The Night Mail

[SM42]

5 minutes ago, Craigw said:

 

One of the "wonders" of social media is the polarising. People who are passionate about politics tend to talk to each other and wear their hearts on their sleeves. Nothing wrong with that, but they also tend to shut out differing views and thus live in a self-reinforcing echo chamber. That does not strike me as healthy. I have political views, but like religion I try to keep them to myself. I keep social media for cats, cat rescue, model railways, military modelling and bad jokes. It works well for me. 

 

Very sensible. 

 

Andy

[New Haven Neil]

Oh, as for our PO wagons, well this one is a bit of a fudge!

 

We know the works existed, we know they had three wagons.....but a photo has never surfaced, so.....we made it up.

 

This is the livery sample, with a spelling mistake, so a 'unique collectors item'.  Must speak to Gostude, LOL....I still have it.

 

Edited August 6 by New Haven Neil

[The White Rabbit]

26 minutes ago, New Haven Neil said:

The PO wagons were one of our better ideas at Trackshack, John and I pored over many volumes of PO wagon books to try to pick liveries that were attractive, do-able and in a basic way North, South, East and West.  Sold well, indeed I still get questions about them.

 

Mine will be fictitious and locally themed. Base coats of primary coloured paint and artwork on top. Cards for the puzzle line-up can be colour coded for non-railway people having a play, we can talk about Joe Bloggs and Sons four plankers. Or Trotter (R) & Pierce (M) two plonkers... 😉

 

Incidentally, does anyone have any recommendations for transfers or other material for DIY POW lettering/liveries in SM32? 

[jjb1970]

2 hours ago, Craigw said:

 

One of the "wonders" of social media is the polarising. People who are passionate about politics tend to talk to each other and wear their hearts on their sleeves. Nothing wrong with that, but they also tend to shut out differing views and thus live in a self-reinforcing echo chamber. That does not strike me as healthy. I have political views, but like religion I try to keep them to myself. I keep social media for cats, cat rescue, model railways, military modelling and bad jokes. It works well for me. 

 

Very well put! The echo chamber effect and finding news sources based on confirmation bias has had a baleful effect on discourse.

 

Now everyone in the world agrees with us, so anyone who doesn't must be some sort of aberration imbecile who should be ignored, well yes everyone in the world will agree with you if your world is deliberately limited to such people and news outlets telling you what you want to hear.

 

RMWeb is the only public social media I use, though I use WhatsApp groups a lot. I abandoned my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts (I never figured out what LinkedIn was for other than self-promotion) and never got involved with Twitter.

 

Facebook should be ideal for us as I am living in a foreign land away from home, have my wife's extended family with people in Indonesia, Taiwan and now Japan and have friends and family everywhere after a career in the maritime world but my feed ended up so clogged with advertising and links I had zero interest in that it became useless as a social tool.

[AndyID]

2 hours ago, New Haven Neil said:

Oh, as for our PO wagons, well this one is a bit of a fudge!

 

We know the works existed, we know they had three wagons.....but a photo has never surfaced, so.....we made it up.

 

This is the livery sample, with a spelling mistake, so a 'unique collectors item'.  Must speak to Gostude, LOL....I still have it.

 

 

I'm not a big fan of ammonia too.

[AndyID]

Without getting into politics things in the US are about to get quite interesting between now and November.

[jjb1970]

25 minutes ago, AndyID said:

 

I'm not a big fan of ammonia too.

 

Ammonia has a lot of advocacy as the marine fuel of the future to replace oil and LNG. Horrible stuff. When I worked for E.ON Ratcliffe on Soar power station was elevated to COMAH status when they installed selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and had to store anhydrous ammonia on site as the reductant.

[AndyID]

55 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

 

Ammonia has a lot of advocacy as the marine fuel of the future to replace oil and LNG. Horrible stuff. When I worked for E.ON Ratcliffe on Soar power station was elevated to COMAH status when they installed selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and had to store anhydrous ammonia on site as the reductant.

 

My knowledge of Chemistry is seriously impaired because my teacher was a complete ******** whereas my Physics teacher was absolutely brilliant. I can still remember the experiments, and that was over 50 years ago.

 

How is ammonia converted into  usefull energy?

