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1 minute ago, doilum said:

Are there any shoddy mills lenft in the UK?

On Manchester MRCs Dewsbury Midland layout. I think the actual building still survives

2 minutes ago, lanchester said:

In a different area, I believe RJ Mitchell used to do much the same thing at Supermarine. But at least if you do this in the drawing office there is a chance that changes are properly recorded. A quick redesign on the shop floor is not such a good idea.

Fairly standard practice in any D.O. There is usually a large amount of feedback both ways between the draffies and the engineers. Even on CAD, the top of the drawing sheet usually has the exhortation "If in doubt, ask"

The two at Woodhead are near the site of Crowden station. In the first one, the road on the right turned sharp right behind your back, across Woodhead dam, and then rises to join the A628. In the second, about the only thing still there is the farmhouse above the railway!

15 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

There's more than few designers come unstuck when trying to produce an enlarged version of a successful design, as in enlarging a 4-4-0 into a 4-6-0, through failing to realise bigger boilers mean nothing if the valve openings constrain the steam flow. The Caledonian's Cardeans come to mind, impressive compared to the Dunalastairs but not actually much better.

 

Jim 

Not just that, Jim; things like fitting an adequate grate and ashpan in the space above the axle of large-diameter coupled wheels as well. Especially as boiler became larger, too. Would you say that most superintendents were caught out by the increase in the weight of passenger trains, and the almost sudden requirement for much larger locomotives as result?

3 hours ago, John Harris said:

With regard to the comments about the stations, I have to say that the Crossrail work done on my local station has been done tastefully and sympathetically, keeping some elements of the old LNER design.

 

The biggest problems were the delays caused by the archived plans not actually matching the reality of the site.

 

jh

Speaking as a former designer, I'd say that that was par for the course!

6 minutes ago, montyburns56 said:

 

Wasn't it actually called Oldham Clegg St though or was that something else?

Yes it was. There was a large amount of mail order traffic at one time from Oldham.

Have they just left that dumpy level there?

1 minute ago, Metr0Land said:

 

Maybe not, but the current lynch mobs who are going around trying to tear down any and every statue they can find an excuse for, aren't asking the rest of us for a considered opinion either.  Plus ca change.....

In the case of the one in Bristol, they have been, for the last three or four years at least. But the Council of the Merchant Venturers, which still has a lot of clout in Bristol, have more or less torpedoed it. If Liverpool can do it, why can't Bristol?

8 hours ago, fezza said:

There is a lot of nonsense going on at the moment.

 

Slavery did help fund the early development of the British Empire and that was not the best chapter in our history.  But without the Empire, we would have been a weak state offshore from Germany.  We may have lost in 1914.  We'd  certainly have been invaded in 1940 and there would have been no Empire to help us out in the subsequent struggle against the fascists.  We'd probably be speaking German now under the most evil regime the world has ever known.  I don't have to tell you what would have happened to those who weren't white.   Bottom line is that the Empire was crucial in saving parliamentary democracy, as well as spreading it to many parts of the world.

 

People need to focus on building good race relations and treating each other better today.  Too many on the left and right just want to use history to stir up trouble.

Really? If people didn't go around empire-building, perhaps there wouldn't be so much of the competition that leads to catastrophic events such as the two world wars. Here's a little nugget for you; the Lancashire textile industry, which took off after about 1810, relied almost exclusively on slave-grown cotton from the southern states of the USA, until 1861, when the supply disappeared overnight. That cotton, transported around the empire, destroyed, in one example the domestic textile industry in India. One philosopher has pointed out that the people who actually manufactured the cotton only differed from slaves in that they weren't bought or sold; but they were, and are, just as disposable

On western parliamentary democracy; you mean like the one where even in 1914 in the UK, only 40% of adults had the vote (not just women; there were certain male workers who still couldn't vote)? Did anyone actually ask the peoples of Africa, India and Asia whether they wanted this democracy? Or the other things that went with it? Most of our former colonies appear to be one party states, and some of them quite oppressively run, for the benefit of Western and Chinese corporations

The one marked "Somewhere on the GW" has upper-quadrant signals throughout, and the one facing the camera has a lattice post. Is that a football ground Floodlight pylon on the right? If so, I reckon it's somewhere near Burnden Junction, Bolton

14 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Super Servant 4 

A heavy lift vessel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Palma de Mallorca this morning (Monday 9th June).......

 

 

  

 

"Go on, son; open the valve"

"Which valve, chief?"

