Zero Gravitas

I’ve reported the thread - I’ll leave it to Andy to decide the most appropriate approach.

Well you live and learn - thank you. I’ve just been back to Tatlow to educate myself, and then I’ll go to my room and think about what I’ve done. However, I still wonder if there is a reason why opening to the left was much less common than opening to the right. And I’ll add to my post above to explain my error.

It’s all my fault. I’m sorry. And the clue to the answer is in the thread title. I watched the Guy Martin program on EVs the other night and thought “I’ll comment on this in the EV thread”... But could I find it? Search didn’t seem to work, so eventually I gave up and just posted anyway. However, it seems to have taken on a life of its own. On other forums, administrators can merge threads when this sort of thing happens. Would our beloved leader be able to to do this and restore the timeline?

There's probably good news and bad news here... The good news is that I think the weathering and the transfers are absolutely fine - I've seen vans on exhibition layouts lettered and weathered to a significantly lower standard than this. And it's good to see vac pipes and steam pipes on fish vans! My own approach to getting the numbering level is to use a bit of low-tack masking tape to create a straight, level edge and use this as the datum for positioning the lettering. However - the bad news is that I've never seen an LNER van (or any UK van for that matter) where the door slid open to the left - every other example I've seen has opened to the right. In addition, I would expect these vans to have LNER pattern 8-shoe brake gear, with the off-set v-hangers; and they appear to have something more akin to LMS brake gear arrangements. Edited to add - 57xx has corrected me below, so I’ve struck out the erroneous part of this post. These are NER wagons and should have left sliding doors. Apologies for any confusion. So in fact, there’s just good news :-)

No - EVs will make sense when the cost of buying and running an EV over the lifetime of ownership is less than the cost of buying and running an ICE over the same timescale. And we're just not there yet.

No it's not disingenuous at all, because what I'm doing is showing the real cost of changing my vehicle. And you're right - in the vast majority of cases the cheapest vehicle to own is the one you've got now. I could go out and buy a one-year old Octavia tomorrow if I wanted - but I'm not going to as that would cost me more in total than continuing to run the car I currently have. And that's all I was trying to show - that at the moment for me, and the majority of us, the cost of converting to an electric vehicle is so much greater compared to the cost saving of running an electric vehicle as to make it not financially sensible. And that's partly because for the sort of EV I'd be interested in isn't yet old enough to have second-hand examples (an Enyaq is actually smaller inside than my Octavia) - if we do the sums again in three years time, when there will be second-hand Enyaqs on the forecourts (the cheapest second-had Enyqaq on auto trader is currently £38000) then we may get a different result - and there will come a point at which it will make financial sense to move to an EV. But I'm still a long way away from that.

Again fair enough - so let's assume I replace the Octavia estate with another Octavia estate - I paid £14000 for this one at one year old, so let's assume I do the same. So the additional cost goes down from £33000 to £26000 and the break even point reduces to 13.5 years... Including the cost of the car is not disingenuous at at - it's absolutely fundamental to the decision to switch to an EV. If I were in the happy position of having a car of equivalent value to an EV that meets my capacity needs, then I'd be giving it serious consideration - but I'm not. However, that MG5 looks interesting. If it has room in the load area for Mrs G's wheelchair that could be worth of investigation (but would still have a 7.75 year breakeven for a equivalent trim level to my current Octavia)

Fair point - although the whole idea was to see what would happen when you were out of range of the domestic supply. In addition - for those 1100 miles using Gridserve chargers, you'd pay approx £40 less than me, or 0.275 pence per mile. To replace my Octavia estate (trade in about £7000) with an equivalent-size EV - say a Skoda Enyaq at £40000, and based on my average 7000 miles a year, it would take me just over 17 years to break even... I'm not anti-EV at all, but at the moment, for the vast majority of us the economics just don't make any sense.

£140 was the quote in the program, where they said it was 1100 miles. Using my own trusty Skoda Octavia estate, which has averaged 61.3 mpg over 60,000 miles (that's proper measured, not off the trip computer, which is an average of 1.5 mpg optimistic), and based on a diesel cost of 135.9 per litre (yesterday at Tesco in Didcot), it would cost me £110.86 And presumably the program will have been made when diesel cost less than it does now (at 1.42 per litre it would cost me £115.83)

Thank you - it looks like it was me after all... Although using EV as a search term definitely returned no results. I'll add this to that thread (unless you advise otherwise)

I’m sure it’s me, but I can’t find the EV thread (and yes, I have used the search facility)... I watched the Guy Martin program about EVs last night. One of the things he did was drive from Land’s End to John O’Groats and back in an Ioniq 5. The charging problems he encountered along the way predictable, but what surprised me was the cost. The electricity from commercial chargers cost £204 - as opposed to £140 of diesel to do the same trip.

