Maybe you should have worn these... :-)

Baird's undersock

...just think, if he didn't invent those, he wouldn't have had the money to work on Television".

Just for Mike...

What lurks beneath London

Ghost stations

Now that would have been one hell of a trip on the old District Line...

...from the realms of "Essex Girls" to the "County of Berks" :-)

@Monday: Thank you :) It seemed such an ordinary Friday too...

@Dena: My shoe has gone? :( *resign self to no cinderella moment* Good points. It WAS one of the oldest trains on the network and the doors do clamp shut in a totally different manner to the newer ones which are much more sensitive - even to people leaning on them. It would be interesting to find out if there is a difference in the way drivers can control/override them though. I WILL put my lost property claim in and I've drafted an accompanying letter making the point that it might be advisable for drivers to assume that it could be a child, elderly person or a neck stuck in their doors rather than me and my non litigating leg.

@Rob: Awwwwwwww... my commiserations :( Glad it's not just me though :) My problems are not 5'8" doorways but when I'm already bent under something. Which you think would be enough of a reminder... much like your eyes should be for you... being so near the top of your bonce as it were... but o-o-o-h no. :)

@Chris: I did get offered a card but declined it. At the time I thought it was my own stupid fault which it was and I was so pleased to have two feet to stand on again :) I would have liked to have seen the reaction at London bridge when my sock pulled in though.

@Mike: I'm good underground. Usually :) Above ground... not so much.

@Sirius: interesting links :)

Is there no button/knob/handle the passengers can use to open the doors in an emergency? Is there no button passengers can press to alert the driver of an emergency so he can stop the train and go see what's wrong?

We have 90+ year old rapid transit cars at the museum that won't move when a door is open. The newest commuter cars and locomotives in Boston have a circuit that won't allow the loco to move if there's a door open in the train.

I am both shocked that this could happen, and gratified that your family did not have cause to file a massive lawsuit against the operating agency.

---

David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

@David, I think the general rule is the more overcrowded the system the more safeties that are over ridden "for efficiency."

---

There should be no door overrides and every accident like this should be reported as it means there most probably was a fault and the train should have been taken out of service.

I get these mailed to me regularly

http://www.raib.gov.uk/publications/investigation_reports/reports_2014/report222014.cfm

http://www.raib.gov.uk/publications/investigation_reports/reports_2014/report192014.cfm

---

There should be no door overrides and every accident like this should be reported as it means there most probably was a fault and the train should have been taken out of service.

I get these mailed to me regularly

http://www.raib.gov.uk/publications/investigation_reports/reports_2014/report222014.cfm

http://www.raib.gov.uk/publications/investigation_reports/reports_2014/report192014.cfm

Ain't progress a b*tch! All new underground rolling stock still have the "emergency handles" in each carriage. The problem though is that they no longer operate the brakes, but light up on the driver's panel.

Unless it is something large that obstructs the doors & thereby prevent the circuit that informs the driver that all doors are closed which tells him not to proceed, that circiut will be complete.

When they removed the guards from the system, it was proving to be problematic whenever an emergency handle was pulled, hence the display light on driver's panel, it was too time-consuming for the driver to track down which handle had been pulled on the 6 or 8 carriage train.

Profits 1st!

On a sidenote, there is nothing to prevent a train from moving with doors open as any safeguards are easily overriden by the crew.

There should be no door overrides and every accident like this should be reported as it means there most probably was a fault and the train should have been taken out of service.

I get these mailed to me regularly

http://www.raib.gov.uk/publications/investigation_reports/reports_2014/report222014.cfm

http://www.raib.gov.uk/publications/investigation_reports/reports_2014/report192014.cfm

Good grief :( Lucky escapes! Thanks Bernie.

So assuming the doors would have eventually been opened before the train moved off was possibly a little naive of me. All I can say is fortunately there were enough people aware of my predicament that the emergency alarm would have been used if it had departed with me still intruding into it, but in view of the above, I'm thinking a stronger worded letter is in order. I'll give them the rest of this week to respond to the one I've already sent but I'd feel a whole lot better knowing the driver knew the doors weren't closed than if he'd thought they were. If that's the case, they should be paying us danger money for even entering the system - not charging us through the nose to have it dragged along a platform.

