Picture(s) of the day....

[CitroJim]

I see those Yeoman Class 59s a good deal as they live in Somerset at the Merehead Quarry Railway and not a million miles from a well-known forum member

They're a bit powerful. Not overly attractive but with them it's a case of function first...

This would have been the Class 59 back in the 50s and 60s - far more attractive



Neil, I guess the coal of the Beamish chippie imparts a nice flavour

I hate the smell of smoke generally but exceptions are wood and coal smoke... The latter is very evocative, especially when it issues from a steam locomotive

[NewcastleFalcon]

Nice pic of the Evening Star Jim.

I have got myself a little intrigued now as to the full journey of those wood pellets....having a look at the Port of Liverool now to see if I can track down the vessel on which they arrived just for my own amusement of course. Plenty of detail on the vessel movements to peruse.

I imagine the rail freight cost for that 1600 ton train will be expensive enough, but taking that back to the shipping costs and handling costs of that bulk over from the US or Canada, and over that side getting the pellets from processing plant to port, and prior to that getting the wood from the remote forests to the mills.....by the time the pellets reach the generating plant at DRAX B there is a fair amount of energy expended in the logistics of turning trees into electricity!

Regards Neil

[CitroJim]

I guess the economics must stack up in its favour Neil but it does, on the face of it, seem an incredibly bizarre way of powering a power station.

Still better by rail than thousands of lorries clogging up the roads... One Class 59 to haul that lot has got to be cheaper than a fleet of lorries and use less diesel I'd have thought.

Last time I passed the Ratcliffe On Soar Power Station near Nottingham I was staggered at how big the mountain of coal was! It was about ten times bigger than in the picture below...



Nowadays, and knowing both coal can be burned cleanly with the right technology and that the UK still has significant reserves, it is surprising there has not been a resumption of cola mining in the UK.

I believe we import nearly all of what is used here. Seems ludicrous to me...

But with one big exception...

On the subject of steam locomotives, I was reading the other day that if the Port Talbot steelworks closes then it puts one of Wale's very last coal mines into jeopardy and if that closes then the preserved railway movement will struggle to get the right coal as this mine is the last to supply the good Welsh Steam Coal they need.

British steam locomotives were designed to burn one sort of coal and if they don't get it their performance is very much impaired and this may in turn jeopardise the ability of those that are main-line certified to pull a full rake of 12 coaches at 90MPH...

[NewcastleFalcon]

I am enjoying exploring the links from a simple freight train trundling through picturesque little Hebden Bridge. Thanks for joining in....love that stuff. Its a very competitive world and the Port of Liverpool has certainly put some serious investment into a £100 million Biomass handling Facility, and the links with DRAX B are an important part of this.

From the US and Canada point of view, they see demand from Europe expanding for wood pellets, which are a by product of their huge sawmilling operations. While supply of the raw feedstock into the process isn't a problem, getting it from the forest to the processing mills and the ports is. 21st Century Industrialists, and Entrepreneurs having to answer the same questions as their 19th Century equivalents, and coming up with railways and canals

Transportation and loading can be as much as 40 percent of the total delivered pellet cost, according to Brent Mahana of Cooper/Consolidated, the largest independent barge operator in the U.S. Of that cost, roughly 30 percent is fuel. Shipping by barge is by far the cheapest method, followed by rail. But much of the North American supply is too far from an inland waterway or rail loading yard to make it economical. With diesel at $4 a gallon, just 50 miles' worth of trucking costs to get feedstock to mills and finished pellets to oceanic ports can make or break an entire supply chain.

Regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

At least one of the shipments from the US to the biomass terminal at Port of Liverpool came from Newport News Marine Terminal, just over the water from our old friend Norfolk, Virginia.

I see those Yeoman Class 59s a good deal as they live in Somerset at the Merehead Quarry Railway and not a million miles from a well-known forum member They're a bit powerful. Not overly attractive but with them it's a case of function first...

The Yeoman Highlander did a bit of a stint at Merehead before moving to Germany, and then back to haul the first biomass train out of Liverpool to Drax B.

One other link with another recent picture of the day topic, I posted up a picture of North Star one of the very early Star series of GWR broad gauge locos designed by Robert Stephenson, which also included a loco called Evening Star.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GWR_Star_Class

regards Neil

[CitroJim]

As many will know, I have (many) other interests besides French cars... One being vintage wireless...

I'm also a licensed radio amateur (I hate the term 'ham' ) and this is my 'shack' as of today...

All of the kit you see is pretty well vintage - I don't do modern in anything apart from my bikes...

[white exec]

Is that a Leak (Troughline?) f.m. tuner down there on the right?
Audio and hi-fi one of my hobbies.
I must post some pics of some very old stuff here, when I get time.

[CitroJim]

Is that a Leak (Troughline?) f.m. tuner down there on the right?

Yes, it is Chris I like my vintage audio too...

It's just one of three I have - all in daily use... That one is a mono one and it runs into a big valve amp just out of shot. The amp has a pair of 6L6s in the output stage It's actually a guitar amp and runs into a 12" guitar speaker...

