Zero Gravitas

14 minutes ago, Tim Hall said:

Is anyone who's got a Genesis coach going to Hackett about?

And if you were thinking of doing that, would you get Mike and the Mechanics to do it for you?

14 minutes ago, Gilbert said:

Also still waiting and I suspect I am not too far from you...

Chris

if it’s any consolation, mine arrived today - so they are gradually getting through…

I know it’s bad form to talk about the arrival of subscription copies, but nothing here in OX11, more than a week after it appeared in WHS in Didcot.  Should I be worried yet?

FWIW, I was resigned to missing out on the W1 when Hattons cancelled my pre-order, and I couldn't get one anywhere else. Imagine my surprise therefore when a Hornby ad for the W1 appeared on my Facebook feed - I've ordered and received an R3979 double-chimney version.

It appears to be fully intact, so it's now being put away as Mrs. ZG's Christmas present to me. She's delighted, normally she has no idea what to get me :-).

Ouch. That means that publicly anything other than charging at 7kW as a full member is now more expensive per mile than fuel for my diesel Skoda…

(assuming the EV does 4 miles per kWH, and my Skoda does 60 mpg (which it actually does) at £8 per gallon)

16 minutes ago, Ian J. said:

I've put a pre-order in. Not exactly right for the geography of the revenue era version of S&P, but would fit in nicely for the heritage era for hauling excursion trains from Tynworth to Penmouth Harbour, much as what I would be using my USA Dock Tank for 🙂

A random musing, but I've always thought that if a 57xx Pannier and a USA Dock Tank decided that they loved each other very much, the 15xx is what their offspring would look like.

5 hours ago, 30801 said:

Tesla idle fees are iirc a quid a minute if the bays are more than 50% occupied 50p otherwise.

So how likely are they to be there eight hour?

They’re not 🙂 - that makes sense, and thank you for the clarification.

There is  a fresh problem about what happens if you do want to charge the car whilst you are at work (for any reason) - Perhaps instead of valet parking, we’ll have valet charging, where someone is employed to moved the vehicles on and off the chargers whilst the driver are at work.

9 minutes ago, black and decker boy said:

No it’s not, the rapid chargers are in the perfect place for passing traffic needing a 20min stop & top up, very close to the A34 junction and southern bypass. 
 

you need land to build such a facility so OCC  are clearly being clever in now having a new revenue stream from their P&R land.

All perfectly true - but of little consolation to anyone who has come off the A34 to charge, only to discover that all the chargers are occupied by cars whose drivers have gone to work in Oxford and aren’t due back for 8 hours…

1 hour ago, black and decker boy said:

More charging progress:

 

Europe’s most powerful EV charging hub opens in Oxford

 

https://transportandenergy.com/2022/07/05/europes-most-powerful-ev-charging-hub-opens-in-oxford/

 

Pivot Power, part of EDF Renewables, alongside Oxford City Council, Fastned, Tesla Superchargers and Wenea, has officially opened Europe’s most powerful electric vehicle (EV) charging hub – marking the completion of Energy Superhub Oxford. 

 

The project is part of a nationwide network of Energy Superhubs developed by Pivot Power, which combine transmission-connected batteries and power infrastructure for EV charging to enable more renewables and accelerate the decarbonisation of transport.

 

The charging hub will initially offer fast and ultra-rapid charging for 42 vehicles at once at Oxford’s Redbridge Park and Ride. The charging hub will be powered entirely by renewable energy. With 10MW of installed capacity on site, the hub can scale up with EV adoption to provide charging for 400 vehicles, helping to support the estimated 36 million EVs expected on UK roads by 2040.

 

 

 

 

And it’s in completely the wrong place….   The whole point of the park and ride is that you park there and then go somewhere else for some time on the bus - perhaps all day if you work in Oxford.  What’s the point of being able to charge the car very quickly under those circumstances - and what happens when a car is fully charged by 10:00, but the owner won’t be back to move it until 17:30?

