Pacific231G

Slightly more than just a tunnel, because it included a station, was the Kingsway tram tunnel in London. It ran from a triangular junction on the Embankment under Waterloo Bridge- the steel doors are still there- under the Aldwych and up Kingsway. It emerged just north of Holborn where the ramp is still in place with inset conduit tracks. Much of the southern part of it is now a road tunnel between Waterloo Bridge and Kingsway avoiding the Aldwych and the northern part has been used for various purposes including an emergency control over the years since the trams departed. Around Farringdon there was quite a complex of lines mostly associated with the widened lines including the GWR's underground goods depot serving Smithfield Market. This was just to the east of the northern end of the Snow Hill Tunnel (now used for Thameslink) The Midland and the GNR also had goods stations around Farringdon but I don't think either of them were underground. There is a plan of the GW goods depot here: https://cdn.londonreconnections.com/assets/smithfieldgwplan.jpg

Of course I was and I don't believe in the Bermuda Triangle, Alien Abduction or Climate Change deniers either. On most of the lines where the Tour does encounter working level crossings, the chances of coinciding with a train are remote to say the least because sadly there are basically almost no trains and there is of course co-ordination to avoid the few that do run. ISTR that the train encountered on a level crossing in 2013 was running very late. and it was ironic because SNCF ran an extra train earlier that day for Tour spectators. The Paris-Roubaix incident in 2015 was sheer madness and another train coming in the opposite direction doesn't bear thinking about. Nevertheless, apart from gorgeous scenery, there is a fascination to seeing the rural railway infrastructure that the Tour often runs alongside even without trains. For example, the one they followed yesterday between Troyes and Chatillon is shown on the map as freight only as far as Polisot then "non-éxploitée" to Chatillon sur Seine. It is a little frustrating when you know there's something to be seen and you don't get to see it but even more so when the commentators go on about a particularly interesting triple viaduct that we didn't get to see (at least on Eurosport) because of a commercial break. Nothing to do with railways of cycling but unless I missed it I was also a little surprised yesterday that they didn't show Source-Seine as I'm sure they passed very close to it. Being something of a grotto it maybe didn't show up too well from the helicopter.

I don't think this particular conspiracy theory holds much water given that the disqualification was imposed by the UCI who are based in Switzerland and not by the French ASO who organise the Tour along with a number of other races. Given Sagan's "star" status in terms of attracting viewers and therefore TV rights sales and sponsorship I gather that the ASO are none too happy about the decision. However there clearly are grounds for a conspiracy theory relating to the obvious instructions to the TV Directors to avoid as far as possible showing any working railways. Sometimes they're unavoidable where they parallel or criss cross the route over fairly long distances but, whenever the course encounters a level crossing, they always seem to focus on the Peloton when the leaders are crossing and vice versa or if all else fails going to a commercial break or shots of the countryside till the danger has been passed. Disused level crossings and viaducts seem to be more acceptable, presuambly because they imply that railways are obsolete but it's clear that the French roads lobby have the coverage well nobbled.

Interesting Ron Has much use been made before of rigid OHLE conductor "rail;" instead of a contact wire suspended from a catenary wire? I know very little about OHLE but assume the advantage is that it is rigid so its position can be more closely defined relative to the tunnel roof and without a catenary wire requires less space as well as doing away with the tensioning weights etc. required for catenary. Furrer+Frey who make it (is it their system that Crossrail is using?) also claim that it is "fix and forget" needing far less maintenance than catenary which they say would be particularly relevant in tunnels. Would its disadvantage be that it is heavier than a catenary wire and possibly more difficult to zig zag to avoid wear on the pantograph collector head being in one place? Interesting that in their own publicity film Crossrail refers to it as the "rigid overhead catenary system" which is of course a contradiction suggesting that they don't actually know what the word catenary means. Update :I've just discovered that overhead rail is used ontunnel and trench sections of ligne C of the Paris RER. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overhead_line#/media/File:Overhead_rail_P1220601.jpg and has been installed in the Simplon tunnel to enable a larger loading gauge.

A very sensible view Andy. We may regret changes in accepted British English usage but trying to freeze it at a particular moment in time or believing that what our English teachers taught us several decades ago had some kind of ultimate authority is futile. In British English we no longer refer to our railways as railroads but at one time both terms were in regular use and, though it's still the official term both in Britain and internationally, few people outside aviation now refer to the places where aircraft arrive and depart as aerodromes (Conversely the Americans, who often deviate from ICAO standards, refer to everything from LAX to a dirt airstrip with no facilities as an "airport") . The change may reflect a change of usage. At one time you didn't just go to the railway station to get on a train; you also went there to send or receive parcels and goods, to collect the daily newspapers if you were a newsagent, to send or receive mail if you were the post office, and to conduct any other business that involved the railway. All those related to trains but often indirectly. Nowadays almost the only reason to go to a station is to use a train so train station probably does make more sense. In a similar way, American usage seems to generally now favour "train station" over the far more evocative "railroad depot" . Of course if you're a Londoner you're used to going to an Underground Station or even a "tube station". You don't do that because you want to go under the ground but only because that's where the trains are and more often than not they're not underground at all (My local "Underground" station is about thirty feet above the street)

Eurosport are showing the whole of each stage this year and as most of the PNs (level crossings) tend to be in the first half of many stages we may get to see more of railway interest.

