RLBH

Railways were looked at, but the cost of the trackbed and the complexity of the switching mechanisms required made the crawler-transporter cheaper overall. You can address that problem by scaling time as well, but then you wind up trying to make an hour's operation happen in 6 minutes 52 seconds, and you have to make all the DCC sound effects go all squeaky.

Agreed, the layouts as presented on TV just left me and SWMBO cold, whilst she was actively rooting for Team Grantham in Heat 5 despite originally dismissing them (sorry LNER4479!) as another bunch of purist rivet-counters. She's perhaps an example of the target market for the show. She wants to see something interesting happening, rather than a branch-line terminus or TMD that looks pretty much identical to every other one except to the cognoscenti. Whether that's steam, modern image, or sci-fi she doesn't much care, but it needs to be modelled well and work properly for her to take any interest. She also loved the crochet trees in Heat 3 and has offered to make me some for my layout! Interestingly, given the above, she also thinks the scratchbuild challenge is a bit ludicrous, but is suitably impressed when the random articles are turned into something appropriate for the layout. There is value in showing that household objects can be turned into scenic items, and some sort of challenge task is a good way to do that whilst putting in some artificial tension. That's probably necessary for a TV show. So far as setting up layouts like some of the GMRC ones at exhibitions goes - I'm sure there are 'traditional' layouts which run a sequence of moves, then reset the fiddle yard to repeat the same sequence again, with demonstrations at fixed times. I can't see why GMRC-style layouts with 'one-shot' animations couldn't work similarly.

You've actually reminded me about this, as I was having doubts about my own track plan. I'm now reassured that both Aberfeldy and Dallas Dhu (just sount of Forres, if anyone cares to look) have the same configuration of sidings as what I have planned.

Massless, yes, but photons still have momentum, and therefore there will be some (though negligible) recoil.

Unfortunately, recorders don't buy teabags, or holidays, or whatever else they're trying to flog. I'm not sure how the market research people distinguish between people who watch live, and people who record to watch later, but they evidently do. What I've noticed is that when you watch on demand through a Sky box, you can fast forward through the commercials. But the cannier channels have a reduced number of them in the on-demand version, sometimes only one or two, so that by the time you've picked up the remote, fast forwarded, missed the programme starting back, rewound, and so forth, it's easier just to watch them.

I first came across the term 'rivet counter' on a model aircraft forum, where it was pretty clear that it referred to the sort of person who gets very wound up about whether a Messerschmitt Bf-109E-7/U2 had 112 rivets, or just 111, along the wing leading edge, in spite of the fact that rivets on an aircraft are difficult to see at 12 inches to the foot scale, and all but invisible at any smaller scale. Or indeed insist that the paint used on the model must be mixed in precisely the same way as the prototype paint, totally ignoring the fact that the 'correct' paint may look totally wrong when viewed at 1:72 scale under fluorescent light in an exhibition hall. Certainly, if the real thing has ten rivets, one expects to see that number. But if there are nine or eleven, and the model is convincing, that is surely not so great a sin? As far as Tony's 0-6-0T goes, I'm reminded of the mathematician who, on looking out of the window of a train to Aberdeen, remarked that 'in Scotland, there exists at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black'!

And only very rarely is it the sort of cake that someone would produce at home for the purpose of eating. They have all sorts of gimmicks that make for an entertaining competition. Naturally the gimmicks are rather different, because baking cakes is not the same as building model railways. Maybe you could make an acceptable programme about 'real' railway modelling using the Grand Designs format. I have a hard time seeing it being nearly as successful as GMRC, and the production company would still find some way to add artificial pressure or gimmickry. For what it's worth, my wife is pretty ambivalent about model railways, but enjoys GMRC; the winning layout from last year was the only thing she had any interest in at the Glasgow show. It's arguably Series 1 that moved her from active disinterest to mere ambivalence.

It's a direct equivalent to the Powell 2-8-4T from Living with London Midland Locomotives, in fact.

Which is of course why I suggested the 2-8-2 as the most natural 'extra' Austerity. The Austerity 2-8-0 and 0-6-0T were direct equivalents, in form and function, to the S160 and S100 respectively. It's reasonably plausible to imagine an equivalent to the S200 built for service overseas, although the chances of them actually running on British metals seem slim except perhaps as a novelty on a preserved line. As far as the Class 4 goes - yes, I have a hard time seeing that as anything other than a Q1 or an Ivatt 2-6-0, with suitable simplification.

