ejstubbs

The Peco Technical Advice Bureau folks are usually pretty good at providing missing instructions. They e-mailed me a scan of the instructions for the CK15 Goods Shed when I asked them a few months back.

The kit in question is a Dapol turntable. It turns out that two of the components making up the turntable deck are slightly warped. I'm just wondering whether it would be better to assemble the deck first, and then use careful warmth to take any remaining warpage out, or try to straighten the individual pieces first? At the end of the day it's not a major issue - it's cheap enough to buy another if I can't fix these bits. It's part of the risk you take with these ancient ex-Airfix kits.

Which is better than it was, with Edinburgh Gateway station having a fall-out-of-the-train-and-on-to-the-tram connection to the airport these days. Assuming your train stops at Edinburgh Gateway, of course (which the ones from Dundee do). The tram pricing is still out of whack, though: £6 single for the sub-ten-minute ride to the airport vs £1.70 single for the 20-minute-plus ride in to Princes Street. (I understand that it's reasonable to charge a bit extra for time saving and convenience but £4.30/nearly four times as much looks sufficiently like gouging to put many people off altogether - especially Edinburghers, renowned for their grippiness!)

Three peak mountain snowflake (3PMSF) is the marking to look for on tyres for winter use: Apart from anything else it's a homologated standard, which M+S isn't. https://www.oponeo.co.uk/tyre-article/winter-tyres-don-t-rely-on-the-m-s-mark Most, if not all,countries which require winter tyres to be used during the winter months insist on tyres with the 3PMSF mark - M+S on its own is not sufficient. My 4WD Yeti performed brilliantly in the snow this week, some of which was up 30cm deep, running on Goodyear Vector 4Season tyres with the 3PMSF marking.

Lothian Buses kept running until 7pm, although a lot of their further-out-of-town services were curtailed. However, anyone who thinks that the bad weather forecast wasn't borne out by events is free to wade through the snow on my drive in southern Edinburgh and I'll happily invite them in for a chat about it. There were 1,000 cars stuck on the M80 last night. My missus was stuck for four hours on the city bypass until a number of drivers took the initiative and drove back the wrong way down the up ramp from the M8 roundabout in order to get on to one of the secondary roads that wasn't completely blocked by HGVs that couldn't get up the hill between Calder Road and Baberton junctions. The conditions yesterday were far from trivial, and they have continued to be so today. That's part of the problem: in the past the warnings do seem to have been excessive. This time they were right, but people had got used to ignoring them. And issuing a red "do not travel" warning as they did, at 10am on a weekday when most people will already be at work, was never likely to have precisely the desired effect.

Thanks, I suspected something like that would be the best way to go about it. I think may experiment with some pieces of scrap/sprue to see what sort of temperature I need. And yes, I'll probably clamp or weight it flat while it cools.

Unpacking one of the polystyrene lineside building kits that I've had hanging around for ages waiting to be built, I've discovered that one of the key components appears to be slightly warped. I don't know whether it was like that when it came from the shop, or whether it happened while the kit was in storage. Might it be possible to coax it back to its correct shape eg by careful application of heat? (Or maybe just warmth?)

Wikipedia agrees with you. Anyone else spot the irony here? "I know about trains and they got it all wrong. But I liked the bus - was it right?"

I am quite sensitive to cold, and there was a guy sat on the other side of the coach wearing a t-shirt, as well as two youngish kids sat opposite me wearing short-sleeved polo shirts. So I think it was a tad warm in there yesterday. The train was fairly full, mind. Perhaps the aircon struggles to cope above certain levels of passenger loading? Or it was just badly adjusted.

The post that shows as 4788 on my browser is this one. You didn't say that the wording you quoted was from the Highway Code, and I didn't say that you did - though I can see that it could be read that way. I was just trying to clarify that it didn't, in case someone else reading the thread thought that it did - as seemed to be suggested by a cursory reading of some of the later posts. Hence my use of the words "for the avoidance of doubt", rather than, for example: "chriswright03 was wrong to suggest that..." Apologies if you felt that it was intended as a correction rather than a clarification.

