rogerzilla

There is a situation where you pass a boat on the other side: if you are in a powered boat and you meet a horse-drawn boat coming the other way with the towpath to your right. It makes no sense for the horse-drawn boat to pass the tow rope over your boat when it's not necessary. And yes, it happened to us going into Kintbury on the K&A.

Coppell was amazing due to the length of the trains and the OLE. Copenhagen Fields is absolutely huge and a rather unusual shape - not easy to reach a derailed train, I imagine!

They revived the submarine fleet in the mid-50s and dropped the job title then.

German U-boats had diesel stokers until the 1950s. Obviously they didn't actually stoke anything - it was just a carry-over job title for some engine room crew.

The 1st gear synchro on my 1997 MX-5 was a bit ropey, if it was there at all, so yes.

Could those two 69s handle the weight of that wagon?

Bought tickets. Hopefully the parking field isn't a quagmire.

You sometimes get a co-acting signal to the RH of the line, more or less opposite the "real" signal. If the platform curves to the left, a signal just after it may not be visible until very close up, especially with people on the platform. The signal could be raised up to clear the station buildings but there may be reasons this isn't an option, such as a bridge or OLE.

SO had to get the very slow rail replacement bus to Didcot tonight. She could have caught the S6 bus all the way to Swinedun instead but that's made awkward by the Botley Road bridge works.

If you used an immersion heater, boiler efficiency would be closer to 100%. It can approach 80% when using coal (when, of course, a load of heat, and some small pieces of fuel, are lost up the chimney).

Most steam locos are between 5-10% thermally efficient. The main limitation is the theoretical efficiency of the steam doing work inside the cylinder. The input temperature is miserably low by Rankine cycle standards and you can't do better than about 18% even with no losses anywhere else. Boiler efficiency can be up to about 80% with good coal and a good fireman, but can drop below 50% if there is a lot of small stuff being sucked straight through the tubes. You also get wire-drawing and other fluid frictional losses from piston or slide valves (poppet valves can be better, but that's a can of worms). The only way to significantly boost efficiency would be to use much higher temperatures and pressures, but those are really difficult to achieve within axle weight and gauge constraints. Both Fury and the Hush-Hush were effectively failures. By the last few decades of steam, the main focus was on reducing maintenance and increasing availability through things like extensive mechanical lubrication, water treatment, SC smokeboxes, better bearings and horn guides, etc. No-one was really chasing thermal efficiency, except for the aberration that was the Crosti 9F.

Also happens on bicycles, where rubber brake pads embed grit and chew up the aluminium alloy rims. Alloy chips from the rim also get embedded in the pads, so the problem accelerates. Hard pads wear the rims less because they don't embed grit. In a cleaner environment like a car engine, it is the soft bearing shells that wear first, since the main cause is metal-on-metal contact at startup. A steam loco is somewhere between the two cases!

AIUI the main British objection to feedwater heaters was that an exhaust steam injector did much the same thing with no moving parts* (feedwater heaters also need a pump). *later BR injectors did have a moving flap to enable automatic restarting when the combined jet failed

Also used for knocking over the tripods of gricers, based on what I've seen 😄

Golden Valley Line, Swindon-Gloucester. It's been redoubled since, but was single when the 50s used it.

One big problem is that the market for lump coal is tiny. Most coal goes into power stations (overseas) or industrial processes, where it is pulverised first. Not many mines bother to produce graded coal the size of two clenched fists, which is what you want on a loco grate. Mechanical stokers can use partially pulverised coal, but half of it ends up going straight through the tubes and up the chimney.

In t'olden days, the big sheds used to drain boilers for washout every few weeks, but saved the hot water in an insulated tank and returned it after the washout was complete.

My 03 runs very nicely on DCC. I don't know what decoder is in it (I had it professionally converted, as these are difficult due to the split chassis and tiny size) but could probably find out.

Ok, one of the bogies is jammed. Any idea if the available spare bogies (designed for 370-430 or 372-240) will fit mine, which is 371-825?

Lights work, motor whirs, but there is no drive from either bogie. It had occasionally stuttered on curves before. Do these tend to split their gears, and would that happen at both ends simultaneously? Both ends were working the last time it was out, because I cleaned the wheels under power. Any other suggestions?

Now working with a crossover. Didn't bother messing with the power routing and just fed both ovals. Locos can go over the crossover with no issues.

You would have been standing next to me, then. We got on at Bewdley.

It's the last scene of The Box of Delights, too (you need a prairie tank, really).

All GWR 4-6-0s look the same, except for the wonky bogie on the King, the straight splasher on the County, and the Collett side window cabs vs the Churchward "hard man" cabs 😉

My mistake, it's 4555 that has the odd typeface, not 4566. They're both at SVR!