ejstubbs

Would the RAIB normally get involved in the failure of a locomotive? No-one was hurt, the train was brought safely to a halt and there doesn't seem [so far] to have been any suggestion that there was any loss of control beyond the failure of the drive system, or any other immediate risk to the train. The locomotive suffered a mechanical failure which meant that it couldn't proceed, which impeded traffic for a while until the situation was sorted out. A failed locomotive can't be that rare an occurrence to need investigating by the RAIB every time it happens, surely? Although this appears to have occurred at relatively high speed, so do failures of the OLE of which there was a spate on the ECML last year but I don't recall the RAIB getting involved with those. I'm just pondering the question out loud. Quite happy to be told that I'm wrong!

Have a look at this (before it gets taken down - don't worry, you won't have to pay anything) and see whether your analysis still stands. You may find that trying to make authoritative pronouncements about a dynamic situation like that on the basis of a single photograph is rarely going to be particularly successful. Max was trying to pass Lewis. Not if you look at the line that every other driver was taking through those corners. Max ran very wide and pushed Lewis out to the edge of the track. (And here's another thing: backing off the throttle suddenly on the exit from a corner is quite a good way to make bad things happen*, even in an F1 car. They may look like it, but they don't actually run on rails.) Just because it's judged to have been a racing incident doesn't mean that one driver wasn't culpable. Happens all the time without a penalty being imposed, especially if the driver didn't gain any actual advantage (which Max clearly didn't, since it put him out of the race). And by the way: it's the race stewards who investigate incidents, not the marshals. Don't get me wrong, I admire Max and enjoy watching him race. Who wouldn't admire someone who could pull off the passes he did in Brazil in 2016? (The one at about 0:37 here is just outrageous!) I thought he was rather harshly blamed for the crash with Grosjean in Monaco in 2015 (like Max said, Grosjean seemed to me to shed a lot of speed, a lot sooner for Sainte Devote than he had the previous lap). But last Sunday I think he was the architect of his own misfortune. * I could tell you a story about that. About the time I totally misjudged the tightness of the exit to a roundabout, lifted off in a panic, and ended up spinning backwards down the approach side of the exit road. I was blessed that night: there was no-one else around and the only damage to the car was a burst rear tyre from hitting the kerb rather hard. I managed to limp in to the car park of a nearby pub to get the wheel changed in a safe place. Even better, it wasn't my car: it was a company pool car that I was only driving while waiting for my new company car to be delivered - and I know that some colleagues had managed to do a lot worse to other pool/company cars and not suffer any comeback!

The only time I've been to Monaco was for the GP in 1987. I travelled down there from Turin, where I was living at the time, with a pal in his RED Triumph Spitfire roadster. I can promise you that we got a few admiring looks driving through the streets outskirts of town. Well, the car did, anyway; I guess exclusivity always has a certain appeal (we certainly didn't see another one all the time we were there, while Ferraris, Maseratis & Porsches were a dime a dozen). I'm not entirely kidding either: we certainly heard a few admiring remarks ("Guarda! Che bella spyder") as we cruised along, trying to look cool while frantically wondering where on earth we could park the damn thing and still get to the circuit in time to see the race... We actually made it into town in time to see the end of the morning warm-up. I say "see" it but truth be told there's not a lot you can actually see over six layers of Armco barrier from thirty feet away, but the NOISE that they made coming through Casino Square - I'd never heard anything quite like it (and I'd been to a fair few GPs in my time prior to that). The way it assaulted your ears as it reverberated between the chi-chi millionaires' mansions and apartment blocks was just something else. We watched the race from rather further away, an area called the "pelouse rocher" (basically the Grimaldi's back garden, as far as I could tell - the steep bit above the harbour that they don't use much!) We got drenched on the way back to Turin, caught in a storm in the mountains before my pal was able to find a safe place to pull over and put the roof up. Great weekend, though!

