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Captain Pegg

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Captain Pegg last won the day on November 9 2022

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    Droitwich
  • Boat Name
    Vulpes

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  1. I find it strange that someone who avidly boats to all corners of the BCN worries about Coventry and Nuneaton. And if you worry about them you should really fear Bedworth.
  2. There’s a significant history of motorising boats built to be towed. The reality is that a much larger number of unpowered boats than have already would meet their demise if they weren’t converted in some form. Lesser of two evils perhaps. Boats are living things.
  3. In respect of the new build you refer to it’s probable that the paint remained properly adhered but to mill scale rather than the base steel and it’s the mill scale that has fallen off taking the paint with it.
  4. Sounds like he never entirely lost some Oxford from his accent. The issue isn’t the use of the name or the pronunciation though, it’s the way it’s written. I dare say my boating ancestors - with an almost identical family history to Mike - also used the name but I’ll wager they never wrote it. And I’d be certain if they could have written it they’d have been sure to spell it correctly. In any case I’d also bet that what boat people actually called it was a lot closer to “Wigrums” than “Wigrams” phonetically.
  5. My own dislike is the use of the name ‘Wigrams’. It’s a term that seems to have come back into modern usage probably via the books published by the wartime female trainees (themselves never called Idle Women in their own time). I don’t dispute that boaters once used this term but what they were saying was “Wiggerham’s” in the hybrid Midlands accent that boaters tended to have. It’s someone’s name so somewhere along the way somebody should have done some research and got the spelling correct, particularly for the marina which in my view spoils the look of the place to boot. How crap to be remembered by folk that never knew you and can’t be arsed to spell your name correctly.
  6. I doubt any of us here had heard the term until @IanD referenced it when describing his layout for Rallentando. I very much doubt any boater made the term up and Ian himself is avowed in his dislike of nods to tradition - real or faux - so I can’t see he would be guilty of using the term for the reason you suggest.
  7. Fore-cabins were for people, additional space for children to sleep. The term seems to originate in its modern (only?) usage with Tyler Wilson and I’d guess that’s from the part that’s from Newcastle-under-Lyme rather than the one from Sheffield. @David Mack, I think it’s pretty clear that I don’t know if the term has any true historical provenance. However looking through A Canal People the only fore-cabins pictured are over the bows. These being ex-FMC general cargo boats repurposed for the coal trade. Gifford being a Clayton’s tar boat also carried a cargo where mass likely governed over volume in terms of loading. So maybe there is something in it. Are there photos of boats in the Potteries with fore-cabins at the front of the hold? Just because we don’t know something to be true doesn’t mean it’s false.
  8. I’m pretty sure that @IanD picked the term up from his builder and the explanation was that the space in which it sits was available because the boats concerned carried raw materials of high density to the Potteries, i.e. clay, rather than finished products. Whether this is true, or if it is that the term was ever used historically, I know not.
  9. Assuming it even was a real thing once upon a time isn’t a potter’s cabin supposed to sit further back than a fore cabin, in the space where the cratch is on most carrying boats? And there’s another one, cratch instead of deck board.
  10. CRTs vegetation control contracts probably forbid it. There’s plenty of stuff that fire could spread to including the ground itself if the slope is dressed with ash, which is common at least on embankments.
  11. Morpeth - which is a curve with a 50mph speed restriction with a maximum permissible approach speed of 110mph - does have Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS). TPWS is a tertiary system, the driver being the primary system and Automatic Warning System (AWS) the secondary. On the approach to any speed restriction with a reduction of 30mph or more an advance warning board must be provided. This is an inverted triangular lineside sign displaying the speed ahead in black numerals on a white background with an orange border. The advance warning board is situated ahead of the commencement of the actual restriction at a distance that enables all trains to reduce speed suffciently. 180m in advance of this board will be an AWS magnet situated in the four foot space (i.e. between the rails so the train passes over it) that triggers both visual and audible warnings in the driving cab. The driver has 2.7 seconds to cancel those warnings by depressing a button on the control desk otherwise an uncommanded emergency brake application will be made. (Should this happen the train will also be de-configured in some way and possibly lose all brake pipe pressure meaning it will need to be re-configured before proceeding. It requires reporting to the signaller in all circumstances. It's more an immoboliser than an automatic brake). Once cancelled the AWS plays no more part and what happens next is entirely at the drivers command. However should the driver fail to slow the train sufficently by the time it reaches the TPWS overspeed sensors that are situated between the advance warning board and the commencement of the restriction and it is travelling faster than a pre-programmed speed the emergency brake will again intervene. Neither of these systems offers full protection for a variety of reasons it's probably not worth going into but it's principally because they are retro-fitted to a pre-existing railway rather than designed into a fully integrated system from scratch and are also provided on a cost vs benefit basis. It's entirely possible to drive a train through these warning systems and arrive at the curve in an overspeed condition. Only the European Train Control System (ETCS) provides direct full speed and over-run supervision; although tilting trains have a form of continuous speed supervision because of the increased overturning risk. Automatic Train Protection (ATP) only exists in isolation in two locations and is a more fully effective system than TPWS but obsolete. It offers protection against rear-end collision or level crossing incursion that is not provided by TPWS.
  12. I believe Forget Me Not was built by Sephton’s in 1928 for John George Grantham. According to Narrow Boat magazine It was acquired by Samuel Barlow Coal Co Ltd in 1940 from a Joseph Grantham. John George Grantham had a son of that name so assuming both of the above pieces of information are correct that’s likely to be the connection. There were multiple boats in the Grantham family called Forget Me Not. Forget Me Not is of course the butty of the hotel boat pair and is the one on the outside with the hold full of weeds in the above picture. Its cabin was removed (or perhaps disintegrated) many years ago now. Mabel still has an extant cabin.
  13. If you’re referring to Wootton Bassett what was notable about that incident was that the driver’s inappropriate response to failing to clear the Automatic Warning System (AWS) horn relating to a speed restriction lead to them both missing an adverse signal indication and failing to trigger the Train Protection & Warning System (TPWS) that should have prevented the train from passing a red signal. What it shows is that all safeguards have their limitations and that driver behaviour is the primary factor in maintaining safety. I don’t doubt that the driver was highly competent in the mechanics of operating the train’s controls, but they were totally lacking in other key skills required to do the job.
  14. OK. Very different rules and requirements on tramways hence it didn’t occur to me that’s what you were referring to. Sorry. Similar situations have occurred on railways historically and as a result are in general protected by warning systems. Mistakes that lead to uncommanded brake applications will soon lead to a driver being removed from driving duties. They are an indicator that the driver concerned isn’t actually capable of driving a train to the required standard which I thought is what we were discussing.
  15. I think you mean Clapham not Croydon and in any case the functioning of the automatic warning system was not a factor. The use of the engineered safeguards to protect the train is not part of driving a train properly which is the task being discussed. It’s quite the opposite. But apparently it’s a wind up so I’ll leave you and your mate to glory in your own ignorance.
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