Pandora

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thames_and_Medway_Canal You may also take in the former canal which shared the tunnel to Strood with the railway, if you walk along Canal road there is a monument to view for the canal From Canal Raod which leads to the end of the down yard there is an obelisk for teh canal: http://www.railalbum.co.uk/nonrail/canal-thames-medway.htm

A retired Traction Inspector told me of a verbal instruction to purposely fail women as train drivers, and the instruction was to fail them on inability to couple up and pipe up assessments, depots and yards did not have facilities for women, only men, and the costs of providing facilities for women was the prohibitive , with such an attitude you can understand why carriages did not have catch tanks

The problem at Cholsey, is it a single axle counter or a group of axle counters? If the axlecounter units are functioning with diesel trains but not electric trains., is it the case that the returning traction current in the running rail is leaking into the signal system via the axle counters and not the proper path, the "Red Bonds".

What was the name of the Chief Mechanical Engineer promoted from "Gas Engineer" and said I do not know why they use my name I have never ever designed a railway locomotive in my life

HST 125 's seemed to be in the minority today, I hope GWR organise a good send off for the units when they are retired. There were issues with OHLE power beyond Reading today, therefore diesel power required on the 800's. Caught the 0800 Paddington 2x 5 car set as far as Bath Spa, the diesel engines were started up at the Reading stop, from that point on , by my my GPS phone app speed did not exceed 110 mph which shows how the more powerful sets are needed off the wires. Cancellations on my return journey, the 1443 and 1513 ex Bath to Paddington both cancelled and so was stranded on the platforms for an hour, it must be seen as a serious problem for for two consecutive class 1 services to be caped. An HST appeared, (very welcome) the 1543 service, the 1513 caped for lack of driver according to the announcer, I did not note the reason behind the 1443. Is GWR behind schedule on driver conversion to the new traction? I'm not complaining/criticising, just logging my day out.

The stock level computer is reasonably accurate for Maplin Lakeside where I purchased their entire stock of Arduinoi Mega ADK boards for £21 each, It may have been Lakeside which had a collection box for customers to donate towards the staff break-up meal. Staff seem to b e keeping a positive attitude to their situation, ( it is not their fault after all)

Does anyone who deals with P-Way wet beds recall "Monica"? What ever happened to her? Monica was an On track Machine designed specifically for fixing wet beds, Monica could gobble out wet beds by going down to formation level, new ballast would be dropped into the void after Monica had done her party piece and the wet beds sites would be back to ljne speed for the next morning.

Brixton Station occupies the junction of the Chatham and Catford lines, are you aware of the long-closed East Brixton Station which was situated on the Atlantic lines? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Brixton_rail_lines.png

Along with "Name and Shame" the institutional Americanism the "Six Monthly Performance Appraisal System" is another example of poor management by which managers inflict their ill-informed attitudes opinions and prejudices upon their "hires". The revealing Red Bead Experiment video was shown to a group of managers of one long defunct major computer company where I drew an impressive salary for 10 years, of the junior management audience, few were unable to hide their emotions when the error of their thinking was exposed . https://deming.org/explore/red-bead-experiment

I believe that much of the WCML is not tamped, but "Stone-Blown" Stone blowers inject fine chippings below the ballast, stone blowing with chippings is equivalent to measured shovel jack and pack. Fine chippings do not grind and grate together as trains pass over and there is not the break down into water-loggged ballast dust which results in a wet bed. Wet bed is a mis nomer, the way tools just bounce off you would think they were spillages of airport runway concrete

Q: Why are the chucking it down the conveyor? A: The check-out systems of my local supermarket (a major name beginning with the letter of the alphabet after S) monitor and measure the productivity of the worker, there is a weekly" "name and shame" list for the staff noticeboard of those who are deemed by management to be under performers, just another example of the bullying culture of the high street nationals.

