Nick_Burman

On 29/08/2020 at 15:05, Geep7 said:

Having looked at quite a few Spanish stations on Google Maps and YouTube videos, it appears there are very few true terminus stations on the RENFE network, especially in the 80's and early 90's.

Alcoy, before it was rationalized to near-death? San Juan de las Abadessas? Ayamonte? Muskiz? Vigo? There are a few choices...

Cheers NB

On 03/07/2021 at 15:26, Geep7 said:

Whenever I've been to Spain, I've never seen any shunting of freight, just long block trains going from one main yard to another.

Unsurprising, RENFE pulled the plug off the wagonload network about 20 years ago or so. If you want wagonload freight activity you'll have to turn  the clock back to the 1980's or earlier, when there was still such activity.

Cheers NB

Hello,

Has anyone modified the Bachmann turntable to make it look better and has pictures of the result?

Cheers Nicholas

3 hours ago, dave1905 said:

Actually that was most likely INBOUND wood.  They probably thought it was pulpwood but it was actually "prop timber".  The coal mines used wood posts to hold up the roof of the mine and lumber to line the interior of the mine where there was loose rock.  An active mine would need a supply for prop timber to keep pushing the face forward.

Quite to the contrary, outbound pulpwood for the paper industry too. N&W's West Jefferson Branch (the "Virginia Creeper") originated quite a few carloads of the stuff, and it was billed as pulpwood for papermaking and not as pit props. So did several of the mine-run branches in the Appalachians where the railroads were not adverse to earning a few extra bucks by tagging an empty gondola or bulkhead flatcar onto a mine run.

Having mentioned pit props, another inbound load would be steel props and segments, used to line mine tunnels in fault or soft rock areas. From what I understand by the 1960's a good number of mines in Va. and WVa. had at least their main haulage tunnels lined with steel rather than wood.

4 hours ago, dave1905 said:

Quote

Inbound heavy machinery in flatcars or gondolas (a good excuse to have a whole flatcar load of Roco HOe mine tubs...)

 

Maybe but not often, that stuff lasted decades.

Enough to justify one or two car cards in the deck...

I forgot about the freight house in the layout - add a boxcar of LCL to the mix.

Another possible load would be cars of non-coal minerals. The Yancey RR in North Carolina originated mica in boxcars, for instance. (The YRR was not a coal carrier and was outside Appalachian coal country, but it did interchange with the Clinchfield who was definitively very much coal carrier).

Cheers NB

On 25/08/2021 at 00:36, mdvle said:

As for a boxcar - perhaps supplies for the mine?

Using MR's Virginian as a guide, other traffic can be:

Inbound covered hoppers full of lime powder for dusting mine tunnels, to prevent explosions;

Outbound gondolas and bulkhead flatcars of pulpwood, loaded by local loggers;

Inbound heavy machinery in flatcars or gondolas (a good excuse to have a whole flatcar load of Roco HOe mine tubs...)

Inbound Boxcars of explosives, handled as a separate train;

Outbound boxcars of furniture, from the furniture factory;

Cheers NB

On 20/08/2021 at 23:21, 40 058 said:

Rough location, I want to say possibly the Chicago area? Again though, I’m not 100% positive! Where did the two locomotives and Santa Fe operate at this time period. 

If you are still a bit lost, buy the Steam Powered Video Atlas of North American Railroads. I can't overstate how handy they are.

Cheers NB

On 21/08/2021 at 15:11, mdvle said:

Yes. Each railroad owns and maintains their own track

There were quite a few exceptions though - the Kankakee & Seneca Railroad was a branch line jointly controlled by the Chicago Rock Island & Pacific and the New York Central (or rather its subsidiary, the Chicago Cleveland Cincinnati & St. Louis Railroad, better known as the “Big Four”). It ran (open Google Earth...) between the Big Four at Kankakee, Ill. and the CRI&P at Seneca, Ill.. It was used by the two railroads to allow them to connect to each other directly and thus bypass congestion in the Chicago area. AFAIK NYC maintained the branch but CRI&P used to run run-through trains to and from Kankakee handling east-west traffic.

Another oddball branch (or rather system of branches) was the Camas Prairie Railway in Idaho and Washington states. The company was jointly owned by the Northern Pacific and Union Pacific railroads who supplied locomotives and rolling stock. The railway had its own staff (drivers, firemen, conductors, etc...) but management personnel was rotated between each of the owners every few years or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camas_Prairie_Railroad

Cheers Nicholas

On 30/08/2021 at 15:53, KeithHC said:

Now how many supermarkets are built next to railway lines or over them.

Morrison's (used to be Sainsbury's) occupied the site of the GWR station at Clevedon. And there is a Tesco Superstore south of the centre which is right next to the former trackbed... a good excuse to reopen the line.