At this location in Pembrokeshire there are two more-or-less parallel bridges over the same stream within ~50m of each other. When we used to go down that way on holidays, when I was a kid, each bridge was only one lane wide and the road split so that each lane ran over its own bridge. My Dad used to joke that it was the shortest stretch of dual carriageway in the UK - you can see from Google Maps that it used to be a bit under 200m long. I'm still not 100% sure whether it would actually count as dual carriageway, though I can't immediately see why it shouldn't. You'd have been doing well to get up to 70mph on that short stretch, though, especially since the single carriageway either side wasn't particularly suited to doing 60mph anyway (I may have tried it once when I was young and stupid but I certainly can't recall whether or not the attempt was successful). It was still like that up until the early 1980s AFAIR but they have since widened the northern one of the two bridges to two lanes, and closed the southern one to through traffic. (Probably no bad thing, given the apparent difficulty that far too many tourists in Pembs these days have in coping roads narrower than the M1.)

That'll be it then. CEC explicitly stated that the new 20mph limits would not involve speed bumps, cushions or chicanes. It's probably cheaper to put up a bunch of repeater signs (and skipping those that you are allowed to!) than installing speed reducing infrastructure everywhere. That would be very 'Edinburgh' (aka "The Grippy City").

Approaching Wolverhampton on a Virgin Voyager from Telford yesterday, I noticed what looked for all the world to be bullhead rail on some sections of track at the north end of the station. Granted, some appeared to be sidings of some kind, but I'm pretty sure some of it was on tracks that led to/from platforms. Did I imagine in it - a febrile delusion brought on by spending four days in Telford, perhaps? On a different subject: the Pendolino that took me back to Edinburgh was uncomfortably warm. Not quite so much that I felt it necessary to disturb the woman in the aisle seat so that I could remove my suit jacket, but still not exactly relaxing. I don't use VTWC very often - are they always like that? (I also noted a random looking collection of tents and 'bashies' pitched in a patch of scrubby woodland on the east side of the line, I think near Wolverhampton Junction North. Presumably some kind of informal colony for homeless persons. What a wonderful society we live in.)

Hmm. I didn't know that I wanted one of those but at that price it seems churlish to refuse. Oh well, it's only money...and another suspiciously engine-shaped parcel that I'll have to explain to SWMBO!

It still is the rule, although it was relaxed in 2012 to allow repeater signs not to be placed along "short lengths of carriageway". This helpful document clarifies what "short" means, as follows: [repeater signs] need not be placed ... along a length of road which is subject to the speed limit indicated by that sign if that length of road: (a) is subject to a speed limit of 20 mph and is shorter than 200 metres; (b) is subject to a speed limit of 30 mph, is shorter than 200 metres and does not have a system of carriageway lighting furnished by lamps lit by electricity; © is subject to a speed limit of 40 mph and is shorter than 250 metres; (d) is subject to a speed limit of 50 mph and is shorter than 350 metres; or (e) is subject to a speed limit of 60 mph, is shorter than 400 metres and is a dual carriageway road or a motorway. Note point (b) above: it is actually not permitted to put repeater signs in a 30 limit if it is a 30 limit by virtue of having street lighting. That is stated on the very first page of the document linked above. (This is in contrast to NSL repeater signs, which aren't particularly common, but are permitted.) Note as well that there is a rather sneaky get-out for the rapidly-proliferating 20mph limits. If the sign at the entry to the 20mph limit says that you are entering a "zone" then repeater signs are not required at all. One thing I'm grateful about with the Edinburgh 20mph limits is that they haven't taken that option: the 20 limits are signed normally, and also have reminder markings on the road surface (although I'm not sure what legal force those have, if any). So at least you have little excuse for not knowing that you are in a 20 limit (not that the police seem to be making any great efforts to enforce them anyway, at least not since the first flurry of activity when the limits started to come in to force). (By the way: for the avoidance of doubt, the text quoted by chriswright03 in post 4788 is taken from the confused.com web site, not from either the Highway Code or any of the relevant UK legislation.)

It doesn't say that. In Rule 123 it says: "The 30 mph limit usually applies to all traffic on all roads with street lighting unless signs show otherwise." And in Rule 130 its says: "The presence of street lights generally means that there is a 30 mph (48 km/h) speed limit unless otherwise specified." By no means every road has street lighting. Motorways often do have street slights, but AIUI they are a special case where the limit is 70 simply by virtue of the road being a motorway, unless a more restrictive limit is signposted (ie they work "the other way round") so they don't need NSL signs for lit sections.