Yet another reason not to go to Oxford. From Didcot, Oxford is closer, but we prefer to shop in Reading or Newbury because they are easier to get to; and easier and cheaper to park in.

What a lot of bass players - and I’m another one.  Possibly my most prized possession is my 1987 Wal Custom, purchased new from the Bass Centre when it was still in Wapping.

Postie delivered mine in Didcot this morning, so they are being released into the wild.

This is still bad form, but have you read Hornby’s description on their web site:

“Supplying vital loads of cargo for many hundreds of steam locomotives, the Ferry Van Wagon is a practically universal feature of the railway, part of the scenery as surely as the sight of a station or a locomotive”

which is interesting, to say the least...

On 31/03/2022 at 21:31, Neil P said:

I'm not looking for a scapegoat. I feel sorry for the guy who had to cancel his holiday.

There's been a lot of fingers pointed at Dediserve, who have clearly messed up, but I don't understand why it's wrong to suggest that the rmweb team should consider how they might have done things differently.

To misquote Bananarama - it’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it...

There’s a big difference between “considering how they might have done things differently” and your original “are the RMWeb team taking any responsibility for the failure”.

Language and how it is used really matters - particularly in difficult situations.

In PRINCE2 project management, at the end of a project there’s an activity called “lessons learned”, where one reviews the things that went well, and should be done again; and the things that went less well, to think about what changes should be made for future projects.  If it was called “the hunt for who got it wrong” it would be a considerably less useful experience for all concerned.

And so it is here. Sometimes, sh*t happens - people react and a lot of hard work and late nights later things are getting back to normal.  And you can be absolutely certain that there will be thinking about how to stop this from ever happening again.

On 31/03/2022 at 14:53, MJI said:

Speed is pretty good

That’s as maybe, but nobody should be promoting the use of illegal drugs on a railway modelling forum.

11 minutes ago, rapidoandy said:

They are the wagon label clips (which were mounted on a wooden back piece). Not all of them had them so they have been included as optional parts for those that want to fit them.

 

Enjoy your GPV! 

Ah - that makes sense. Thank you!  And whilst I’m here - the way the NEM pocket can be removed completely is quite wonderful. Some day all manufacturers will do it this way.

Well, mine has just been delivered. It's very nice indeed. I'll add a couple of photos later, but in the meantime, there are two little rectangular grey bits in a plastic bag included.  What are these and where do they do?...

As ever, another splendid issue.  One question - are the laser-cut wagons in James Aitken's article 4mm or 7mm?  I'm sort of guessing 7 mm, but it would be nice to have that confirmed.

(and, as ever, it is entirely possible that the article does actually tell me and that I've missed it...)

21 hours ago, Jonboy said:

The shocker for us was when the last tumbler dryer died and was replaced with a heat pump fitted version, that dropped our electric usage by around 25% per annum on its own.

What did you go for, if I might ask?  Our Miele tumble dryer is now 20 years old, and I suspect it’s a major contributor to our energy costs...

On 15/01/2022 at 16:40, didcot said:

It's been an issue in certain parts of Oxfordshire for longer than I care to remember. No sign of it getting any better. 

Indeed not. In Didcot, Mrs. ZG’s birthday cards, posted in various parts of the country and post-marked 05 or 06 January, were all delivered together on 13 January...

53 minutes ago, Crisis Rail said:

 

He’s not a celeb. He’s an athlete he is considerably fitter than you and me. it’s his employment. It’s also nobody’s business for anyone as an athlete what unknown he does or doesn’t want to put in his body. 

 

To sort-of-quote Terry Pratchett “freedom includes the freedom to take the consequences”

He’s perfectly at liberty not to take the vaccine. However, he shouldn’t be surprised when this prevents him from doing certain things because the choice he has made is at variance with the rules of where he is going.