One flow which caught my attention was the Tesco (?) swap bodies to Wick in Scotland. A good idea, however the execution was a bit absurd - a 66 for two container flats, very much an overkill. I always thought that it would have been better to, say, try  and involve ScotRail somehow in the affair. Modify the flats with passenger compatible brakes, then run them north of Inverness attached to a loco-hauled passenger train - a smaller diesel (say a 73), one 2nd class coach and the two flats tagged onto the back with the train doing the regular all stops run from Inverness. Either EW&S would provide the diesel and ScotRail the coach, or ScotRail would provide both with EW&S just tagging the flats behind at Inverness. Just daydreaming...

Cheers NB

My father was dispatched to a boarding school (Rossall near Blackpool) at age 12. From then until he went off to Uni at age 18 he used to travel unaccompanied every holiday back home, first to Leeds and later to Portishead. I don't remember the details, but I think that the school used to take students down to Blackpool Central by bus, then place them on trains to their destinations. One detail that I do remember him telling was that he was given an envelope, hung on his neck, with the tickets and contact details, and that he was "passed down the line" by guards and porters. Again, I can't remember the routing, but I think it was Blackpool - B'ham - Bristol TM. At Blackpool, a school rep would likely hand him (and probably other students also) to the guard, who would install them in a compartment where he could keep an eye on them. At Birmingham he would be handed to a platform porter who would then shepherd him to the right platform and hand him to another porter who would make sure he got on to the right train. My grandmother would then collect him at Bristol TM for the last leg - usually by bus (heresy! But it was more convenient given the fact that they lived in the Redcliffe Bay area, away from the station) but occasionally by train.

Cheers NB

17 hours ago, Martin said:

LPG (a mix of propane & butane) is around 14kWh/litre.

Natural gas (mostly methane) is around 10.5kWh/cubic metre.

According to the numbers I found on the internet.  Hope that helps

 

     Martin

I looked up the internet again and found a site which claims that 1L of LPG = 0.5kg of LPG = 5500kcal which would be equal to 0.6667 cubic meters of natural gas as heating power. If this is correct, my 900L of LPG would be the equivalent of 600 cubic meters of natural gas, which would yield a potential saving of between 100 and 200 euros/year on the bill. Does it sound right?

Cheers Nicholas

14 hours ago, Jeremy C said:

There's precious little in it, in kJ/kg, but unless Nick can get a price for natural gas in terms of euros per megajoule or euros per kilowatt-hour, the conversion factor isn't easy to guess at. What pressure is used for domestic natural gas in Italy, for example?

According to the page of one distributor, natural gas arrives at home at 0.02bar. I don't know about the UK, however here the natural gas market is open, so there are several distributors. The regulating agency in charge of controlling the market has a site where one can compare prices, which are all quoted per annum based on a series of factors including annual consumption. So, prices are quoted on a yearly basis.

Cheers Nicholas

17 hours ago, Danemouth said:

Are the Italian Gas people offering some sort of conversion process?

No, but it's not difficult. The heater will need to be seen by our plumber while I can handle our stove, it comes with nozzles for both LPG and natural gas which I can change myself.

Cheers NB

One for the chemists here... I live in Italy and so far my house has been heated using LPG, which we also use for cooking. However, over the last 3 weeks or so Italgas (the national gas pipeline administrator) has been working to lay natural gas pipes in our street. This has led to the discussion about how convenient or not the switch to natural gas would be. Normally we go through 900 liters of LPG per year, however to see if it is worth or not I would need the natural gas equivalent in cubic meters of this same volume. However, the information I found on the internet is confusing (OK, Italian internet is crap, all ads and little content), leading to estimates ranging from a saving of circa 100 to 200 Euros/year to absolutely outrageous values. Obviuosly I'm making mistakes during conversion but so far I havent been able to find a proper relation between LPG and CNG. Could anyone please help?

Cheers NB

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Isn't that loco a genuine Baldwin, with minor cosmetic alterations to make it look "Maine"? Or, maybe we're talking about different locos.

The BMR has two locos, one is a 4-6-2 from a cement mill in South Africa, and the other is a 2-6-2 rebuilt from a 2-6-0 which was supplied originally to the Mogiana Railway in Brazil and which later passed into sugar mill service.

Cheers NB

1 minute ago, Nick_Burman said:

 

A very oddball 1150mm (3'9"). This was the connection from the Sestao - Galdames railway which fed the AHV steelworks at Sestao.

 

 

Cheers NB

Forgot: http://historiastren.blogspot.com/2012/08/el-ferrocarril-de-sestao-galdames-i.html

Cheers NB

5 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

What gauge?

A very oddball 1150mm (3'9"). This was the connection from the Sestao - Galdames railway which fed the AHV steelworks at Sestao.

