My Train Journey This Morning

[Pondlife]

ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

Pro-rail (the Dutch network operator, known to many passengers as Anti-Rail), have sent out a 'Sprinter' ahead of this intercity, which is really fooking smart. What a bunch of twats.

.... and breathe

headphones on, eyes closed, find your happy place.

[Mich the Tester]

Train has finally arrived in Utrecht 25 minutes late. I should perhaps take a stoic attitude, and as Seneca accepted his fate at the hands of Nero, accept that any train journey which starts well will quickly deteriorate; lower my expectations to defeat the infinite capacity of the Dutch Railways to disappoint.

[Mich the Tester]

Evening train home yesterday was held up by;

- late arrival of extra carriage which was to be decoupled after one stop anyway
- confusion among rail workers as to which carriage was going where
- stuck behind a 'Sprinter' train which was unable to accelerate properly out of stations due to 'leaves on the line'
- other passengers angry as they have to take buses further up due to person jumping in front of earlier train


This morning,

- very cramped compartment in first class due to train designers accounting for Pygmy passengers instead of 6ft plus Dutch passengers
- delayed arrival in Utrecht (20 minutes) due to 'Sprinter' train which was unable to accelerate due to 'leaves on the line'
- angry looking woman sitting opposite me (perhaps angry due to accidentally kicking my shin and discovering it's harder than her toes)
- no smells
- no OAPs

That concludes this morning's general crapness.

[RichardCranium]

My carriage had the square wheel.

Square wheel on my carriage.

A rack-and-pinion railway (also rack railway, cog railway) is a railway with a toothed rack rail, usually between the running rails. The trains are fitted with one or more cog wheels or pinions that mesh with this rack rail. This allows the trains to operate on steep gradients.

The first cog railway was the Middleton Railway between Middleton and Leeds in West Yorkshire, England, UK, where the first commercial steam locomotive, Salamanca, ran in 1812.

In 1900, E. C. Morgan of Chicago received a patent on a rack railway system where a rack was used as a third rail to power the electric locomotive. In 1904, Morgan patented a simplified but compatible rack, where the teeth on the engine pinions engaged square holes punched in a bar-shaped centre rail.

The Goodman Equipment Company began marketing the Morgan system to mining companies, and it saw widespread use in many mines, particularly where steep grades were encountered underground. By 1907, Goodman had offices in Cardiff, Wales to serve the British market.

Supposedly, the Snowdon Mountain Railway in Snowdonia is the only remaining rack railway in the UK. North Wales in the 1890s saw the arrival of the old railway idea - the "rack and pinion" concept - to allow locomotives to climb frequently cloud-covered Mount Snowdon, the tallest mountain in England and Wales. The Middleton's early locomotives had been forced by the quality of iron available in 1810 to be too light to grip the track, so they had used the rack and pinion system to allow their locos to scramble across Leeds. The Swiss had used the technology to get narrow-gauge railways around their country. Those were for general business - the Snowdon Mountain was unashamedly for tourists.

I suspect, Zeity, your dodgy home-built teleporter's PCB has somehow gone tits-up and you are now commuting in a diesel-electric train on a cog railway.

No other explanation makes any sense.

[RichardCranium]

Then again...

DOWLAIS

A year later another rack engine was contemplated. Neath Abbey wrote to Dowlais on 19th January 1835: "Our price for a Locomotive Engine of the same power as the "Mountaineer" will be £500 ... We cannot say the cost of the machinery requisite for working on the Rack as it is a point that requires a good deal of consideration and had best be decided on by your as well as our Engineer — when the mode of doing it is fixed we will give you an estimate".

The engine was named DOWLAIS . 28 drawings of components survive, dated between 20th June and 23rd December 1835; but an almost complete side elevation was published in Engineering for 15th November 1867.


DOWLAIS, Neath Abbey 1836 ("Engineering", 15th November 1867)

DOWLAIS is most interesting for the very compact rack mechanism, which is more clearly seen in the plan than in the Engineering engraving. On the crankshaft was a pinion A which could be slid along a keyway by means of a crank and a handle that was held in a three-notched quadrant in neutral, rack or adhesion. For adhesion drive the spokes of A were engaged in the clutch of the pinion B, which was loose on the crankshaft and permanently meshed with the gear C fixed on the rear axle. When driving the rack, pinion A meshed with gear D on the rack spindle, the rack wheel E being 1ft 3½in in pitch diameter. The rack spindle was mounted on a U‑frame held at the front by bearings on the crankshaft and raised or lowered by crank and rods actuated by a 4ft lever on the footplate. The third gear on the crankshaft, F, was fixed. It was always in mesh with the gear G that was loose on the valve working shaft; G could be engaged at diametrically opposite positions by the sliding clutch H, which was held open against a spring by a pedal on the footplate. Two cranks of 21/8in throw transmitted the drive from the working shaft to the Y‑shaft with its handles, and rockers from there operated the valves. The driver reversed and braked in the same way as on PERSEVERANCE. DOWLAIS moved 8ft 9in per revolution of the crankshaft by adhesion, or 3ft 7in by rack.

[RichardCranium]

FOUND IT!!!

Zeity, you dozey old lizard, have you been getting on this train?

A replica of Trevithick's engine at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea

[RichardCranium]

Well, I found this to be interesting reading. "History of the British Railway - Part 1".

You'll need an extended loo break to read it all.

[SupremeSpod]

Well, I found this to be interesting reading. "History of the British Railway - Part 1".

You'll need an extended loo break to read it all.

Gricerboy?

[Lockhouse]

My train has been late every day this week, three times due to signalling problems and once due to "slippery rails". Twice I've missed my connection at Basingstoke. Plus the newspaper delivery has been arriving30 minutes later at Winchester so I can't get a Telegraph first thing.

[BdP]

Sweaty Cycling Peasants

Yet again, my 7:22 from Southampton Airport Parkway to Basingstoke was made more of a hell with the numerous, sweaty, selfish cycling dolts who insist on bringing their juvenille toys on board an adult's train.

The sooner the TOC companies totally ban cycles from trains the better. Cycling idiots should store a bike at each end of their terminus. The space taken by these toys could be transformed into something useful, rather than the fetid, disgusting retards who clog up trains with their ...... etc etc etc ....