DenysW

Never really used. Ft-lb, yes, as in 550 ft-lb-wt/sec = 1 hp.

I think you should write them a very strong letter pointing out that the latest, environmentally sound, practices - as shown in the UK by HS2 - are to put at least 50% of the transport route into tunnels. This gives effective wild-life crossings AND stops casual (=non-paying) users of the permanent way from ski-ing under the cars.

Possibly a legend. When we lived in New South Wales we were told that death from Fierce Snake bites (the most venomous of all - also possibly a legend) also entirely happened to people who went looking for Fierce Snakes.

As a bit of an afterthought ... If you really wanted to design a 150 mph steam engine, then the least-wrong answer is probably a big-boiler 4-2-2 "single" with a turbine to eliminate the problems with reciprocating engines, and prepare to tolerate the fact that the biggest boiler that won't destroy the track probably limits you to three or four 40-ton carriages. The "single" eliminates the remaining hammer from connecting rods. I make no claims for efficiency, just speed - a turbine optimised for, say, 125 mph is not going to be thing of beauty on sections of track requiring 50 mph max.

I can only answer for the 1930s real thing, not models. Air resistance only seems to become significant over (roughly) 90 mph, so most of the LNER and LMS streamlining was actually not serving a technical purpose most of the time. It was also apparent that it's not the head-on air resistance that matters, it's the partially-sideways-on wind that messes around with the trains. If the rolling resistance at that time had been addressed by 100% roller bearings on locomotives and carriages then possibly air-resistance would have been more important down to lower speeds. The terminal velocity is where the resistance to movement is equal to the force applied by a combination of the locomotive and gravity (blinding glimpse of the obvious). As the force applied by reciprocating steam engines drops off with velocity due to pressure loss through the valves, it's most likely that this sets the terminal velocity on the flat, and the slope (up or down) sets it otherwise. Better/bigger valves give less pressure drop but don't completely eliminate the effect.

Don't try dual boot. I did (Linux/Microsoft) and it was a real struggle. Then the hard drive had a problem in the boot sector. I got Linux to shuffle itself around onto good sectors, but not Microsoft. I do still use the Ubuntu flavour of Linux because it's so much faster than Microsoft on the internet and on starting-up. I also use that machine away from home because I'm 100% sure it doesn't require the internet (to validate software licences) on start-up.

Yes, agreed. I get off at West Hampstead Thameslink to change on the Overground (formerly the West Hampstead Junction Railway then the North and South Western Junction Railway, then the District/LSWR) to get to Kew. It annoys me that the Bedford->Three Bridges services don't stop at West Hampstead TL to let me off.

In 1852 the GWR and the LNWR were both so stretched, one by debt, the other by over-expansion, as to send a merger proposal to Parliament. That might have driven the B&E into the Midland's arms.

It's generally unhelpful to answer a question with a question, but here goes anyway. Could it be that 3435 had a tender fitted with a tender cab? This is the rationalisation given for rear steps on 4F 3893 (plate 281 in Essery & Jenkinson Vol. 4.

A mostly-frivolous suggestion. What if the Midland had agreed with the Bristol and Exeter to take over the lease (from the heavily-mortgaged GWR) in 1849? This ignores whether the Midland could have afforded it - probably not. Strategy: passengers change at Gloucester and build a trans-shipment goods depot there. Or extend dual-gauge to Birmingham New Street (broad-gauge goods to Curzon Street) if possible (the GWR may have thought it was - I've not looked for comments). The Gloucester to Birmingham seems to have been built using baulk track despite being standard gauge, so the change to mixed might have been eased a touch.

Hey, even I recognize and know a few lines of that one! Yes, but nowadays the the words provoke derision rather than respect. An anthem that proclaim the UK rules the waves? You're avin' a larf. And that it's citizens will never be slaves - presumably because we were more on the dishing-out end than the receiving end - back in the days when that was profitable, of course.

An ugly £220 in my case. I bought a pre-loved Skoda (having generally found that this brand lasts 180k-280k miles bought either new or pre-loved) but it only had one key. That price was for a second key PLUS ensuring that the missing 'second key' would no longer work.

How odd, when most of the point of the Midland numbering was to put the tender engines in increasing order of power to simplify Train Control. And who cared about the tanks (Midland attitude)? (As above) How odd, when most of the point of the Midland numbering was to put the tender engines in increasing order of power. However, except for the Midland re-numberings of 1845 and 1907, pre-Grouping numbering was more about accountancy (low numbers: re-used, purchase charged to the Revenue Account, new numbers: Capital Account) than any modern logic.

Not wrong, at most optimistic that direct-logic is close enough. So the force pushing the wagons downhill is gravity, approximated by weight divided by slope. Agreed. The force resisting this is (mostly) the frictional force from the bearings: which is non-linear with speed (especially at low speed) and there's no concensus on the actual numbers to plug into a formula. Models have nothing like the frictional resistance/scale-velocity as steam-era bearings, and are also wildly different one to another. Good luck.