Cheers NB

Narrow gauge in northern Spain... and I'm not talking of the meter gauge either. Rather, I'm thinking about the huge network of mine railways which once plastered the hills to the south and west of Bilbao and in the Asturias coalfield. Built to gauges ranging from 500mm to 750mm these lines connected pits to washeries and also to the nearest MG or BG connection.  Two of them, the Santullano - Cabanaquinta (750mm) and Laviana - Rioseco (650mm) were common-carriers which also offered passenger services.

http://www.grupotrabajosferroviarios.es/laviana-riosecohistoria.html

http://www.grupotrabajosferroviarios.es/santullano.html

https://territoriomuseo.com/noticias/show/870--el-zurron-un-siglo-del-tranvia-de-vapor-del-valle-de-aller

(the SMDF map refers to the Santullano line after it was downgraded from common-carrier use with the arrival of the Vasco-Asturiano Railway from Oviedo)

As one can see from the maps, it was an absolute warren of levels, adits, shafts, inclined planes e track flying in all directions, a sort of coal-mining Penhryn dropped in the green hills of Asturias.

I'm having a rather peculiar issue at home. Every time we turn the heating radiators on a small quantity of scaley blue-gray coloured dust gets deposited onto the floor, about a foot away from the radiator. This happens next to every radiator in the house. We are puzzled at what it might be. Pipe corrosion it isn't as the dust from that tends to settle at the base of the entrance or exit pipes. All radiators have been cleaned out of ordinary dust. Any ideas?

Cheers NB

Deleted - duplicate post.

On 08/01/2013 at 00:41, TheSignalEngineer said:

At least they know that when you are playing with your trains you are probably not playing with other women.

When they don't think the hobby is "the other". When I still lived in Brazil I remember a very talented and accomplished modeller who had had to quit both the local club and the hobby because the missus objected to both. More remarkably he didn't raise a finger to counter her objections.

The owner of my local hobby shop collected cases of hobby jealousy.There was the gent who returned from work only to find all his model trains spread across the entrance of the apartment block he lived - missus took the opportunity that he was not home, emptied his train cupboard and threw everything from the fifth floor. Confronted with the situation he collected what remained, went up to his flat and, without uttering a word to hers indoors, packed his suitcase and left. Next morning he sued for divorce.

Then there was the guy who used to frequent another hobby shop where he used to buy Rivarossi locomotives at unbelievably low prices. He would take them home and, a couple of days later, hers indoors would take the locomotive back to the shop and sell for half of the price he had bought them for. This went on for a while, until the day he was chatting to the owner and asked how come he would come across such locomotives at such prices. "Oh, a lady brings them to me" was the answer. Since the guy was suspecting about the sudden disappearance of equipment from his cupboard, he opened his wallet, fished a picture of wife and flourished it to the hobby shop owner: "Is this her?" "Yes" came the answer. Return home, one huge domestic row and scratch one marriage.

Cheers Nicholas

My mother's first post-Brexit-expat-banking-chaos pension has been deposited into her Italian account. Kudos to the Pension Service - one letter, no fuss, no faff. AND they gave her a good exchange rate, more than Transferwise would do.

Cheers NB

On 21/12/2020 at 19:22, ColinK said:

Some diesel cabs would be useful.

For what locomotives? Now that's something that did not occur...

Cheers NB

OK, it's live! I've finished the instructions, loaded them to Shapeways, made new pictures...phew! But the Forney is up and available at http://shpws.me/SraQ. The picture shows my resin prototype - it works, but I think I'll have to buy my own kit... There are a few bits missing in the image and one or two things have changed to make it acceptable for Shapeways, but otherwise what you will receive with the kit are the parts which one sees in the photo (minus the whistle and locomotive, of course).

The best reasons to buy this kit is to get a locomotive which is a bit more "modern" (say 1900 - 1910) than the stock engine and to give crews some quality of life - with it crews will have windows the can actually lean out of and doors they can come in or out without risking getting stuck - handy in the event of a looming "cornfield meet" when engineer and fireman have to "join the birds" in a hurry. OSHA/HSE would approve... The resulting locomotive is a bit small as far as Forneys go, especially the Maine ones, but is far from "unprototypical" - for instance, H.K Porter listed a Forney in its catalog which had 6x10” cylinders, rode on 20” diameter drivers and weighed slightly under 8tons in working order. And at 17 feet 6 inches long it was smaller than the Minitrains locomotive!

Cheers Nicholas

41 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

Beethoven's Ode to Joy?

I wish it were! No, some anodyne plinky-plonky tune. The worst part that it sort of stuck in my mind, like some horrible dream.

Cheers NB

5 hours ago, coastalview said:

 

This means UK banks have to make sure they operate within the various regulatory frameworks of each EU country in order to continue to serve any customers living there; being able to do so is very complicated, and depends on the types of products on offer, the bank’s business model and the regulator’s rules in each country. 

All UK High Street banks are essentially ditching their EU customers if they don't haven an UK address.

Cheers NB