Bill - to someone born and brought up in the UK anywhere more than 100km (60 miles) is "in the wilds".....

...thanks for that bit of information Bill - in just over a month's time I will be heading out into the wilds of Canada by train....

A Boeing 737 cargo from Paris to Orio al Serio (Bergamo) overshot the runaway and ended with its nose on a highway during a storm. Fortunately it was 4 AM and the motorists were few so they could avoid it.
Tullio

Thank you, Bill, for a very thorough explanation. It honestly makes me value my records even more. I have a converter machine from Hammacher Schlemmer that will transfer them to CD, but from what I'm gathering here, that result will not be as durable as an original commercially produced disc.

So a commercial CD actually has a braille-like series of binary code imprinted on it?

1 old 78 that I liked was Spike Jones & the City Slickers William Tell Overture.

Cheers.

Taking a more-awake look at it, it would appear that 7273 can attach to a slug at the front end as well as the rear. Those big cables are not standard.

I'm thinking you'd need inclinometers.

No. Accelerometers (3 axis) are what are inside a smartphone and it knows up. After all gravity is an acceleration. Remember your general relativity.

Yep.
But would the accelerometers in a car be sensitive enough to be effective on a slight slope (considering they have to deal with considerable vibration in general operation)?
I guess it would depends how good the software is.

Two other things just came to mind:

GPS map databse which may have altitude information.

How is the software to know there is a curb? Wheels turn a different direction.

I don't think anyone I know (except the penny pincher who drives a stick for the better gas mileage) uses a parking brake as routine.
____________

I drive manual transmissions because they are more fun to drive.

Regarding turning the wheels to the curb, do cars that have automatic parallel parking do that when they finish?

When will people learn NOT to open "phishy" emails????
Companies paid more than $3.1B to fake-CEO email scams

Email scammers, often pretending to be CEOs, have duped businesses into giving away at least $3.1 billion, according to new data from the FBI.

LSM and I saw a pelican over the river when we were coming back from
Edmonton the other day. There are a lot more hunting birds around this
year. I saw a cardinal a couple of years back, and I was hoping it was
warm enough this year for a repeat showing. It is even better than that,
the cycle won't be complete for another two years so there is lots better
to come in animal numbers alone.

James, I was about to tell Sarge sorry, I don't remember, so thanks from both of us.

Crunchy, my theory is that eventually, the universe will stop expanding and start shrinking again, which will finally result in all the matter slamming back together into one microscopic dot again, the force of which action will cause it to explode out all over again in another Big Bang. It then follows that there is no reason to assume that we are currently in the first iteration of this phenomenon.

Or as Douglas Adams put it, there is a theory that if anyone ever finds out what the universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced with something even more bizarrely inexplicable. There is another theory that this has already happened.

I have a Calgary friend who has told me some politics are involved and I can't quote him here because it would be moderated. Seriously.

No doubt, it gots to be politics.
From 1971 till 2015, 44 years, the Progressive Conservative Party ruled in Alberta, till the NDP (Canadian socialists) won to form a majority government.
There will be no end to the political machinations, and grumbling, for years to come.
For a lot of people Whining is their default setting.
Maybe your friend shouldn't listen to them?

I'd think dispatching some backhoes to lower the road might be a better response.

Boom? Really? Please.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuNcSp2T4Lw

Mister W!!!

...
I'll have you know that my beautiful, gentle, sweet and charming little woodland friends DO NOT have "filthy little paws"!!! They have frequently washed, perfect little pristine paws!!!

Strategically placed bungee cords = problem solved

Pretty sure a constant speed and variable pitch are the same thing. Fixed pitch is the type that would not require this tool.

I'm somewhat surprised Bill Walker doesn't know what it is.

Apparently, these guys are really serious about the Great Lakes Basin Railway. When you get to the last page, if you click the link to the company, their map is very interesting. It still shows rail lines that are long abandoned. This simultaneously annoys and pleases me. Annoys because it's bad info, pleases because I can see in good detail where these lines used to be.

How soon until all the raccoons stupid enough to walk into traps get caught and eliminated from the gene pool, and there are nothing but smart raccoons left in NYC to have babies.

Trapping the dumb ones only makes the population, as a whole, smarter...

I just saw something about making maple syrup on TV a couple
of days ago. They said it takes 40 gallons of maple sap to make
one gallon of maple syrup.

That might explain why it's so expensive.

A couple of tracks that were still working 35 years ago are just scars on the landscape now and the occasional "odd" road name like Railway Ave in Jenner.

In other words the whole freight shebang is run on a shoestring.

