Bittern

17 hours ago, Pandora said:

30 cwt of fuel oil in a steam  locomotive firebox needed to to save 20 cwt of locomotive coal,  but 20cwt of fuel oil in a diesel locomotive saved 100 cwt of locomotive coal,

It wasn't quite as silly as that makes it sound, since converting the steam loco fleet could be done for much less time and money than scrapping them and building whole new locos. Also cracking wasn't as well developed so an oil-fired steam loco could in principle use cheaper low-grade fuel, and because oil left less ash theoretically locos could keep running longer and you'd need fewer locos and cleaners. In principle it could have still saved money, especially if higher utilisation had allowed them to scrap older locos, and it might have allowed single-manning  on lighter duties (so it was strange that they didn't convert small tank engines too), at a time when there was a shortage of warm bodies, let alone skilled workers. Of course, those "theoretically"s and "in principle"s are doing a lot of heavy lifting, and it didn't work out in practice, but it was worth a try, and if they hadn't I'm sure we'd be here asking why they didn't try to make better use of the already paid for steam fleet with things like oil firing.

It was still a bad idea to cancel the LNER diesels  though, for all the reasons people have said.

So long as the contact wire starts above the maximum pan height and slopes down gently enough, it should be OK. 

5 hours ago, BlackFivesMatter said:

Why were the blue Pullman's not adopted and subject to less success? There were issues with rail unions- I do not know what why or how.

ISTR reading (probably in Ian Beattie's article on the blue pullmans, so IDK if it is any more accurate than his drawings sometimes were) that the issue was about the difference in pay and conditions between BR catering staff and Pullman (UK) staff, even though Pullman had been nationalised in 1948 and had been a BR subsidiary before being fully absorbed. I can't remember ever reading which way round the difference was.

9 hours ago, lmsforever said:

The RMT seem to inhabit a world different to that of the rest of us

I get the impression (as an outsider) that in part they are just trying to push up wages and conditions as high as possible before the inevitable redundancies and de-skilling - get while the getting is good, and make sure the baseline for negotiating the redundancy cheque is as big as possible when it comes. It's not great for the industry, but there's no way the industry as currently structured can guarantee jobs (let alone career progression) for many RMT members if they just accept the changes, so I can hardly blame them for that strategy. Paying them off in a lump sum would probably be the best available  "whole railway" solution, and might be cheaper for the treasury than the disruption caused by fighting RMT on the Southern, but it wouldn't suit the incumbent operator (who'd prefer to pay a bit and then pass the problem on to their successors) or the government (for obvious political reasons).

On 22/10/2021 at 12:38, Ken.W said:

Yes it was about 1982  and until then first gen DMUs didn't have electric tail lamps

ISTR that the 4-wheel railbuses had electric tail lights from new, but that in at least  one class they were both switched together. Having both on was a violation of the rules, because it counted as having two tail lamps, and somewhere I read  an anecdote of a signalman who would stop one every time it passed. I don't know if the solution was a local rule or just not using the electric lamps and using an oil lamp instead..

A good example is the side windows on the HST cabs, and the two-seat cabs (that was, IIRC, one of the reasons ASLEF blacked the APT-E).

As I understand some buffers push water, or oil, through a series of baffles, so it absorbs energy gradually. Think of the resistance when pushing down a coffee plunger.

On 02/10/2021 at 23:50, Northmoor said:

They never stated how they were going to buy all the rolling stock though; a very effective way of spending a few billion without actually building a single new vehicle (effectively just changing the name on the ownership document).

AIUI the plan was that new stock would be bought by BR/DfT directly (after all, doing all government borrowing as part of the national debt rather than commercial loans by assorted contractors was a key part of McDonnell's platform, and probably the least controversial) and that given those lower financing costs the ROSCOs and existing SPVs would need to reconsider their pricing (as happened with the 707s).

I think some people wanted a new BREL/AEC, which might have made sense if the other policies about  catching up to the rest of Europe on improved urban transport had been firm policies instead of vague ambitions (since it would need a huge amount of production of trams and metro carriages relative to the existing European market, to make up for buying hardly any for decades), but that wasn't part of the party platform. Instead I gather the expectation was that they'd be buying loads of 745s and 755s, or failing that 80x and 70x units, at least at first.

On the question of regions and their abbreviations, what does the "GE" prefix on this Mk1 mean? The caption refers to "Great Eastern lines", but I thought GE remained part of the ER until the Anglia region was created.

On 12/09/2021 at 23:18, The Johnster said:

The Scottish also went in for Caley blue backgrounds on some locos.

I've seen 1960s photos of LMR locos with maroon backgrounds, and sometimes white lining on the numberplate, which tends to look like parentheses. 

On 15/09/2021 at 03:55, fezza said:

That's true but there was a distinction between local DMU livery (blue) and intercity DMU livery (blue/grey) and yet we know intercity DMUs could often be found on local services and vice versa. 

Overall blue was originally used for non—gangwayed compartment stock, NPCCS, and anything powered. It was decided to paint intercity DMUs in blue/grey for marketing reasons, but then the 4TCs were blue because they counted as EMUs that happened to not have a motor car. (Similarly the double arrows were only applied to locos and MUs.) B/G seems to have spread across EMUs faster than DMUs.

On 11/08/2021 at 19:49, Zomboid said:

I think my ideal would be a system type layout, where I'd have the full length of a light railway or US style short line, where I'd then run the daily mixed train, stopping to shunt the various industries and sidings along the way.

 

I think that would be highly unpopular at an exhibition though, with one train pottering around on a 60' layout...

There was a very long model of the Hayling branch, which modelled from the edge of Havant to the end of the line. It made various appearances in the 1990s (IIRC I saw it in 1995 and 1996 in straighter arrangements, and possibly in 1999 or 2000), but mostly at local history or community events rather than model railway shows.  Apparently it was given to Hampshire Museums but I don't know if it still exists.

This image illustrates what the motor poles are in a 3-pole motor - a five pole motor is the same concept but has five coils. More poles gives a smoother torque, all else being equal, though you'd be hard-pushed too get a 7-pole motor into an n-scale body.

On 18/06/2021 at 16:29, russ p said:

 

Prior to 82 the only train to show two reds was a Royal train

My pet hate with lightning on model locos is pre 82 ones showing two reds

I  vaguely recall a story in RM about an early railcar (probably one of the four-wheel rail buses) on a  branchline (Seaton, perhaps?) which had two red tail lights on a single switch and so the junction signalman would stop it every time it passed. I can't remember whether the solution was a rule change or an extra switch.

On 20/06/2021 at 23:10, The Johnster said:

Many of the Cyril Freezer plans using gradients look very difficult to build accurately and successfully within the space he claims, and while they are theoretically possible I doubt that many of them have ever been successfullly built and operated; you do not see them at shows or featured in magazine articles. 

I suspect they worked better with the relatively coarse wheel  standards, more flexible chassis, and so on commonly used  when he drew most of those plans. 

The B side is more commonly used as the viewing side because

• you get easier access to uncouple arriving locos
• you can see the carriage underframes, canopy details, and so on more easily.
• potentially more interesting  buildings along the approach road.

The A side can work very effectively, especially on a sprawling country station where you have room to model the station forecourt and so on. One of the attractions of such stations is that they can be quite pretty (especially in a somewhat idealised model), and the A-side allows some classic scenes to be emulated.

If you're modelling a  location on a hillside, it is normal to model from the downhill side for better visibility and because it makes a convincing back scene easier.