Last Friday was a bad day on the underground from what I saw of it. They were really struggling with it being the end of half-term, halloween and the poppy exhibition at Tower Hill. I was on a district line train earlier in the day where the emergency brake kept deploying. They decided to keep the train in service and fling us all over the place in a series of bunny hops. Probably going to run the CCTV footage at their Christmas party... for some extra merriment.

Thanks for all the other contributions everyone :) I hope you don't mind if I borrow from your collective expertise in my next letter? I protect my sources :)

Glad you are ok. When I read your post, nightmares charged thru my mind. Let us know, if and when you get a response.

---

Pluto will always be a planet to me.

Seti Ambassador
Not to late to order an Anni Shirt

I had a couple of scares once upon a time. The first was when the doors closed between me and my backpack while I was getting on. Fortunately, the driver opened the doors briefly, and I continued getting on.

The second was getting off. The person in front of me was in a wheel chair, and his front wheels dropped into the space between the car and the platform. Fortunately, several of us got him loose before the train door started to close.

---

BOINC WIKI

I have a Berks R Us Report sort of.
It happened back when I was still in High School. There was a substitute bus driver. He pulls a Berk. Instead of pulling all the way over on the road to let me off. He stops by the shoulder line of the road.
Meanwhile I am up walking to the door to get off the bus. Call it "divine intervention" or just voices in my head. I start hearing my name being called. As I am almost off the bus I lean back and ask if somebody called my name. Nobody said anything so I start to get off. I don't know why but I looked down the side of the bus. Glad I did. Because a 1 ton lorry starting to come around the bus on my side at highway speed. I was not a "happy camper."

---

I have a Berks R Us Report sort of.
It happened back when I was still in High School. There was a substitute bus driver. He pulls a Berk. Instead of pulling all the way over on the road to let me off. He stops by the shoulder line of the road.
Meanwhile I am up walking to the door to get off the bus. Call it "divine intervention" or just voices in my head. I start hearing my name being called. As I am almost off the bus I lean back and ask if somebody called my name. Nobody said anything so I start to get off. I don't know why but I looked down the side of the bus. Glad I did. Because a 1 ton lorry starting to come around the bus on my side at highway speed. I was not a "happy camper."

Voices in the head that stop you getting flattened are to be encouraged! Glad they got chatty Admiral! :)

Understood. Happy these voices didn't need medication.

---

Keeping it in the family... another berk... and report thereof.

So... phonecall from my daughter on Monday started with "I've had a bit of a blonde moment mum." (Please note: the term "blonde moment" is only permissable when uttered by a natural one. Utter it as a brunette and Julie's "run for the hills" is simply not far enough away peoples... oh no... you have been warned... you will be cut down as you flee... you will find yourself begging to be granted a continuing existence as a lowly mollusc... which is not a bad life really :))

Now... the last time she had one of these "moments" was when she mistook the words "mange tout" as meaning someone selling a skin disease to encourage baldifying your pet and was naturally outraged. So much so she prepared a letter to send to her MP. Fortunately, for the house of commons, she asked me to proof-read it for her beforehand so it was never sent :)

Anyway, as you can imagine, I was not too alarmed by her opening comment. I have a bright, intelligent daughter... 99.99 percent of the time...

On Saturday however, she was the other 0.01%. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. Her next words were: "Can you come over and help me talk to the serious fraud office mum? They're here now." Ignoring doctor's orders not to talk at all for a few more days (for it's not everyday one gets such an auspicious invitation) I thought it best to have a quick spruce up... mid-whence the bathroom tap gave up it's grip on it's moorings and became Thames Water's latest mains leak, liberally sousing me and the bathroom with a ferocity usually only used on rioters. Odd how one's priorities can change so rapidly... but mine then became collecting sixteen years of dust and cobwebs to smear about my soaking self whilst locating the stopcock, which clearly had been painted over with gloss paint at some point in the distant past, specifically with this precise event in mind.