I spent some time in Canada - Alberta, out there they have or had single track lines that are only used for a very short period every year, just to collect grain after the harvest and maybe the odd train for cattle.

These lines were probably built before roads, most roads out in the sticks in this area are gravel not tarmac.

Just had a look on google maps satellite, looks like I am out of date the metals are missing.

In other words the whole freight shebang is run on a shoestring.

In which case that could infer low freight charges due to very minimal track maintenance.

Just beats me why they don't spend more money on manufacturing goods locally.

Why does CN & CP own track in someone elses country? Does the US own Canadian track? If so why?

Early Spring?

Is it non-magnetic?

Is it used to work on aircraft?

braking screws loose

Sonic screwdriver!

@Celt & all the others north of the 49th parallel

Just make sure you don't sell it all, you might just suck in some polluted air from the south.

Canadians are selling cans of fresh air to China

The answer is easy: move to Saskatchewan. they don't do Daylight Saving, haven't for many years now.

Neither does Arizona. ;-) :-)

PS whilst typing this I had the Chicago camera on and once again I have head a very loud siren, I keep meaning to ask what they are, I assume some sort of test, but what for?

Both are in the Thompson River valley.

Thanks, Bill.

And here is how the Chinese pay for all that potash: a string of containers, full of TVs and cellphones and other gadgets, heads eastbound in the same valley. Photo taken on July 20th.

So I'm curious as to where this is? Pretty scenery, might be fun to take a drive though that canyon!

Especially if I can satisfy my insatiable need to consume hydrocarbons at the same time:)

Are you telling me that the front of the train is round the bend at the middle top of the picture and that we can't even see the back end of it?? Absolutely ridiculous.

The insatiable need to burn carbon can not be better illustrated than with this train.

Hear something about mayo being used accross the pond. Have to ask Chris.
I use ranch dressing sometimes.

Um, does Eric look a bit Canadian to you? :-)))

The California Zephyr takes 51 hours (on a good day).

My, why do I think it might be used to get rid of some clouds?

I don't know. It has nothing to do with weather.

Perhaps blur might be a better word.

Nice play Bill. Was that taken
up by James Bay, do you know?

Had I been the pilot of that aircraft I would have said this

"My concern is the safety of the 144 passengers on my aircraft. I am landing at your airport whether you f'ing like it or not. When I have safely done so I will make my way to your control tower and bang a few heads together. Now get out of my way I am coming in!".

A grammatical error.

Let's eat, Grandma.

Let's eat Grandma.

GRAMMAR SAVES LIVES!!!

Then it is illegal without another qualified pilot onboard to have "eyeballs out."

Bill, last I checked, if you were in VMC you still were required to use your eyeballs.

As to altitudes, with the transponder reporting pressure altitude at 29.92" and weather at 30.15" you tell me which way and by how much the transponder was off, assuming it was still in calibration. A ground school question. Now tell me if the radar the controller was looking at compensates for it?

While you are looking up that, what are the regulations on IFR radar separation, altitude and distance. Do those change if the pilot reports VMC and a "practice approach?" The question being was the first call of traffic already after those minimums were broken?

Should the jet pilot have called no joy sooner?

I can remember another accident very similar to this one in San Diego and both aircraft were talking to the controller and one reported the other in sight. And another in Cerritos. One thing they all had in common, VMC!

Hold up there, the Davis Cup
has nothing to do with hockey!

In which way are you supposed to turn around those freight trains going end through end across the whole of Canada?

Help is on the way Canada, more Ausssie fire fighters are on their way. :-)

Thank you Good Sir, we need the help!

I have a friend who used to live in Canada, and she told me at the end of movies in theatres everyone stood up and sang, God Save the Queen. Is she pulling my leg, or is that the truth?

Not forgetting that passing loops are also installed on sections of double track to allow faster trains to overtake slower trains, or to provide stations....

Sidings in the UK tend to be off the mainline but come to a dead end.

Passing loops are where they want to run regular trains in both directions along a single track.

I would ask the question to Canada & the USA, just WHY do you need to move so many goods from one place to another? Why can't you simply manufacture them where the demand is? OK, one needs raw materials and nature decides where the mines of minerals etc are, but even so. None of it makes much sense to me, particularly when they can't even run oil tanker trains safely, as we have horrendously seen.

But turning to passenger traffic, a quick look at the Western seaboard map shows that Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco Los Angeles etc are some of the biggest cities there. It would have made sense 50 years ago to have had a high speed rail line down the Western coast of North America, so why all the hand wringing now?

I presume the American short siding is the equivalent of the UK passing loop?

