The Night Mail

[polybear]

2 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

Not necessarily - it all depends on the “Chocolates for Christmas” orders (all at true “trade” prices and in “trade” [i.e. large] quantities).

 

Any benefit due to exchange rate fluctuations goes into the BTBAB* kitty. No orders, no benefits from currency exchanges.

 

*Buy The Blokes A Beer 

Can iD supply Cadburys Dairy Milk at trade though?  I’ve yet to find better….

[AndyID]

10 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

OK, Andy, clue me in.

 

I get reversing up the driveway in a car with rear wheel drive (traction ‘n’ all that), but a FWD? Surely tractive effort would be the same moving forward and backwards. Unless it is the gearing/gear ratio when going in reverse that makes the difference?

 

I really have no clue, please enlighten me.

 

Yes, as others have pointed out it's because more of the vehicle's weight is on the downhill end. Technically the center of gravity acts at a point lower on the slope. Not only does that favor drive wheel at the lower end but it's a real disadvantage for drive wheels at the higher end.

 

There's another aspect too. The driving torque tends to transfer weight on the suspension towards the rear of the vehicle. It's quite obvious on FWD cars when they accelerate quickly from a standing start. The front end of the car rises because there is less load on the front suspension and there is an increased load on the rear suspension. The same is true on RWD drive cars so the driving wheels are less likely to slip.

[jamie92208]

7 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

 

In Swizzerland, apparently!

 

Morning, from a breezy, sunny and rain-free rock, 15c and that'll be about it I should think. 

 

We're not immune to the sporting activities here, in fact the Fraggles are a sporty lot, having local footie, rugby and hockey leagues for both sexes  (and some mixed in hockey - yes, mixed!) as well as the 'national' team playing in a north-west UK league.  Motorcycling of course goes without saying, and the only sport either of us is interested in.

 

Not sure of today's agenda, herself is cleaning gutters, not a job I can do due to not being able to stand on a ladder rung - because trashed foot.  Watching would be good sport actually, but would likely involve having gutter yack flicked at me for laughing, so I am keeping out of the way.  Then who knows, likely a light lunch somewhere as we're off out to the Big City for a curry with friend Jayne this evening.

 

Oh-oh, Mrs NHN approaches, better pretend I'm doing something.

Have you tried wearing a pair of clogs Neil.  They don't give at all and there is no pressure  point like a pair of shoes.  I used to wear them on shed when working at the Ratty.  Very comfortable. 

 

Jamie

[Dave Hunt]

17 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I had the left hand brake line snap on a display jump into HQ British Forces Antwerp. 

 

It was akin to trying to land an aircraft with only the right hand side flaps operating.

 

Which I did once. This was the result:

 

 

The runway is is a couple of hundred yards beyond the aircraft.

 

Which is also where the right main wheel is.

 

Dave 

Edited 5 hours ago by Dave Hunt

[Tony_S]

25 minutes ago, AndyID said:

It's quite obvious on FWD cars when they accelerate quickly from a standing start.

It was embarrassing in a Ford Escort we had.  It would bounce if you tried to move too quickly from stationary. It wasn’t a problem in our Clio or with the Fiesta. Perhaps we are just more sensible now. With a modern Land Rover you just select a terrain icon that looks like what is outside the car and off you go. The access to the  cottage we had in Dorset earlier this year had inclines probably steeper than those found on roads with mud gravel and patches of concrete. A new icon appeared on the instrument panel showing hill descent control had been applied. 

[AndyID]

I drewed a pic.

 

 

Hopefully self-explanatory.

 

BTW, the weight transfer to the rear on a steep incline explains why Pacifics are more likely to stall than 4-6-0s.

 

 

Edited 4 hours ago by AndyID
Typhoo

[polybear]

57 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

Which I did once. This was the result:

 

 

The runway is is a couple of hundred yards beyond the aircraft.

 

Which is also where the right main wheel is.

 

Dave 

 

How broken was it?

 

 

[AndyID]

7 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

How broken was it?

 

 

 

The landing gear was pretty cream-crackered but it doesn't look too bad otherwise.

[iL Dottore]

2 hours ago, polybear said:

Can iD supply Cadburys Dairy Milk at trade though?  I’ve yet to find better….

Nope!

