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Are you talking about short-term or long-term benefits? Short-term, I suppose the benefits include employing people to plan, oversee and execute the works, rather than paying them Universal Credit. Another might be releasing money into the economy which otherwise mightn't (probably wouldn't!) be. Long-term? It's an infrastucture improvement, which the UK as a country desperately needs. There's the increase in capacity in the railway system, which we're also told we desperately need. Most of the existing railway system has been in existence now for at least 120 years. The original cost estimates, for most, if not all the major trunk rail routes came in way over budget (in the case of the Great Northern, double); should they have not been built?

What I was trying to say is that I know some people who think that all the money will be spent in a single financial year. I'd agree with you that that is a massive inflation; but wasn't the word 'may' used in connection with it. I would assume that with robust cost control, costs can be kept down I think I can remember saying, a few pages back; what will those who would like to make major investments in UK plc, especially after a certain event happens, make of a country that has so little confidence in itself to bring major infrastructure projects, whether publicly or privately, to completion?

There will be people, a lot of them, I suppose, who don't how financing a major engineering project works, because most aren't involved in that sort of thing, especially nowadays. I have encountered some who seem to think the entire budget will be spent in a single financial year, rather than over the lifetime of the project, and cannot see that the costs are in fact quite low when compared to other parts of government spending, even with this latest supposed inflation.

Which reminds me of Gimbert and Nightall at Soham in 1944.

Both. I think there's a binliner uses it, and one or two other trains. The big stumbling block is the single-line bridge over the M60 just down from Denton Island

I thought the tram was being extended from Ashton to Stalybridge. It doesn't go to Stockport at all. at the moment; perhaps an extension of the line from East Didsbury might be the way to go, there.

I would say there that, while the operating companies may make an operating profit, DafT has to guarantee that they do by subsidising them in order that they do, to find franchise bidders. As someone said a couple of years go, DafT outsources the day-to-day running of services, rather than that they are fully privatised. Network Rail is, IMHO, never likely to do so, due to the demands placed upon it, so it needs a payment

Didn't one of these appear in the film Von Ryan's Express?

Wasn't that also one of President Trump's selling points in 2016?

That's what I was on about. I think the general description when I was at college was "Hoop stresses". Yes, it's much easier to press a 2" diameter tube to 600 p.s.i.

Given maximum axle loads in the UK vis-a-vis the USA, I would think that quite possible.

300 p.s.i. must be getting close to the maximum pressure you could get away with with a fire tube boiler that size.

I suppose there were 3 miles or so through Standedge Tunnel

I would say it was the US submarine campaign which brought Japan to its knees. They took very few anti-submarine precautions. At the end of WW", their merchant marine had ceased to exist. Never mind that US submarines also sank 3 aircraft carriers.

THe actual title Forester's book was Brown on Resolution.

Three Corvettes is a very good autobiographical book. Even though I was in the MN and it was 30 years later, I could relate to a some of it. HMS Ulysses is, quite frankly, one of the biggest loads of stinking ordure I've ever read.

Cunningham's remark was made at the time of the Battle of Crete, in 1941, when the army thought the Mediterranian Fleet was going to leave the garrison to its fate. ABC was by general opinion, The Empire's greatest operational admiral of WW2. He had to be, given the odds against him.

Andrew B Cunningham. " It takes 3 years to build a ship; it takes 300 to build a tradition"

Remember, Jesus saves, but Keegan scores on the rebound!

Still got the book!

Looking at the fastenings on both the fishplate and the chair, I'd say that that was shoddy workmanship. Three bolts too short and one too long on the plate, for a start.

This can happen in the UK as well; there is a road nears me (the A62 over Standedge) where drivers have to have their feet close to the brae pedal at all times, due to sheep on the road.

In my 1955 Ian Allan combined it was 4MT. Gresley was wedded to 3-cyliner designs, apart from the J38/J39, which were, IIRC entirely Darlington products.

The V4 was overly complex for what it was though, wasn't it? The B1 was class 5, and the V4 was class 4

I think that was what I was trying to get at. The book in question was a thorough-going look at the LNER 4-6-0 classes; the locos in question were mainly the ex-GC express passenger types, and the later LNER B17/B2, all with comparatively large coupled wheels