bimble

59 minutes ago, duncan said:

Anyone placed a bet on when the first rent a truck hits the raised bridge ?

presumably the 8" is just enough that the majority of the smaller hire box trucks just clears the bridge and it's only going to be the larger stuff that gets caught

9 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 

I remain utterly unconvinced by compulsory DRLs on all new vehicles.

I seem to recall seeing a report after they were made compulsory in Poland (I think), in that traffic accidents did drop overall... however, the accident rate for more vulnerable road users (pedestrians/cyclists) rose, they think because they get lost in the lights when drivers are looking at the traffic. Almost certainly not helped by the trend to have really bright LED DRLs in cars these days

3 hours ago, polybear said:

Hey, well what a surprise.  It seems that "Smart Motorways" are to be reviewed after concerns over driver safety fears.  Cars which are broken down and/or had an accident are on the hard shoulder at times when the hard shoulder is "open" for use as a road lane, with several deaths as a result.

 

So where exactly did the Transport/Highways Dept. Wizards expect such vehicles to stop?  In the Fast Third Lane?

FFS.

 

(Source:  BBC News UK webpage.  I'd post a link but it won't....)

 

 

smart motorways "too complicated" for drivers... quite frankly, if looking at the road ahead of you and following the instruction of large, illuminated signs above you is too complicated, perhaps you shouldn't be behind the wheel at all...

then again, we're 300 pages into a thread which shows that driving is beyond quite a few people...

4 hours ago, Wickham Green said:

There's obviously a detector that switches on the big illuminated sign telling overheight vehicles to turn - why not wire that into the 'stop' phase of the traffic lights too ??!?

They do. More recent videos (they changed it ~2017) show that the lights turn red to stop trucks to give them a chance to see the sign. There is at least one video of a truck blowing through the red light and then ripping the top off their trailer...

I travelled out of season (end of Oct) and my train was considerably shorter. This was from the observation at the back of the train...

by Bimble, on Flickr

Keep in mind that being a regular train service, the Canadian might run during hours of darkness. The East bound train is only really in daylight hours from Blue River to Edmonton, and the West bound from Jasper to Kamloops. It's a fab trip, but if you are after scenery it might be an idea to look at the more touristy option, such as the Rocky Mountaineer...

overheard at the model train show this morning:
"Billy, what train is that?"
"It's an Intercity Dad."
"No Billy, look, it says 'Virgin' on the side, it's a Pendolino"

No Billy's Dad, Billy was right, it was an Intercity... circa late 90s, in Virgin's Cross Country livery...

10 hours ago, kevinlms said:

Same applies in Victoria, so presumably nation wide. 

I would think that properly trained railway staff, ought to know more than the police regards whether a train is coming or not.

I suspect if they're working on the crossing, trains will be warned before hand so will be approaching under caution, and the worker would be in contact with the signaller so would be informed if/when a train was approaching the crossing.

58 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Then two people will be marrying.

but three people would have gotten married...

30 minutes ago, Ryde-on-time said:

In Siem Reap last month. Don’t think all the options on this menu were entirely appropriate?

As I wonder what 'stir fried Morning Glory with oil' is... and decide it's not something I'll google whilst at work...

didn't check the TV forum...  

1 hour ago, Coryton said:

 

At least where trams have separate traffic lights, I would have thought they would be programmed so that didn't happen.

It won't... unless a car has queued across the tracks in the yellow box, so when the lights for the tram change to green they are unable to traverse the yellow box because they find a car that shouldn't be there. The tram's exit is clear, they are being stopped by a car illegally stopping in the junction.

16 minutes ago, Hobby said:

 

 

No, it's two separate carriageways separated by a central reservation (quite a substantial one at that as it used to have two lanes for it's whole length on both sides) where the two lanes have (for some of it  some two lane still exist on both sides) been marked into one lane. So as far as I'm aware it's still a dual carriageway and governed by that speed limit. See this for further reading:

 

https://www.roads.org.uk/blog/what-makes-dual-carriageway

I gotcha. I thought you meant the central reservation was removed, making it a single carriageway road, not a single lane dual carriageway.

