jonny777

1 hour ago, Mike_Walker said:

The units which have been found defective so far are the earliest Class 800s on GWR which have accumulated the highest mileages since entering service.  However, the nature of the defect, a metal fatigue fracture in the weld which joins the bolster carrying the yaw damper attachment and jacking point to the main body structure (see below), means that it can be expected to show up across the entire 80x fleet operated by GWR, LNER, TPE and HT as their mileages increase.

 

 

I discussed the problem a week ago with Mark Hopwood, GWR's MD and a long-standing personal friend, and at that time only a handful of cracks had been discovered and two or three units stopped for repair.  The cracks found at that time were above the motor not trailer bogies which is understandable given the higher stress they are subjected too.  Although concerned, he was of the opinion at that time that the issue was manageable and nowhere as serious as the problems involving the CAF built trains.  Obviously, things have moved on and it would appear further cracks have been discovered.  I haven't attempted to contact Mark for an update this morning as I figure he's probably more than a tad busy right now!

 

The entire fleet is currently undergoing checks at the various Hitachi depots and units given a clean bill of health are being allowed to return to service which is why, as I type this, limited services are returning to GWR and LNER.  Hopefully enough units will be released over the weekend to allow a near "normal" service to operate next week.  If a number of additional problems do emerge then there could be problems resourcing operations when services ramp up from May 17.

 

Repairs will not be easy.  The 80x have aluminium bodies and aluminium is more difficult to weld than steel.  It needs much higher degrees of heat and the material transmits this very effectively to places you really don't want it.  Like all modern trains, the 80x cars are stuffed full of sensitive electronics controlling everything from the train's performance to seat reservations and working the loo doors.  If subjected to large amounts of heat these component will fry and therefore before any welding can take place many of them will need to be removed.  Then once the weld repair has been completed and tested they will have to be refitted and themselves tested.  This could easily take one or two days per car whilst the weld repair itself might only take a hour or so.  And remember, there are 4 locations per car and the fleet numbers in excess of 1000 vehicles.

 

As noted by others, problems with yaw damper attachments are nothing new and have been cropping up ever since they first started being used - the Class 158s probably being  the most high profile case.  It is a high stress area which requires both very careful initial design and subsequent manufacture.  It's not always easy to get it right.

 

Meanwhile over a CAF...  The problem there is somewhat different.  It revolves around the design of the yaw damper attachment to the body which uses bolts in tee slots which are part of an extrusion attached to the body.  In one case, this assembly was torn way from the body and signs of the same problem potentially affecting other units led to at least 22 Class 195 DMUs and Class 331 EMUs being stopped.  The identical design is used on all the current CAF built trains in the UK, Classes 195 196, 197, 331 and 397 plus the Mk5 and Mk5s LHCS.

 

 

 

 

Hooray. Truth from a real expert, rather than speculative stuff from the armchair variety. 

However, I will don my tin hat.....

12 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

Evening.

 

Johnny, Jersey's EU non status is the same as ours of course.  Folk just don't get it!

 

 

Yes Neil, but the problem for Jersey, since Brexit, has been that the French will either not allow non-EU vessels to land their catch at French ports, or impose so much paperwork that the fish have gone rotten before it is completed. 

Now this means that the number of Jersey boats currently fishing has declined, and the French have muscled in to increase their number of boats in Jersey waters in order to take advantage. This has led to the current licensing system which forces the French skippers to provide proof of their longstanding fishing history in Channel Island waters, which of course the newcomers can't. Hence no licences for them. 

Wet a nd windy here in North Somerset. 20mm of rain overnight, but it seems to have eased off now. 

We had paid for a full survey when we bought this house in 1987. The survey pointed out a few minor faults, but said we should insist the vendor install new guttering before we considered moving in. 

We couldn't be bothered to stir things up, so moved in and had to exist with the condemned guttering. We forgot all about it, and the whole lot was eventually replaced in 2009 (i.e. 22 years later) after not really giving us any problems, but it just looked rather life-expired by then. 

