Ronaldo47

At least we will still have the Llangollen due to it being also used to convey drinking water to the Midlands. I seem to recall that it was only maintained as a navigable waterway after WWII because a manager insisted that keeping it navigable was essential so that maintenance craft could access the many sections with no road access.

This is still being broadcast at the time of writing, no doubt available from their web site later. I missed the beginning and came in when they were dewatering Telford's masterpiece, then dealt with dredging the Monty, currently interviewing Mr. Parry who is discussing funding.

I remember reading that the records of one of the old canal companys were lost when their offices received a direct hit in a bombing raid during WWII.

Automotive fuses continue to use the old practice of rating fuses by the current that will make the fuse blow. For other applications, such as the fuses in your 13A plug or domestic electronic equipment, fuses are rated by the maximum current they can carry without blowing, which is normally half the automotive fuse rating.

Google found this: a Japanese fishing boat sunk by a cow that had been stolen by some Russians, and had got free and fallen from the military transport aircraft it was being carried in. https://www.rulesmaster.com/news/view/11

A couple of decades ago, wasn't there a story in the papers about an incident in, I think, India, where a cow that was being transported by air, broke loose, fell out of the plane, and hit and sunk a boat? I remember it coming up in an episode of, I think, "The News Quiz" or "Have I got News for You", where one of the panel was the formidable wife of the "Cash for Questions" MP whose name I forget.

At college, one professor was fond of posing occasional questions in tutorial exercises that could not be answered because insufficient information had been provided.

Your sensation of comfort is determibed by the balance betwern the heat radiated from your body and the radiant heat received from your surroundings. My first house was a 1920's-bulit end terrace with solid brick walls where the living room was next to the outside wall next to the side entrance. When I redecorated the living room, before applying the woodchip wallpaper that was all the rage in the 1970's, I lined the wall with the thin expanded polystyrene plastic that used to be available in wallpaper-sized rolls before the potential fire risks associated with polystyrene wall coverings and ceiling tiles was appreciated. I found that after applying the polystyrene wall covering and before applying the woodchip, on entering the unheated room from the unheated hall, I immediately felt much warmer. I assumed that, because the surface layer of the expanded polystyrene was extremely thin, and underlain by insulating pockets of air it had a very low thermal mass. It could therefore quickly be heated by heat radiated from me and reflect heat back to me. Once the woodchip paper had been applied and painted with emulsion-paint, the sensation of warmth in the unheated room, vanished. So I can quite understand why you would be able to detect the presence of a cold substance such as a cold radiator.

One sunny easter morning after overnight rain, the first lock we went through had freshly-painted wooden balance beams, black with white ends. The black parts were bone dry and slightly warm to the touch, while the white ends were still covered in rain drops and were icy-cold. Which to me conclusively demonstrated that black bodies are significantly better absorbers of radiation than white bodies. Logically, the same ought to apply in respect of radiation emission, which is certainly what I was taught at school.

The Easex Water document at the link in my post of last Saturday (24th Feb) contains an explaination as to why bubbles can appear in tap water.

Perhaps CRT are worried about the possible cost of an environmental assessment requiring them providing a corresponding number of trees to compensate for the ones they cut down? I seem to recall that, when Crossrail were planning to site a depot at some long-disused sidings where the rails were still in situ, although hidden by abundant sapling growth, an environmental assessment would have required them to create a corresponding area for wildlife had they cleared the site. Rather like the stretches of substitute abandoned canal that have had to be provided for wildlife on the restored Monty. In the event they built their depot elsewhere and the saplings had become small trees the last time I went that way.

Thanks for the clarification, it's been years since I commuted into London.

My recollection is that the DLR on-train staff were called "Train Captains" when the first lines opened. I don't know what they are called now. It was reported that, when Her Majesty officially opened the DLR, she arrived early and, as there was no easy way of over-riding the automatic system to make the train depart sooner, the Royal party had to wait for several minutes until the train started at its pre-programmed time. The busy suburban lines from London into Essex have/used to have around five sets of four-aspect colour light signals to the mile in the inner area. When a train passed, a signal, it would go red. When it passed the next signal, that red would go to single amber. When it passed the next signal, the amber would go double amber. It would stay double amber for the next few signals passed, and then go green. So the driver of a following train would know roughly how far ahead the next train was, and adjust his speed accordingly. If you were sitting behind the driver's cab, you could hear the audible signals the system generated through the wall. From memory, green produced no sound, double amber sounded an electric bell, and (when the line was congested and trains were crawling, a not uncommon occurance when approaching Liverpool Street in the morning rush hour), a single amber sounded a hooter. I understand that attempting to pass a red would have applied the brakes. The sound signals allowed trains to continue running at around 90 second headways in the fogs we used to get at one time but rarely get now.

Here's some screenshots from the article I provided a link to last Saturday. It mentions that the water louse can thrive in water mains, and does resemble a terrestrial woodlouse. The local water company should apparently be contacted about this sort if problem, always assuming that the water does come from a public supply.

This illustrates our traditional clothes drying method in 1977! The boat did also have gas-fired central heating and an airing cupboard to complete the drying.

Several decades ago there was a serious infestation of harmless freshwater shrimps in the water mains in the Southend area of Essex that actually made it to the national TV news. My friends were living in the affected area at the time, and they used to filter their tap water until the water company sterilsed and flushed out the mains. I could't find anything about it on Google just now, but it did turn up some info from Essex Water about water treatment. The issues with shrimps and other, harmless, animals that can sometimes find their way into water mains and live there happily, and how they can be eradicated, are discussed in detail towards the end. link here: https://essexwatersupply.com/water-treatment-and-purification/

One of the other attendees at a course I was on at the Civil Service College in the 1980's, was from the Department of Transport. He told me that, what usually happened was that they would be asked to design a road, which they would do, taking into account the expected growth in traffic and service life. The government would then tell them it was too expensive and ask them to change the design to something cheaper. This might result in fewer lanes or road surfaces with a shorter life. The subject had arisen in conversation, as stories about premature deterioration of a motorway in the Midlands were featuring in the news at that time, something that the guy said was entirely predictable. The Humber Bridge construction project was a topic on that course in the context of how government decisions are made. The need for votes in a crucial by-election was indeed identified as the key factor!