessions to space constraints within the rules, but not explicitly in this case.

Could you explain why? Does the loop count as a running line?

This subject has been discussed multiple times over the years on RMWeb. I now know (or think I know) more than I knew I wanted to know about the 6ft, the 10ft, and combinations & variations thereof. I've perused the Gauge O Guild's Track Spacing and Structure Limiting Dimensions document and mentally translated the figures from 7mm to 4mm. After all that, I just have one question left: Consider your classic single track BLT terminus with a run-round loop. Working from the summary provided by Martin Wynne here, would I be right to regard the platform road as a "running line" and the run-round loop as a "loop or siding"? If so then they should be at the 10ft spacing, or ~61mm between track centres in OO - which is getting on for a whole centimetre more than the standard track centres you get with Peco streamline crossovers. Does anyone take this in to account in their layout designs? OK, that was two questions. Sorry. Just to be clear, the threads I've already read on this subject include: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/118289-track-spacing/ http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/106067-passing-loop-clearance/ http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/23043-width-of-the-six-foot/ http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/25538-track-spacing/ http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/93148-track-spacing-in-small-rural-goods-yard/

Instead of the trap on the bay road, have you considered a point leading to a short spur? You might choose to think up a reason for its existence but on the other hand it might simply add a bit of flexibility - as in "somewhere to stable the odd bit of stock that's not needed for anything right now".

It might be fun/instructive if someone were to go through that list and find out how many of those myths originated from the pen of the individual who later told the BBC: "...I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect ... and it really gave me this I suppose rather weird sense of power." (Note that the newspaper for whom said individual worked at the time - after having been sacked from another newspaper for making up a quote - saw fit to publish this article in 2016.)

Although even EU regulations often leave room for national laws to extend the rules - or even deliberate gaps which national governments are required to fill with their own laws. I know (because I've been up to my neck these last few months in trying to interpret the thing for my company) that GDPR* has such openings for local variation. * In the formulation of which the UK ICO was closely involved, before anyone starts banging on about "faceless bureaucrats in Brussels". The ICO even has a face.

As it happens, I spent my tea break yesterday afternoon doing a bit of research, starting off with Google image search and then branching off to the disused stations web site, Old Maps and NLS Maps. It seems that the weighbridge would generally have been located more or less adjacent to the entrance to the goods yard - sometimes not particularly close but at least not too far away from the obvious way in and out of the yard. Even where the weighbridge was next to the gate, I haven't found an example where it had to be traversed in order to enter or leave the yard. Perhaps this was because the mechanism had to be compliant with Weights & Measures legislation, and there was risk of it going out of adjustment if it was being driven over constantly without being actually used (although I suppose it might have been possible to lock the mechanism to protect it when it wasn't being used). Also, the steel weighing deck might not have been an ideal surface for vehicles to have to traverse on a regular basis for no good reason. I suppose at a busy yard there might have been some benefit in having the weighbridge some way inside the gate, so that vehicles didn't have to queue out on to the main road. Gosford Green goods station is a good photographic example, with the weighbridge a short way inside the entrance and off to the side: Some screenshots of old maps illustrate the variation that can be found (although I realise one does have to be careful with maps - they may not show all the 'stuff' that defined exactly where the road vehicles went within the yard). At Quainton Road the weighbridge was inside the goods yard entrance, to one side - much as at Gosford Green: At Ingleby it was a bit closer to the entrance, but again to one side leaving free access if required: At Saffron Walden it was a short way inside the entrance, next to one of the sidings: At Uppermill it was next to the goods shed, not particularly close to the entrance to the yard but still more or less 'on the way' in and out (though if the road vehicle had been loaded from a wagon on the leftmost siding then it would have had to loop around to visit the weighbridge on the way in and out): At Gilmerton it seems to have been tucked away off to one side in the yard, albeit still not particularly inconveniently located for traffic coming and going: I reckon that there is a bit of scope for modeller's licence, so long as it's not away in a distant corner of the yard somewhere that would be thoroughly awkward to get vehicles to and from.