My employment involved me going to countries where certain vaccinations were mandatory for entry. If I didn’t have them, them they would not let me in.  This is no different, and the fact he is an athlete is completely irrelevant. In fact, if he believes that the vaccine impairs performance, then he’s actually seeking to gain an unfair advantage over those athletes who have chosen to be vaccinated.

8 minutes ago, Fenman said:

 

Curious. All the professional reviewers have stated that the Skoda Enyaq, for example, has a boot so large that you could just about carry the moon.

 

Paul 

It’s not just about total volume - it’s how that volume is arranged.

My wife is a wheelchair user.  Her wheelchair fits comfortably folded and laid in the back of our Octavia estate. The back of the Enyaq isn’t long enough to do this, and whilst it is taller, it’s not tall enough the put the chair in upright.

An electric Octavia estate would be perfect for us (notwithstanding the fact that it makes no economic sense at the moment - see previous posts...)

2 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

I appreciate it may be inconvenient, but surely the mums could get together with a rota of some form ? and I think from what I see primary schools are more orderly than senior schools. But the simple fact is the schools like pubs and clubs were closed because they were unsafe places. We cannot hide from the fact that they are high risk environments for virus transmission  

So the mums should sort out the rota before going home to do the housework and cook their husbands’ tea for when they get home from a hard day at work?

I’m sorry, but I’d really like to hope that in 2022 we’ve moved beyond these outdated ideas of gender roles.

11 hours ago, atom3624 said:

WRT this RM instruction not to deliver, is this possibly an instruction issued by previous owners of your property when they were moving, which hasn't been rescinded?

It should of course relate NAME and POST CODE, but perhaps its the post code only which is triggering this instruction?

Al.

No one else has ever lived in this house - it was bought off the plans 24 years ago.  And we’ve had plenty of items delivered in that time, and this is the first time anything like this has happened.

13 hours ago, Hobby said:

If you check i haven't dismissed anything and agreed with his last post so that's that one out if the way. The simple fact is that we don't have the figures for the whole country, instead we only have individual reports. However I suspect that the government does have those figures and that's what they have based their decisions on, ZG. But no doubt you'll tell me I'm wrong!

That's just strange - first you question the veracity of what I'd heard from a person actually working within the NHS, because there weren't any "statistics", and then you tell me that you agree with someone else who has just done exactly the same thing....

Anyway, here's a statistic to keep you happy. It's from BBC news:  Covid: Workplaces told to plan for absences of up to 25%

"Rising cases are also affecting the NHS, with 24,632 staff at hospital trusts ill with coronavirus or self-isolating on 26 December, up 31% on the previous week and nearly double the figure at the start of the month, according to NHS England."

You'll probably be upset that it's from a "media source" - but I hope we can agree that BBC news is generally pretty reliable; and the point is that it backs up what I said in my original post - people working in the NHS are very worried about their ability to cope with the omicron spike due to increased staff absence.

3 hours ago, lapford34102 said:

You've made some some very good points in recent post Andy though Hobby has a valid stance as this can't go on much longer.The NHS+Social Care needs a cold hard look , everyone seems to agree on that, and maybe the sooner the better though getting a social and political concensus on the way to go unlikely to be easy.

Daughter's view of their current situation is that they may not be overwhelmed but they're effectively saturated at the moment. She's a Lead Clinical Occupational Therapist and pulling 12 hour shifts as she's the only one left standing in her group. No-one's going to give her a bonus, tell her her to take next week off or even apologise to her family for the resultant disruption. We saw her before Christmas and she's clearly knackered but will undoubtedly keep going while we're hoping nothing gives. This is just one very small cog in a one very big machine. One thing that's beginning to rankle her and, I suspect, others is the assorted talking heads going around praising the NHS for all their hard work. Her view is words are cheap, do something!

An anxious Dad just having a blast of her behalf.

 

Happy New Year!

Stu

Unfortunately, because you can’t quote “statistics”, Hobby won’t believe you and will dismiss what you are saying as hearsay.

 I, on the other hand, do believe you; as it tallies perfectly with what my friends who work in the NHS are telling me.