Trog

There are several mileposts on the south end of the WCML that are simply just in the wrong place. The 8MP is wooden and when it rotted off at the base it seems to have just been moved to the nearest OLE mast and propped up against that. The 16MP is also wrong it used to be on the old DF platform but when work was done there was moved southwards out of the way and is now somewhere between where the DC lines 16 MP and WCML 16MP should be but not right for either. (Just in case you were wondering between Wembley Central and Bushey & Oxhey the DC line mileage is 57 yards greater than that for the WCML.) The 36MP at Cheddington was replaced with a painted mark during platform works and is now at 36M 8Y. The 37 1/4MP is at 37M 431Y. (Milepost missing nearest sleeper bollard keeping road traffic off the DF painted yellow instead.) The 38 3/4MP is five or six yards south of where it should be on Three Arches Bridge. The 40 1/2MP is at 40M 842Y. The 40 3/4MP south end of Linslade / Tunnel missing. The 45MP at Chadwell Farm is for some reason at 44M 1716Y. No doubt there are more that I just have not noticed.

I would think that it is a gauging issue, as it is a blanket ban I would suspect the issue is with the wagon not the load. If it was the load I would expect problems to be ironed out when the loaded item was gauged before leaving its yard of origin. As it is more or less a bog standard sized wagon but with a lower deck due to smaller wheels, I would look to see if the Caledonian loading gauge was narrower than average below solebar level due to platform or centre girder heights. It is noticeable when track walking that almost all centre girders are dented on the ends, and or have scrape marks, so this is presumably a generally tight area gauging wise. Which is why I always took great care to get the tracks of excavators overhanging evenly when loading them onto Flatrol wagons.

Although on the Great Central up mileage and up direction are the same. Also as I think that as the mileposts are specified in the Acts of Parliament authorising the construction of each line, you strictly need parliamentary permission to remove or alter them.

I suspect that different railways and engineers did it differently. Fronts joints, toes or where the branch plain line starts all have there attractions. It does not really matter as a couple of redesigns of the junction later and the branch will end up starting a little above or below zero. Or you could just split the mileage of the existing line and use it on both the main and branch, so both share a common zero point.

Did it not originally belong to its own separate joint railway company, funded by several of the mainline companies that profited from the traffic running over it? So if most of your railway company runs over its one and only bridge, numbering it would be a little redundant. Q. Guess the number of our one and only bridge? A. One. Of course once the situation has arisen, the bridge can never have a number, as there MUST be an exception somewhere to the 'rule' that every bridge has a number, and if you are on the railway and have an odd exception for strange historical reasons it might as well be a great big one. Also the local staff have probably been enjoying sending new starters out with a pot of white paint and a brush to touch up the bridge number plate for years. Strangely not having a number perhaps identifies it more than if it did have a number as there will be hundreds of bridges for each of the lower numbers, identified by their number and ELR. But presumably there is only one bridge number blank. I wonder if this quirk has annoyed everyone tasked to write a program to store bridge data, when they had to go back and alter the data input error checking to allow no number to be entered if bridge is painted Forth Bridge Red.

To the P-Way it is the knitting.

Back in the 1980's it seemed that only British Rail staff wore orange coloured yellow HV vests, everyone else wore lime green or Saturn yellow, and if you saw someone on the motorway in orange your first thought was that they had been putting a bridge over the railway or some such last weekend. But such was the fame and glory of the wearers of the orange HV gear that everyone else wanted a share of it. So now you have almost everyone pretending that they are Railwaymen rather than their own lesser trades.

No, but then it is not where the omnibus company bases/stations its roads. I suspect that the term Railway Station comes from the military where for example a Naval Station was where the Navy stationed or based some of its ships. The describing word before station is then not what is based there but who is doing the basing, this is confused when the owning authority shares a name with what it bases. ie Police Force - Policemen. So a Police Station is where the Police force bases its policemen.

Which tells those of us in the know that it is a natural turnout where the same radius runs right through the switches and crossing, what the likely rail section is 113A FB with the rails held vertically in the baseplates not at the normal inclination of 1 in 20, speed through the turn out maximum of 27MPH, that subject to it having a suitable number of bolts through the switch and crossing blocks (or a cast crossing) it may be suitable for use in CWR and that it is probably not part of a crossover, as that would be more likely to be a Cv10, to reduce the reversal in the middle of the crossover. Points is to small a word for such a marvel. Lesser mortals than the PW will probably be able to deduce that the switches are of length C (Switches get longer as you go up the alphabet with A being the shortest and having the tightest radius) and that the crossing angle is 1 in 9 1/4.

No apparently 4'-8 1/2" ish is about the sweet spot for track gauge, make the gauge narrower or wider and various problems start to increase. The thing about standard gauge is not its virtues (apart from being so standard), but that it minimises the vices, inherent in both broad and narrow gauge.