[jjb1970]

Ammonia can be combusted in an engine, though it needs quite a lot of heat to ignite and the amount of oil pilot fuel can be very high at some loads. The ammonia advocates go a bit quiet when asked about pilot fuel and emissions and whether that will be bio-oil (which is a bit if a red rag to many). The other thing which I think needs more work is emissions from ammonia, some appear to assume that because it has no carbon molecule it is GHG free but that's rather a simplification as CO2 is not the only GHG and GHG emissions are not the only emissions from combusting fuel.

[J. S. Bach]

6 hours ago, Craigw said:

 

One of the "wonders" of social media is the polarising. People who are passionate about politics tend to talk to each other and wear their hearts on their sleeves. Nothing wrong with that, but they also tend to shut out differing views and thus live in a self-reinforcing echo chamber. That does not strike me as healthy. I have political views, but like religion I try to keep them to myself. I keep social media for cats, cat rescue, model railways, military modelling and bad jokes. It works well for me. 

You have come to the right place, then.

[J. S. Bach]

Night Owl from the Piedmont.

[AndyID]

34 minutes ago, J. S. Bach said:

You have come to the right place, then.

 

It's extremely  important that bad jokes are recorded for posterity.

 

BTW, did you hear the one about an elephant, a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus?

[AndyID]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Ammonia can be combusted in an engine, though it needs quite a lot of heat to ignite and the amount of oil pilot fuel can be very high at some loads. The ammonia advocates go a bit quiet when asked about pilot fuel and emissions and whether that will be bio-oil (which is a bit if a red rag to many). The other thing which I think needs more work is emissions from ammonia, some appear to assume that because it has no carbon molecule it is GHG free but that's rather a simplification as CO2 is not the only GHG and GHG emissions are not the only emissions from combusting fuel.

 

My suspicion is that unless the fuel is derived from very recent solar energy we are just being silly-billies. The planet is receiving more than one kilowatt per square meter. It's time recognize that and stop tapping into historical sources of energy. Just my opinion of course.

[polybear]

1 hour ago, AndyID said:

BTW, did you hear the one about an elephant, a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus?

 

No - do tell....

 

 

 

[AndyID]

6 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

No - do tell....

 

 

 

 

I don't remember too much but I know it started,

 

"An elephant, a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus went into a bar

[jjb1970]

2 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

My suspicion is that unless the fuel is derived from very recent solar energy we are just being silly-billies. The planet is receiving more than one kilowatt per square meter. It's time recognize that and stop tapping into historical sources of energy. Just my opinion of course.

 

IMO has developed guidelines for fuel lifecycle analysis to establish 'well to wake' GHG intensity values as it is recognized that it is very easy to produce fuels with very low 'tank to wake' GHG intensity but which are terrible if upstream impacts are considered. However they still need to be operationalized, it's all part of a complicated process involving multiple work streams that should all be finalized next year to agree a package of mid-term measures building on the existing short-term measures adopted a few years ago and earlier work such as the energy efficiency design index.

 

One thing the industry really needs is consistency and certainty. The investments necessary are huge and to invest biblical amounts in new fuels production (and/or alternatives such as nuclear) along with distribution systems as well as renewing the fleet people need to have a certain confidence that those investments will be acceptable. The world took a wrong turning a few years ago when governments really promoted LNG as the fuel of the future, resulting in huge investment in a fuel which is at best a transitionary fuel (and some don't want it at all).

 

We now have voices saying that electrolysers and green electricity can deliver greater benefits if used for purposes other than making marine fuel and objecting to clean fuels. Even if that argument is accepted (personally I'm not sure it makes sense but I recognise the logic) the one thing we can't do is to continue arguing and do nothing as nobody is going to sink $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ into new technology unless they're reasonably confident that it's a decent bet.

[jamie92208]

2 hours ago, AndyID said:

 

It's extremely  important that bad jokes are recorded for posterity.

 

BTW, did you hear the one about an elephant, a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus?

I thought that one was about a mini but there was no mention of the giraffes. 

 

Jamie

[Craigw]

3 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

You have come to the right place, then.

 

It has taken me a while, but I have worked that out. Why do you think I have started commenting rather than lurking?

 

Regards,

 

Craig

[SM42]

The green agenda is an interesting one. 

 

On the one hand we now legally have to consider all the emissions from the product of a project, not, just it's construction and use impact, if it involves any type of fossil fuel.

 

But ask if the same applies to  greener technologies, like battery production  the dire lack of future recycling of a plant's output and the environmental impact of that and it goes and bit quiet.