"I didn't say I advocate buying from the cheapest source. I buy from the cheapest source that also provides the quality I want" Agreed, the most expensive part/device/component you will ever pay for is the one that is the "cheapie " not fit for purpose, & has to be thrown away/fixed/replaced with the correct choice of specification and quality and which was probably only slightly more cost in the first place. The Japanese motor industry and electronics industry took on that concept post WW2 This man was said to have been the driver:. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

The Mega ADK is bit more than the Mega 2560, the Mega ADK ( Android Development Kit) is the Mega with extra components to interface to Android devices, to develop apps with Android Studio IDE

I have the fine-scale modern versions of my list but the following locomotives are simply too hard to euthanize: Triang Brittania Dublo CoBo Dublo class 20 and Lima class 20 Lima 31 The Triang E3001 fell off the list when Bachmann released the class 85

The JMRI vitual sound decoder is replacing expensive (£45 to £100 per locomotive )hardware (the sound part of the decoder) with potentially low-cost software,a most welcome development and a step in the evolution of the DCC system.

Buy the Hantek 6022Be dual trace 10Mhz unit for £40 from an Ebay vendor, the Hantek simply plugs into the uSB port of a laptop and you load some software from the CD, the laptop screen is the "display" window and is very satisfactory, I have no issues with the "user interface" of the Hantek, the price of £40 includes two oscilliscope probes leads in the box. I binned my clunky unpredictable Velleman handheld unit soon after buying the Hantek

PcDuino is a retired device, it never caught on I advise buying the powerful Arduino Mega ADK for under £24 from Maplin, you will need to use the search facilty of the Maplin website to locate an ADK, there are still a few of the Maplin stores with an ADK in stock. ps the latest price for an ADK is £21

I have been a customer of Maplin since they began from a "back bedroom" and then a single shop in Rayleigh Essex in 1974, they became a big player in electronics components as the first to offer the retail consumer access by mail order to components such as TTL or CMOS logic long before Maplin became a mainstream high street operation. The cost of semiconductors such as 74 series TTL plummeted from £5 a piece to around 20pence, in contrast Uni Grads starting salaries were £3000 pa, making digital electronics feasible for consumer retailing, their extensive paper catalogue of the 1970s was a feast and a treasure chest for students of electronics, and their rapid order to shipping was first class experience, does anyone recall the Maplin ETI 4600 synthesizer? Maplin had been operating on slim margins for several years , changing owners, and too close to breaking their banking covenants for comfort, the post Brexit exchange rate changes is said to have wiped out their slim sales margins towards losses. I have not noticed any price rises before / after liquidation sales , I purchased an Arduino Mega ADK computer for under £24 earlier this week, typically they had been £35.

I looked up the technical specification of the 68, 3800 hp from the Caterpilar diesel engine May we consider the the 68 as the modern era "Super-Deltic"

I had a couple of rides today between Marylebone and Birmingham Moor Street behind the 68's, i was not the only enthusiast with the same idea too, I'm impressed by acceleration from station stops and acceleration in the between 90 to 100 mph range ( speedometer app on a mobile phone). I therefore look forward to the riding the 68's on the arduous gradients of the TPE route, the diesels may be Caterpilar , but the vigour shown by the locos is not.

On the subject of your needs vs her needs please may I draw attention to the MGTOW movement https://www.mgtow.com/

There was the London Coal Tax which operated for 300 years and the final collection of tax was around 1890. The boundary was an irregular loop of markers around 12 to 18 miles radius from the centre of London, some impressive boundary markers were erected in the 1860's and many still exist and a few examples can be seen near the lineside . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-tax_post One example may be seen at the London end of Swanley Station high up in the down side embankment A list of survivors: https://archive.is/20121224102205/http://www.rhaworth.myby.co.uk/coalwine/postlist.htm

I believe that Bil McAlpine used his influence (and probably his funds) to rescue 4472 from a low position and worked with his friend Pete Waterman to secure the future of the loco. Is it the case that his passing away was incorrectly reported in the media several years ago?

Scrap is also a hazard and a safety risk, trespassers on the line stealing material and a ready source of supply for vandals to purposely obstruct the line damaging trains or worse, such as the major West Ealing derailment in 1989 of an express hauled by a class 50 50025

It must be around 7 or 8 years back NR made scrap clearance a priority and allocated budget for OTMs and plant to run up and down line possessions "de-littering" of the PW, some examples of the scrap had become well- known landmarks for train drivers braking points! The railway was certainly a lot tidier in my neck of the woods at the end.