Hi Mersey If you think a tool like this would be useful, then why not just make one from a scrap of wood? I couldn't find anything like my "Synchro Timers" tool on the web so that's probably your best bet in any case. When I found them I thought they would be better than the wooden jig I was already using to hold the rails in place while cutting them with a razor saw. in truth the home made jig did the job just as well and, even for someone with as many thumbs as me, it had literally been the work of a few minutes to cut off a suitable wooden block, cut the slots with a saw then use a needle file to widen them just enough to hold the rail. Where this manufactured tool could be quite useful is for soldering rail to copper clad sleepers, holding the gauge whle acting as a heat sink, and it's possible that's what they were designed for. The catch is that the 16.5mm slots in the tool seem to be made for code 100 rail so are a bit loose for code 75 and I.can't see many people who build their own track these days using code 100. It was interesting at ExpoEM this year to see some of the jigs and templates that Peter Denny had made for himself from scraps of wood at no cost at all. There do seem to be a lot of things like double track spacing jigs that you could buy but might just as easily make for yourself.

I acqured this device some time ago I actually have a couple of them though I've not used them since I bought a Xuron cutter. I can't remember where I acquired them as it was a good few years ago but probably for a few pence from an exhibition 2nd hand table. They have slots for 16.5mm and 9mm gauge track but they're probably a bit overelaborate for the jobl. I think I only ever used the top half and that would be very easy to reproduce by just sawing a couple of slots in a small block of wood. There's an idea for a block to do that here and making it to fit a mitre box seems quite a good idea. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRp59btM0B8 There's another video on track cutting here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIt2F3rFjDg Note which make of track MRR are using !!

Backed by some very profitable arms manufacturers who couldn't care less how many innocent people get killed by their products so long as they can sell lots of them.

I agree. I found with a disc that it was very hard to get a square joint- well it was for me- but the Xuron cutter makes it very easy and I wouldn't be without it. You do have to be aware of which is the good side and which is the waste side so I wouldn't use it for cutting electrical gaps. You will need a needle file to dress the end of the rail after cutting it to remove any burrs but that takes a few seconds and the whole process is a whole lot quicker than digging out the drill, screwing a cutting disk onto it, plugging it into a power supply and so on. The thing to remember when using a Xuron is not to ever use it for cutting anything else. I discovered that the hard way when I used it to cut wire in tube wire after which it was completely useless for rail cutting; I just had to buy a new one which is now firmly labelled - "for rail cutting only". The other thing to remember when cutting rail either with a cutter or a disk is to always use eye protection- basic good workshop practice but sod's law guarantees that the day you just have that one rail to cut so let's not bother is the day when a sharp piece of metal or broken cutting disk will aim itself at high speed straight at your iris. Tracksettas are OK if your curves are to that radius and particularly useful for ensuring that sharper curves don't go under whatever minimum radius you're using but if you use them immediately off a straight you won't get any transition curve. For one or two curves of odd radius just cut yourself a template from reasonably sturdy card.

Better than the buffer stop demolishing the Pug!! Old engineering adage that a million pound computer will sacrifice itself to save a 5p fuse.

That's not necessarily true for occupation crossings. As a child I used to stay on a relative's hill farm between Brecon and Cradoc in S. Wales that had land on both sides of the Merthy and Brecon railway. There was a gated occupation crossing with the gates opening away from track and I certainly don't recall any telephone to communicate with the nearest signalbox.

Interesting John. I've a feeling I saw something like this on the quayside at St. Valery Sur Somme before the track was relaid and rationalised.I think that one may have been directing metre gauge stock from three rail dual gauge track with a common rail to the four rail track with the metre gauge between the S.G. track that runs between St. Valery and Noyelles- the main line junction. I wonder what the speed restriction would be with this formation. With a conventional set of points the tyre and the front of the flange is positively directed by the relevant point blade and its profile is designed for that,with this arrangement the wheelset is forced to diverge by the check rail pushing on the flat back of the wheel; presumably with a certain amount of squealing.