 

The world needs  to wake up and have a good talk to itself as at the moment it seems to be floundering on indecision, political wrangling, dubiously effective or as yet unproven technology and is going nowhere fast with any of it.

 

I'm quite sure there are technologies out there to ease the human impact on the climate, just no-one has the guts or money to go all in or there is an inevitable impact somewhere on the environment that makes people jumpy or creates a polarised view of why it's just as bad.

 

I think we are stuck with fossil fuels for a while due to necessity until an affordable alternative emerges that has full public and political confidence behind it.

 

In the meantime we need to look at how to reduce the impact of the situation  we are in.

 

But who would invest in that if there is a limited future in it?

 

Andy

[iL Dottore]

On the subject of fossil fuels there was an interesting few lines at the start of the novelisation by Alan Dean Foster of the classic film Alien. Basically it said that the space tug Nostromo was hauling a fully automated oil refinery that was converting crude into various oil-derived products, for although Earth no longer needed oil as fuel, it needed oil-derived products like plastic precursors.

 

An interesting notion, especially as - elsewhere - it has been postulated that modern human society could still function extremely well without burning oil as fuel, but would fall apart without plastics.

 

Of course you could, in many instances, replace plastic with metal, wood and glass, but the resulting product - although having a cool “steam-punk” vibe - would be heavier, more expensive and possibly (in some instances) less durable.

[rockershovel]

Re social media, I find LinkedIn quite useful. It was originally launched as a professional links page and that's still how I use it. 

 

There's a lot of dross from recruiters who in many cases, really don't know their business or understand their clients requirements, but I only need 1 to 3 "strikes" a year, sometimes not even that .... I do find I need to give my feed a good pruning on a "regular and often" basis and the people who treat it as a sort of Facebook manque need blocking. 

[rockershovel]

50 minutes ago, SM42 said:

The green agenda is an interesting one. 

 

On the one hand we now legally have to consider all the emissions from the product of a project, not, just it's construction and use impact, if it involves any type of fossil fuel.

 

But ask if the same applies to  greener technologies, like battery production  the dire lack of future recycling of a plant's output and the environmental impact of that and it goes and bit quiet.

 

The world needs  to wake up and have a good talk to itself as at the moment it seems to be floundering on indecision, political wrangling, dubiously effective or as yet unproven technology and is going nowhere fast with any of it.

 

I'm quite sure there are technologies out there to ease the human impact on the climate, just no-one has the guts or money to go all in or there is an inevitable impact somewhere on the environment that makes people jumpy or creates a polarised view of why it's just as bad.

 

I think we are stuck with fossil fuels for a while due to necessity until an affordable alternative emerges that has full public and political confidence behind it.

 

In the meantime we need to look at how to reduce the impact of the situation  we are in.

 

But who would invest in that if there is a limited future in it?

 

Andy

Greens are mostly destructive zealots. They are fine as long as you take no notice of them, most of the time but once in a while they have a point - whales, or disposal of life-expired oil rigs. 

 

The main thing to understand is that global warming is that it is driven by about 15 countries, none of  which are interested in the least or doing anything about it. Our "net zero" is an accounting fiction achieved by offloading our emissions on others. 

[skipepsi]

This is an interesting rabbit hole...

 

mweb.co.uk/forums/topic/187542-for-those-who-like-old-machinery/

[Willie Whizz]

Now, if someone could find a way of genuinely making “green” policies and products more profitable than continuing with current ones, you watch how fast the bu%%ers change …

[jjb1970]

At conceptual level the technological solutions to decarbonise shipping haven't changed much in 15 years and more. I studied marine emissions and abatement for my MSc in 2011 and if I wrote my dissertation today I really wouldn't change much. 

 

The arguments aren't really about onboard systems and technology but scaling up green fuel production, and the key to that is more green electricity. 

 

I see the argument as almost like a modern day version of Pascal's wager. If the environment argument about climate change isn't all it's cracked up to be we will still gain huge benefits from reducing local/criteria emissions, diversify energy supply, reduce dependence on unstable parts of the world and probably gain the usual co-benefits of new technology development. If it's as bad as it looks then we will at least try to mitigate an existential crisis.

 

On countries, most countries now take emissions reduction seriously and are making efforts to transition away from fossil fuels. As Il Dottore says there may always be demand for oil for none fuel use, but we are moving away from oil as fuel.