Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

Thanks Aaron, will try that next time.

Sounds a bit complicated though.

[bobAlike]

Hi Tikay, I spent the day today at Network Rails offices in MK. Got to do a feasibility study into asset managing the bridges and tunnels etc. Very interesting.

[tikay]

Hi Tikay, I spent the day today at Network Rails offices in MK. Got to do a feasibility study into asset managing the bridges and tunnels etc. Very interesting.

Interesting? More than that, fascinating at the very minimum.

There are an amazing number of railway bridges in the UK, & their reliability is astonishingly good. When was the last time you heard of one fail?

Every single Network Rail Bridge has an ID plate, the modern ones are a bit naff, but the old-stylee ones are beautiful, & now fetch a goodly sum on e-Bay. People collect them. Obv.

In the old style plate here, the initials represent the locality (initials of Town etc), sadly the modern one leaves nothing to the imaginative mind, it just plum tells you the location. No fun at all.

Note the distances shown in miles & chains. This remained the case on the GWR until very recently, I believe, though not so much on the less grand Railway Companies, such as LMS, LNER etc.

You are a very lucky man, I'd love to get involved in that project.

Enjoy.  

Click to see full-size image.

Click to see full-size image.

[tikay]

Porn Tube

As you very kindly steered the convo round to railways, & bridges, how about this for a bit of Tube Porn?

Quite how the TfL Bridge Numbering system works I have no idea, as they are mostly in tunnels, but imagine deciding what are bridges in this clip?

This is the old District Line Cut & Cover section. A Victorian Engineering marvel if ever I saw one.

Watch the whole video, & imagine YOU are the driver. Does life get any better? I don't even have to mimic the sounds, I just sit there holding my mock regulator, brake & deadmans handle & off I go, transported to Train Heaven.

I may Upload a lot more of there, I know everyone will be blown away by them. 


http://www.britishrailways.tv/train-videos/2013-02/london-underground-district-line-cab-ride-from-high-street-kensington-to-edgware-road/

[RED-DOG]

Nurse!

[tikay]

Shall I upload some more of those, Tom?

Two great sites for you to bookmark.....

Train of the Week - corker this.

http://trainoftheweek.blogspot.co.uk/


BritishRailwaysTV.

This one has 157 pages (ONE HUNDRED & FIFTY SEVEN) with up to 10 videos per page.

Here is a 100mph Nucleur Flask train crash.

http://www.britishrailways.tv/train-videos/2012/100mph-nuclear-flask-train-crash-test/


Here you go.....


http://www.britishrailways.tv/?page=1

Has to be better than a MANTIS breakfast photo, surely?

[bobAlike]

There's aprox. 29000 bridges and 10000 tunnels across the UK as it happens. Unfortunately the way of tracking them is outdated and by April 2014 a new system has to be in place. If I accept the contract I'll be responsible for designing the way forward. Just need to work out how to get out of my current responsibilities.

[tikay]

There's aprox. 29000 bridges and 10000 tunnels across the UK as it happens. Unfortunately the way of tracking them is outdated and by April 2014 a new system has to be in place. If I accept the contract I'll be responsible for designing the way forward. Just need to work out how to get out of my current responsibilities.

Judging by the numbering system, it must be decades out of date. Miles & chains?!

What a great gig that would be - it would last for years.

I'm surprised at the number of tunnels - 10,000 - jeez. Our Engineering ancestors did a wonderful job, tunnel failures are nearly as rare as bridge failures. 

Modern bridges, including road flyovers, have not fared nearly as well. Hammersmith Flyover, barely 50 years old at a guess, & the London Elevated section of the M4 are both in a terrible state of disrepair. The 40 year old Tinsley Viaduct (Sheffield, M1) has been under constsnt repair for 20 years now.

Brunels bridges & tunnels, meanwhile, are as good as the day they were built, despite coping with much far higher loads than designed for. Old is not always bad.

[RED-DOG]

There's aprox. 29000 bridges and 10000 tunnels across the UK as it happens. Unfortunately the way of tracking them is outdated and by April 2014 a new system has to be in place. If I accept the contract I'll be responsible for designing the way forward. Just need to work out how to get out of my current responsibilities.

Judging by the numbering system, it must be decades out of date. Miles & chains?!

What a great gig that would be - it would last for years.

I'm surprised at the number of tunnels - 10,000 - jeez. Our Engineering ancestors did a wonderful job, tunnel failures are nearly as rare as bridge failures. 

Modern bridges, including road flyovers, have not fared nearly as well. Hammersmith Flyover, barely 50 years old at a guess, & the London Elevated section of the M4 are both in a terrible state of disrepair. The 40 year old Tinsley Viaduct (Sheffield, M1) has been under constsnt repair for 20 years now.

Brunels bridges & tunnels, meanwhile, are as good as the day they were built, despite coping with much far higher loads than designed for. Old is not always bad.

I remember Tinsley Viaduct opening. If you were among stationary traffic on the underside while M1 traffic was moving above, the whole thing used to shake so much that you couldn't drink a cup of tea from your flask.

After a few weeks of this, they closed one lane in both directions. It remained closed for over 10 years.

[AndrewT]

The reason the Hammersmith Flyover is crumbling is because they kept gritting it in winter even though they didn't need to.

The people that built it were well aware that if water got into the steel cables within the flyover, that would be bad news. Salt water is even more corrosive so to prevent this getting in, they put underroad heating in under the surface, so that it wouldn't have to be gritted in winter and any ice or snow wouldn't build up.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the instruction manual for the flyover seems to have gone missing and it was gritted just like any other road - years of salty runoff got inside and made it all crumbly.

EDIT: After a bit of a Google it turns out that the heating system was originally switched off by the council as the bill was so high, so it was paid by the London County Council. Then, at some point, the heating broke, though no one seems to know when.

[Karabiner]

Why on earth would they measure railway-bridges in cricket-pitches?

[kinboshi]

The reason the Hammersmith Flyover is crumbling is because they kept gritting it in winter even though they didn't need to.

The people that built it were well aware that if water got into the steel cables within the flyover, that would be bad news. Salt water is even more corrosive so to prevent this getting in, they put underroad heating in under the surface, so that it wouldn't have to be gritted in winter and any ice or snow wouldn't build up.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the instruction manual for the flyover seems to have gone missing and it was gritted just like any other road - years of salty runoff got inside and made it all crumbly.

EDIT: After a bit of a Google it turns out that the heating system was originally switched off by the council as the bill was so high, so it was paid by the London County Council. Then, at some point, the heating broke, though no one seems to know when.

I blame the Poles.

[technolog]

 

[Tal]

I must work with some incredible actors. I told them the 29,000 bridges stat and they came across as nonplussed.

[Tal]

One final attempt re the astronomy stuff. Wouldn't do this other than there are some mind blowing numbers here:



This little fellow is the Pinwheel Galaxy. You are seeing it about 21 million years ago, because that's how long the light takes to get to us. It is about 70% larger than our Milky Way but has 10 times as many stars in it.

Remember the stat about that nebula where if we stood at either end it would take 2 years for me to see you waving? With this galaxy, it would take 117,000 years for me to see you waving.

It is a spiral galaxy, but we can see it virtually straight on.




This is the Sombrero Galaxy (sounds like an ice lolly). 29million light years away.

It is also a spiral galaxy, but it is side on. It has a ring (like Saturn) that goes all the way round the entire galaxy.

The black hole in the middle has the equivalent of a billion of our suns in it. A billion.