Thanks for finding the pictures which only go to show how false memories can be. The locos and other rolling stock were dirty white rather than yellow and you're probably right that they were IC locos with exhaust conditioners. I don't think there were more than a couple of them in any case. Now I know the contractor was Nuttall I've been able to turn up a few more images of the project. Loco and stock were a lot cleaner when the images here were taken. http://www.geoffspages.co.uk/raildiary/soton83.htm That's definitely the downside works yard as I saw it before we went into the tunnel and it was a particularly narrow site. I wish I could get hold of a copy of my film but it's probably no more than the usual piece to camera by reporter, a few shots of the work inside the tunnel and an interview with someone from NSE, probably shot with the tunnel mouth behind, and possibly an interview with someone from Nuttall as well. I woud have tried to get a shot or two of the NG train in motion but can't remember whether or not I succeeded and it certainly wouldn't have been while we were in the tunnel.

Would they have used IC locos inside the tunnel? My recollection was of battery electrics but that could have been wrong as I was concentrating more on directing the cameraman and reporter than the details of NG working- I should have asked for a recce. but on a daily show we very rarely had time for those. I've not been able to find any photos of the 1983-85 tunnel works but there is an interesting piece from about ten years earlier about the canal tunnel that caused all the railway's woes and the canal it was to be part of here. http://www.hantsfieldclub.org.uk/publications/hampshirestudies/digital/1970s/vol33/Course.pdf

Sometime between 1983-85 I made a film for the local BBC South Today programme about the relining of the Southampton Tunnel. This involved the intensive use of a narrow gauge railway running from the works access between the tunnel mouth and Southampton station and the worksite within the tunnel. At the time they had shut the down line and erected a plastic barrier between the south side that they were working on and the north side through which trains were running (very slowly!) in both directions. At some point the whole operation was reversed with the up line shut but at the time we filmed it the contractors were working AFAIR about 150-200m from the tunnel mouth. I thought at the time that something like this would make quite a good model with narrow gauge operation at the "base camp" and main line trains running behind it with both lines disappearing into the tunnel mouth. I don't know if this sort of operation was ever carried out at other tunnels but Southampton tunnel suffered from being built above a canal tunnel that was never opened but had been laid wit puddled clay that trapped water in it. The railway tunnel itself had been built cut and cover with brick vaulting but was being relined with modern concrete segments. My recollection is that the track layout at the base consisted of a run round loop and a couple of sidings and a loop at the site in the tunnel with I think an extension forward to enable materials, concrete segments mostly, to be delivered and the bricks and rubble to be loaded onto wagons and taken out. I think the rolling stock consisted of flat carriers for the concrete segments and skips for removal of waste with battery electric locos to work them. Locos and stock were all bright yellow. I also seem to recall that the railway equipment was standard stuff used by the tunnel contractors and taken from job to job.

Shame they didn't shunt him over an unbuilt bridge. It might have saved the world a great deal of grief It's interesting to look through the the Decauville catalogue for "things you can do with a portable railway". My favourite was for explorers going up rivers to carry a couple of bogies and enough track aboard their boats to portage past rapids etc. by laying a couple of panels in front of the boat, pushing it forward then taking the track panels from behind and moving them to the front and repeating that until they could refloat the boat. Shade of Fitzcarraldo but it's supposed to be something they actually supplied to a client with what success I don't know.

Slightly off-topic but what sort of aircraft did you fly? I'm interested because when I learnt to fly (purely for pleasure) in the early 1990s one of the other students was a veterinarian working on a rabies eradication programme also I think in Tanzania. They had a Piper Cub that was very little used and she'd realised that by learning to fly it she could get around the scattered communities they were working with in a fraction of the time it was taking using a LandRover.

I don't know if this was the first use of temporary railways for road building but starting in 1859 it must be one of the earliest. In 1854 the Chemin de Fer du Midi opened its main line between Bordeaux and Bayonne in S.W. France running through a region about the size of East Anglia known as the Great Moors of Gascogny. At the time this was mostly open marshy scrub with very poor sandy soil whose people lived off a combination of small scale intensive farming and sheep that grazed on the open moors.The moors were criss crossed with rough tracks but there were very few if any good roads. The railway made the region more accessible and the government of Napoleon III was determined to make it "productive". To open it up for development, the Midi railway was contracted in 1857 to build around 500 kms of new agricultural roads across the moors from twelve of its stations. These were constructed by laying temporary standard gauge track along their routes to import the stone and gravel needed to build proper roads as these weren't available locally. Twelve locomotives, 100 wagons and 100 kms of track were used for the project and once each road was built the track used in its building was moved to the next. The roads were completed in 1861 and though the Midi had been given the right to retain and operate the railways as roadside tramways it had declined to take this up. The government also forced the local communities to sell off their common moorland to be drained and cultivated but the only thing that could be grown commercially on the poor moorland soil was the native maritime pine tree. The result was that every scrap of open moorland, was soon covered in trees and without grazing land for their sheep the way of life of the local people collapsed. The irony was that within about twenty years the "new" roads were proving completely inadequate for the growing traffic of heavy carts carrying logs and cut timber to the railheads. Rather than trying to improve the roads the answer this time was to build a series of permanent standard gauge light railways. Many of these ran roughly parallel with or even alongside the roads but they were always on their own rights of way rather than being the roadside tramways so widely used used elsewhere in France.

