Pandora

Is it correct that the L& Y merged with the LNWR just before the Grouping, and the L& Y name was therefore not part of the 1922 Act? Was the LNWR the largest joint stock company before the merger or only after the merger with the L & Y?

we 1950s babyboomers had to live through 3-day weeks, regular power cuts (not caused directly by our generation), inflation rates regularly over 20%, I was a 6th former / student during that turbulent economic era, unemployment was considered extremely high if the dole queue hit 1 million and goverments could swiftly halve that number.Emerging qualified in electronics, I received a offer for every job I applied for, in fact it was the onus of the employer to convince me why I should take their job and not the go elsewhere I forgot to mention the greater opportunities for social mobility of my early adulthood or going abroad meant swimming trunks and cocktails and not helmets rifles and bayonets.

The LNER express diesel fleet to replace ECML pacifics, agreed in principle by the LNER board but lost and forgotten due to aftermath of WW2 and nationalisation, author Michael Bonavia wrote on the subject, Woodhead and Great Eastern suburban electrification projects became the priority and diesel fleet proposal quietly forgotten i wonder what the locos would have resembled , similar to an EM1 or EM2 but in a diesel electric form, or an American influence such as LMS 10000. The LNER electrification engineer having been sent to the USA to look into dieselisation of the USA railroads.

Triang were somewhat tight-fisted when it came to developing their range of chassis blocks, the Britannia, Princess and Winston Churchill shared the same block. R59 2-6-2T 82004 had the very undersized Jinty wheels and was considerably improved by replacing the wheels from Romford or others. Albert Hall, the B12, and Flying Scotsman, I think they had the same basic motor/driving wheel block as a chassis, adapted to suit the body using extension strips made of pressed-steel attached by bolts. I never owned a Triang M7 but I have a hunch the M7 was based on the L1 chassis with extension strips bolted to the block.

1950's babyboomers, Uni education no-debts, white collar careers which merit those qualifications , copper-bottomed pension schemes, getting rich from house price rises of 1000% , keep working and drawing a tidy salary, retire to commence a life of 25 years of SKI 'ing, Spending The Kid's Inheritance This is the legacy from the babyboomers to the Millenials: They f**k you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. by Philip Larkin (born 1922) I am not proud of the mess my generation are leaving behind. Why has it gone so wrong?

The question to consider is, of the figures, especially 1935, how many were on regular employment, and how many were "on the books" yet not working and without pay? I refer to the situation my of GF , a boilersmith at the Plant Works Doncaster, GF was on short working / stood down for years during the 1920's and 1930's and his family circumstances so dire, his children were taken in and raised by relatives for much of their childhood. An anecdote by my late mother concerns A4 locomotive Silver Link, the government, concerned with the poor state of the economy, passed funds to the "Big Four" to mitigate unemployment, The LNER spent their share on construction of the first batch of A4 locos and streamliner coaching stock. Mother remembered the change of family fortunes as GF began now working 5 to 7 days a week erecting Silver Link and others. She claimed that financially the family never looked back, all the way up to WW2, Mother had an entirely comprehensible regard for Silver Link, it is my intention to have the Hattons O-gauge model of 2509 Silver Link in her memory.

There is growth in free-lancing and temporary work contracts of limited duration of less than 12 months, the "gig" economy, and growth in workers classified as "casual workers" which seem to me to be away of undermining employees statutory rights of employment. These all add up to a detriment to the viability of funding an annual season ticket, season ticket loans to employees by companies were quite common in my day in the City of London, ( I can also recall luncheon vouchers ) as the economy marches forward following the flag of "progress" ie millennials, do not anticipate to have more than your babyboomer parents, what percentage of jobs offer open ended employment contracts with perks such as season ticket loans, final salary pensions, etc?

It was a long time ago, but a similar situation for the Networker 750V DC stock, a Networker dropped an air compressor while in service, many cancellations and even line closures while investigations conducted.

No trains today due to suspension of stock, I heard that a unit in service lost components of the braking system, the lost parts were found during a track examination. drivers are stood down on depots, stock will be checked and signed back into service when safe.

Moan Moan Moan I'd rather have a diesel brake tender

The carbon emission of the engine is not determined by the DPF as the DPF is in the exhaust system not the engine. the DPF is a soot (soot = carbon) trap or filter, temporarily trapping and filtering the soot in the exhaust gasflow, every 200 to 300 miles of driving the vehicle, when the DPF is at maximum load of trapped soot, ie "blocked" as measured by pressure measuring sensors in the exhaust system, the vehicle ECU commands a DPF high temperature "Regen" processs of 10 to 15 minute duration to unblock the DPF trap. The Regen "unblock" process burns the soot into CO2 gas and ash, the CO2 being released into the atmosphere via the tailpipe The difference between an HGV SCR and a car SCR?, both use Adblue urea solution, one being heavy-duty component designed to be successful and effective at neutralising Nox over hundreds of thousands of miles of vehicle operation, the other designed to help the vehicle pass a twenty minute emission certification test.

