rodent279

Were class 20's the only mainline diesel locos to get carriage type BR roundels? This is 20098, in original BR green, at Toddington yesterday, paired with 20137, also in green, but with full yellow ends, and post-1957 lion & wheel. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-XYsKXYhXM-anM5SFVrRU1zZmM/view?usp=drivesdk

Another factor to consider with electric cars is how good will they be at towing? We go camping with a small trailer rammed with camping gear, and are thinking of going for a trailer tent. If you start adding trailers, caravans, boats etc, you'll drain the battery quicker. Since, love 'em or hate 'em, a lot of people tow caravans etc, if an electric car isn't suitable for towing, they're not going to buy one. Clever politicians haven't thought thought of that have they?

Evening. Another entry from Piffling Trivia Corner! Mileposts these days are mostly painted yellow, on most ex-BR regions. What colour would they have been pre-nationalisation? Have they always been yellow, or have they been white, or unpainted? And while we're on such a gripping subject, what would have been the highest number on a UK milepost? (You might have guessed, the trivia in life fascinates me! I mean, who decided UP is towards London, or the major terminus? Why not DOWN to London? Why for years was the speed restriction in KX throat 8mph? Why not 5, or 10? Why, when you hear an announcement on a train, do we now arrive INTO a station, not AT? Why do we now have TRAIN stations, when we used to have RAILWAY stations? I could go on, the list is endless, I have a very low attention span........ooh look there's a nice rock......ooh look, there's a nice rock......)

Yes, that'd be about right. The best conventional power stations I suspect can edge over 50%, but not by much. I would imagine efficiency of transmission & distribution systems is in the mid to high 90's, so still probably better than straight diesel-electric, though again, not by a long way. I believe Chapelon argued that the overall efficiency from burning the coal in the power station to using electricity in a 1500 V D.C. locomotive, using the technology of the 1930's & 1940's, wasn't appreciably higher than burning coal in the firebox of one of his most advanced steam locos. But of course, as you say, electric traction, whether traditional via 3rd rail or OHL, ov via battery, can be powered by renewables and/or nuclear, and regen braking can feed back into the grid. (And you have to remember that the thermal efficiency figures are the best achievable, which is usually under a steady load. In a power station, it's easier to run the prime mover at a steady load, with little or no fluctuation, whereas a diesel engine in a vehicle is constantly going through load cycles, from idle to maximum, to part load, back to idle, & so on.)

Don't forget the thermal efficiency of even the best diesel engines struggles to reach 50% (for the average steam loco, it's more like 8%, and that'd be a good 'un). In other words, half of the enrgy stored in a tank of diesel gets wasted as heat. So, if you're looking at this purely from an "energy stored in a tank of diesel/used on a tour of duty", vs "energy stored in a battery/used in a tour of duty".......don't forget that at best half of the energy stored in a tankful of diesel is wasted, and does not contribute to the useful work done by the engine. I'd hope that the internal losses in a traction battery, and the losses in the control system would be far smaller, and that the overall efficiency from "energy stored" to "work done" would be much higher.

Fair enough!

Not wishing to stir up trouble here.....but isn't it only a Jack when flown from an RN ship?

IEP seen belting westward this morning through Cholsey, as I passed on a London bound HST, at 0945.

Ok folks, piffling trivia time again. Can anyone explain the working of trains into/out of Didcot Railway Centre please? I picked up a 2001 Railtrack GW Sectional Appendix recently. In section 4 it goes into great detail about the working of trains at all sorts of places, for example to/from the PDSR at Paignton. Despite a lengthy section covering Didcot yard, power station etc, there is no mention off the railway centre. Clearly stock does occasionally pass from the GWS to NR, so how is this managed?

Correct, Sweden, Norway, Finland etc are most definitely in Europe. As for countries spanning two continents, Russia and Turkey are certainly two, however, Iceland sits right on the fault line where the North American continental plate meets the Eurasian plate. You can do a bus tour, stop off and walk around on one, then ten min later walk around on the other!

Hadfield is a pretty sorry place these days. Wouldn't be quite so bad if the last few reminders of it's status as a through route were removed, but the mournful sorry looking gantries at the east end just look like a gravestone for the Woodhead route. RIP.

I suspect as usual this will turn out to be an aspiration, which will be quietly dropped at a convenient moment. 23 years is long enough for most of the current crop of lying scheming manipulative b@$*@**$ to be retired and/or pushing up daisies.

Yes, I always thought the old KX Thameslink was an accident waiting to happen. During peak hour, the doiwn platform could be rammed with punters trying to crowd onto the next service north. Good to see that Thameslink was such a success, but the KX-T transformation into the new St Pan really was long overdue.

There is actually a pressure group devoted to rescuing the remaining stones of the Doric Arch from Bow Creek (or whichever sewage infested bit of the Thames they were dumped in) and incorporating it in the "new" Euston, if/when it gets rebuilt. Why? Can we not produce a modern piece of architecture that is more fitting, instead of trying to pretend a railway station is a cathedral or mediaeval castle?

I suspect there is a fair amount of smoke & mirrors going on here. In other words, an attempt is being made to re-focus attention elsewhere for a while. Bring it on I say, it's a decision that should have been comitted to years ago, and in all honesty, is it not something we can all foresee at some point anyway? 23 years may be a bit optimistic, but it'll happen eventually.

<pedant mode> In fact, strictly speaking, the UK seat of Governemnt is in the City of Westminster, and the main business district is the City of London. </pedant mode>

As for UK statsions, probably Euston followed closely by Man P & Bris TM. Exeter St D used to be full of interest, but I find it a bit stale now. Off the beaten track somewhat, Calstock on the Gunnislake branch, is sited right at the end of the impressive Calstock Viaduct, which, incidentally, is not made of stone, though it looks like it. It's actually made from thousands of concrete blocks, cast on the quayside below the viaduct. There you go-more mind-blowing piffling trivialities for you!

Koln Hbf is another impressive one, with the Hohenzollern bridge making a grand entrance over the Rhine. Milan Central is another one, and Basel is an interesting international crossroads.

Regarding non-UK stations, Warsaw Central was pretty grim. Big subterranean concrete maw, bit like New Street, but without the charm. I suppose a lot of these stations had what you might call "atmosphere"-but then so did the Colisseum when they were feeding Christians to the lions..........

OT, but were HST power cars ever turned on the table at OC?

Trowbridge was a depressing place even before the bus shelter. I spent over an hour there waiting for a failed 33, which eventually arrived behind a 47, on a freezing December evening in 1983.

Agreed, I like it too.

Personally, I love Euston. Recent retail developments have not helped one bit, but I love the big circulating area with its marble floor and high ceiling. The old Euston, though long demolished before I was born, sounded like a depressing place. And as for the Doric Arch -pig ugly monstrosity! Why try to make a railway station look like a Greek temple? Who are you trying to kid? My nomination for most depressing station today would have to be Swindon though.

Which leads me to another in my series of piffling trivialities. Back in BR days, how were oil tail lamps allocated and maintained? Did each station have a number of lamps allocated to it? Were they identified in some way? If one needed say a new lens, how was this done? Was it just sent off in the stores van to works for repair? How was this all accounted for? Did BR actually have any idea of how many tail lamps it had? And lastly, how far could a tail lamp stray? Could one start it's day in London on a Monday, and by the following weekend been in Penzance, having travelled via Wick?

Australia -Gov't in Canberra, business in Sydney. Germany federal Government split between Bonn & Berlin, Lander (State governments) distributed throughout the country. Business largely in Frankfurt, but much more distributed. It's not uncommon for the seat of govt to be remotely located from the major business centres.