TheSignalEngineer

'War Stories' @Trog HaHa. Been there, done that. I was STO acting MS1 when I got a call to attend a meeting concerned with line speed improvements for HST introduction. Most attendees were high MS grades or above. The person taking the minutes was paid more than me. We came to an item for one station with a severe speed restriction on all lines where total rebuilding was proposed to enable line speed for non-stop services, saving them about two minutes in running time. The civils estimate was in excess of £3million over 40 years ago. We hadn't been asked for a cost at the time but would have needed to completely resignal 3 miles of existing 4-track MAS with a new junction at each end. All innocent like, I asked the meeting how many express trains were going to run through non-stop. The person planning the service said "Three, two up and one down". At that point the Head of the project development called a halt to the discussion with a few choice comments regarding not wasting money for marginal gains. The platform layout remains the same today.

If the copings are taken off it is necessary to take of the oversail courses of bricks as well otherwise those bricks may become loose and fall onto the track

I've used quite a lot of Dapol wheels and found a few derailments, particularly with the milk tanks. I don't know about the profile but I found a wide variation in back-to-backs and too little play in the milk tank wheels to take 24" radius curves. With the Stove R the chassis design is never going to work as originally made. I cured mine by resetting the B2B, fixing the outer wheels and making sure there is adequate play in the middle axle. Not perfect but it will do for now.

I would have preferred even that to my old school clinic dentist. His first job after qualifying was with the Army Medical Corps in Normandy in 1944. Anaesthesia wasn't his strong subject.

I like the first one the best. Much less fussy than the earlier versions, more practical to operate and the angles give more interest to the view than the straight versions.

Pity it was a scale 10 feet wide across the duckets as well. I suspect it was all down to a certain employee at the time but we won't go there again.

Back on batteries, I see that the Crossfire range has an 11.6Ah battery which would give 30% improvement on your battery. The thing to remember is that suspension is absorbing energy which must be coming from somewhere, and that is the pedals or motor especially when you are climbing. There are suspension posts but I haven't tried them personally. Dropper posts on mountain bikes do provide a certain amount of softening but that is not their primary purpose, they are expensive and a pain in the ____ to maintain in 100% working order. My first line of attack would be to look at saddles. There are wide ones with big springs, which may be OK on a Shopper, but not that good for long distances. The reason racing bikes have narrow saddles is they are more efficient when pedalling and you can move around a bit on them to change the pressure points. I don't know what the Vengeance has but I think the spec says memory foam. Whether that is the same as what is referred to as a Gel saddle I don't know. They have a layer betwwn the plastic base and the cover that is similar to the stuff used for surgical implants and will shape to your riding position.

Starting away on an ebike is certainly different than with an ordinary bike. I tend to use eco or tour except when starting away from the lights at the front of a traffic queue. Then I step up in necessary. It certainly gives drivers a bit of a shock when they are revving behind you impatient to get away and you shoot off in turbo doing 15mph after about 20 yards. When I first took mine out for a ride round the town I overtook a boy racer type in the queue for the first set of lights. It took three miles, five sets of lights, two mini roundabouts and four pelican crossings before he caught up with me leaving the other end of town. The Suntour battery on the Vengeance is rated at 8.8Ah. Suntour also do a 12Ah battery but I don't know if it is the same fitting. The one I use on the road and gravel is 13.4Ah. If I was riding on the Cheshire Plain I could probably get at least 80 miles out of that but in the Dark Peak the limit is about 40 miles due to the climbs and I am a regular on them. I have known people who struggle to do more than about 20 miles round here but a lot is down to technique. I took a hire bike round a trail centre before I bought an eMTB and the mechanic there was amazed at how much distance and climbing I had done and still had over 40% battery left. My eMTB has a 16.7Ah battery and I can do 35 miles with 4500 feet of climbing mostly off road on one of my routes and still have 30% in hand without really thinking about battery management. Hybrid when describing a bike is usually the type of use it is intended for. Most hybrids are suitable for roads and trails, but not for the rougher cross country and obscure bridleway rides. I don't know if anyone has marketed an ebike with regen charging yet. To do that would put the weight up, need a more complicated control system and some way of disengaging the generating side when you are pedalling. Covering it with solar panels would probably be more effective. Lower pressures are certainly more forgiving on your rear end on the rough stuff even on a full suspension MTB. I use about 20psi on 2.5" tyres for tubeless or a bit higher on tubes. I have ridden a Fatbike with 4" tubeless tyres quite successfully on wet sand at 10psi but have heard of people going even lower. I'm not sure how the rear wheel Suntour motor affects the overall balance of the bike. I remember when doing long distance touring we always tried to distribut the weight by using front wheel panniers as it made the bike more controllable and easier to pedal than with all of the weight on the back. I ride with the Bosch system which has the motor mounted in the bottom bracket position which distributes the weight more evenly between the wheels. Puncture resistant tyres usually have a layer of Kevlar or a plastic strip in the build-up. Tubeless are done with a liquid sealant which can be a bit of a faff to get right. You need to blow the tyre onto the rim very quickly. I use an 8 litre compressor with the output pressure set to near the maximum for the tyre or rim. Press the trigger and that will instantly inflate the tyre to the correct pressure. A quick spin round to distribute the sealant then I let off the pressure to the normal running value.On the road many people still use inner tubes because they are more successful when using pressures of 100psi found on narrow tyres. Anne uses tubeless for her gravel bike on the road and smoother trails but that runs best at about 50psi.

