Karhedron

You raise a very good point. Greta Thunberg has been very effective at raising the profile of of the subject but many people do not respond well to "hectoring". Many people want to help but would prefer clear advice on making practical changes. One of the reasons the current 5-a-day strategy for fruit and veg has been successful is that it is clear, straightforward and practical. We need a 5-a-day scheme for environmental protection that puts the emphasis on supporting people to make improvements rather than blaming them for past mistakes. If someone is a smoker, nicorette patches and support is going to be more effective at helping them quit than guilt-tripping them. The chart below shows how an average person in the UK produces CO2. There are chunks we cannot do much about because they are at a national level. You cannot personally cut down you contributions to Defence spending for example so let's focus on areas within our control. The section marked "Household" account for nearly 40% of the total so represent "low hanging fruit". Household electricity Household electricity is the easiest one to change as you can switch to a 100% renewable tariff. There are 2 on the market at the moment, I am currently with Ecotricity and I would have no hesitation in recommending them to others if you are concerned about your carbon footrint. I do pay a small premium for this, they are not the cheapest on the market but they do plough their profits back into building more wind turbines and solar farms. This means that not only are you reducing your carbon footprint but electricity bills are going towards making the whole country greener. This is a win-win as far as I am concerned and well worth paying a bit extra for (particularly if you have an electric car as this will be 6 times greener than one powered from electricity generated by fossil fuels. Just a note, many companies offer "green" electricity tariffs by buying carbon offsets elsewhere in the world by planting trees etc. It is unclear how effective these are so I always recommend buying electricity from a company that actually generates renewable energy here in the UK. Make other changes like switching to LED lights to cut down on your consumption too if you can. https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/ Household vehicle fuel Household vehicle fuel is another one you can control. New cars are expensive but if you are buying one anyway, consider an electric car, powered by renewable energy. By doing just these 2 changes, you will reduce your carbon footprint by around 25% at a stroke without having to make any lifestyle changes. Household heating Household heating is a bit trickier. Most houses are heated by gas and converting to other forms of heating can be expensive (heat pumps) or awkward to use (electric storage heaters). Make sure your house is as well insulated as possible with loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and double glazing will all cut your heating bill and gas usage. Some companies offer bio-gas which is generated from waste plant material. Again it is slightly more expensive than a regular gas tariff but well worth it in my opinion. https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-green-energy/our-green-gas Personal air travel Personal air travel is about 6% of the average but does have the potential to be completely eliminated. Take holidays by train in Europe and you can make the journey part of the holiday as you watch the world roll past your window. Check out the following site for advice on how to reach most parts of Europe by train. https://www.seat61.com/Europe-train-travel.htm Food Food is another area where you can make a modest change. You don't have to go vegetarian to make a difference. Beef and lamb are the biggest producers of carbon emissions and cows also produce methane (another potent global warming gas). Try to cut down on a meat a bit and switch to pork or chicken where possible to make a significant difference. I hope that this offers some practical advice without guilt-tripping or hectoring.

Current studies suggest 22% of the lifetime emissions of a car come from manufacture, shipping and disposal. The remaining 78% is comes from driving it. This means that car technology only needs to become modestly "greener" in order to result in a new reduction of CO2 over the lifetime of a vehicle. How green a EV is depends on how the electricity is generated. Here in the UK, we are actually somewhat ahead of the curve in powering our grid with renewable electricity. This means that a green car driven here will be greener than one driven in a country that still uses fossil fuels as their primary source of electricity generation. Research conducted by the Mobility, Logistics and Automotive Technology Research Centre in Brussels found that an EV that uses electricity from non-renewable sources will emit slightly more emissions over its lifetime than a diesel car, but less than a petrol car. Switch to green electricity and the EV will produce up to six times less carbon emissions over its lifetime compared to a petrol car. I currently buy my electricity from Ecotricity which is one of only 2 companies that offer a 100% renewable energy tariff. For me, switching to an electric car would make a big dent in my carbon footprint. If your primary concern is CO2 emissions then an EV and a 100% renewable energy tariff is the best way to do this. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/aug/17/car-scrap-energy-efficiency https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/emissions/are-electric-cars-actually-worse-for-the-environment/

Current estimates suggest that price parity could come as soon as 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/23/should-i-buy-an-electric-car-all-you-need-to-know-about-prices-technology-and-range

Could you give some examples of what you are referring to please to avoid confusion?