I knew little of the Severn Tunnel until the post prompted some research. Basically the construction of the Tunnel, What a Disaster, and what a Triumph of perseverance by the Victorian engineers

Basically petrol cars are not exactly good for the environment either and in some ways are actually worse than diesel cars! The issue of dieselgate is this: No - one would object if if the manufacturers had designed, manufactured, supplied diesels cars meeting the emissions standards set in the Eu -wide clean air legislation. The fact is the car makers DELIBERATELY, and PURPOSELY chose to cheat and disregard the clean air standards, delivering millions of diesel cars which were an order of magnitude more health damaging than the petrol cars they replaced

It can depend on the recognition of bargaining procedures by the Train Operating Company, ASLEF seems to be the majority, RMT is the minority union for drivers and footplate grades. There are also "non-poaching" agreements between ASLEF an RMT to avoid civil war between unions. "Civil War" between unions is the dream of the TOCS, divide and conquer would suit management as they press for implementation of ill-informed ideas to undermine terms and conditions of footplate staff, terms and conditions which often came from management think tanks in the first instance, have proved to be defective, and management wish to bury,

A colleague told me of an article in the Times, a comparison of rail ticket prices over the Eu 27 countries, Rail ticket prices UK was top at 50p / mile, then second Austria 33p/mile Germany 19p / mile, Holland, 30p/mile, Italy 15p/mile bottom was Latvia, 7p /mile I do not travel abroad, these figures from the newspaper for UK, France and Germany, are they accurate?

The manufacturers of HGV's and other large diesel vehicles equipped their engines with expensive fit for purpose urea SCR systems which actually work and the authorities have no argument with them The high price tag of an HGV etc meant the cost of effective SCR system could be swallowed in the selling price. The car manufacturers could not factor the cost of an effective SCR system into the price of the diesel car and at the same time compete with either petrol or petrol-hybrid cars on price. Hence VW's 50,000 mile limited life DPF system and the defeat device which masks the fact that the VW DPF is so under-engineered and inadequate. The Co2 emissions of a diesel car are under-stated anyway, the diesel car simply temporarily stores its carbon as soot particles in the exhaust diesel particle filter for 200 to 300 miles and then releases a big dollop of 200 to 300 miles worth of CO2 in a 10 to 15 minute high-temperature burn , ( the DPF regen cycle). None of that CO2 released in the 15 minute burn is ever included in an emissions test giving a falsity to the figures for Co2 figures of the diesel cars.

The Eastern Region withdrew their passenger locos such as the A1's to such excess, the Auditors were strained by the excessive writing-off of assets. That is said to be the reason locos were stored with the boilers filled with chromate solution, on paper, in long-term storage, in reality, withdrawn and scrapping postponed to balance the Ledgers

It may be 1965, I do not think there were any withdrawn 4F's around in 1966,I believe they had all been hauled off to the graveyard by then. I think the last 0-6-0 on BR territory was Jinty 47326 stored withdrawn at Rose Grove ( or was it Lostock Hall ) in June 1967 Post script: this image shows 47326 minus chimney and dome cover in April 1967. I do not recall 47326 in that state in June 1967 on my shed bash, was 47326 used as a source of spares by preservationists? http://www.railwayherald.co.uk/imagingcentre/view/163351/PL

Around 2003 the European car manufacturers lobbied at Eu level to promote the diesel car in order to fend off the competition of the ground-breaking Japanese technology hybrid such as the 2004 Prius. Vast sums of money in the form of grants and cheap loans were accepted by the Eu car industry to develop the diesel bolt ons such as diesel catalysts, particulate filters and SCR Adblue systems and the car industry was given a 10 year window of grace before applying petrol engine emission standards to diesel cars, those standards were EU 6 regulations of 2014/5. The govt made the mistake of belief and trust in the Eu car industry. Note how hard it was for the USA regulators to make VW own up to the defeat device in the Golf , 15 months of questioning and hard evidence from ICATT by the USA authorities and 15 months of denial by VW which was only broken by a VW employee whistleblower who informed the United States EPA regulators of the defeat device. Faced with such hard faced liars, how can anyone place the blame on the government of the day for those worthless toxic diesel cars?

Since the break of VW scandal in 2015,the authorities of many Eu countries have investigated and found defeat devices of various styles in most diesel cars, all intended to circumvent the certification tests, the VW "Akoustikfunction" defeat device the most sophisticated. Fiat was found to employ a simple 22 minute timer knowing the duration of the test was 20 minutes, Vauxhall measured engine torque/load to detect emissions certification testing and Mercedes used ambient temperature with a threshold of 17 deg C knowing the emissions test was conducted at 20 deg C, there are many more. The results of testing even the latest "clean and green " Eu6 diesel cars cars were dismal reading showing their toxic Nox emissions typically 500% of the 80 milligram /km limit, Eu 6 petrol cars were typically 35 milligram / km ie below their 60 limit. In simple terms a single Eu6 diesel car produces the toxic Nox of 10 Eu6 petrol cars

Perhaps there will be a "tilt" switch in the van, whenthe van is in motion or subjected to impacts of coupling/buffering up tyhe decoder will respond with appropriate sounds. Does anyone else recall how an unfitted freight train, when " stationary" at a signal , the vans would creep as the buffers and couplings yielded and released energy, it would send long travelling waves of motion up and down the length of the train? Pity the poor guard in the brakevan who would be thrown off his feet as the wave reversed direction. I think this was known as a rug or ruck

Your Audi A6 is equipped with a defeat device, the defeat device switches the car to "road mode" in every day driving, the "road mode" dosage of urea is a fraction of the correct and proper stoichiometric dosage for "emissions test mode". SCR technology is not new, but is expensive to implement, adding 50% to the cost of the car engine, expect to see zero small cars and only a few medium sized cars available in the showrroms with diesel engine options over the next three years. The figure of 68 miles per litre of Adblue for the VW Tiguan came from a sworn statement in a USA court by a VW engineer on trial for the dieselgate fraud. So far two VW employees have received 3 year and 7 year gaol sentences for their crimes

You are very misinformed to blame the government for the diesel emissions problem, the Govt owes you nothing, the car makers owe you the return of your money for selling a false bill of goods, cars which cheated past the conformance testsw.

I hope they get the profile right on the new tooling. Is this retooling of a model a response to the Sutton Loco works enterprise? http://sulzertype2.co.uk/page.php?p=home