The Austerity 4-6-0 is an interesting, and obvious, thought, suggestive of the occasional 'Railways of Nineteen Eighty-Four' discussion. And one that prompts thoughts of other Austerities - but what? The obvious one is a 2-8-2 comparable to the USATC S200, on the presumption that the UK had to built locomotives for the work domestically rather than getting lend-lease. Intended for use in the Middle East, but built to the British loading gauge for practical reasons. As, in fact, were the S200s, although they never actually ran in the UK as far as I know. General freight would suggest a need for a Class 4F 0-6-0 or maybe a mixed traffic 2-6-0, with possibly an 0-8-0 heavy shunting tank to make up trains for the big Austerity 2-8-2. And that, I think, would be the lot. Certainly no need for such extravagances as express Pacifics on an Austerity railway. With the need for austerity being foremost, the little branch lines needing Class 2 locomotives to handle their light traffic will no doubt be closed 'for the duration' and served more efficiently by some combination of 15cwt and 30cwt lorries and motor buses.

There is a story that during a particularly prolonged strike, a Soviet diplomat remarked to his British counterpart that they usually resolved such issues by sending in the security forces and having those who were refusing to give way shot. The British man pointed out that such an approach wouldn't work in Britain. If you shot management, the workers would hold out hoping you'd shoot a few more. If you shot the workers, management would hold out until you'd reduced their wage bill a bit more. We could always magic up our own money if needed, although the advisability of doing so is debated. Magicing up other people's money isn't such an easy trick, and the Americans wanted their loans paid back in dollars. It's very clear from the history books that anything which had to be paid for in dollars would only be bought if absolutely necessary, whilst anything which could be sold for dollars would be.

I think the logic of the V4 wasn't so much getting extra power, as getting extra ashpan capacity to keep going with poorer-quality coal and more air to help with combustion/draughting. It doesn't seem to have been a bad locomotive, just one that missed out when Thompson replaced Gresley. That suggests that there might be some sense in doing one as a BR Standard.

In fact, a Coronation with a 385 ton train balances at about 42mph on 1 in 75 - to beat that, you need to mortgage the boiler or trade off momentum for height. Which of course you do, in practice, since very few gradients on the British railway network are long and steep enough that you can't do one or both of those. A Class 87 electric, with twice the power at half the weight, balances at 83mph on the same train. To match that with a Duchess, you could only have a trailing load of 28 tons - which might be enough for the dynamometer car and some technical staff, but certainly nothing earning revenue.

Feeding that back into the resistance calculations linked above - that's a 350 ton train, i.e. ten coaches, and drawbar power. Add another 4.85hp per ton of locomotive, assuming you're on the level. As soon as you start adding hills to the equation, it all becomes much more difficult. A 1-in-200 gradient takes the drawbar power needed for a 350 ton train to do 70mph from 836 horsepower to 1,584 horsepower - and another 2.1 horsepower for each ton of locomotive!

My view on these is that one can allow one such event on a 'serious' layout. Maybe a second if it's large. Unusual, spectacular and extreme events do happen, some of them on a daily basis - a pub fight on a bucolic 1930s GWR branch line might be out of place, while it might be amiss not to have on a 1970s urban layout. Above all, at an exhibition the operator should not point out, in great detail, every single cameo on the layout, whether mundane or exceptional. This happened to me at one exhibition, and afterwards I was totally unable to enjoy it! The best ones I've seen, at least in terms of engaging families, have tended to be along the lines of 'there are X number of Y animal on this layout, how many can you find?' If, of course, the layout is being built at home for personal entertainment and nothing else, feel free to do whatever you like. A variation of Rule One seems applicable here.

I have thoughts in the opposite direction - a standardised Deltic with Class 50 ends.

A distinct likelihood; Beeching was a big fan of electrification. In The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes he recommended that the CLC route from Manchester to Liverpool be developed in preference to the Liverpool & Manchester Railway route in part because of the possibility of extending the Manchester-Sheffield-Wath electrification.