The six wheelers replaced churn traffic because it saved so much manpower. I'm not going to say "there was not a single churn shifted in 1947" because someone will turn out a picture of one being used in 1956, but in general, churn traffic was dead by then. This is an interesting point as I have been trying to find the end date for churn traffic for some time. Certainly the 1930s saw a big switch to milk tankers but churn traffic on the rails didn't fade away quickly, simply because many smaller dairies hadn't been converted (possibly expense or interrupted by WW2). In 1959, R.C. Riley wrote an article called "Home on the Milk" which details the journey of the west country milk train from Penzance to London. The author notes that some churns were still being collected on the route but that the numbers had fallen drastically compared to some years earlier. He went as far as ton attribute this to the footplate mens' strike in 1955. This makes quite a bit of sense as churn traffic was both labour-intensive and highly perishable so would have been heavily hit by such a strike. Tanker traffic would have held up much better as it was quicker and easier. I think that the dairy staff loaded the tanks rather than BR staff loading the churns into the vans which would also have helped. The upshot of this is that by nationalisation, the majority of milk would have been in tankers but you could easily justify a siphon or two for residual churn traffic in the 1950s. The last date I have seen for a churn was 1961 in the Southern so I currently assume that was the end date unless/until I get more concrete evidence to the contrary. What I feel fairly confident of is that any remaining churn traffic would definitely have ended with the "Western Agreement" in October 1964. This was an arrangement between BR and MMB to focus the milk flows into London on the Southern and Western Regions. These were the bulk flows originating from South Wales, Penzance and Torrington that picked up extra tankers en-route. Rail served creameries on the LMS and ER closed around this time with their London bottling plants switching to receiving west-country milk tripped around London from the marshalling point at Kensington Olympia.

No, it was a much older proposal and would also have been much further out from the city centre. Much of it would have been beyond the boundary of Zone 6.

Yes, there was at least one proposal to build such an orbital railway in the early 90s under the auspices of Network South East. I don't think it was much more than blue-sky thinking but it did get as far as an article in the railway magazines at the time and included a map. The plan seemed designed to use as many old branches and spurs just beyond the outskirts of London as possible, probably to keep costs down. The Watford - St Albans line for example would have been almost completely swallowed. This in itself was one of the problems with the idea. I have travelled on the branch and there really isn't much in between St Albans and Watford to generate traffic. Would passengers from either location have been tempted to travel round to West Drayton (or wherever the interchange with the GWML would have been situated)? It was an interesting idea but as planned, it would have been just outside the greenbelt and thus would probably not have opened up nearly as many travel opportunities as TL or XR. Building it inside London (circling around zone 4 or 5 for example) would have been more interesting but probably completely out of the question on the grounds of cost.

Pre-industrial levels of CO2 were roughly 280 ppm. That represents the most recent equilibrium level without human interference. We don't know for sure what level is safe because of feedback. This is where more CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming that then alters something in the environment that causes more greenhouse gases to be emitted or triggers further warming by other means. Known examples of feedback include: The icecaps and glaciers reflect some sunlight back into space. The more they melt, the warmer the planet will get due to absorbing more solar radiation. The arctic tundra contains large frozen deposits of methane. As the climate warms, some of this is released causing more warming as methane is 25 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Reduced rainfall in the tropics makes the rain-forests drier. This reduces their growth rates and means they remove less CO2 from the atmosphere. It also increases the risk of forest fires which will release more CO2 into the atmosphere. We have seen examples of all 3 effects this year (links below). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49788483 https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/arctic-lake-methane-alaska-gas-esieh-video-a8553666.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-49415973 The concensus among climate scientists is that we probably need to get CO2 levels back down below 350ppm to avoid dangerous runaway effects. Worryingly, we are now well over 400ppm.

The comments with the photo state that this is the 3.20 p.m. mixed train from Marlow on the 24th May 1954. A quick check of the WTT should show if this service included passengers or not. Does anyone have the 1954 WTT for the London Division?

There is a photo of the Marlow - Bourne End mixed train in 1954 below. It does indeed show an Auto-train as you mention.