 

Ever since Mondelez International (a spin-off of Kraft foods) who now own Cadbury* changed their recipe, Cadbury chocolate has been a poor imitation of what it once was. According to one poster on Reddit, the Kraft obsession with making money meant “replacing sugar with corn syrup, replacing the very important ingredient of cocoa butter for the cheaper costing, tasting, texture changing, mouthfeel affecting, ingredient of palm oil, then stopped making some popular bars because they weren't selling as well as before, because UK punters didn't like the new recipes and stayed away”

 

Of course, Swiss (and Belgian) chocolate has not only to live up to a well deserved reputation, but is also mostly made by family firms and small businesses which focus on quality. Lindt & Sprüngli, although one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in Switzerland, is partly owned by the Tanner family, the Lindt & Sprüngli pension fund and a few private individuals (it is a publicly traded company). Despite being a large company Lindt and (especially) Sprüngli make very high quality chocolates considered by many to be far superior to those from Caillier - which is a subsidiary of the food conglomerate Nestlé.

 

Swiss chocolate can seem strange to those whose chocolate bars involve mostly corn syrup, palm oil and “flavourings”. 

 

* apparently all the promises mad by Kraft etc, in order to be able to purchase Cadbury wer quickly broken (quelle surprise) and much of Cadbury’s chocolate is made in Poland using cheaper (and also inferior) ingredients

 

Edited 4 hours ago by iL Dottore
Added missed text

[PhilJ W]

An alternative to Strictly come prancing tonight.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/abandoned-railways-from-above

[polybear]

14 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

The landing gear was pretty cream-crackered but it doesn't look too bad otherwise.

 

A certain Flying Club** light aircraft (a low wing jobbie on loan) was once subjected to a heavy landing on one main wheel, with rather a lotta yaw on by all accounts.....

There was a bit of damage to the stressed skin on the top surface of the wing....plus a few bits of loose busted ally fragments Bear saw him rescue from up inside the undercarriage bay.

 

Anyway, the Flying Club Superstars "knew a Licenced Engineer that worked at Hatfield" who could fix it....Bear saw him rummaging thru' the scrap metal bin for a gash bit of ally sheet (history & grade unknown to anyone) that he'd rivet over the damage and all would be fine.....

 

Airyplane owner was less than chuffed - particularly as he'd not long shelled out for a complete respray.  He referred the whole mess to the Insurers & CAA who insisted it went to a Licenced Repair Facility.

 

They discovered the main wing spar was cracked.....

 

**At a certain late (and much greater) Great Empire than the shower at St.Evenage....

 

 

[Happy Hippo]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

 

How broken was it?

 

 

The canopy was still attached so it couldn't have been that much of a bang.

[Dave Hunt]

1 hour ago, polybear said:

How broken was it?

 

Not too bad. It was assessed as Category 3, i.e., repairable under local resources. The main damage was to the right-hand undercarriage and some slight damage to the underside from flying stones etc. The cause was a total failure of the utility hydraulic systems together with one of the flying control systems and although the emergency systems worked so I could get the gear and flaps down I had no rudder control and only the right wing ailerons and spoilers then once on the ground there was no steering. It was all going well until just before touchdown when it started rolling to the right and I didn't have enough control authority to correct it so the landing was a bit of a semi-controlled crash on the right undercarriage leg. At that stage I more or less became a passenger but didn't actually think about ejecting, even though we were off the runway and 'going agricultural' as the saying goes. Best described as interesting.

 

Dave

[AndyID]

2 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

 

Not too bad. It was assessed as Category 3, i.e., repairable under local resources. The main damage was to the right-hand undercarriage and some slight damage to the underside from flying stones etc. The cause was a total failure of the utility hydraulic systems together with one of the flying control systems and although the emergency systems worked so I could get the gear and flaps down I had no rudder control and only the right wing ailerons and spoilers then once on the ground there was no steering. It was all going well until just before touchdown when it started rolling to the right and I didn't have enough control authority to correct it so the landing was a bit of a semi-controlled crash on the right undercarriage leg. At that stage I more or less became a passenger but didn't actually think about ejecting, even though we were off the runway and 'going agricultural' as the saying goes. Best described as interesting.

 

Dave

 

Yes the undercarriage took a serious hit. How did your underwear do? (I know mine would not have done too well 😄)

[rockershovel]

5 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

I think the loco you are referring to is a Mallet.  It has a frame with a boiler attached at the rear and then a further set of driving wheels on what is a very  hefty front bogie.

 

The steam to this front bogie is carried through flexible steam pipes, and the whole shebang works on the compounded steam system where the rear cylinders are high pressure, and the front cylinders which are much bigger in diameter, low pressure.

 

Another type of semi articulated loco is the the single Fairlie loco. Taliesin on the Ffestiniog is probably the best known in the UK.  Here the steam feed is through a rather elaborate steam tight joint (a bit like a UJ on front wheel drive cars).  The more  common double Fairlie has two such arrangements, one for each power bogie.

They are variously described as "Engerth" or "Stutz". The front of the tender is supported on the rear of the loco frames. 