Doubtless to be corrected, but I thought Midland 1-22 (Kirtley 2-4-0s) became LMS 1-22. including No. 2 being preserved as its number of 158A (pre-1907) after Stanier decided Midland 1 should be scrapped as clutter and 2 was discovered still in service as a pilot engine at Derby?

The problem here is that even railwaymen cannot predict the future. The 1940s view was that steam was OK, and was going to be replaced by electricity. The 1960s view was that there was no long-term passenger use for railways, it was just a case of managed shrinkage. Then road congestion kicked in and passenger numbers reversed. Now work-from-home is shaking down to a reliable proportion, and passengers numbers (I believe) are returning - but not reliably on every weekday. Railwaymen would have been re-fighting the previous war every time. I'd hold judgement on that until they are the norm, the battery technology has stabilised, and the electricity network has reconfigured to renewable. Economies of scale and all that on the cars. We might turn to electrically powered scooters - a change that appears already to have started.

Although I only 80% agree with this*, what I think scuppers the revive-the GCR-route is that it doesn't get you from Rugby to London on an abandoned, part-built-over route, it gets you to Calvert (or the place in the middle of rural Chilterns where HS2 has demolished the old route.). The GCR/Met and the GCR/GWR route from Calvert (or near offer) into London is still used. You then have the problem of how to get into London at acceptable cost and acceptable over-riding of NIMBYism. Back to HS2 costs and routes! You wouldn't annoy the heritage lines in north-Leicestershre/South Nottinghamshire because they are well away from the bottleneck on the WCML. *Despite noting that it carries the assumption that Victorian-era design train-speeds and level-crossing frequencies are still abso-blooming-lutely fine.

Not sure it's a black-and-white as this. The US cost comparisons I've seen from the time did not assume only about a 12-year life for the diesels but a 40-year life for steam locomotives (but with a 15 yearly reboilering). For diesels they also didn't recognise the reality of the overhead penalty of steam needing water/coal every 100 miles and diesels maybe three times this interval. Electrickery is only as good as your scale. USA too big outside of commuter/East Coast. UK sensible for heavily used lines, but I've yet to see a drive to electrify from the Central Belt to Inverness, yet alone Wick/Kyle.

Also part of the myth. There's no evidence that I've seen that the LMS changed the schedules to make the services more frequent and/or with more stops. By Grouping the companies had just-about reinstated the pre-War schedules, so checking this would also be very difficult. Extra to @Flying Pig's point, the truth appears to be that the LMS underestimated the need to maximise use of their best gradients to Manchester & Scotland, which were decisively the LNWR routes from Euston, and the publicity benefits of being time-competitive to Scotland, where their route to Edinburgh was tougher than LNER's. There seems also to have been a bit of a p$ssing contest between GWR, LMS, and LNER about producing the most powerful hand-stoked locomotives, whilst Southern got on with electrification to make itself more profitable/less loss-making So first LMS went Royal Scots (but only 70 of them), then the Duchesses, again a small-ish, specialised class. They tightened times on the ex-LNWR route as the 1930s progressed, but not particularly on the ex-Midland routes. They did continue the Victorian/Edwardian policy of trying to run the correct size locomotive+train combination for the actual duties, but the only exception to this, post-Grouping, seems to have been Bulleid's belief in still-over-sized small Pacifics.

This is a wide-spread and (mostly) false myth. Thus: - The LMS was formed in 1923, and decided to spend a year or so continuing planned construction while it worked out what it needed - It then decided on its three top priorities for new locomotives, none of which was a top-line passenger locomotive - Instead it did trials of the most powerful Midland/LYR/LNWR designs, and the Midland Compound came out as the most economical, and generally better than in in-house 4-6-0s from the other in-house companies - Only 3 years later (lightning fast in steam-railway terms ), it discovered it needed more power than the Compounds were capable of, trialled a GWR Castle, and this lead to the Scots. So: one bad-with-hindsight decision in a committee meeting in 1922 and a myth is born.

Agreed. But it would still have been more cost-effective at £10M instead of £40M (Daily Mirror numbers).

Re cost over-run. I give you Thanet Parkway, as reported by the Daily Mirror: "Official figures show the station, which cost almost four times its estimate, attracts fewer than 300 passengers a day"

I'm less so, just because of the vibrations and dirt inseparable from reciprocating coal-fired steam engines. Also the (relative) lack of control/perfectionism on water supplies. And the pride the British railway industry took in training on new technologies by osmosis. Stanier couldn't get dedicated crews to run Turbomotive, for heavens sake.

@The Stationmaster's point was that the initial estimates used to justify the scheme did not include tunnelling and cut-and-cover tunnelling to the degree that has eventually been applied - yet must have been believed compliant with all regulations and expectations at the time.

Staying firmly off-topic, it's frequently asserted that tunnelling skills developed during the canal boom were why railway tunnelling wasn't even worse/was regarded at the time as achievable. Fast forward to the present where the tunnels on HS2 are (probably?) meeting their contractual budgets, but (as @The Stationmaster above) the mere existence of the tunnels is expensive scope creep.