If you liked that you'll love this. http://geekologie.com/image.php?path=/2011/08/08/mad-on-the-internet-full.jpg

Don't worry Bernard. Model Railway News and other publications couldn't tell the difference between 00 and OO and H0 and HO either; both appeared fairly indifferently and were I suspect down to the choice of the the typesetter rather than any editorial decisions. It's only because we read things on computer screens that we can even tell that there is a difference. . In H0/HO the difference of course is that HO is the American 1:87.1 scale and H0 is Europe's 1:87 scale (as defined by the NMRA and MOROP respectively) In Britain there was some considerable confusion about whether 0 gauge should be a number (as it came in the gauge series 3,2,1,0,later followed by 00 and 000) or a letter but in Europe it seems to always have been considered a number. Iin France 0 gauge modellers call themselves Zéroistes and their equivalent of the Gauge O Guild is the Cercle du Zéro (a neat play on words) They do though pronounce H0 as "ahsh ohh" The Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Modellbahnbau Spur 0 definitely uses a zero not a letter O.

I have a vague memory of seeing an 0-6-0 diesel shunter at Ft. William while watching trains around the old station in the mid sixties. I think it was shunting oil tank wagons but I'm fairly certain I never saw it handling carriage stock. I was mostly watching from the lochside path so may have walked a bit further up the line from the station throat.

Impacted as in teeth does have a specific meaning in dentistry. This is from the NHS website "An impacted tooth is simply a tooth that is blocked or ‘stuck’ under the gum and cannot erupt or grow into the correct position. Any tooth can become impacted but the most frequent tooth to be impacted is a wisdom tooth" We don't speak to one another from prepared scripts so spoken language, is often mangled. That's likely to be particularly true if what someone says, particularly a police officer, has potential legal implications. Situation is a neutral word so avoids a prejudicial statement such as "We have a crime here" - it's unlikely but not inconceivable that an automatic weapon could have been discharged accidentally A prepared statement from the police on the situation described would certainly be more carefully worded but probably just as tortuous. "The suspect is alleged to have fired multiple shots some of which hit a number of vehicles in the vicinity of the apparent incident." .

Ozexpatriate, on 13 Jun 2017 - 16:55, said: "Left full rudder" "Aye aye sir, left full rudder" Although US ships do use port and starboard for most things, in 1913 the USN standardised on orders being given in terms of the movement of the rudder (and so the ship's head) rather than the movement of the helm or tiller which had been given as port and starboard . NAVY DEPARTMENT Washington, D. C., May 5, 1913 ORDERS GOVERNING THE MOVEMENTS OF THE RUDDER. 1. On and after July 1, 1913, the present designations “starboard” and “port” governing movements of a ship’s helm are hereby ordered discontinued in orders or directions to the steersman, and the terms “right” and “left,” referring to movement of the ship’s head, shall thereafter be used instead. 2. The orders as to rudder angle shall be given in such terms as “Ten degrees rudder; half-rudder; standard rudder; full rudder;” etc., so that a complete order would be “Right–Half-rudder,” etc. 3. Commanders-in-chief and commanding officers acting independently may, in their discretion, institute the above changes at an earlier date. F. D. ROOSEVELT Acting Secretary of the Navy. If you're building a large navy with sailors most of whom had probably never even seen the sea before, having one less thing to remember in a crisis could well have saved precious seconds In line with changes in international shipping conventions the Royal Navy made a similar change in 1931 from movement of the helm to movement of the rudder but had a transtional period of twlve months when steering orders were given as "starboard right" and "port left"after which they apparently reverted to simply port and starboard but now referrng to the wheel, rudder and ship's head not the probably imaginary "helm". I think the Merchant Navy simply used "wheel port" and wheel starboard" to make the transition. The US practice of giving wheel orders in left and right is out of line with International practice which does use port and starboard (As with aviation, a specialist form of English is the international standard for shipping but there too the Americans tend to be out of line with us and the rest of the world) It all remnds me of Michael Green's definition of A Coarse Sailor.... one who in a crisis forgets nautical language and shouts, "For God's sake turn left".