I also found out a piece of interesting but not particularly useful information the other day. Apparently, in 1938 Neville Chamberlain ordered the security services to tap all the phones of Winston Churchill and provide him (Chamberlain) with transcripts. This seems to be because Churchill was meeting with Labour politicians in order to get a vote of no confidence in the then PM passed in the Commons, and install a coalition with Churchill as the leader. 

I never knew that. 

On 05/05/2021 at 19:39, sb67 said:

Can someone identify this bird for me? Seen in a Hedgerow alongside farmers fields.

 

 

My 'guess' would be a Chiffchaff. 

I had an interested visitor observing the gardening this afternoon. 

I did have a database containing all my model railway stock - primarily for insurance purposes; but it seemed to vanish during a hard drive crash some years ago and I could find no backup or similarly titled file anywhere. So the idea lost its appeal at the time. 

However, I wonder if there is a Mac OS version?

We used to have the makings of a decent rail freight business. It was called Speedlink, and many companies received grants to connect/upgrade their company sites to the network. Rail services ran at regular intervals, and picked up/dropped off wagons on the way

But, Speedlink was killed off, and that was the end of that. 

Twenty-odd years ago I watched (while commuting) as Wilkinsons built a massive distribution centre within a few metres of the existing railway tracks just east of what remained of the Llanwern steelworks site, but with no rail connection at all. 

I'm afraid that with planning decisions such as that, GB and increasing freight flows on the railways are an oxymoron. 

3 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I can recall a Lancashire CC match at Southport being stopped due to snow on June 1st.

I can't dispute your date because I wasn't there; but the main snow fell on June 2nd that year (1975) as some very cold air moved south across the UK. 

Cloudy and cold here in North Somerset. We have had a few showers overnight judging by the wetness of the garden path. 

Nothing much happening today as our council seats are not up for re-election. We do have a poll card for the Police & Crime Commissioner but I can't be bothered with that. Jobs for the boys, it would seem - as they don't appear to do anything significant. 

I will have to go out at lunchtime though, because I have to have my second covid jab today. Let's hope the showers stay away then, or I am going to look a bit bedraggled in front of nurse syringe.  

The media may have you believe that clubs have "got out" of the ESL, but I read on one of the more sensible websites that all of the clubs have signed binding contracts and cannot just break them on a whim of the fans. 

I suspect the ESL will reappear in some new form or other before too long. 

Bright and breezy here in North Somerset, but not the gales and heavy rain of yesterday. 

Recycling and green (garden waste in these parts) bin men have been, but the bangs and scrapings from outside alerted me to the idea that the empty bins were now horizontal and being blown down the street. 

Fetched them in sharpish before they became someone else's 'finders keepers' property, although they do have a large house number painted on the front.

Everything in the garden seems to have survived the weather onslaught, which is a relief. 

I have an Epson printer and a couple of MacBook Pros. 

They work well together; when they work. My printer is old, so maybe they have changed now - but I found that I became a slave to the machine. If I wanted to print in plain black and the printer said the magenta ink had run out then no printing was allowed until I had changed the cartridge. 

If I tried to save money and buy generic cartridges, or refills; the printer would detect that and refuse to work. There was a lengthy workaround, but it meant going through boring processes for about 10 minutes, only to find that it would then say the yellow had run out and refuse to start. 

Even if it was not used for a couple of weeks, the ink would dry in the nozzles and the printer would refuse to work until the nozzle cleaning program had been run. The problem with that was nozzle cleaning would invariably use up a colour and the printer would still not start until I had replaced the relevant cartridge. 

And all this to print out a plain black text on a plain white sheet of paper. 

Life is too short for an Epson printer. 

1 hour ago, Tony_S said:

We used some concentrated garlic stuff on the hostas. Our slugs must have liked garlic too. Aditi’s main “bugbear” for flowers seems to be lily beetle. She really likes lilies so vigilance is required. The first year they appeared in Essex (they have been moving northwards) Aditi thought “what pretty beetles “. She doesn’t think that nowadays. 

Yes, I have also had big problems with lily beetles, so much so that I think all the expensive lily bulbs I invested in a few years ago have now given up the ghost. 

