Regularity

Still around today, but more likely to be seen as “Rules” and “Guidance”. The former is mandatory, the latter isn’t.

Not all Cavaliers were reckless, and not all Roundheads were puritanical. Many of the Lords fought on the side of Parliament, and many commoners stood for the King. Our usual attitudes are way off beam, and just stereotypes. When it came down to it, it was still about an affluent educated elite ruling the country, not the majority of the people. When soldiers banded together to carry things on to the logical conclusion, and to enfranchise at least half of the adult population (they were not enlightened enough to want the vote for women!) they were taken aside and shot… Most people just did what they were told.

‘S why we have laws: individuals decide that the accepted norms of behaviour don’t apply to them. If you are going to be pedantic about regnal numbers, it starts the other way round (King of Scotland before he became King of England) and also has another I, as the Crown of England had been imposed upon Ireland. So, James VI, I and I…

Sctachbuilt, based on the one-off conversion of an open wagon made in the “workshops” of the Mid Suffolk Light Railway.

The EWJR, when it resumed passenger services in the 1880s had a two-tone livery in the usual format, moving in the early noughties to “cream” waist panels only (about the time it became the SMJR) and then, when it supplanted its coaching stock with second hand vehicles from the Midland, went to full over crimson lake (1910). “If all the young ladies who attended the Yale promenade dance were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised.” - Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), noted wit and feminist. Rag mags used to take quotes, and remove the attribution and sometimes the context, in the name of a cheap laugh, sometimes aggravating people who (without them understanding the context, either) view the remark as offensive/sexist. Then there are the arguments, etc, claims of picking on subgroups, insensitivity, countered by “it’s all for charity” (doesn’t excuse genuinely trying to be offensive) and failure of a sense of humour, etc. All this happens in ignorance, at supposed centres of learning. Don’t know if it’s still like that, but I remember it being like that in the 80s.

I thought that was summer!

True, but I think that a tenuous grip on reality is quite possibly a sign of high intelligence - and sense enough to hide here away from the “real” outside world.

When I saw the photo, before reading the text, I wondered how you had gone about so effectively representing the results of some rough shunting, and marvelled at your bravery for gouging bits out…

No, it’s an oxymoron. A true fact is a tautology, which is saying the same thing twice in two different ways. (See what did there?)

Are you using an iPhone? If so, then the orientation of the phone when taking a photo is recorded with the image file. To sort this out, open the photos for editing, make a minor change such as cropping or rotating the image through 4 right angles, and the photo should be automatically saved in your photo stream and be the right way round when you upload it.

Or, in model form:

No one here is that dim as to feel expected to do that in a thread about a fictional railway serving locations loosely based on reality. Well, I hope they aren’t. But I also think of this topic (and the pregrouping forum generally) as being somewhat “above” the standards of everyday social media, otherwise, why bother with RMWeb at all: we could just go over to Facebook.

Which companies with red brake van [ends] are these? How are they known? ”Almost universal” would suggest either a shared practice, a recommendation, or limited legislation. But that’s not the point: you said it was a requirement (regulatory or legal, it amounts to the same if it is to be enforceable). I am not disagreeing with you, it’s just that I hadn’t heard of this before and want to know where and when it happened, and if various clauses for smaller journeys applied, and why it appears that some railways (not always smaller ones) didn’t do this. You didn’t assert about a “practice”: you asserted about something legally enforceable, so tell us where we can find this reference - not so much for you to be able to prove you are right, but so that we can digest it and improve our understanding of railway operations in the pregrouping era.

That’s Running very smoothly.

Well, last time I saw him, he had a big red beard, and it was from their red hair that Nordic settlers from what we now call Sweden gave their name to various peoples in the area: the land of the reds, (Rus). He might be Kievan-Rus, rather than Muscovite-Rus, of course, which puts a different spin on it all…

Ok. But that still leaves the question unanswered: Where is the evidence of this regulation you mentioned in your assertion? I am not disagreeing with you, nor discussing whether or not people commented on something that was common practice. You made an assertion about a regulatory requirement which was news to most of us, and you were asked to supply evidence of it. If diversion and distraction is your only answer to this request, was your assertion just supposition?

