Mark Goodge wrote:

On Mon, 31 May 2010 17:22:55 +0100, Bill Borland put finger to keyboard and
typed:

In article
.com, bob writes


One American gallon: 3.785 litres

One Imperial gallon: 4.546 litres

The difference stems not from the difference in gallons, but from the
two different definitions of the pint. The Imperial pint is 20 Fl Oz,
while the US pint is only 16. From that basis, the quart and the
gallon are each defined in the same way with respect to their relevant
pints.

And the original reason for *that* is that the British pint was
originally the space occupied by one pound of dried peas (God knows
why) whereas the US pint was defined as the space occupied by one
pound of water, which seemed to be a more accurately reproducible
quantity.

Not peas, and it's the other way round, actually - the Imperial pint is the
more logical one. A pint has always been 1/8 of a gallon, but there were
traditionally different gallons for different substances.

.... that for the head being the smallest of them all, if ten gallon hats
are anything to go by. ;-)
--
http://gallery120232.fotopic.net/p11938592.html
("Toffee apple" 31 017 at Colchester, 16 Apr 1980)

On Tue, 1 Jun 2010 10:17:56 +0100
"Tim Fenton" wrote:
"kev" wrote in message
...

Any idea what else has been chopped with Boris's £5bn cuts? I've never
come across a breakdown of the figure. I know he claimed a lot of it
was due to the Metronet work being taken back in house. Also,
presumably part of the figure is the planned cut to the bus subsidy?

You can add in Bozza's daft phasing out of bendies, his obsession with the
Not Very New Not Anything Like A Routemaster, and scrapping the WEZ.

You'd think given the current financial situation that boris would have
swallowed his pride and just left bendies on the roads and saved the money
spent on this daft new routemaster for more important areas. But I guess
despite the unconventional character he's a very conventional politician
when it comes down to it - full of his own self importance and blind to
reality when it diverges from his opinions.

B2003

"Peter Masson" wrote
"Neil Williams" wrote
Basil Jet wrote:
SDO would not really be a problem at a terminus.

It would if it left a whole unit (no corridor connection) off the
platform.

or if the headshunt at Bank hadn't been long enough for a 3-unit train.

Is it still (or was it ever) the case that even DLR staff aren't allowed to
travel in the front unit into the Bank headshunt? That's what they told me
when I organised the (only?) enthusiasts' tour allowed to enter the
headshunt, in 1998, but I was never quite convinced that I'd got the full
story. Further details of what was said at the time are shown at
http://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/90s/980207ke.htm

'sOn 29/05/2010 12:31, Tom Anderson wrote:
On Fri, 28 May 2010, Willms wrote:

Am Thu, 27 May 2010 18:55:59 UTC, schrieb allantracy
auf uk.railway :

I don't know why we bother with Europe, the whole thing is flawed, we
would be much better off with the dollar and become the 51st state
and we could go back to Imperial measurements far better than all
this foreign muck that no one wants.

Just as George Orwell layed out the basis of his "1984".

We were an airstrip in that, not a state.

Conforms to one of Duncan Campbell's books in 1984 (!) - "The
Unsinkable Aicraft Carrier"

--
John Wright

Use your imagination Marvin!

Life's bad enough as it is - why invent any more of it.