To comply with UK law an ebike for road use has a maximum motor power of 250 watts and cutout at 25kph. Above these figures it becomes a motor cycle requiring registration, insurance and a driving licence. There are more rules covering the use of twist and go throttles which can move the bike without pedalling, I think the maximum is 6kph, approx 4mph which is the same as an unregistered mobility scooter. My ebike for the road has a 500Wh battery. Some models have a 300Wh or 400Wh rating. It will do the Dark peak circuit from Glossop over the Snake to Ladybower and down to Bamford then back via Hope, Edale, Mam Nick, Chinley and Hayfield. That's about 36 miles and 4500 feet of climbs on the route I use. For an eMTB I use a 625Wh battery. My last ride on that was 35 miles, almost 30 miles of off-road trails and cross country tracks, with 5000 feet of climbing and I still had 30% battery left when I got home.

Low tyre pressure will reduce range of an ebike. I can feel the difference in effort required on an ordinary bike as the pressure goes down. My ebike for road use runs on about 50 psi. For an eMTB I use tubeless tyres running at 20psi for better grip and more comfort over rough ground. Carrying extra weight will also affect range, especially if you do the maximum speed or a lot of hills.

What is the battery capacity on you bike? I picked one with the largest capacity as we have a lot of hills. It will easily do 40 miles around the Dark Peak with over 4000 feet of vlimbs but battery management is critical. I use the least I can get away with on the outward leg so I can use more later if I am tired. Body weight is also a factor, I am probably less than half of the point where you started your campaign. Getting the balance between what power level and gear to use also important. I've done about 5000 miles electric and my regular runs are now almost in auto pilot as far as power and gears are concerned. The Snake Pass climb from home has one section of 1000 feet in about 2 miles. My controller has eco, tour, emtb and turbo settings. The first half mile is the worst bit so I start in turbo and about the 8th click on the gears until I get the momentum and rhythm right then can knock back to tour for the rest unless the wind is against me.

I don't know about that for your period but by winter 1963 the 11.00 Waterloo Ilfracombe portion is shown as shown a 3-set (K) which were Mk1s, Some at least were the aforementioned 4-set (S) with the SK removed. I have only one attempt at a photo myself in 1965, a bit of a failure but the neg survived. It was a Warship leaving Barnstaple for Ilfracombe taken from the first coach. The destination board clips are on the coach side above the windows and the profile is not Bulleid. I've seen at least one near Barnstaple Town with a Mk1 BSK behind a Warship on Flickr but that was about 1966

I go missing for a few days and Andrew has built a new set of baseboards, the thread is on page 9 plus there are videos already. Regarding fiddle yards on a home roundy, I am planning to hide mine behind the sausage factory. Pigs in cattle wagons and other supplies in 12T vans incoming with breakfasts in Palethorpes vans outgoing. There will be a low relief building on a loading platform and double factory gate at one end which is fenced off for unloading livestock.

Overcast here this morning although the sun is making some effort. Fortunately yesterday had plenty of sunny intervals. The wind was a bit of a problem at times but it meant that the washing dried quickly and all of the camping gear is now cleaned and stowed in the correct places on the rack. I even managed to clean the bikes and check them over.