If it's now a single carriageway, and it's "national speed limit", there is one of those for a single carriageway... and that's not 70mph...

On 26/06/2019 at 19:09, Tom F said:

I had a good chat with @BritishGypsum4 earlier. We were discussing my WTT/ Layout sequence and the variety of stock I can portray. Our attention turned to BR locos. Although the NWR looked on the 'R' being Railway....it was technically the sixth region of British Railways, and BR had running rights onto Sodor. To quote Awdry himself in Book 12 'The Eight Famous Engines' referencing trains working onto the NWR.

 

'Lots of people travelled to the big station at the end of the line. Engines from the 'Other Railway' sometimes pulled their trains. These engines stay the night, and go home next day'

 

Hence follows a heated debate between Gordon, Duck and a Patriot from the LMR.

 

This is referencing passenger trains, but it's fair to say this ruling would also cover goods trains. It's fair to say engines from Barrow (4Fs, 8Fs etc) would possibly work in on a fairly regular basis. This should prove an interesting juxtaposition when one compares the BR fleet's black liveries with the colourful appearances of the NWR fleet.

The following talk about the Patriot was interesting... but did anyone else notice that Duck appears to have gained a leading bogie in this picture...??

16 hours ago, 57xx said:

 

I wonder who will be the first person on the equator to get a speeding ticket for doing 1000mph?

Not the equator, Bloodhound (the, hopefully, +1000mph car) will be trying for the record at Hakskeen Pan in Northern Cape, South Africa...

3 hours ago, PatB said:

It's pretty remarkable to think that her father was born into an era when pretty much the highest technology was the long case clock, and before the first primitive steam locomotives started to lurch their way around colliery tramways, but she still lived to see a man set foot on the moon. The modern world sprang into being rather quickly, didn't it. 

It has been longer from the first spaceflight till now, than it was from the first airplane flight until the first spaceflight...

50 minutes ago, billbedford said:

There is also the problem that tidal stations give pulses of power four times a day six and a half hours apart. So they will still need fossil fuel back-ups.

Not quite, because tides don't go straight out and then stay out till they come back in. They go continiously out, and once at their min, start coming straight back in. So the water is forever either flowing out, or flowing in. And the lagoon type plans retain water, and allow it out at a slower rate than the natural tide to keep the flow going through the turbines until the returning water is enough to generate electricity & refill the lagoon.

could be worse... the Heathrow expansion was proposed three years before HS2... at least they've made a start to HS2...

11 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

So why has there been so much trouble getting the tidal Swansea version approved?

 

the £1.3bn price tag probably had something to do with that... though there is a new proposal in the works that comes in 30% cheaper, and with 10,000 homes...

or, and hear me out, members of the general public could obey the rules... it isn't hard not to be hit by a train...

Two from a trip to Scotland I took last month.

The first is an unidentified DMU heading south, away from Rannock station

The second is an unidentifed 66, heading south through the Cairngorms

When I was shooting the Scottish field champs last month (wow, only a month ago), I was talking about HS2 with one of the chaps in my shooting group. When I explained that the 'getting there 20 minutes faster' was only a fringe benefit, & explained about the increasing capacity, increasing frequency of semi-fast on the current west coast mainline his response was, "well, why don't they (HS2) ever mention any of this? I was kinda against it as a waste of money, but now I can see why they need it"

Personally, I'm starting to wonder if the HS2 publicity department has been infiltrated by the StopHS2 crowd...

5 hours ago, pH said:

 

Absolutely not, unless they change the rules. Presidents must be born in the US of A.

Not true, Ted Cruz was a Republican nominee in 2016, and was born in Calgary, Canada... "natural born" has been opened up to include being born to American parents.

meanwhile in Germany... it wasn't until they were give high-fives between the trains that I actually laughed out loud...