Asda (round here, anyway) always quote fuel prices as xxx.7p per litre. Obviously this is to make them seem worth detouring to, thus tempting you in to the shop. I once worked out that it would cost me more in fuel to drive from the junction with the road I normally drive along, to the filling station at the back of the Asda site, and back to the road again, than the 0.2p per litre price difference vs my normal fuel source right next to the office would save me on a fill-up. (I was never going to be tempted in to the shop itself.) The same would be true for driving half a mile up the road buy fuel at the Asda adjacent to the supermarket where I usually shop and buy fuel. See also Kibblesworth.

I've only got one Hornby wagon with that kind of detail under the chassis. However, I did fit Kadees using 2-56 screws: I cut away all the downward-protruding gubbins behind the buffer beam, down (looking at the wagon upside-down) to the level of the top (ie the 'true' bottom) of the buffer beam. I used a piece of (I think) 20thou plastikard to provide a flat surface for a #262 gear box, and screwed the assembled gear box + #146 coupler into a tapped blind hole through the plastikard and in to the wagon chassis. (I might have glued the plastikard platform on to the wagon chassis - I'm afraid I can't remember for sure.) Note that the gear box opening is behind the front face of the buffer beam; I believe (though I don't have my notes to hand to make sure) that I did it this way, and used a long coupler, so as to be able to drill in to a solid part of the wagon chassis ie avoiding the original screw hole.

As promised, some photos and explanation of how I attach Kadees to Airfix/Dapol LMS non-corridor coach bogies, and Bachmann LMS coach bogies. First, the Airfix bogie: The Kadee #242 gear box fits where the gubbins for the Airfix coupler used to be. I cut away the Airfix coupler mounting plate as far as the side flanges. I cut & drill a 40thou plastikard plate to fit over bogie pivot boss, with a 10mm wide extension towards the coupling end of the bogie, and glue it in place using canopy glue. I glue a Kadee #242 gear box on to 10mmx27.5mm strip of 40thou plastikard using liquid poly cement, then glue that plastikard strip to the underside of the extension from bogie pivot. The gear box should end up sitting ~1mm pround of the side flanges of the bogie front beam. I glue the side flanges of bogie front beam to gear box with canopy glue, and install #141 whisker coupler in the gear box. Now for the Bachmann LMS bogie: After removing the Bachmann TLC, I cut a 6mm wide slot in the coupling end of the bogie as far back as the horizontal section over the adjacent axle. I trim ~1mm off the outer corners to accommodate the Kadee gear box. I make a platform out of 40thou plastikard 20mm long and 10mm wide, with cutouts 3mm deep by 7mm wide each side; this makes a T-shape with a thick top to the T and a short stem. I offer up a Kadee #262 narrow gear box and drill & tap a hole for a 2-56 machine screw. To this I fit a Kadee #148 whisker coupler in a #262 gear box, with lid to the top, attaching it to the T-shaped platform with 3/16" 2-56 button head machine screw. I then attach the T-shaped platform to the underside of the bogie so that the gear box opening is flush with the bogie end. The Bachmann conversion is somewhat simpler than the Airfix one, since you can fabricate the T-shaped platform with the coupler in the #262 gear box separately, then do the surgery to the bogie and pop the whole assembly in place. (This is one reason why I have ditched the Airfix non-corridor coaches in favour of the recent Hornby ones). I've used the converted Bachmann bogies under my Hornby 'LMS' clerestory coaches and my Lima 42' LMS GUV (which originally came with BR bogies). Next exercise is to convert a rake of Bachmann Period 1 LMS coaches to use Keen CCUs. Wish me luck...