It's probably best to ignore Marquez' antics in that race. At 25 (Max is still only 20) and four time MotoGP champion, he should know a lot better than to d*ck about like that. Zero points was no more than he deserved for that performance. No, the important thing was the race at the front, which was excellent: four guys on four different bikes (Honda, Yahama, Suzuki and Ducati) racing and swapping places for 20-odd laps, close but clean all the way. Brilliant shot at one point of the four of them in line astern through turn 6, smoke pouring off four spinning rear tyres, four leaned-over bikes drifting in perfect synchronisation. Anyone fed up with the lack of 'proper' racing in F1 really should take a look at the two-wheeled version of the game.

This Rail article says the first HSTs will be starting on the Edinburgh to Aberdeen service in May this year, with May 2019 to be when the full fleet is planned to be operational. I'm not sure whether that schedule is still going to be met, but various threads on real railway forums seem to indicate that it's not far off. Sounds like the latter is likely what I spotted yesterday. Almost tempted to take a trip up to Aberdeen later in the year!

Including through the hole in said pocket that had been worn through by carrying coins in it. I can't believe I'm the only person that ever happened to. More than once. The revelation for me in the use of plastic vs cash occurred on a lengthy stopover at Schiphol on the 31st December 2001. Not wanting to hang around the airport for several hours we were pleased to discover that there was a straightforward train service in to the city centre. We were less pleased to discover that every single landside ATM was out of service due to being converted to dispense Euro notes. Things got a lot better when we realised that the ticket machines took plastic, so we could at least get in to town and back. We ended up spending a pleasant few hours in Amsterdam, including a delicious lunch and a bit of shopping, and all paid on plastic. Not contactless, because it wasn't around then, but it was still a useful lesson in the pros and cons of plastic vs cash. I remember that there was one solitary ATM in Dam Square that was still dispensing guilders, and the queue for that was immmmmmense!! Mind you, I can still remember the first time I used an ATM abroad, sometime in the early 1990s. It was in the US, and for some reason I couldn't help being momentarily astonished that it had given me dollars even though I was using a UK-issued card! (BTW, I'm not really not sure what's supposed to be offensive about the use of the word "sprog".)

I hadn't been following progress with the ScotRail HSTs at all closely but yesterday I had to make one of my occasional forays to Glasgow for work. On the way home in the evening I was just emerging from a comfortable doze as we approached Haymarket when my brain registered a glimpse of an HST with a blue nose in Haymarket depot. I dismissed it as a figment of my imagination once I'd fully woken up, but reading around today it appears that that could well have been what I actually saw, given that Edinburgh to Aberdeen HST services are due to start next month. Notable, I think, how the profile of an HST was so instantly recognisable to my fuddled brain, compared to the much harder to distinguish square fronts of the stock I'm more accustomed to seeing there. Nice to see some "proper trains" there for a change!

I did try an anorak on once, but I found it a bit too daringly stylish for my taste.

"Plagiarised" is probably unfair. The sketch was written for At Last the 1948 Show (which was broadcast in 1967 - the title was a joke) by Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman (possibly with some input from Barry Cryer). I suspect that Cleese and Chapman may have some authorial rights to it. It wasn't used in any of the Python TV shows, only performed in their live shows. Although there was some variation between the live performances - not at all unusual for live performers, plenty of musicians have 'adapted' their own songs over time - they kept very close to the basic "Four Yorkshiremen" theme. Variants of the sketch have also been performed a number of times in Amnesty International shows (with Pythons only involved in the 1979 Secret Policeman's Ball) and for Comic Relief. The sketch is so well known that it's not possible that these performances were unauthorised. An accusation of plagiarism might perhaps be made with a fraction more justification about a sketch which appeared in I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again. Although the theme of that sketch was about difficulties of travel in bygone times rather then hard living conditions, it still finished with the same "...and if you tell that to the young people today, they won't believe you..." line. But even that version has a good degree of legitimacy, given that Cleese and Brooke-Taylor were both ISIRTA cast members, and Chapman wrote for the show as well.

And another one here: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/131328-bullhead-on-the-main-line/

They may be yesterday's and today's drivers too. People aren't limited to using only one form of wheeled transport (though it's best not to try using more than one at the same time). I'm pretty sure that I've travelled by bus, bike, motorbike and car on the same day. And most people are pedestrians when wheeled transport is not an option (though a worrying number of them are rubbish at that, too).