I always thought the bigger problem was when “big” engines turned out to not perform noticeably better than the locos it replaced, due to a little bit of misunderstanding about boiler and firebox proportions, such as on the LNWR, leading to the famous remark by Churchward to his committee about, “Mine might cost more, but two of mine will pull three of theirs backwards.”

They had lost their charm by then. Boring dome, smaller cab windows. They had been a bit of a problem ever since they were bought (when the “Other Swindon Railway” ordered 3 but could only pay for one). Rather heavy and a tad lumpy at the back, they would have run well enough on decent permanent way, but the EWJR was mostly laid with materials recovered from the contractor, and it was permanent in so far as it stayed that way until the reorganisation into the SMJR had acquired the Northampton and Banbury, and robbed its slightly better (bullhead rail!) track for use on the EWJR “mainline”. It was still secondhand inside-keyed bullhead track, of a light weight, but better than the worn out (rusting away in places) indifferent track of the Erratic and Wandering Journey… There was, it is rumoured, a story of one of these ending up in China, but not seen any evidence of it! For those who wonder what the earlier version looked like:

Well, I hope not but you never know, but why do people feel the need to post hearsay and anecdotes at all? It’s like my apocryphal story beats hard science anyday…

I think he improved with time, though:

Two things there. Firstly, that’s a specific antibiotic, known to be ok, and secondly, as you say, you looked it up. In the case of medicines, rule 1 is, look it up, and rule 2 is, don’t generalise.

This range of colours is so vague that three contemporaneous reports of the EWJR describe the coaches being painted in “off-white and lake”, and then go on to describe the latter colour as being like that used by the LNWR, GWR and MR! Also, was it really “off-white”? That could be anywhere from white, with slight yellowing of the varnish, to a pale cream… Photos of the time don’t help, of course. Not seen evidence of red ends on brake vans, though. And no passenger trains ran 20 miles without stopping, so even if this mooted “regulation” was in place, not for them. I would love to see evidence of this assertion, though.

Very true. Funnily enough, by one of those coincidences, this was highlighted this morning on Radio 4, in episode 2 of “Empire of Pain”. Legal counsel was described as essentially taking two forms in corporate America: those who say “This is what you must do, and this is what you are allowed to do. Anything else, you check with me.” And those who say, “Let me see what we can get away with - tell me what you want to do, and I will find loopholes.” The example of the latter was brilliantly demonstrated by the character of Tom Hagan in “The Godfather”. The other thing regulators like is being able to measure things, and then the measurements became the sole means of assessing compliance and performance. Witness school league tables, based on “results” but with no mention of values in the tables.

That’s an incredibly dangerous and irresponsible post to make, and also conjecture based on hearsay. There are many forms of antibiotics, and whilst some might be ok with a reasonable amount of alcohol, most of them aren’t: they can, amongst other things, act as carriers taking alcohol into parts of the brain and other organs from alcohol is usually kept away: this can be destructive. Some antibiotics are administered as “ant-abuse”, to deter alcoholics from drinking because they can react with the alcohol and make you think you are dying - as well as increasing heartbeat, etc. I know this latter to be true, because 20 years ago I experienced it. I was prescribed it by a dentist, who did not warn me about why not to drink, merely that i shouldn’t. My then wife had told me about this risk, and warned me not to have any alcohol whatsoever. Unfortunately, something I ate either had something fermented in it, or a touch of alcohol, and I spent an uncomfortable 3 hours expecting my aorta to explode. It’s not that the antibiotics don’t work when combined with alcohol, it’s more usually the case that nasty side-effects can happen.

The house I live in (completed in 1901) has a damp course of slate.