Friday Reads – 5 July 2019

1. The maps for the visually impaired aticle is fascinating ….

   As for “gender steryotypes” – we’ve had our own article on that & I would like to re-recommend: “Railwaywomen” by Helena Wojtczak…
   ISBN: 1-904-109-047

2. It was not exactly for fun, but there was Operation Smash Hit, where a class 45 and three coaches was driven at 100 mph into a nuclear flask – which survived. And that was the point of the train wreck.

3. @JohnMF – wasn’t there also an experiment in, I seem to recall, WW2, in the US to determine the maximum gap in the track which locos could jump without derailing – an experiment which was bound to end in a wreck… [The answer seemed to be a surprising metre or so, but I have seen no reports about speeds and track condition parameters.]

4. I thought I had slept well! Hope my work aren’t too upset..

5. There’s a video produced from the US experiment on YouTube:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agznZBiK_Bs

6. The 232 maps are not available anywhere but itunes. The B&W versions are decades old for monotone duplication. I do like the concept of high contrast for cataracts.

   The Romans would ut exitus apud ‘considered to be the first organisational chart ever’

   Britannia https://simonscarrow.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Screen-Shot-2014-10-10-at-18.19.59.png

   Every organisation, empire, hierarchy in the past seven millenia would have a structure chart. Religions particularly had power in the centre like Jerusalem in the mappa mundi.

7. @Aleks – by 400, there was the Notitia Dignitarum, which set out the notional military organisation of the entire Western Empire, not to mention the famous sculpted map of the postal routes and mansiones exhibited in the Forum. The existence of such things implies a much larger substrata which has not survived and probably going back some centuries beforehand. In the same vein, recent studies of traffic circulation in Pompeii suggest a well-developed mapping and regulatory framework, details, again, of which have not survived.

8. @

   “The 232 maps are not available anywhere but itunes. The B&W versions are decades old for monotone duplication. I do like the concept of high contrast for cataracts.”

   There are officail black and white maps on this bit of the TfL site:
   https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/suppliers-and-contractors/map-sizes-and-formats and scroll down to the end for “Black and white versions (London Underground maps) Version L – full area version in black and white”

9. @johnmf

   On a point if detail, the locomotive driven into a nuclear flask was a class 46 – 46009 to be precise.

10. The Army experiments forgot Newton’s first law! Without something to force the engine off the track – like bending inwards a one-ended gap to give a sidewaysforce – it will continue in a straight line regardless.

11. @Alison W

    Newton’s First Law notwithstanding, any small irregularities in the trackbed, or “hunting” by the leading axle, will cause that axle to deviate slightly from the straight ahead. It wouldn’t take much for it to mount, or pass the wrong side, of the rail beyond the gap. A locomotive with a leading bogie ( like a 2-6-0 or 4-4-0) would be more likely to do this than one without (like an 0-6-0 or 0-6-2)

12. Timbeau: Yes, great theory, but as that Army testing film showed, not what happens in practice! On straight track it proved difficult to get a serious derailment.

13. Alison W
    IIRC, in the voice-over commentary on the film they said something like … “It;s always easier to derail on a curve, of course, but we deliberately picked straight track for this exercise” – or words to that effect.
    I think they wanted to find out how to guarantee a derail under the least favourable circumstances.

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