Timleech

...but that's CRT territory! They might not want to play ball. Tim

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motorsport/day-jack-sears-hit-185mph-m1-motorway Includes a claimed debunking of the story that they were responsible for the 70mph limit being brought in. Tim

Where do you put the Preston Brook sign? Dangle it from a gantry over the tunnel portal?

There's a new man 'on the ground' now, so it's entirely possible. He was (I'm told) rather over-officious with someone I know who was on the Bridgewater within the time limit for visiting boats. Tim

It looks as though who they are after is people who shuffle back and forth when away from their home mooring for long periods. It's quite possible that we'll be picked up on their radar this summer as we'll hopefully be travelling to and from various dead ends in Yorkshire while our mooring is in Cheshire, but I'll be surprised and seriously disappointed if they try to make anything of it. Tim

As already stated, that pic is at the Ellesmere Port Boat Museum, the RN item has no connection with Gardner engine - it looks like the cover from the inlet side of an old RN cylinder head, they probably had a spare one which someone decided to screw to the door. On my little tug, starting air - apart from the compressor on the main engine - was provided by a Gardner 0VC petrol engine with integral compressor cylinder:- Tim

The 'Preliminary' to the J series sales brochure might be of interest to some:- The 3J5 was the smallest of the range, 54 bhp @ 400 rpm, 8" bore and 9.75" stroke, while the largest offered was the 6J9. That was 300 bhp@ 290 rpm, 6 cylinders, 12.5" bore and 15" stroke. 413 cwt net, ie over 20 tons for the benefit of any youngsters reading this Tim

They are cold start full diesels (or 'oil engines'). Straightforward air start. It's what my little tug had when new (until the 1950s). Tim https://youtu.be/sHnZczdgvgY Edit - 3.5 tons for 54 bhp., we now have a 4LW which is a bit over half a ton for the same horsepower, much much smaller, and only a few years younger.

I haven't seen any on utoob, I expect you've seen the footage of the Pochins engine but I don't remember any starting or reversing. Why do you ask?

Yes, the two lumps on the side with wires and copper links going in & out. It shouldn't be hard to test their operation without taking them apart. Tim

Could easily be a seized contactor. They look similar to the ones on my 'swing-lift' crane, which don't like the damp, I have to dismantle and derust them every couple of years. Tim

Hi, good to see you back. Actually my last post was meant to refer to DC on small boats, slipped up by mentioning 'neutral' instead of Negative! My boat has 24V DC isolated from the hull, but the 240V wiring (shore power and inverter) is indeed bonded to the hull, with RCDs, in the modern manner. Tim

It used to be the norm for boats, even narrow boats, to have their electrics isolated from the hull. Some still are, including mine Basically, that changed when vehicle-type engines became the norm, and it would have been expensive to isolate their electrics. Now that the change has been made, the 'experts' tell us we're better off with the neutral bonded to the hull. Tim

http://www.bbc.co.uk/staticarchive/5d3a5690c0c3a16ea35477564bf2638fc432655f.jpg

Certainly some are not, I believe that used to be the norm. Fashions may change, of course, even with electrics, I've no idea what they do with modern ships. Tim

It's incosiderate and wasteful if it could be seen that boats were waiting to come the other way. Life without setting locks ahead would be incredibly tedious. Tim

It is. It'll be exaggerated going 'upstream' on waters where there is a significant flow, such as the Llangollen. As an extreme case, we were going upstream through Radcot bridge, on the Thames, on yellow boards, got most of the way through & then started going backwards as a head built up in front of us. We backed away, had a bite of lunch, cleared a bit of weed from the prop and had another go. Exactly the same result, though this time with the cleared prop we managed to force a way through with some more power. Tim