 

 

[Dave Hunt]

2 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

Yes the undercarriage took a serious hit. How did your underwear do? (I know mine would not have done too well 😄)

 

To be honest, I was too busy for all except the last few seconds to start worrying. Plus I was only about 24 and so knew I was invulnerable 😏

 

Dave

[Chris Snowdon]

5 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Curried Red Cabbage and ginger coleslaw is premium fuel for that sort of event.

 

I really like the sound of those or that.  Should work really well with game, and make an interesting change from red-currant gravy.  Many thanks.

 

regards

cs

[polybear]

9 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

Yes the undercarriage took a serious hit. How did your underwear do? (I know mine would not have done too well 😄)

 

Commonly referred to as "An un-commanded Stores Release"; more significant incidents may well result in "Emergency Jettison".....

[Happy Hippo]

3 minutes ago, Chris Snowdon said:

I really like the sound of those or that.  Should work really well with game, and make an interesting change from red-currant gravy.  Many thanks.

 

regards

cs

Normally I wouldn't curry the red cabbage, but when you gotta go.....

[Happy Hippo]

11 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

They are variously described as "Engerth" or "Stutz". The front of the tender is supported on the rear of the loco frames. 

 

 

I've seen one of those made from the old Mamod  steam loco.  The tender was built to carry an oversized meths tank with a flexible tube to connect it to the burner unit.

 

I believe that the late Peter Jones of 16 mm fame, designed one to fit onto a Roundhouse chassis, although due to the Roundhouse loco weight distribution, it would not have contributed much to adhesion.

[Dave Hunt]

9 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Commonly referred to as "An un-commanded Stores Release"; more significant incidents may well result in "Emergency Jettison".....

 

Also known in the trade as BTS.

 

Brown Trouser Syndrome.

 

Dave

[jjb1970]

When I shared some pics of box boats the other day there was some talk of how high they are. This might illustrate the freeboard, the CMA CGM Louis Bleriot bunkering in Pasir Panjang (Singapore) last week. The Louis Bleriot is quite a big boat at about 21,000TEU, that bunker vessel, Goodtrans 1, is not a toy at a touch under 8000DWT and 119m length but she looks a bit toy like in comparison. Some of the bunker vessels in Singapore are impressive boats, far removed from some of the bunker barges generally associated with that part of the industry. Much more tanker ship than refuelling barge.

One of the things I hated at sea was having to go down to the bunker barge to witness them dipping the tanks and counter signing the soundings. At the risk of sounding cynical, if a bunker barge is planning to short change the recieving ship (perish the thought!! Unheard of behaviour....) then they'll probably also have adjusted sounding tables or a special sounding tape, a striker plate inside the sounding pipe or something. Clambering down a pilot ladder onto a bunker barge bobbing around about half a mile below the main deck of a container ship was never my idea of a sensible thing to do. 

 

[Tony_S]

5 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

think the loco you are referring to is a Mallet.  It has a frame with a boiler attached at the rear and then a further set of driving wheels on what is a very  hefty front bogie.

 

The steam to this front bogie is carried through flexible steam pipes, and the whole shebang works on the compounded steam system where the rear cylinders are high pressure, and the front cylinders which are much bigger in diameter, low pressur

The UP Big Boy was articulated like a Mallet but wasn’t (isn’t) compounded. Perhaps by then the technology to deliver high pressure steam via flexible connectors was feasible. 
 My  Bachmann ON30 2-6-6-2 appears to be a model of a non compounded articulated logging loco. Though a lot of articulated logging locos were compounded. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Tony_S

[Chris Snowdon]

3 hours ago, Dave Hunt said:

Which I did once. This was the result:

 

 

The runway is is a couple of hundred yards beyond the aircraft.

 

Which is also where the right main wheel is.

 

Dave 

Any landing you walk away from is a good one (to which, someone once shouted the reply - "And if you can use the aircraft again, it's a foxtrotting good one!").

I see no "Keep off the grass" signs so parking on the lawn was clearly not forbidden.

Am not familiar with the marking aft of the roundel, but reminds me of BR "metals" sector:  "And they shall hammer their swords into ploughshares..."

 

regards

cs

[Chris Snowdon]

3 hours ago, AndyID said:

I drewed a pic.

 

 

Hopefully self-explanatory.

 

BTW, the weight transfer to the rear on a steep incline explains why Pacifics are more likely to stall than 4-6-0s.

 

 

Great stuff AndyID and thanks for shurn it - It takes me back to A-level physics, when given something like this and a bunch of numbers, I would have drawn lots of triangles and then calculated some absurdly-accurate numbers to show the various forces acting on the vehicle, before resolving the whole damned lot to an equally-accurate number, but with the resolved-force arrow pointing uphill...

So I never sat A-level physics. 

 

regards

cs