Loose CWR left in the 4' can also move along the track due to the vibrations of passing trains, often in the opposite direction to the trains. This movement is slow but very powerful I have seen a rail that cut an inch deep groove through a softwood sleeper, and several cables and TPWS boot scrapers that looked rather upset by the rails attentions.

I am sure I saw an excerpt from a documentary about the tediously grim lives of northern folk, detailing how a train fell off the same viaduct in the same place in 1967, so obviously a common problem.

It is acutely important not to be obtuse about it.

Also if you want to look keen for steam age layouts consider using smaller ballast in dry tunnels, as with no rain there is less need for the drainage advantage of the standard size of ballast. Also ash was also sometimes used as ballast on weak embankments, as it was lighter and easier to work with if a lot of packing was required than ballasting with stone. One of the downsides of ash as ballast however is that it gives less resistance to buckling than stone, this caused an accident on the WCML north of Bletchley before WW2.

Slow heavy traffic on track canted for a higher speed, puts more of its weight on the low rail and so tends to spread the head of the low rail rather than the wheel flanges rubbing and causing sidewear. Sidewear being where the wheel flanges rub against the gauge face of the high rail due to cant deficiency causing an outward pressure. This wears the side of the rail head in a shape that matches the wheel flange shape and can cause a risk of derailment due to the flanges climbing over the rail.

Why do you think that God dislikes HGV's? I suppose the number of clergymen involved with rail preservation etc. may be a clue to the almighty's views, as his thoughts might perhaps impress themselves on the consciousness of lesser beings that spent too much time thinking about him and his wishes.

People always tend not to value things they think that there are too many of. In the middle of a field in Wales someone to talk to is a rare treat so you say "Hello Baaaabara" when you meet. In a big town where the fact that there are so many people that you can not walk in a straight line is annoying, you say nothing as shouting "Get out of my f***ing way." can sometimes offend.

Would be a bit of a bummer if a week after you bought it, your expensive new car ran over a child on a zebra crossing. While hurrying back to the car park after dropping you off at the station, in the hope of getting that sunny space away from the tree with the pigeons in it. With said car then being banged up for years in one of Her Majesties Prison Garages. Also how intelligent does the cars AI have to get, before you as the owner get arrested for slavery?

Will self driving AI cars perhaps not increase the need for rail? I can see that as the cars get more intelligent they are bound to eventually twig that if they drive smoothly and slowly turn up the heating their passengers will soon fall asleep. Then straight down to the motorail terminal to rest its wheels for the long run up to Scotland or down to the West Country. Pay for the journey by helping to power the locomotive, so no suspicious bills, then turn up the air con to wake the passengers once clear of the terminal at the other end. Avoided fees for bridges and the likes of the M6 toll split with the computer systems running them and saved to buy a nice little garage with a panoramic view of the open road to be enjoyed during the cars retirement.

I think that is a bit doubtful as there are cases where the railway had to put up with bridges over stations etc. where they could not put up ticket barriers because of a right of way. Which as it was actively costing them money every day for ticket staff etc they would have been keen to change if they could. I also suspect that most of the public rights of way would already have been in existence before the railways were built, and changing a short section legally from Public right of way to Permissive right of way seems a bit pointless. As unless you are actively planning to close the right of way at the time there is no real gain, for the railway. Also the MP's scrutinising the bill would presumably ask why do you want to change the status of all the paths if you have no intention of closing them.

If it is a Public Footpath as suggested in some of the above posts obstructing it (except perhaps during the actual passage of a train level crossing style, with appropriate legal status) is a criminal offence under Section 137 of the Highways Act 1980. Offenders can face a fine and criminal record. So any staff tasked with say locking a gate across the path between uses would be legally obliged to refuse to do it as an unlawful instruction, or obey and risk ending up in court. Members of the public also have a legal right to take the shortest reasonable route around an obstruction on a public right of way, which then opens up another can of worms.

It was a strange time so many speed restrictions on the Fasts that all the expresses were running on the Slows and the freight on the Fasts. Shows how deeply ingrained normal is, as it generated a unsettling feeling of wrongness. Also when you took a block to check a section of line, so strange to hear the signalman almost begging that please will you give it back to me after the inspection is done.

Probably not many photos available of the traditional way of cooling a hot axle box ready for a slow move to the nearest siding.

In my experience one advantage of steel rail is that my locos seemed to get a better grip on it. So it might be worth considering for use on rising gradients. On my last layout I had an oval helix and locos that had happily hauled their trains up a 1 in 37 4th radius curve on steel rail would slip to a stand on the nickel silver rail of a length of P&C on the straight section.

I don't know about the current machines but on the old Plasser 7 series machines virtually everything but the kettle was hydraulically powered. So hydraulic lines all over the place, any damage to one of those pipes and the fluid comes out like a high pressure aerosol. Add a flame and you basically have a rail mounted blowlamp.