Freightliner, block trains, merry-go-round coal trains, InterCity - all originated in The Reshaping of British Railways. The basic idea was for British Railways to stop competing with road transport in areas where rail couldn't win. That meant losing many branch lines where an empty train ran all day and the passengers caught the bus, and giving up on wagonload traffic that could be more economically worked by trucks. His thoughts on road traffic (and remember that at the time, road haulage was also nationalised) are quite interesting, too, but as Chairman of the British Railways Board, he had little to no influence over it. He wasn't opposed to subsidising socially necessary services, provided these were suitably defined, but thought that it was foolish to subsidise both bus and train services where the two were in competition. Since he had no control over bus policy, the railways suffered the worst of it. A lot of his thinking was actually very modern: see, for example, this quote: "In fact, in the cities, private transport is destroying public transport and is in a fair way to destroying itself as well." The real shame is that someone like Beeching wasn't chairman of the British Transport Commission in 1947, with the authority to consider rail and road transport as one. Dragging us back to imaginary locomotives - a Beeching-like review at that time, say released in 1951, would no doubt lead to some interesting traction choices. Presumably there'd be no BR Standard steam locomotives, and no Type 1 diesels, but perhaps earlier dieselisation?

Of course, the difference between this and the railway wagon situation is that we optimise for the trunk haul and try to force oversized vehicles over inadequate infrastructure, the railways took the other path and did the trunk haul in vehicles that would fit the infrastructure. The equivalent would be replacing every articulated lorry with four or five vans! Such musings still leave me with the vision of a Fowler Compound 2-8-2 dragging a train of LMS 40-ton side-emptying hoppers down to Brent Sidings. There are about a dozen reasons why this wouldn't happen, but it's a pleasant thought anyway.

It is of note, here, that the NER was able to work slightly differently for much of its' coal traffic, with railway-owned hoppers transporting coal from the collieries to what were - in effect - an early form of coal concentration depots, and to the export ports. As a result, they standardised on larger hopper wagons, and even had bogie hoppers running on some flows. Even there, small collieries dictated that the humble 9-foot wheelbase four-wheel wagon was required, but the NER was able to persuade the larger collieries at least to fit loading equipment that could handle better wagons. See also the GCR's notions of running trainloads of 40-ton bogie coal wagons (though not hoppers!) from Wath to Immingham behind a gigantic American-inspired 2-10-2 or 2-10-4, or the handful of side-emptying hoppers built by the LMS to supply their own power station. That coal wasn't being handled efficiently wasn't due to the railways not knowing how to do it, they were perfectly willing and able to do so when opportunity presented itself.

There are similar reports that the Atlantic Conveyor would have sunk even without an Argentine anti-ship missile, due to the weight of equipment that was aboard. Since it was wartime, and packed in a hurry, the manifest wasn't 100% accurate. Everybody knew this was the case As a result, virtually every bit of missing kit in every unit in the Army, Navy and Air Force for some years afterward was claimed to have been on the Atlantic Conveyor, and no audit could prove otherwise.

Depends very much on the impurities! For professional reasons I had cause a few years ago to look into ways of making water heavier - there are chemicals out there which will make a pint of 'water' weigh about four and a half pounds, although at great expense. And potentially making it toxic. Shifting a milk churn of mere ordinary water by hand would make a modern health-and-safety person wince, but needn't be prohibitively difficult if two chaps who've had their Weetabix are on hand. Or one who's had double helpings. If need be, a sack truck could probably be found to take the worst of the weight.

I'm not entirely convinced that one hand knew what its fingers were doing, much less the other hand! That was more or less the LMR's opinion of the prototype Deltic. Great performance, come back to us when it doesn't cost a fortune to run.

Technically, Duke of Gloucester is an 8MT, if you crunch the numbers. Most of the big Pacifics were; freight rating in BR days was based purely on adhesive weight and tractive effort, of which express passenger locomotives had plenty. I have seen a theory that someone was envisaging thirty-odd sisters to Duke of Gloucester to replace the Kings. Makes sense on the face of it, they must have been the oldest top-line express passenger locomotives on BR at the time.

Feedwater heaters using exhaust gases are used on pretty much every non-rail steam plant, but not the exhaust steam element of a Franco-Crosti boiler. That's because of the different constraints on landbased and marine boilers - there's plenty of space for extra tubes to heat the feedwater, but the plants invariably run condensing so there's no meaningful exhaust steam.