The picture is pretty indistinct unfortunately. No signage is visible. Apart from railings on the southern and eastern sides, the only other feature is a tall post which I guess is some sort of lamp.

The Wild Swan book does have one rather indistinct photo of Frair Waddon Milk Platform and they note it is the only one they are aware of. If you have difficulty tracking down the book, I can give you a brief description. It is very small, not like the platform as a station. It is hard to judge the size from the photo but it looks to be about 12' square with a railing at the back and on one side. It is hard to tell what it is made from, it might be just timber decking. It was situated where a track crossed the line. The book notes that churns were carried along this lane at least as far back as 1917 so the platform (which opened in 1932) might have been formalising an earlier arrangement. The book mentions that a van was provided for churn traffic and in 1929, a picture shows an elderly Dean full-brake between the loco and auto-coach.

Another catch! As new, the orange cantrail line goes up and over the black area above the cab windows. Later on, the line goes straight across it without curving. Clearly the units got some sort of repaint in the mid-90s as there are quite a few small detail differences despite still being superficially Network South East livry.

OK. I have found Royal Mail branding on a couple of the WCML 321/4s but some of them seem to be missing it. It could be that the branding was applied when new but not at subsequent repaints or it may be that not the entire class carried it. It may also just be that it does not always show up clearly in pictures. This could well be a case of working from photos for particular units. Here is 321406 when new arriving at Euston showing both the "P" and the Royal Mail lettering. 321440 in similar condition with both "P" and Royal Mail present. 321407 in 1997 with the "P" but no sign of the lettering. 321426 in 1997. Again the "P" is present but the Royal Mail lettering has gone. 321401 in 1996. Again the Royal Mail has gone. Based on this, I would hazard a guess that the "Royal Mail" lettering was applied to the class when new but disappeared around privatisation.

Here is a shot of the corresponding end with the "P" in place. Again this is a GE unit. I remember that the WCML 321s had the same parcels area but I cannot remember the branding. I will keep looking for confirmation photos.

I remember that as well. It was the opposite end from the first class section IIRC. Here is the branding on a GE 321.

My Brit struggled on 1st radius curves (227mm IIRC) but you should be OK on the radius you are using. I remember a post about some drive shafts having flash on them which causes problems on curves. https://www.ngaugeforum.co.uk/SMFN/index.php?topic=24487.msg263261#msg263261

I guess that sort of layout is mainly to showcase the stock.

Is that the 3D print we have seen before or a proper EP?

Interesting shot here of 313007 showing both the large roof vents and a rather unusual version of early NSE livery. Much less black around the cab windows than the final version. I prefer the latter livery but I thought this one was interesting enough to share.

I still haven't found any photos of Cow and Gate tankers but I did find this interesting shot from 1937. This is an aerial view of the Cow and Gate creamery at Johnstown, Carmarthen. If you look closely, you can see an Express Dairy tanker in residence. I had been under the impression that tankers only served their owning dairy in the pre-war years and it was not until the MMB pooling in 1942 that tankers started to wander off their home territory. However this shot shows that this was not necessarily the case. The other thing this photo shows is the rake of GW vans and a lone siphon. One possibility is that C&G did not make great use of tankers and dispatched most of produce as processed goods (butter, cheese etc) or in churns. This is just speculation on my part though. It is difficult to extrapolate from just one photo and their is the risk of making unfounded assumptions.

Interesting article on the BBC about the importance of individual action in combating climate change. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49756280

I agree with you. My point is that clean coal competes against other technologies in its category. Unlike wind and solar, it can be guaranteed. But it is more expensive than conventional fossil-fuelled power stations. Nuclear is probably the closest comparison. Unlike nuclear, it does not produce radioactive waste that will need to be stored or disposed of. So the price of running might be lower but the build cost might be higher. So it all comes down to cost.

The question is how it compares price-wise to other methods of generation. It would be competing with things like nuclear for baseload generation I would guess.

The 315s have a very limited sphere of operation for their entire working lives compared to the 313s which have spread to rather unlikely places. The same could be said of the the 314s to some extent, they do not require any extra tooling as they are basically 313s without the DC equipment. A 315 would require tooling up and addition vehicle in the shape of the TSO. Still, maybe RevolutioN will produce a 315 down the line, even if it is not part of the initial offering.