"Any F*****g valve1"

Re-Rainhill; you can't have been that far from where my brother and I were

No, I meant between, say Calvert and Bletchley

On 02/06/2020 at 16:23, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Yes, that's another aspect of history that may need revising for my purposes.

 

Manchester MRS modelled their Dewsbury as North Eastern Region. And why not? I like the tangerine signage.

 

But it seems to me that if the West Riding Lines had been built, BR would have divvied up the boundaries slightly differently and moved it to just north of Royston, so Dewsbury and Bradford (Forster Square) would have remained with the LMR. 

That's because, in the late 50s, most of the lines in the West Riding became part of the NE region. The boundary on the Standege route was, IIRC the Northerly tunnel portal

While we're getting some excellent coverage of what's happening around Bletchley, is there anything going on anywhere else along the route?

22 hours ago, Reorte said:

 

The development of the three masted ship rig maybe? And the techniques to build ships of that size routinely? Just a guess though, I don't know just what impact that would've made (must've been some to have developed though).

We'd had the three-masted rig for at least a hundred years by the 18th century; in fact, most vessels still had two (brigs and brigantines).

Dillard and Clark: Southbound Train

16 hours ago, pH said:

 

There definitely was a topic on this, but it appears to have been on an earlier version of the site.

 

Some suggestions:

 

Play a Train Song - Todd Snider

Texas Eagle - Steve Earle

Dixie Flyer - Randy Newman

The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore - Johnny Cash

She Caught the Katy (And Left Me a Mule to Ride) - Blues Brothers

Southern Streamline - John Fogerty

Southern Pacific - Neil Young

All the songs from 'The Ballad of John Axon' - https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-ballad-of-john-axon-mw0000243698

Oh, yes! A groundbreaking programme

"The last train to Blackpool" by Stanley Accrington - another folkie. Very poignant.

C3532: You don't often see outside link motion.

1 hour ago, juggy0_1 said:

I always read this thread with interest but admit to little knowledge of ships, one thing I've always wondered is do ship actually have sea cocks ?.. I've seen them being opened to scuttle a ship in an old war film, my question is, why would ships have them as their only purpose is to sink them surely ??

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

I'll make an assumption that seacocks were part of the seawater cooling circuit for the steam condensers to feed fresh water back to the boilers.  There would be valves to cut the seawater off for maintenance and if the pipework were removed and the valves opened then the ship would be flooded...

 

I await correction!

Generally correct; on the suction side of the main sea water circulating pump would be a pipe coming from the ship side, with a valve attached, in theory at least, to a branch on the ship's hull. Branched into this was the emergency bilge suction, with a normally closed valve. If you had a serious water incursion into the engine-room the two valves could regulated to keep the level from becoming dangerous, or to allow the water to be cleared. On some ships, these valves could be seriously large; 20",24" or larger pipes weren't uncommon. These valves could take a while to open and/or close if they were manually operated. It was the inability of the crew to open the emergency bilge valve at all, and to close the ship side valve when the main condenser suction pipe burst, that caused the loss of the s.s. British Ambassador in early 1975. She was a fully laden 42 000 ton tanker

1 hour ago, 43110andyb said:

 

BR did a good job of fooling the public into thinking there was no loss of capacity! They steadily dropped off the loading from 7 (BG, FK, 5 TSO typically) down to around 5 if I remember rightly.

    It had to happen at some point I guess but I still miss the diesel hauled TP’s.

I think the original spec was BG, FO, 7 x SO for the Newcastles, and 6 x SO for the Yorks, but, as you said the number of carriages gradually reduced; I think they ended up with 4, hauled by a 31. That said, in 1980, the service had to be improved as people deserted the railway for the M62; and it was an improvement. Prior to that, we had LHCS to Newcastle every 2 hours, with the Trans-pennine units doing the other hour to Hull

It's in a few of the photos around Plawsworth . You can see it for miles in any direction.

13 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

Coffin sticks rather than loopy juice*.

 

Benson & Hedges.

 

https://www.imperialtobaccocollection.co.uk/gallahers--ariel-bh-cadets-du-maurier-nelson-olivier-park-drive-senior-service-silk-cut-sterling.html#

 

 

*I remember Double Diamond and it had a worse reputation than Stella. 

 

 

 

Jason

You must have heard the Watneys joke

29 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

It seems that the wrong minister has resigned!

To be fair, the other one we are allegedly talking about is not a minister.