So what was all this in aid of? Well... whilst seated on a PACKED NUMBER EIGHT BUS, it seems my bright child made a PURCHASE using her MOBILE PHONE and READ OUT HER CREDIT CARD DETAILS for everyone on the bus to do some Christmas shopping with... a computer, designer clothes, VERY expensive perfume and similarly pricey jewellery later... when she tried to pay for some supermarket items on Monday, she was utterly ASTONISHED to discover her card being declined for being maxed out (and some) and being escorted by security guards to an office where she had to provide proof of who she was before they would let her leave.

Quite how many people have been on a spree I don't know. I do know that the fraud officers seemed less phased by my bedraggled dishevelledness than they were by the HUGE spider (that no doubt had been minding it's own business in the vicinity of a stopcock for years) which suddenly descended from my hair for a quick dangle in front of my face. Now normally, spiders don't bother me, but I was already somewhat disturbed at the time... so I sort of... flung it a bit with just a rasping squeal as a warning, straight at her majesty's servants before croaking "don't kill it. I need to take him home with me."

I'm not well.

Anyway... now we wait to see whether broadcasting your credit card details to a busload of people means you are then culpable for what they do with the information... Some good news is that London Underground have quite a lot of single shoes for me to look through. I got the feeling that they think they might all belong to me...

Oh my word, she has been a bit of a silly girl :-( She'll have to talk to the bank who issued the card on that matter. Usually if you genuinely lose it or get it stolen you're only liable for the first £50 or something, but in this case I just don't know.

Here it's generally $50, but you usually have to notify them within 24 hours, I think.

Taps have a habit of doing that, quite often its the washer that suddenly disintegrates without warning after years of faithful service, or the thing just seizes solid as a gesture of defiance. Last time one of mine locked shut I applied a bit of wellie to it with some mole grips with the result that the whole tap turned not just the top, and twisted the copper feed pipe which split!

One fine Sunday, I decided to clean the little filter screen in my water softener. I first put it in bypass so there would be no flow once I let the residual pressure dribble out. Somehow, I cracked the plastic carrier the filter was in, and when I took it out of bypass, the carrier popped off and started gushing water. (By the way, my father had the softener installed right next to the water meter, where the service line comes out of the floor, and nowhere near a floor drain.) I quickly slammed the bypass back over... and cracked it as well. Pushing it either way no longer had any effect. Water was still coming out of the filter hole. The only thing I could do was turn off the valve on the meter. That may or may not have been the event when the valve was stuck and I broke its handle trying to turn it with a screwdriver stuck through it. After that, I went to pick up my mother from church and had to tell her about it. She remained remarkably calm and called her mother, who called a plumber friend. The plumber came over and found in her bag a metal cap that fit in the filter socket and effectively sealed it so we could have water until I went to the water softener company the next day to get replacement parts. (Or did I? I may have just left it like that, since we were going to be getting Lake Michigan water soon and would no longer need the softener.)

Now then, two burning questions of the hour. Firstly are all spiders "hims" or are there some "hers" about? I assume that there must be else we wouldn't have any little spiders.

I assume any spider I see is a her unless there's a qualified entomologist present to tell me otherwise.

As for the shoes, er um, perchance can one ask just how many of them MIGHT be yours? On second thoughts perhaps the world is not yet ready for such a revelation.

There is the one we know of...

I do hear though that the TfL lost property office have a number of false legs that have not been claimed yet. You'd think the the owners would have noticed by now that something was missing about their person. Mind you they must have about a dozen umbrellas of mine collected over many years. I swear they grow legs when I avert my attention :-)

On one or another of the Chicago commuter railroads, they used to say that every commuter had three umbrellas: one to leave at home, one to leave at the office, and one to leave on the train.

If you ever write your autobiography, put me down for a first edition signed copy. I can just see the reviews now .....

"From the moment I picked it up I couldn't put it down. Who left the superglue on the back?"
Times Literary Supplement

"Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery pales into significance when compared to this tale of Derring Do against all odds. No buckle was left un-swashed!"
London Evening Standard

"Taking exploding pavements and fizzy monitors in her stride, our heroine is the scourge of BT. A rip roaring yarn from beginning to end!
Daily Telegraph

I also want a copy.

And with that, I'm late for lunch.

