Top Gear - Bullet Train

> You don’t see it even in formula 1 the idea being to maintain traction
> not lose it so it’s probably not even good driving.

You obviously haven't gone to the Goodwood Festival of Speed then :-)

Simon

> are late. Average delay times in the last year SIX SECONDS. Makes ours
> look like a right fooking joke.

Yep. I can never understand why if they can do it, why can't we? They
have to puiblish their average lateness figures in the newspapers too.

My sister lived there for a while. She told me that if you are disabled
someone will help you onto the train, and then when you reach your
destination there will be someone else on hand at exactly the same
doorway you got on to help you off again!

Simon

thagor2008@*************** wrote:
> On Jul 14, 2:23 pm, Mike Plowman <mike.plow...@mydomain.net> wrote:
>> Booooooooorrrring. And the news section with the three of them is so
>> scripted it's painful to watch.
>
> The whole of TG is scripted, very little is spontanious. Does anyone
> really believe Hammond "accidentaly" got left behind by a train while
> looking for a drink and May conveniently just happened to have a
> handicam on him , what a co-incidence? Also the always arriving within
> minutes of each other with these races is a dead giveaway. In reality
> they would arrive hours apart but the crew make sure that never
> happens by delaying one or other of them somehow.
>
> The previous week Clarkson apparently turned his car on its side on a
> racetrack. Uh huh. Funny there were no scuff marks on the road then.
> And how come it had overturned onto its doors but no further? That
> must've have been one amazinly precise bit of driving to achive that
> and so close to the edge of the track too. Highly suspect.

He was also facing the wrong way for that section of track. Ok, he could
have gone in backwards first but no skidmarks?

--
Abo

allan tracy wrote:
>> I liked last week when Clarkson trashed a tyre on the Bentley with
>> his antics - I can't see there being much change out of a £1000 for
>> a Bentley tyre (if any at all).
>>
>> I can never understand the reason for all the tyre smoke, it's just
>> pandering to the petrolheads.
>>
>
> I suspect that sort of driving appalls most of us with an engineering
> background, just can't stand watching a well designed piece of
> engineering being abused that way.
>
> You don’t see it even in formula 1 the idea being to maintain traction
> not lose it so it’s probably not even good driving.

Yes you do. The optimum amount of wheelspin in an F1 car is around 7-8% when
accelerating out of a corner.

Mike P

In article <6e625cF5cflbU1@mid.individual.net>,
"Mike P" <privacy@privacy.net> wrote:

> allan tracy wrote:
> >> I liked last week when Clarkson trashed a tyre on the Bentley with
> >> his antics - I can't see there being much change out of a £1000 for
> >> a Bentley tyre (if any at all).
> >>
> >> I can never understand the reason for all the tyre smoke, it's just
> >> pandering to the petrolheads.
> >>
> >
> > I suspect that sort of driving appalls most of us with an engineering
> > background, just can't stand watching a well designed piece of
> > engineering being abused that way.
> >
> > You don’t see it even in formula 1 the idea being to maintain traction
> > not lose it so it’s probably not even good driving.
>
> Yes you do. The optimum amount of wheelspin in an F1 car is around 7-8% when
> accelerating out of a corner.

Which, for readers in uk.railway, links nicely to creep control in heavy
haul rail applications.

Sam

Abo wrote:
>
> On the poster they state that it stops your tyres
> going down because the nitrogen molecules migrate through rubber a
> lot slower than air does.

If that was true, the air in tyres would gradually approach 100% nitrogen
over time anyway.

"Norman Wells" <norman@myarl.co.uk> wrote in message
news:g5kjpj$keh$1$8302bc10@news.demon.co.uk...
> Abo wrote:
>> Peter Hill wrote:
>>
>>> So so wrong. Motorsport quackery
>>
>> It's a tyre pressure thing. When you run for a few laps the tyre
>> pressure changes as the heat builds up. When you fill with air this
>> change can be unpredictable as the proportion of water vapour in the
>> air can vary. Filling with nitrogen mans you know you have a dry gas
>> inside your tyres and you can predict how the tyre pressures are
>> going to change as they heat up.
>
> I have seldom read a more unknowledgeable account than this. Water vapour
> has nothing whatever to do with tyre pressures, and nitrogen is just as
> likely to contain water vapour as air is anyway.

Take that Abo, you clearly know nothing of oval racing! Now what was it you
do again?;)

In message <0001HW.C4A3C1BD01DEF550F0407648@news.eclipse.co.u k>, at
15:18:21 on Wed, 16 Jul 2008, Stimpy <stimpy1997uk@yahoo.com> remarked:
>> If you really want to stop your tyres going flat quickly fill them
>> with CO2. Its a large molecule and will escape much slower.
>
>Ha! I've gone one better and filled my tyres with concrete - that doesn't
>escape at all :-)

Joking apart, whatever happened to the idea of filling tyres with some
sort of foam-rubber compound as a run-flat precaution?
--
Roland Perry

> I was too. "Late" is a minute over its due time and they recompense you
> with a free rail trip and a letter to your employer to explain why you
> are late. Average delay times in the last year SIX SECONDS. Makes ours
> look like a right fooking joke.

That quoted average delay is for the more exotic of the shin-kasen.
It certainly isn't true for the JR East lines I use when I visit.
They're good, but they're not that good. The little chits for your
employer happen a great deal after a minute --- I've only seen them
being handed out once on my way through Nakahara station, and the
train was about ten late due to rain --- and the refund thing again I
think only applies to shin-kasen. Shin-kasen is also fairly
expensive (advance booked, non-refundable, weekend standard class
Tokyo--Hiroshima return was about a hundred and fifty squids last
year).

It's a typical UK view of abroad thing: we compare the general UK
service with high-level services in foreign countries, which is always
a rigged comparison. French TGV is better than the WCML, but French
rural provision is terrible. Many countries have better broadband
provision in cities than the UK, but very few, if any, have better
provision (or, indeed, any provision) in rural areas. And so on.

ian

On Jul 16, 10:43 am, Simon <n...@noname.com> wrote:
> > are late. Average delay times in the last year SIX SECONDS. Makes ours
> > look like a right fooking joke.
>
> Yep. I can never understand why if they can do it, why can't we? They
> have to puiblish their average lateness figures in the newspapers too.

Well, around Tokyo at least the lines are absolutely dedicated: each
line carries precisely one service type. There's no mixing of express
and local trains beyond having a few trains with different stopping
schedules. They're not mixing freight, local and through express a la
WCML. On the longer haul lines the same applies: the shin-kasen have
dedicated track and dedicated signalling.

>
> My sister lived there for a while. She told me that if you are disabled
> someone will help you onto the train, and then when you reach your
> destination there will be someone else on hand at exactly the same
> doorway you got on to help you off again!

The same's true in this country, according to a friend in a chair.

Japan is interesting for disability, and I'm pondering why: not merely
do you see almost no-one in a wheelchair, you also see no-one who is
blind, very few pregnant women and no children at all with visible
handicaps.

ian