Including you, apparently :-)

Certainly here in Didcot, the empirical experience is more like Neil’s - in Tesco it’s about 60:40 masks:no-masks.

Sorry. I was frivolously thinking about what the W1 would have been classified as had it been a 4-8-4 (or 4-8-2-2, but let’s not start that again). Knowing then that LNER Pacifics were A Class, and the 4-6-0s were B class, there was not a class for 4-8-4s; and also given that I (for India) was the only letter not used, I made the jocular suggestion that had the Hush-Hush in fact been a 4-8-4, it would have been an I1 and not a W1 (W being the class code for 4-6-4s). Edited to add: Just realised (not for the first time) I'm an idiot: Given the W1 was the only LNER locomotive with a 4-6-4 arrangement, had it been made as a 4-8-4, the W code would still have been available and so it would still have been a W1, but W would then be assigned to 4-8-4s. No wonder you've got no idea what I mean...

It’s actually an I (for India) 1... I being the only code the LNER did not use for wheel arrangements...

Please! Pause!

Or more pertinently for this forum, why did she take a B1 to Australia in the first place :-)

This has been a fascinating discussion, and the conclusion I have drawn from it is that if there can be this much interpretation and discussion applied to something that is supposed to be a standard for classification, then (and with all due respect) then it's not a very good standard. Additionally, I think the single biggest problem with Whyte notation is that is does not differentiate the powered wheels from the unpowered, and so relies on a degree of assumption and/or interpretation of what the layout of the locomotive actually is. Most of the time, this works because across the majority of locomotives the wheel arrangements are broadly similar (basically carrying wheels - driving wheels - carrying wheels) and we can make an accurate interpretation based on our experience. However, there are "corner cases" (as we are seeing) where it's a lot less clear what's going on and it's both difficult to assign a Whyte notation and then interpret what that notation actually means. It's a bit like the Newtonian theories of motion - they work for the majority of situations we experience as humans (up to the solar system scale), but for very high velocities and masses (the black hole sort of scale) they don't work and Einstein's theories have to take over. So for me, whilst it's not perfect, that's why UIC notation works better for a greater majority of locomotives.

Why, in the name of all that is wonderful, did you let her in in the first place? (not you personally, but you know what I mean)

I’ve always said that Mr. Bonwick is the most dangerous man in railway modelling...

That’s the same link I quoted. And whilst 4-6-2-2 is not “strict” Whyte Notation, I think it does make sense in in the spirit of Whyte (to me anyway...). In UIC it would be a 1C11, which would be much clearer. As for your second example, I agree that Whyte doesn’t cover it - but I don’t think UIC does either. There are (A1A)(A1A) examples (Class 31 or 18000, which is less than a mile from where I am typing this), and in any case if you were being strictly pendantic but tautological they would (Ao1Ao)(Ao1Ao). Although you could argue that if (Ao1Ao)(Ao1Ao) were adopted formally, then A1A could be used for the situation you describe, but would fail for a B1B upwards.... This conversation is one of the many reasons I love RMWeb!

It’s covered fairly (if you’ll excuse the pun) well here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whyte_notation including articulated locomotives. PS: I think the W1 would be a 4-6-2-2 and not a 4-6-2+2 because the Bissel truck is attached to the same set of frames as the other wheels. If, for some bizarre reason the Bissel truck were attached to the tender, then it could be considered a 4-6-2+2, but then I think it would have to be a 4-6-2+2-0-0 in Whyte notation. PPS: A 4-6-2-2 could theoretically be interpreted as a locomotive with a two-axle leading bogie, followed by a three-axle leading bogie, then 2 driving wheels and a single-axle trailing truck... Which is why UIC notation is more precise.

You had training on Depersonalisation-Derealisation Disorder? if however, you had training on the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), then that would make more sense; although your training department are probably currently holding their heads in their hands...

Even by your very high standards, Mr. B - that tractor is outstanding!

No - that was a completely different band