I generally don't glue gear boxes on. I prefer to fit them using a 2-56 (no. 2 UNC) button-head hex screw. This is the size recommended by Kadee. I use the drill and tap in the Kadee #246 tap & drill set to drill and...er...tap the requisite hole in the chassis. A blind hole is often all you need, you don't need to disassemble the wagon. I get my 2-56 screws and 1.3mm Allen keys from modelfixings.co.uk; I'm sure there are other perfectly good suppliers. Just be gentle when tightening the screws - have a bit of sensitivity for the material. If I do glue the gear boxes on then I use canopy glue. You could ways do both, ie screw and glue, if you wanted to be extra sure.

Per the title, does it make much odds where, in a goods yard, the weighbridge for goods being brought by lorry or orson cart is located? Obviously somewhere not too horribly inconvenient, but would anywhere with reasonably easy vehicular access be OK - it doesn't have to be at the yard gate or anything like that? I'm thinking about the inter-war period, if that makes any odds. I must admit I don't really 'get' how freight was charged in those days. Did everything have to be weighed, from the smallest crate to the full wagon load? And what about loose bulk goods like stone, coal, iron ore etc? Or liquids going in a tanker wagon? Presumably livestock was charged in a different way again. Is there a useful book that outlines how all the non-passenger business was handled? My Mum used to tell us how her father used to send her rabbits (deceased, for eating) by train during the war (partly because they weren't on the ration, I imagine). She said that they used to arrive fur and all, with the hind legs tied together (which, if nothing else, would have made them easy to hang on a hook somewhere) and with an old, clean tin can fastened around the head (presumably to collect any 'leakage'). I assume that delivery within the day could pretty much be relied upon, otherwise things might have got a bit yucky.

Per my post #536, my experience is that Kadees and CCUs don't work together very well - certainly not as well as a proper semi-rigid coupling between the CCUs. I am also not a fan of glueing or screwing NEM Kadees on to vehicles or bogies. The original Kadee couplers (like the classic #5) were designed to pivot at the point they are attached to the vehicle/bogie, around the pin inside the draft box. The later whisker couplers are the same, just with a different self-centering spring arrangement. Similarly, NEM Kadees work best when fitted in to a pivoting NEM pocket - the kind with the "fishtail" that fits in to a wedge-shaped slot on the vehicle chassis. The knuckles aren't really intended to provide much in the way of flex: their job is to couple vehicles together. If you watch stock with rigidly-attached Kadees going around curves you can see the knuckle of one of the couplers being prised open as the couplers try to accommodate the displacement between the vehicles. Although that usually works, IMO it compromises the effectiveness of the coupler pair in doing the job of keeping the train together. That's not how the couplers are designed to work, and I doubt it does much to help CCUs - which have a rigid, non-pivoting NEM pocket - do their thing properly, either. Basically, I regard attaching Kadees rigidly as being a rather lazy bodge which risks compromising the effectiveness of what is is generally accepted to be premium-priced coupler. I believe that if you're going to pay that money for a coupler, you might as well take the trouble to install it so that it can do its job properly. I'll try to post some photos later to show how I have fitted Kadee whisker couplers to the old Airfix LMS non-corridor coach bogies, and the later Bachmann LMS bogies (which I used in place of the original Lima BR bogies on my LMS 42' GUV, as well as for my Hornby clerestory coaches).

Thanks for doing that research, Chris. Although it's a close match by some of my criteria, my recollection of the layout is that it was rather more rural than St Lukes, unfortunately (fine layout though that one is). Looking through the rest of the MR gallery hasn't struck the requisite chord either, I'm afraid. The good news, for me at least, is that the National Library of Scotland does have all of the last five years of MR, RM and BRM in its catalogue. And it doesn't look to be too difficult to get a library card, either. Looks like I'll be spending a busy afternoon in their George IV Bridge reading room sometime soon, then!