That's fine for the passenger trains, but what about when you have two 10,000+' trains going in opposite directions? I'll tell you what happens: the passenger train gets stuck in the short siding and has to wait there while the freights meet 50 miles away at a siding that can handle one of them.

The length of the train in that picture is just ridiculous!!!

Up until the 1990s, the average freight train in Canada was about 5,000 feet (1.54 kilometres) long and weighed 7,000 tons. But it is now not uncommon to see these trains stretch to 12,000 feet, sometimes as much as 14,000 feet (more than four kilometres), weighing up to 18,000 tons.

Are Canadian railways that close to financial ruin that they have to run stuff like this to save money and survive?

No, but they're run by people who care more about profits than anything else.

CN used to be run by E. Hunter Harrison, who decreed that trains should be about 10,000 feet long. Never mind that on single track lines, the passing sidings were only about 5-7,000 feet. He also imposed various other practices that look good on paper but not in reality.

After he hit CN's mandatory retirement age, activist investors took over the board of CP and hired him to be president there. Guess what he did? Yup, the exact same stuff.

How do you tall men fit in that tiny plane???!!!

Learjet 25B is a 10 seat aircraft. Apparently this one is rigged for gas on the go. :)

How do you tall men fit in that tiny plane???!!!

Let's all play a game to guess how many towns and cities
on the new Windsor/Quebec TGV line, demand a stop?

Is that Windsor Ontario or Windsor Quebec? (or Windsor Somewhere else)

That's a nice idea about laying another couple of tracks by a freight route, because both freight and high speed rail work best when "straight and flat" - locals may care to comment on the route geography. The trick with high speed rail is not to "call at every gatepost", but to stop where there is either an existing suitable station, or where there is the land an population that would use a "park and ride" service. Thus on that 1300km journey there may only be half a dozen stops, no stops to change trains, just sit back and relax as the scenery passes by at 300kph.

Do the orange flight suits signify plane crew, and the others passengers?

I suspect they need more rail as well, but that isn't something they have figured out or just isn't possible on the face because of right of way considerations.

Are Canadian railways that close to financial ruin that they have to run stuff like this to save money and survive?

Really makes you wonder why they don't derail around curves being THAT long ....

Why do the States insist upon have the front of an Engine about 20ft from the driver, it's not a container ship :-))

OK, after a little digging on the second FP9, I'm slightly less amazed that it still exists in this paint scheme. It was built for the CN, here in London, back in the 1950s, but spent about 20 years with a local tourist line, the Waterloo St. Jacobs Line, which painted its engines and passenger cars in vintage CN colours. This engine moved to the OSR in early 2014.

I suspected the answer would be something like that. That paint is in much too good condition to be original.

Don't you have a tax exemption based on 'casual income'
in England? Here if you derive your living income from
any activity, (work, business, trust fund) then any extra
income from say a lotto win, or selling stuff on the internet,
there is no tax charged.

That's an intriguing vehicle.
Is it still propelled by the main driving wheels?

Rule #4 The customer is not always right!

Rule #1. The terms "sweetie" or "dear" should NEVER be used to address any person older than 14 years of age.

I was amazed at the specs for the wheels of these new Acela 64 locos. Do they wear in use by 3" or is that after skimming in the factory refurb?

1,117 mm (43.98 in) (new)
1,041 mm (40.98 in) (worn)

ACS-64

PS to my knowledge, there is still a shortage of available freight locos so some you see may look old and tatty but if they run, they will be used, doesn't really matter about the cab if it is a trailing unit.

Is it a reasonable question to ask, that why do the American railways have to shunt so many of their locomotives all over the place all the time. Is it just to keep the train spotters happy, or are they just incompetent?

If I'm remembering my training correctly, ideally diesel exhaust should be almost invisible - water vapor. From a pollution standpoint, grey smoke is less damaging than black smoke, since black smoke is mostly unburned fuel.

Do behave Bill :-))

USA

George Crum, a half black, half Native American cook at Moon's Lake House, who was trying to appease an unhappy customer on August 24, 1853.

UK

English food writer William Kitchiner's 1822 cookbook The Cook's Oracle

Those are crinkle cut crisps.

It would be a cure for cancer. Just beam out all the cancer cells.

But looking at that Canadian 4 header, and even realising that USA/Canada is 3000 miles wide, why does so much freight have to be moved long distance from A to B?? Why aren't goods produced where they are needed? Ok mines cant be moved to the users, but how much %age of freight is mine output as against other goods?

two tips, on extras that many libraries offer:

1) Free passes to musical/museum events.