---

David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

One incident which still has our family chuckling over a decade later concerns my younger brother. The u-bend in the bathroom handbasin was getting clogged up, so one day he decided to remove said u-bend to give it a good clean out. Having done so, it was of course full of water, so without thinking he promptly pours it down the basin! he then spends the next few moments wondering why he has got wet feet :-))) But the silly bugger does exactly the same thing 10 minutes later when he decides to wash his hands before re-fitting the U-bend :-))))

Senior moments R us!

Now if he had ever watched This Old House or Ask This Old House, we would have seen Richard put a bucket under the trap before removing it.

---

David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

Your tales of woe have insprired me to tell my berk moment.
This happend last winter while we had 2 foot of snow on the ground. One fine witer day the power to the house died. No problem I have a whole house generator that kicks in after one minute. Well after one minute nada ,zip, nothing.
So I go and get my portable car starter battery. It does not have enough charge to crank the generator over.
Now its cold outside. Two feet of snow and Im in onetrack mind mode. I need to get thisg started our we are going to freeze. So I trek to the shed get my old battery charger out and hook it up to the battery in the generator and plug it in. My grandson pops his head out the back door and asks me in his sweet little voice. Grandpa How can you charge a battery when there is no electricty?

DUH! I called my self a dumbass and busted out laughing. So far only my wife and he knew about that. But this Thanksgiving after our meal. Were telling stories and he brings that one up. We sure had a good laugh over that. I told him, That hopefully many years from now. He can tell that story as part of my eulogy.
Im still laughing at what a dumbass I was.

---

[/quote]

Old James

Off the main topic, but relevant to the James' post

When I was in the Royal Navy, one class of ships had an interesting fit -

A pull-start petrol motor was used to start a 6-cylinder Diesel Generator which was used to run the compressors to provide air to start a 0.65MW gas-turbine generator which in turn ran the main air compressors to start 2 off 1 MW Diesel generators and, if necessary, the 4 gas-turbines which were one half of the propulsion engines to move the ship. The electrical power then let the ship light the main boilers, which ran the steam half of the propulsion, and 2 off 1Mw steam generators, and the remainder of the ship's systems.

Thus "How do you start a County-class destroyer from cold?" Answer "Pull the starter cord".

I'm not sure if this level of cold-start ability has been done elsewhere.

---

Happy Crunching,

Graham

Heh heh heh :)))) It's all coming out now :))))) The berks abound thread :)

Oh re: the spider... could have been a girl I suppose... I just thought being an indoor spider unfairly transported from its usual stomping ground, I had a duty of care to return it there.

Off the main topic, but relevant to the James' post

When I was in the Royal Navy, one class of ships had an interesting fit -

A pull-start petrol motor was used to start a 6-cylinder Diesel Generator which was used to run the compressors to provide air to start a 0.65MW gas-turbine generator which in turn ran the main air compressors to start 2 off 1 MW Diesel generators and, if necessary, the 4 gas-turbines which were one half of the propulsion engines to move the ship. The electrical power then let the ship light the main boilers, which ran the steam half of the propulsion, and 2 off 1Mw steam generators, and the remainder of the ship's systems.

Thus "How do you start a County-class destroyer from cold?" Answer "Pull the starter cord".

I'm not sure if this level of cold-start ability has been done elsewhere.

My dad had a drag line and the starting procedure on a cold day was to open the compression release so the diesel would be easy to turn. Use a 6 volt electric motor to start a two cylinder gas engine. The exhaust from the motor warmed the intake for the diesel so after the gas engine could handle the the load, you engaged the clutch between the gas and diesel engine. After building up more heat, you would throw the compression release and bump up the fuel. If everything was done right, the diesel would start.
if you were in a hurry, you could use ether but my dad thought it was costly so he would put a rage with a little gas on it over the intake and that worked just as well.
This system was very common in early diesels but with 24 volt starting systems and glow plugs, you don't find it any more.

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Yeah but Graham, just one duff link in that chain and you have a dead ship! Where was the redunancy coverage and fall back plan?

Signaller!
Aye Sir!
Make from HMS Devonshire to HMS Hampshire
Have dead battery, request tow rope and jump start
Aye Sir!

I was wondering whether the corollary was:

"How do you immobilise a County-class destroyer?" "Hide the starter cord".

I'll probably be sent to prison now, for revealing information that could aid an enemy.