In my lounge I have a genuine Troughline Stereo paired up with a Leak Stereo 30 amp and thereon into a set of vintage B & W speakers... It sounds fantastic to my ears... Also amplified by the Stereo 30 is a very early Philips CD player and one that's well over 30 years old now and one I've had from brand-new...

In my workshop I have another very scruffy mono Troughline I picked up for a fiver.. It was missing all its valves but a couple of quid later that was sorted and it's worked perfectly ever since.. That one is amplified by a little Class A EL84 home-built amp...

The Trough and amp are the first thing to be turned on in my workshop immediately after the lights...

[white exec]

Some of those old discrete component bits just keep going on for ever.

Some old audio here, from the early 70s includes
Sansui AU-505 stereo amp, 38W a side iirc. Full circuit diagram displayed inside the case!
Garrard 401 record deck in hefty plinth, with so-so Ariston arm and obligatory Shure M75ED
Pair of Sennheiser stereo headphones, HD414X (bought new for £9.99 in Boots, c1971) and which still put some current Bose cans to shame.

My first attempt at some novel speakers for home use was in 1971, when HiFi News featured a design for a pair of vertical spun-concrete pipes, 4ft long x 1ft diameter. A 10" round speaker sat in the top of each, facing upwards. Bottom end of the pipe was raised a couple of inches clear of the floor. Not good. Bit of a flop, but certainly cheap.

Decided to remedy things by building a couple of half decent speakers. Years of going to London hi-fi shows, at places like the Russell and various Heathrow hotels, had taught me how good good hi-fi could be, on delights such as Quad (valve and Electrostatics), Revox A77, and even the tiny Rogers-BBC LS3 bookshelf speakers. These shows were also my first taste of Bowers & Wilkins, KEF, Tannoy - and Sansui.

So, KEF it was going to be. Their "Constructor" Series featured DIY cabinet designs for the famous B139, B200, B110 and T27 drive units. In the end I built a couple of asymmetric units, weighing about 70kg each, off the floor, and with B139-B110-T27 inside. Garrard, Sansui and a Sony ST88 tuner completed the line-up.

All that was about 1974, and apart from adding a few bits over the years - a chucked-out Tandberg 3-motor and VU-metered cassette deck, and a DIY tv tuner (tuner and IF strip, from Henrys, for a fiver), and finally a Sony CD deck - this did us until 2001.

A sales bonus happened at work (a very rare occurence), and I wanted to mark this unique and momentous event with something lasting. So, it was hi-fi time again. Courtesy of a surviving "real hi-fi" shop in Guildford, it was "listening time" again! Took a pile of CDs with me (Celine Dion, Giorgio Moroder, Simon Preston, Mahler 8, Walter/Wendy Carlos, Rachmaninov 2....) and had a whale of a time. Finally settled on a pair of KEF Reference Three's, and an Audiolab 8000LX. Some decent bi-wire cabling was thrown in, along with an Pure DAB tuner.

This was all delivered the same afternoon by the shop owner, who offered to install it all. No: I would have the fun of doing that myself! Before long, Karl Jenkins had released The Armed Man - another CD landmark.

The big old home-made KEFs, which took up four times the floor space of the new ones, were donated to our local Comprehensive school, and were installed in their Music Department. They'd done their time (27 years), but now we had a bit more of our lounge to call our own again.

Today, the 1974 Sansui amp lives on, CD and iPod driven for an outdoor terrace and eating area, powering a couple of home-made speakers hidden in two conifer trees. I'm told the now 42 year old power supply capacitors inside are probably due for replacement.

The Garrard 401 deck has been used to AudioClean more than a hundred LPs to CD, and still sits under a lounge PC. The Sennheiser HD414's get almost daily use. You can even still buy the genuine yellow foam ear-pads!

[Gibbo2286]

I know this is a 'French Car Forum' but why are you two talking in that foreign language?

[white exec]

I know, that did occur to me half way through, but I carried on regardless.
Good to have the feedback.
Sorry, I've done it again. B*gg*r.

[CitroJim]

Excellent Chris, love it That's some very, very fine kit you have there! I don't have a vinyl deck but I plan to rectify that in 2017 - if I can afford it Good decks and cartridges go for good money these days...

I expect I'll end up with a nice Garrard SP25 and a Goldring G800 as I had in the 70s...

and a DIY tv tuner (tuner and IF strip, from Henrys, for a fiver

Funny you should mention those, they (and Henry's Radio!) were the side-subject of a discussion recently over on the vintage wireless forum about the quality of TV sound. It was, as you'll know, very good but few TV receivers took any advantage of it. TV sound output stages and speakers were invariably poor and well below what the transmission system could ultimately deliver...

This was done for various reasons - mainly cost saving and the problem of housing a good speaker in the shallow TV cabinets but some technical too such as magnetic fields from big speakers upsetting the colour CRT and the reduction of a phenomenon known as 'Intercarrier Buzz' to acceptable levels..

A shame as the TV sound channel had a full 15Khz bandwidth and was almost as good as Band II FM radio...

Gibbo, sorry - I guess I've just perpetuated the gibberish

[white exec]

[Gibbo2286]

I don't care really, it's what's called conversation and naturally drifts off in all directions, often leading us to stuff we didn't know.

[white exec]

Just think what an evening down the pub would be like.....