2) Undesired (i.e., low-volume check-out by patrons) CD's, and books.
Many are really good; it's amazing what others don't like that appeal
to yours truly. These items are yours, to keep.

Sure, things get heated, but whats wrong with a little passion?

... and if we do close it, all those conversations that make you despair will end up happening in number crunching and the Cafe.

Just think of this forum like a quarantine zone.

I still think that a captain should have a "root" password able to open any door in any circumstance. Imagine a hostess fighting a madman.
Tullio

Is it used in paper tole?

If paper tole is what I think it is, Bill, another name for 3D decoupage (?) then no - it is not used for producing decoupage (paper tole). But the end products, when combined, can be very impressive.

Ooooooooooooooooooooh... you're getting sooooooooooooooo close :)

No, it isn't a misprint and it is real.

These are ok, but change is still a problem.....

Er, you pay a tailor to fix your pockets??

You have to be careful when getting rid of the smaller coinage. Prices start going up when you can't place a fractional price on small purchases.

Roadsign

In Sweden we use daily English loanwords like "chat", "mejl" and "brunch". But in the case "After Work", to grab a beer or glass of wine after work, it is not an expression we borrowed but invented ourselves. According to the English-language newspaper The Local English speakers in Sweden are puzzled by the term "after work" that is neither used in the US or in the UK rather, "how about some drinks?" Or short "pub?".

'Chat' and 'brunch' i recognise, what does 'mejl' mean? I'm not even sure how to pronounce it.

I started working for a German firm in 1987, and still do consulting for firms in Germany and Scandinavia. They often ask me to help with their English in written reports, but after so many years I really have a hard time finding the small errors they want me to correct. I know what they are saying, so it all looks OK to me!
(Or as some would say, it all to me OK looks.)

Hmmm.
The most reluctant countries in Europe to speak English are France and Germany.
I have also worked at a German firm, Siemens. Concern language they said was English.
When people from Germany came here to have a seminare they all talked German.
Why? Since in the computer business there are so many tecnical terms that are German:)
Yes. Datei Ãœbertragen, Tastatur und Datenbank!

Datei Übertragen DÜ is the Enter key on the keybord.

As an aside, this created a lively discussion in the office as to exactly how many cats you had to own before you officially became a Crazy Cat Lady.

I have heard "four" or more, which we had for a couple of years.

I have also heard "double digits".

That moma cat was a smart cat. She was a rescue sort of. She was pregnant and went people shopping. We did not select her. She selected us. How that works. I do not know. We had no say in her decision making. Even the dog had to move on over. She just came over and moved in and stayed.
Has anyone have that happen?

Years ago in California I had a job that lasted about a year before the company crashed and being somewhat of a low budget operation they had about half the workers asian. In the software area where I worked I suspect the numbers may have been a bit higher. They came from China, Japan and several other countries in the areas so their accent was mixed but after a year of working there, I didn't notice the accent very much and had gotten over any issues of understanding them.

There are numerous theories on why birds fly into glass. Not the least of which happens in the spring when they see their rival (reflection) in the glass and attack it.

The Hood was designed and built for the previous war

Not quite, but was likely designed to many of the previous war specs.

The HOOD
Laid down: 1 September 1916
Launched: 22 August 1918
Commissioned: 15 May 1920

Don't forget also RMS Lusitania.

I have far more trouble with the writing than the accent.

- I have never heard a locomotive referred to as "a heavy haul"

- "where tracks are wider and stronger than in most other parts of the world"??? stronger, maybe, but standard gauge (as established by the silly Brits)

- how can you weld the other side of a round object that you weld all the way around?

- I have never heard of a wheel-axle-gear assembly or WAG; I know it as a wheelset
- bogeys (or is it bogies?) are called trucks in North America

If it's cheaper than air or sea freight what corners do they cut?

The long term answer is better education. And better public transit.

How do you perceive long term better education?

The UK started clamping down on drink driving in the early 70's - that's 40 years - too short a term?

It can be done. Just think of the heavy freight haulers that use ice roads. A person weights next to nothing in comparison.

Have to agree that the laws themselves are good, but the problem is that the sentencing is too damned lenient!

Drink/drugs driving?
Dangerous driving?

Automatic 5 year ban for both.

Cause of death by driving? automatic lifetime ban & stuff the claim that you'll lose your livelihood, you took a life, go stack shelves at Tesco's!

I think a freezeway is a fine idea. However, Edmonton probably gets far less snow than the Boston-bay area, even excluding this past extraordinary winter.

It's cheaper to clean up after an accident rather than do constant maintenance.

...I'm not talking about 100mph multi-thousand tonne trains, but about those trains running safely at speeds dictated by the topography of the line not the state of the line.
...