OK, the 6mm jack plug approach is clever, but it doesn't get around the problem that I am trying to solve which is not just polarity switching but also making sure that the power is coming from the correct outlet track from the turntable. I'm trying to eliminate as much need for switch setting - and hence room for operator (ie my) error - as possible from the task of running a loco on to the turntable, turning it and then running it off the turntable on to a different track in a different power section. With DCC only polarity would be an issue, but using DC power sections in the way I want to adds a bit more operational complexity - which I now believe I can eliminate by using straightforward electrical componentry. Providing the power connection to the rails isn't the biggest issue - the table doesn't need to be able to turn more than about 210°, so ordinary power feed wires with a bit of slack in them should be fine. I'm going to use a 50mm lazy susan bearing for the deck, which has a hole through the middle plenty big enough to allow the wires to pass through. Arguably the title of the thread is perhaps inadequate - but there is a limit to how much information you can sensibly fit in there and it still be comprehensible. It's also getting late, and I've had a difficult day at work, so I'm afraid I'm in no real position to set about crafting a better title just now!

Very interesting, but I don't use DCC (which is why I posted this in the Electrics (non-DCC) forum).

That's the approach I was originally thinking of, before I started to muse about PB contact strips. As you say, it's much cleaner, with no electrical gubbins cluttering up the turntable well. In theory it should be simple enough: a DPDT centre off switch to control which of the outlet tracks provides power to the deck, and to provide isolation of the deck, and a DPDT on-on switch to set the polarity of the deck to match the outlet track. That does mean, though, that there are three combinations of switch positions which would result in things not working properly - too easy for the operator to make a mistake, at least for my addled brain. It's just occurred to me that it ought to be possible to use magnets and reed switches to detect where the table is. And by using two magnets, one on each 'leg' of the deck, and putting them in different positions on each 'leg' then I think it should be possible to activate four separate reed switches and thus select the correct power source & polarity for all the likely options. The reed switches would then fire DPDT relays to connect the right outlet track's power to the deck at the correct polarity. Hmm, some more pondering required... (Any more than two outlet roads would start to get rather complicated, though, I can't help thinking.)

Maybe I didn't explain it very well. The idea is that the phosphor bronze strips will be wired to the rails on the turntable deck. They will pick up power from contact pads in the turntable well. The contact pads will be wired to the rails of the tracks that run to the turntable, and will be positioned so that the phosphor bronze wiper strips will only make contact when the turntable is positioned at or close to the relevant outlet track. The idea is that the turntable deck track will be unpowered when the deck is not aligned with an outlet. When it is live the polarity of the track on the deck will match the outlet track. The design is still fairly nebulous at the moment but I wanted to see if there was any combination of wiper strip & contact pad materials that would be better or worse than others. Corrosion is certainly a risk better avoided. As far as wear goes, I'm anticipating that it should be fairly straightforward to replace the contact pads in the turntable well if they get worn, less so the wiper strips.

I am considering using sprung phosphor bronze strips on the underside of my turntable deck as pickups to power the track on the deck. The plan would be to have contact "pads" powered from the tracks that the turntable connects to. I'm wondering what would be the best material to use for those contact pads: phosphor bronze again, or nickel silver, or copper? Would any combinations be a definite no-no?