The proper formulation of the principle is "ignorance of the law is no defence". If you are indeed ignorant of the law then that would be a perfectly valid excuse* for breaking it, but you couldn't put it forward as a reason to be found not guilty. You could, however, use it as part of a plea in mitigation (ie to try to get a more lenient sentence) once found guilty, eg: "Sorry M'Lud I am used to driving my own motorhome and I didn't realise that the one I hired was limited to 60mph on dual carriageways rather then 70mph because it was in the higher weight category." (Then again, speed cameras can't tell what weight category your motorhome is in, so the only way to get nicked in that instance would be if a switched-on police officer caught you on a speed gun.) * First definition of the noun in OED: "A reason or explanation given to justify a fault or offence."

Though you have to keep the dust out when mounting the slide in the first place, otherwise you can get some fairly amazing colour fringes. That's what happened with my Dad's Kodachrome slides when he tried to re-mount them, anyway. Maybe it was just a Kodachrome thing - it did seem to occupy a fairly unique ecological niche in the photographic world, before digital swept almost all before it. (Although I think I read somewhere recently that someone is trying to bring it back!)

Highway Code rule 169: Do not hold up a long queue of traffic, especially if you are driving a large or slow-moving vehicle. Check your mirrors frequently, and if necessary, pull in where it is safe and let traffic pass. In theory, failing to observe this rule could be construed as inconsiderate driving, which is an offence in its own right under section 3 of the 1988 Road Traffic Act: If a person drives a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road or other public place without due care and attention, or without reasonable consideration for other persons using the road or place, he is guilty of an offence. It doesn't help that the wording of the rule in the Highway Code is open to significant variations in interpretation (despite, as far as I can tell, it having been re-worded recently). One might quibble about what constitutes a "long queue of traffic" - why doesn't it just say "Do not unnecessarily hold up other road users"? There's also the problem of people's varying interpretations of what constitutes a "slow-moving vehicle" - some drivers seem to think that if they're travelling at the speed limit for their type of vehicle (ie they're going as fast as they're allowed to, not as fast as they can) then either they're not "slow-moving", even if the speed limit for other types of vehicle is ten or twenty mph higher. Rule 168, about allowing other road users to overtake, isn't much help IMO because it starts off by saying: "If a driver is trying to overtake you" - which could all too easily could be taken to mean (and indeed perhaps is intended to mean) that the rule doesn't apply until the person behind starts the overtake ie starts to indicate and pull out. The way some people staunchly defend their position in lane 3 suggests that they really are afraid that, if they were to pull over when lane 2 is clear, the "inflated ego" between their legs would shrivel up and drop off. The characters that I find quite scary are the ones that overtake using lane 3 at 60-65mph (which is barely sufficient expeditiously to pass an HGV travelling on its limiter) and then speed up to 70 or even more after pulling over. It is simply not possible to make sense of the thought processes that would be required to explain such behaviour. One can only assume that conscious thought is not actually involved at all - which is worrying when you consider that they're supposedly "in control" of anything up to two tons of motor vehicle travelling in excess of 100ft per second...

Is this the kind of "ICE" that you had in mind? https://www.caranddriver.com/features/faking-it-engine-sound-enhancement-explained-tech-dept https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2016/jun/13/a-roar-deal-why-your-cars-engine-noise-might-be-fake (Not saying that the R8 has Soundaktor, but Audi do fit it to other cars in their range. TTs maybe?)

When the consequences of your misdemeanours could end up costing other people their lives, you shouldn't be able to 'get away with' all that much IMO.

GPS can certainly provide an altitude as part of the positional fix, though it's not as accurate as the lat/long. Whether any given unit takes that in to account when it calculates the distance between two points and thus (knowing also the time taken) speed is another matter.

AKA "FART": Forty All the Ruddy Time.

Probably no odder than some of the trains you see on Great American Railroad Journeys, with the loco taller than the coaches, or what looks like a double-decker coach in the middle of a train of single-deckers. I suspect most passengers wouldn't care what the train looks like from the outside so long as it's comfortable and pleasant to travel in, and gets them where they want to be on time. (That said, I still smile when I see a 365 approaching.)

Agree that GPS speed displays often have some lag, and that they use some kind of a rolling average because of the inherent (and to a certain extent calculable) positional error - which partly contributes to the lag. Fundamentally, GPS gives a position; speed is calculated from successive position information over time. Accepting the existence of lag and averaging (which will tend to smooth out transient peaks and troughs), AFAICS that means that we can be 99% sure that at some point not many seconds before the incident, and before it started to slow down, the lorry was travelling at at least 35mph. Which would temper somewhat my estimation of the driver's excellence.