It looks to me, from the comfort of thousands of miles, that the US has to start to look to the way it uses and manages its railways - much of the track I saw in October last year was in poor condition, in part due to the amount of freight using it, but also the lack of maintenance investment.

The nearest we have is probably the Lickey Incline, 2 miles at 2.65%

Damn stupid way to build a railway!! Same as the line though Dawlish .....

I think many modern freight bogies also have some limited axle swing

No, they really don't.

VIA Rail Canada trains currently go up to 100 MPH in some places

In Manitoba trains can get up to very high speeds on the 'National Hill,'
just out side of Winnipeg....

...so the lead loco isn't expected to pull the whole 99k tonnes.

It makes sense on the face of it, build an ore refinery next to the ore mine and just ship the processed metal out (hundreds of tonnes), rather than the thousands of tonnes of metal ore which will be largely 'waste' oxygen.

As much as possible, these trains are scheduled to run through the mountains in daylight and the boring plains at night.

Pressure relief valve

OMG! He's not crazy, he's just Canadian!

Bill, don't forget to mention
that we have a paved road now!

Looks like a fly zapper! The bits in front of it are parts I assume?

What substance is in it?

Does it oscillate?

Fluid density tester

My wife has transit rights, to reach the lower basement and the beer fridge.

Quite right too, how else do you get your glass refilled?

Why when you walk in the rain you get more on the inside of the lenses than the outside?

"they hate us because they ain't us"

The trouble is that all these people work for foreign call centres where your own countries legislation has no legal effect.

The warmer guinness is it tastes better (up to a point) but it gets worse to pour. On hot days we used to turn the cooler up to make it easier to serve, but we got some complaints that it was too cold. It was a juggling act. The worst beer in the whole wide world is universally acclaimed as Watneys Red Barrel, now thankfully discontinued. Watneys Mild was nothing more than coloured water and came a close second.

Taste and flavours often get lost with lower temperatures.

He was hiding behind the settee :-))))

(an old) Newbie here. (trans. have been away for a while...)

Any reason not to "Suspend" project until informed here that things are up and running again?

Thanks.

This of course brings to mind the Mars Climate Orbiter incident in 1999: "The 'root cause' of the loss of the spacecraft was the failed translation of English units into metric units in a segment of ground-based, navigation-related mission software - -"

Eric worked on a satellite once that got rained on. Somebody forgot to close a dome door. Anyway, it turns out electronics can be "washed". Just don't turn them on until they are dry. The satellite worked fine once it was completely dried.

Absolutely nothing wrong with water and electronics, the water just has to be pure distilled or de-ionized, with no contaminates.
I used to work on 20 kW water cooled amplifiers. The supply voltage was ~35 kV.

It's the conducting contaminating dirt that does the damage.

our use of the words "dark skinned" could be perceived as a form of oppression. You appear to be automatically connecting "Dark skinned" and "beggar". Couldn't you have made your point by saying "...approached by a beggar"?

My point is that there is lots of oppression to go around. Nobody seems to have an exclusive claim on it anymore.

OMG. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say how meanings have been stretched. There is no way I was inferring that "all beggars are dark skinned" or that "all dark skinned people are beggars" and if you think either of those terms was what I meant you really need to detune your sensitivity. That is exactly the sort of PC BS this thread is about.

It was an accurate description of the beggar in question and no, I couldn't have made the point without giving a description of said beggar

The reason I used the term "dark skinned" was to demonstrate why the beggar used the term "White c***"". If the beggar had been white, he would have just called me the name without the adjective.

T.A.

I'm walking through the shopping centre and get approached by a dark skinned beggar, who hits me up for money and cigarettes. When I politely refuse to give him anything, he calls me a "White "C" word" and takes a step towards me.

Who has the most right to feel "oppressed" and "offended" in this situation, the beggar or me ?

T.A.

I did forget that the bean counters prefer profits over safety:(

Almost hockey eh?

Used to set the angle when sharpening a cutting edge.

OK, we are getting close. A cutting edge on what kind of tool.

Mr. Ed and Francis the talking mule.

Cheers.

Bill, did you ever catch Max Ferguson?

I remember that from many years ago.

I know Spud1200 is a newbie and doesn't yet understand most of what makes Seti@home tick, but this would have been better posted in Number crunching. We get this time and time again. What is needed is a comprehensive starter pack for new crunchers which they could download, or start up a "Freshers" type thread over in NC.

Hi:
I know what I call that stuff, but
I hesitate to talk about it as I
fear they may steal it away from us
like they did with zippers and basketball....