A New Bus For London
Last night, I went to a presentation by Stuart Wood of Heatherwick Studio at the London Transport Museum of the proposed New Bus for London. Stuart is the lead designer, who is working in partnership with Wrightbus, who will actually be building the new buses.
A Routemaster, an RT and a New Bus for London
This picture shows the bus alongside two of its predecessors, the Routemaster and an RT. I probably travelled on more RTs, than any other bus, as I used the 29 or 29A to get to school for several years.
When I first saw pictures of the bus, I must admit I wasn’t sure that the three-door, two-staircase design would work. In fact, as the talk revealed, it is one of the design strengths as it enables all of the parts of the hybrid-drive system to be kept out of the useable space, with the battery and fuel tank under the front staircase, the engine/generator under the back one and the electric motors inside the rear wheel arches.
What did surprise me, was that some of the things, they’d have liked to have done, fell foul of the various regulations. For instance, they would have liked to have the handrails in bare metal, as on the original Routemaster, but regulations mean they must stand out, so that those with limited vision can see them. In the end they used a light yellow-gold colour.
Rear Lower Deck Layout
This picture shows the handrails in the proposed layout at the back of the lower deck over the rear axle. Note the high seat backs in this picture on the back-to-back seats over the rear axle. One of the design ideas here was to create some slightly better seats and as there are two groups of four, they also have the advantage of being suitable for families or friends travelling together.
In fact the interior design can be described as quirky in some ways.
- Both staircases are glazed, with the rear one being curved. They are infinitely better than those on the French TGV Duplex trains, which are straight and dark.
- I actually feel that for someone like me with a limited left hand, that I would use the rear staircase to ascend to the top deck, as this would mean I’ll be better balanced. I have climbed onto the top deck of a Routemaster since my stroke and found it not too difficult.
- The design also incorporates a love-seat at the top of the rear staircase, just like the old RT did. I can’t say, I’ve ever sat there on the top deck of a Routemaster, but did a lot on the old 29’s to and from school.
- The rear downstairs seating as the picture showed is definitely quirky with high-backed seats and groups of four. In a way the groups reminded me of how my mother would put me at the age of six on a 107 at Oakwood to go to my aunt’s for piano lessons, on the longitudinal seats of an RT. The conductor would look after you. Although the buses may have conductors at times, these seats might well become family seats, for say father travelling with three or more children.
- I said three or more children, but as the seats all over the bus, are of a bench design, three small ones could easily sit together.
- I also think that those like me, wo do their shopping on the bus, will like the seating, as a bench design will allow you to share a bench with your shopping. I do this regularly on a 56 or a 38 from the Angel, when I return from Waitrose, on the half-empty buses in mid-morning.
So have they designed a bus for all people?
- It has a large capacity that will mean it should be a good commuter bus.
- The large amounts of glass and good visibility might make it a sightseeing bus on central routes.
- The layout is family friendly in my view. For energy saving reasons we must get children to like public transport.
- I do a lot of shopping on the bus. Does it fulfil that role?
- The seating on the lower deck, might encourage people to use buses for longer distances. I used to go miles as a child on the 107 to visit relatives. Now, there is no way other than to drive. But if the bus is comfortable, quiet and spaceous, would people be tempted to use it, in these times of high-energy costs?
Only time will tell if the concept works. But I like it!
Justice By Facebook
I think that this is the biggest threat to justice, I’ve seen in the last thirty years. In this case for example, according to the Guardian, a juror contacted the defendant and the trial collapsed at a cost to taxpayers of £6,000,000.
I don’t know how you stop it, unless you ban those who know about the Internet from juries.
So it might be the end of the jury system in many cases, and we go to a system, where defendants are tried in front of a panel of judges.
I hope not.
Belgians Break the Record
Belgian has just broken the record for the longest time a country has gone without a government.
So does it prove that often, when you are in a real hole, the best thing to do is stop digging.