Good Morning everyone. A few days hiding away in a field in the White Peak has left me several pages behind so I will endeavour some carch up later. I have had an Octavia for 9 years. Two spring replacement jobs but that's common on most cars round here due to the state of our roads. The only non-wear and tear job which emerged a few weeks from new was a tailgate strut replaced under warranty.

Having spent several years before I owned a car cycling along the A34, A51 and A45 in south and east Birmingham I have plenty of alternative hand signals for errant drivers. Having said that it was probably no worse than when I lived on the other side of the city where we referred to one area having a reputation for rule-free road use as the North West Frontier and the main highway through it as the Khyber Pass. That was 60 years ago.

S sets in the WoE were allocated to Waterloo -Plymouth, Portsmouth - Plymouth and Portsmouth - Cardiff. They were Mk1 stock. Set numbers were 866, 867, 877, 878, 881, 882, 883, 884, 887, 888, 891.

I would forget the lower idea. The connection from the turntable to the bay line would require a trap point if the bay is to be used for passenger trains.

Bullhead so probably second hand.

It's got guard boards, what more do you want?

It was not so much Clapham as Sectorisation that killed a lot of schemes. The real price inflation then took off in 1993/4. Shrewsbury resignalling was still actively bring planned in 1991. At the same time I was Signalling Project Engineer for Blackpool Resignalling. That had got to the stage of the Signalling Plan being on its way through the approval process ready for detailed design to start. It was to be controlled by Preston PSB. Responsibility for the line and paying for the scheme was then transferred to Regional Railways. The box and signalmen at Preston were the responsibility of Inter City. The project got completely bogged down in the political infighting that took place during the run up to privatisation and the whole investment programme virtually disappeared overnight. It took about another 25 years before Blackpool was finally done.

The idea would be to match the coal capacity to the day's work where possible, or in the days of engines being allocated to a single crew it could be enough to get from one loco change to another to match in with their breaks. Carrying surplus coal cost unnecessary money. Large passenger locos could do about 40-50 miles pre ton IIRC. On the GWR a King which carried 6 tons could just about do a round trip Paddington to Wolverhampton which was about 250 miles, Paddington to Plymouth was about 225 miles. A Duchess tender could carry 10 tons which could easily do the 401 miles Euston to Glasgow. I think the Princesses originally had 9 ton tenders but these were thought to be a bit close for comfort. Gresley used 8 ton tenders on his Pacifics but there were stories of these running into Kings Cross with empty tenders on long distance turns. The Thompson and Peppercorn Pacifics had 9 ton tenders.

350 yards at 4mm scale is 4.6 yards (4.2 metres) I think. Having one or two boxes was often down to operating convenience rather than distance. If there were sidings at both ends it was often more convenient to have two boxes. It was also better to have two boxes if the platform also formed a loop where a stopping train waited for a faster train to pass as the signalman could give train out of section quicker because he had seen the rear of the train pass the box and didn't have to wait for confirmation from the guard that it had arrived complete. Another factor sometimes overlooked by modellers is the history of the line. The distance allowed for points was defined by the Board of Trade Requirements in the 19th century, changing again in 1902 and 1925. See comments below for the distances at various times. No. It applies to all points manually worked from the signal box. This is what was contained in the 1950 Requirements. The 1885 edition specified 180 yards for all points The 1902 edition specified 180 yards for facing points and 300 yards for trailing points in the main line and safety points in sidings. In 1928 this became 350 yards for all manually works points and unlimited for motor worked points. The practicality of working points as more modern heavier trackwork was installed led to the reduction of the distance or single ending of previously multiple ended sets. This was further complicated by the introduction of the Health & Safety at Work Act which led to restrictions on the amount of mechanical effort which could be applied to a task. By the 1980s we were routinely providing motor working for multiple ended points over 250 yards from the signal box.

Up to 350 yards in the Requirements, but depending on the type of lever frame, lie of the rodding run and type of switches used it was in reality often less.

Lichfield City had two boxes, No.1 at the Birmingham end and No.2 at the Wichnor Junction end. That one was interesring as it was an island platform with a through main line outside the platform line on each side. There was a scissors crossover between the platform and maim lines on each side which enabled the Wolverhampton - Burton and Birmingham - Lichfield Trent Valley trains to overtake each other at station and still give connections. The crossovers were removed some time after the Walsall service was withdrawn in the 1960s and No.2 box was abolished in 1973.