I even bought tiny ladybird larvae online last year, in order to combat greenfly on various plants. I don't know if they worked or not because a few days after their release I noticed a number of house sparrows picking the greenfly off the affected plants and they may have scoffed the ladybird larvae as well. 

That seemed to cut the aphid numbers, but by then much of the damage had been done. I understand that garden plants are an "all you can eat buffet" to most insect larvae, but sometimes the infestation just gets too much for my brain to cope with; after months of careful nurturing of plants to that stage. 

Currently, I have a seed tray with about 15 newly germinated cyclamen plants in it. They are tiny, just a 3mm diameter leaf on each stalk; and I know that within a few seconds something could come along and munch the lot. There is little I can do about it, but cross my fingers and hope. 

It is alright for the Monty Dons of this world with a £15000 BBC budget for seeds and greenhouses, but I only want a few of each plant. 

Sorry, depressing epistle over. 

39 minutes ago, Tony_S said:

We have the same problem with hostas. Essex slugs seem to love them. Aditi had tried all the usual suggestions. They even did for the ones in tubs with copper tape and gravel. We won’t use slug pellets so it was easier not to have hostas. I suspect everyone else with slug pellets has finished off the local hedgehogs too.

 

Sadly yes, and it is not just gardeners who use the slug/hedgehog killer treatments. UK farmers seem to; by adding tens of thousands of tons of the stuff each year on arable fields. 

One of the worst offenders are people who grow oilseed rape which, if you research into details of pests and diseases, seems to be attacked by all and sundry creatures in the fields but especially flea beetles which cannot be eradicated without decimating other insect species as well. After reading biological articles I am surprised that the crop is allowed to be grown at all, especially just for its oil; when there are many other varieties of crops which can be used for cooking oil. 

Presumably, it is cheap to refine; and its high demand for nitrogen mean that global fertiliser companies are making a mint?

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

Going back to how well coal heating actually works, I have lived in a house with no central heating (there were some electric storage heaters in a few rooms), no double glazing. The storage heaters were useless but the downstairs rooms with fires in them were very pleasant. Yes, there was ice inside on the windows upstairs too, but the duvet did the job (although I'd sometimes get dressed under it).

 

I really liked that place, and the bit I didn't like about it wasn't anything to do with heating but with a rodent infestation.

 

I also lived in a modern flat for a while (early 2000s build) with only electric heating, which was considerably less pleasant. IMO coal fires are not efficient but they are effective, at least for the room they're in.

 

Yes, that is true - and I think it stems from the fact that given enough adjacent heat, a lump of coal will catch fire and burn quite well with large flames. This is in contrast to smokeless fuels which will burn, given a good hot draught, but only burn with a small flickering flame. 

Of course the secret to this is the 'hot body radiation' (cue sniggers from usual suspects) and the formula "Sigma, T to the 4th". It seems to me that the burning properties of house coal allow a fire to reach a higher temperature (and hence radiate more heat) more quickly than an anthracite fuelled one, which needs plenty of air from underneath. 

I don't use much house coal, but it is nice to add near the start of an open fire, and then pile on the smokeless pieces once the temperature is high, which can be judged by the colour of the fire. Red is not warm enough, lightening shades of yellow are much more favourable. 

There seems to be an art to creating a decent smokeless open fire, but without small amounts of house coal the art is going to present an increasing challenge.

Windy and now rather wet in North Somerset. 

I have busied myself with more rainwater logistics, as one of my butts will fill completely after 6-7mm of rain, and so I empty some of its water into containers and watering cans ahead of the next dollop of rain. 

I suspect the reason for this is a slightly uneven gutter which means the water from the house roof tends to run in that butt's direction more often than not. 

I could straighten it out, but I rather like the random setup, as that particular butt is the most convenient for watering everything in tubs. We have about 20 tubs full of plants which are impossible to grow in the garden directly, mainly due to slug and snail activity. 

Lupins, Delphiniums and all forms of Marigold are simply wasted if grown in the ground. They can all vanish over one wet night in the worst scenario. Strangely, the same is true of Cowslips, but not Primroses - which I can't understand as they are both from the same family of plants.  

Presumably the Premier League will dole out some punishment to the club? Maybe a points deduction? 

May I suggest -40?