This 100%. Calling them "self-service" checkouts is a wild exaggeration, since the damn things always seem to find something to complain about which then requires the attendant to come over and wave their electronic tag thing at it to make it behave. (IME they almost never investigate the problem the machine thought it had detected, they just wave their magic wand to make the error message go away.) Example from a few days ago at Sainsbury's when I had only a few items (and no alcohol, which is obliged by law to require human intervention). In trying to pay for a half dozen or so items the attendant had to intervene three times. The first time I did exactly as the machine requested and it still complained: Machine: Are you using any of your own bags? Me: <presses "yes" button> Machine: put your bags in the bagging area and press this button. Me: <does as requested> Machine: Wha!!! Don't like it!!! Make it go away!!!!! (or words to that effect) Me: <thinks: Oh FFS.> The next incident was when it decided it didn't like the barcode on one of my items and asked me type the number in - then without any further action from myself it changed its mind and reverted to "sullen refusal co-operate" mode. The last one involved some alleged irregularity with my Nectar card, which I had actually had replaced a week or so previously because the old one was getting worn and difficult to scan. The resolution for each of the above apparent show-stopping calamities was for the attendant to wave his magic dongle at the machine and walk away. This seems to be the self-service checkout equivalent of "have you tried turning it off and turning it on again?" But computers have noticeably improved since that first became an IT support in joke. I get the impression that self-service checkouts are still running some early version of embedded Windows on a Pentium 4. IMO the worst thing about these self-service tills is that they are so badly designed from a process and ergonomic point of view. They demand that things be inserted in randomly-located orifices, then spit bits of paper at you from multiple other inconveniently positioned openings. And I still don't believe that there is any kind of point to the "unexpected item in bagging area" nonsense. It's my shopping. Sorry if that comes as a surprise to you. (I note that the self-service tills in IKEA do not have weight sensors in the "bagging area". If they can manage without, I bet every else could too.) As far as I can tell most of these devices are all made by the same company so they probably feel no impetus to improve or innovate. The machines certainly don't seem to have changed much since they were first introduced; any differences between them in different retailers are miniscule and mostly down to software tweaks. The only significant differences in terms of user experience that I am aware of are the Morrisons ones, which give cashback, and the aforementioned IKEA ones which by some miracle manage to do their job without getting paranoid about the "bagging area". Meanwhile, consumers become increasingly hacked off at the utter failure of bricks-and-mortar retailers to do anything worthwhile to alleviate the irritation and tedium of their shopping experience, and increasingly turn to spending their money online instead. I find the exact opposite: because the machine insists that every item scanned then has to be placed in the "bagging area" before the next time can be scanned (otherwise it throws a tantrum and wails for Mummy yet again) it's the machine that controls the pace at which I can work, rather than it accommodating me. You can't take advantage of having two hands to scan with one and pack with the other (perhaps the idiot who designed the things in the first place spent some much time with his thumb stuck up his *rse that he never noticed that most of us have that capability). The machines are painfully slow in most of their other functions as well. I almost always find that the voice prompts are a few seconds behind what the screen is telling me to do, but that doesn't stop the doris from piping up while I'm already doing what needs doing, or I've already pressed the button that needed pressing. The only time she catches up is when I've finished and paid, when she takes advantage of the few seconds it takes for me to put my receipt away in my wallet to remind me take my shopping and my receipt away with me, as if that particular thought had never occurred to me. The whole implementation of the concept is tremendously tedious IMO - but as others have said you're often pretty much forced to use it by the retailer's decision not to employ sufficient/any human checkout staff.

I managed to get the warpage out of two of the three deck parts. I clamped the warped part to the flat base of a steel bookend, and used a 3litre plastic food container for the water bath. Monitoring the water temperature closely, I dunked the components in when it had cooled down to 85°C. The metal of the bookend seemed to absorb quite a lot of heat, with the water temperature dropping to 80°C quite quickly. The bit that stuck out of the water probably acted as quite a good radiator as well, with the temperature dropping to 70°C within a minute or so. What didn't work so well was putting the component clamped to the bookend into the container and then pouring in water straight from the kettle. That nudged 90°C before starting to cool down, and the result, although flat, was a little out of shape: Lesson learned! With a replacement part from a second kit I now have the three non-warped parts I need to build the turntable deck. They do have a very slight end-to-end bow but I am expecting that will largely be cured once the side girders are in place, and the track glued to the deck. I am planning to plate over the sleepers and from the rails to the inner face of the deck girders using something like the Wills chequer plate, to give the sort of finish to the deck that you can just about see in this photo of the turntable at Minehead on the West Somerset Railway:

This is the URL for page 108 of that thread: http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/87114-the-official-rapido-apt-e-thread/page-108 (Hover your mouse pointer over the link to see the full version.) You should be able to see how it's done from that: append "/page-"<page number> to the URL for the thread. If you end up on a random page within the thread eg by following a link in another post, simply scroll to the end of the URL and change the page number. Works on any thread AFAIK. Personally, I hardly ever use the search facility within RMWeb itself. I find that Google works as well and usually better by simply appending "rmweb" to the search term. You can narrow the hits down a bit by enclosing search phrases such as "catch points" in quotes. If you want to be really particular you can use the Google search qualifier "site:www.rmweb.co.uk". Again, if you end up on the wrong page in the thread it's easy to navigate to the right one if you know the page number. As an example, Googling 'catch points rmweb' has 15,900 hits whereas '"catch points" rmweb' has 493 hits, and '"catch points" site:www.rmweb.co.uk' has 361. However, Google is pretty good at putting the most relevant hits first so you're unlikely to find yourself having to wade through thousands of hits if (like me) you are a bit lazy in specifying the search.

Kadee also does 'scale' couplings which have a smaller coupling knuckle than the ones based on the original Kadee design. Being nominally 'scale' size for HO they are arguably under-size for the OO market. They are only available in the "classic" and "whisker" variants, not NEM fitting. For those yearning for DCC uncoupling, a company called Subarashi Models is apparently working on just such a thing, with co-operation from Kadee: https://www.smart-coupler.com

Late 60s, actually. The first appearance of wings on an F1 car was the Lotus 49B at Monaco in 1968. They'd been used on both sports and open-wheel race cars in the US before that. The pioneer was, of course, Jim Hall with his Chaparral cars. The Chaparral 2 had front wings in 1963, to stop the nose lifting. The 1965 the Chaparral 2C had a low, moveable, rear wing, and a year later the 2E got this monster: Jim Clark drove an Indy car in 1967 that had small wings, and was impressed with it. He asked his team to experiment with a wing on the car that he drove in a race in New Zealand early in 1968 (before his sad and untimely death in an F2 race at Hockenheim in April that year), although it wasn't used in competition. By the time the Belgian GP came along both Brabham and Ferrari had rear wings on their cars. Lotus responded with a high-level rear wing mounted directly on the rear suspension: Matra then went the whole hog and did the same at the front: Wings grew ever higher and more spindly until, at the Spanish GP in 1969, the rear wings of both Lotuses collapsed catastrophically, putting first Graham Hill and then Jochen Rindt out of the race: (Rindt had already expressed concerns about the structural integrity of the rear wing on his car.) By the next race at Monaco (well, after the first practice session, in fact) the FIA announced that rear wings would be banned. After a bit more to-ing and fro-ing the rules were clarified to allow front and rear wings, of limited sizes, and with no movable parts. The other innovation in F1 in 1968 was the first use of a full-face helmet, worn at the British GP by Dan Gurney, who had worked with Bell helmets to help develop it (and who had worn one at the Indy 500 earlier in the year).

That logic sounds completely backwards. What's special about 214cm that he would choose that, and then turn it back in to feet and inches? It makes no sense. You might as well argue that, if you're starting off at 7ft but want a whole number of centimetres then the nearest integer number to that is 213cm, which is 6ft 11⅞" to within a gnat's whisker. So why didn't he use that? Or why not 215cm, which is a much nicer, rounder number in metric? The answer to the original question was given in post #2 in this thread, and hints at the possibility that, while Brunel was great at civils, he might not have been so hot at mechanicals. Despite being a "genius". Allegedly.

There is a photo of Robert Stephenson, looking pretty alert and engaged, on his Wiki page. EDIT: Oops, brack posted this several days ago. And with more information to boot.

Misunderstood would I think be more accurate!

If that's an oblique reference to the "Millennium Bug" then you may be doing a disservice to the effort that IT engineers spent making sure that the world didn't 'come to an end'. A classic example of Walter J West's aphorism: "The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was." See also: the Apollo programme. (A feature of both is that neither were in fact completely trouble-free. In the case of Apollo, unlike Y2K, they at least had the opportunity to learn from the mistakes they did make.)