Off out for a smoky-drinky, but a mild one. In theory I am not working tomorrow but there is a possibility I might get a call. I’m an on-call janitor! The boss has been warned of my plans for this evening, and that there would be no point phoning me for an 8 am start because all she’ll hear on the phone is incomprehensible grunting interspersed with Neanderthal swearing. I can do the afternoon if necessary.
I have a bottle of Ben Bracken from Lidl. £17.99 for a Speyside 12 year old single malt. Never tried this one before, so there’ll be a verdict on it later.
Okay, time to head out. It’s not icy tonight so I should make it home without breaking any more bones.
underdogs bite upwards 
That’s good, old fella. Hope the malt is OK when you try it. I might even look at it myself if you say it’s all right, although I can’t seem to be able to drink spirits in the evenings at my age…I get the nightmares later (oh, wait, er, that’s part of your research budget, isn’t it…)
Think about the nuclear-powered 2-8-2. I thought it was rather smooth in my young days. Wish it could have really happened. If you made one, you’d have to paint it in Bulleid green (a sort of post-Maunsell-mid green tint, rather good actually, (Did you notice the 2.4 GHz fore-and-aft aerials? That was for “real-time train-control on the line”, relayed of course to the driver/fireman on a CRT in the cab…) They didn’t even need to see the 4-aspect coloured-light signalling, if it was in fog etc…)
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I used to have a ‘Battle of Britain’ class so I know the green you mean.
I did notice the aerials although these days, they’d just need GPS.
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I sketched that drawing in 1978 – no GPS then of course, except in science fiction! Line-of-sight along the track, between repeaters, would have been sufficient for that time, I opined in the 70s.
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2.4 GHz would still work through fog and heavy rain, which is why mobile phones do: 10-14 GHz (GPS bands) would not – water vapour is a strong microwave/far-infra-red absorber at some bands in this sector, which is why sat dishes sometimes “go off a bit” in heavy weather…
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I did think it might be a good idea to have one dish on the cab roof that can be rotated to face the direction of travel, but that would mean raising the height of every bridge and tunnel on the line. Besides, it does look good with a big dish on the front. You could call it ‘Enterprise’.
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I defined the General name of the class “The Merchant Venturers”. They had names like Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, and so on. Indeed, I think I also had “Richard Arkwright”, James Watt, and the like. There were also scientists and mathematicians represented. I still have the list somewhere in my library (I actually even know where.) Many were built under contract and sold to other railway companies like the LNWR, and the North British (who especially loved the 2-8-2s for the Edinburgh-Aberdeen run.) All these of course were reformed in the flash of capitalist restoration in 1945, after Montgomery’s and Churchill’s Army Groups had disregarded the Americans at Torgau, crashed headlong into the Soviet forces in Germany, and forced them back far into Siberia, decimated and leaderless.
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I wondered about the cab-roof rotatable dish, but had the same problem that you noted. Too much work for the Chief Civil Eng’s department., and also costly! It seemed to me that, since most curves on this very very fast line (200mph+ in some places) were of 60-80 chains’ radius or more, fixed dishes would “do” most of the time, and if the signal strength was good enough, there’d be enough “spread” to cope at 2.4GHz. On fast bends, the track was banked inwards anyway on the fast running-lines.
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Raising the loading gauge would never get past the Board. The expense would be horrible.
On long curves you could put more repeaters, which would cost a lot less than raising every bridge, tunnel, overhead gantry, station awning etc…
So you present it to the Board as a requirement to raise the loading gauge then compromise on a low-cost option by letting them give you loads of repeaters instead 😉
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Already tried it Leggy. Good smooth stuff, I’m sure you’ll like it.
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I did.
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“I’m an on-call janitor!”
Promotion is the word. They obviously trust you to perform.
Let me know when you are the MD.
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I see worried manager faces. They’ve seen my CV and it’s bigger than theirs.
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Aldi recently had standard Glen Moray at a similar price, not at all bad.
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Glen Moray is a very nice vatted malt at a price way below the likes of Monkey Shoulder. I get that one often.
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