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Old November 9th 07, 09:36 AM posted to uk.railway,uk.transport.london
Recliner Recliner is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Jan 2007
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Default After the Ball is over - Waterloo International

"Mwmbwls" wrote in message
oups.com
On Nov 8, 8:03 pm, "Paul Scott"
wrote:
"Neil Williams" wrote in message

...

On Thu, 08 Nov 2007 03:50:09 -0800, MIG
wrote:


Incidentally, I note an interim stage in plans for Waterloo to be
increasing platform lengths to 10. With most trains in units of 4,
this isn't going to make much difference.


If it is 10 23m coach-lengths, that'd fit a double IC Desiro,
surely?


For some reason though platform lengths are normally described in
terms of 20m car lengths, so a 10.444 needs a '12 car platform'...

This has overtones of the story of the space exploration vehicle lost
because one manufacturer was callibrating in Imperial Measures and
another in metric. Canadian aircraft have run out of jet fuel in mid
Atlantic for the same reason.


Actually, the Canadian airliner that ran out of fuel did so in the
middle of Canada (or it wouldn't have got down safely). It's nicknamed
the Gimli Glider: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

The 767 subsequently had a full flying career and was retired last
month.

It was a different Canadian airliner that ran out of fuel over the
Atlantic, for completely different reasons. It had a fuel leak because
of a maintenance error.