Good point. Close coupling mechanisms really need a fairly rigid connection between the bogies to activate properly. The pivoting coupler head on NEM Kadees means that they are much less effective at getting the CCM to engage. Like you, for me it's Hornby/Roco between coaches in the rake, and Kadees at the ends. Checking my notes, I find that I fitted the end vehicles of my Hornby superdetailed LMS period 3 corridor coach rake (brake 3rd and 50ft full brake) with #20 NEM Kadees, wheres the non-corridor rake is OK with #19s. None of which is much help to ISW, who has Bachmann coaches. Sorry. The minimum radius on the user's layout will also make a difference. Mine goes down to setrack 2nd radius (so shoot me) which probably explains why I needed the longest couplings for some of my stock. So even one person's experience won't necessarily translate directly to another's. (IMO it's still a fairly small excess cost to have a few NEM Kadees left over, but other people may legitimately be more cost-sensitive than me.)

I'd be a little wary of expecting to fit NEM Kadees of any length to those coaches and have them working first time. The NEM TLCs in your second photo are one of Bachmann's stepped versions, rather than the straight types which come with modern Bachmann stock. That suggests to me that the NEM pockets on those coaches may be the wrong height for any other manufacturer's NEM couplings - the stepped version of the TLC was Bachmann's quick'n'dirty fix for their own mistake. Whether or not this matters to you depends on whether you use magnetic uncoupling for your Kadee-fitted stock: if the NEM pocket is the wrong height then at a minimum the trip pin will need adjusting in order to make the uncoupling work. Worst case that won't be sufficient - and if so then IMO you might as well consider stripping off the non-standard NEM pocket and fitting one of the whisker couplers, rather than faff about doing microsurgery on the NEM couplers in an attempt to get them to work in the incorrectly positioned NEM pockets. The good news is that you should be able to check whether or not the NEM pocket height is likely to be an issue with your #18 couplers. As to which of the #19 or #20 will be right for those coaches, can't you buy a packet of each and try them out? Having one redundant packet of couplers left at the end of the exercise seems like a minor cost compared to what you're likely to have to pay to convert all your coaches. (And there's always eBay...) EDIT: melmerby got there first!

Thanks Chris, that looks like a useful resource, I'll take a more detailed look when I have a bit more time. A bit of trawling through my own archives (of layout scribblings in AnyRail) suggests that I would have seen the layout in question around April/May/June last year. I know I came across it while browsing magazines on Sainsbury's. ("Why didn't you buy it then?" I hear you ask. Good question. IIRC correctly there wasn't much else that appealed in that edition so the cover price seemed a bit steep for one layout idea. In retrospect...) I have the June 2017 edition of RM, and the March 2017 edition of MR (see, I do buy magazines sometimes!) and it's in neither of those. I suppose I could try the National Library of Scotland, as it's a copyright library and I believe should have copies of everything published. That does seem a bit OTT, though; it's only a model railway, after all! I wonder if there might be someone reasonably nearby who wouldn't mind me having a quick squiz through their piles of model railway magazines. I'm sure I'd recognise the layout if I saw it on the page in front of me. I can't help thinking that if I was looking for a layout that had appeared in RM in the 1950s someone would have come up with the answer by now! Hey ho, all part of the joy of RMWeb, I guess

Tenth photo down on that Broadway Station Rebuild page: "One or two trees at risk in secretive GWSR felling programme". It'll be on the front page of the local rag before you know it. (To the OP: It's "corbelling", BTW - https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/corbel).

I once encountered someone driving the wrong way down an exit slip road off the Edinburgh City Bypass. It's a long, two-lane slip road that people often join at 70mph before slowing for the roundabout at the top. Fortunately everyone - including the driver who'd made the mistake - stopped in time. What I couldn't understand was how they'd managed to convince themselves that the slip road was a good place to go. The turn off the roundabout (clearly shown on Google Maps here) is pretty sharp and fairly obviously designed solely for entering the roundabout. Unless they had managed to go round the roundabout the wrong way as well which, given the layout of the roads at that point, is an even more scary thought... Many years ago I witnessed someone get it very badly wrong heading northbound at the Swiss Cottage gyratory on the Finchley Road. I could only imagine the look on the driver's face when they found themselves facing four lanes of traffic pointing towards them them, and about to get a green light! Fortunately everyone was very sensible and waited while the confused driver sorted themselves out; the consequences otherwise don't really bear thinking about.