I feel that one solution to the problem of political parties that have their own opposite agendas, might well be to agree how the taxes are raised to keep the country going and then let everybody get on with it. So many things in this country perform quite well, without any political interference. In fact, in some areas like food, as I showed with the bread story, that interference actually makes things worse.
Appropriate Advertising
Just watching the British Motorcycle Grand Prix, which is taking place in the rain. Lots of adverts for Visit Spain.
How appropriate!
Looking for Ferrous Inclusions in Copper Wire
One of the first real research projects I ever did, was to look for small ferrous inclusions in copper wire. This was during a vacation job from Liverpool University at Enfield Rolling Mills. It was I think the third summer I spent there and it was all good training for the future.
My problem was to look for small pieces of iron in thin copper wire, that was being drawn smaller to make electrical cable. Even the smallest piece of iron of the order of ten micrograms can do bad damage to the dies that shape the copper. To complicate matters the wire was travelling at something like 3,000 feet per minute, although I can’t remember exactly what the speed was.
I remember building a frame from Dexion, with pulleys at three corners, so that a cotton sash cord could be passed round these and an electric motor at the fourth. The cord was used as I could slip straightened lengths of wire into it to simulate the wire. I can also remember drilling the wire down its length to insert very small pieces of iron in the middle. The whole was sealed with copper wire, as I wanted to make sure that the only magnetic material was the speck of iron.
The person who’d tried the problem before had used a detector based on permanent magnets with a coil in the middle. It didn’t work too well, as you got a pulse when the wire entered and left, with only a small blip from the iron.
I used a longer detector based on an electromagnetic coil, with the detecting coil in the middle. The idea was that any eddy currents created by the start of the wire would die down before the detecting coil. I’m not sure if I got the maths right, but it did work and I got a nice one cycle wave on the Cossorscope, with two smaller ones when the wire entered and left. Note that in those days of 1966, you had to develop miles and miles of paper film to get your results from the oscilloscope. Although I should say that there were plenty of good Textronix ones at the University, but then it was so much better funded than industry.
It wasn’t perfect but it would have been good enough to say that a coil of wire didn’t contain anything bigger than so many micrograms. I think in the end they solved the problem, by better hygiene in the wire drawing, so that there was no need to apply a qualitative test.
But I was rather proud of what I had done as a nineteen year old and have always felt that the technique has other applications.
Cambridge Busway to Open on August 7th
It would appear from this article, that an opening date has been set.
I’ll believe it when it opens!
Hope For Pain Sufferers
Whilst in the university, I picked up a copy of their Research Intelligence newsletter.
It fell open on an article about how Dr. Goebel at the University, has developed a new way to combat chronic pain. It is described here.
Hope For Cancer Sufferers
On Wednesday I was invited around the Cancer Trials Unit at Liverpool University. I have to declare two interests in that my youngest son died from cancer of the pancreas and I contribute in a small way to their research.
It is an impressive unit and the visit left me with the feeling, that if their attitude, thoroughness and methods are repeated in hundreds of other similar units across the world, as I suspect they are, then there may well be some better news for cancer sufferers in the future.
Why Are Loaves Square?
Apparently, we’ve now had the square sliced loaf for fifty years. In my years, that’s fifty years too many.
But have you ever wondered why Britain fell so much in love with this awful product? Here’s an e-mail, I’ve just written to the BBC.
In the 1970s, I did some work for a major bakery group in the UK. I dealt with top management, some of whom had been bakers. And very much of the old school, who knew their bread.
So I asked why we had so much bad sliced bread and did they eat it.
They didn’t eat it and to a man, they took a sack of flour home and then baked it themselves.
The reason there was so much square sliced bread was that van drivers in those days were paid by commission and they could get most commission by cramming that sort of bread in the van. So they wouldn’t distribute the better class of bread, which didn’t fit so well.
Another interesting fact from this period, was that a lot of bread got returned to the factory. Harold Wilson and his government felt this waste pushed up the price of bread, so they banned returns. Do you remember happy bread, which was a different colour for each day?
In fact, the non-return policy, meant that the price of bread rose, as the returned bread had a whole lot of uses like animal feed, which then became unprofitable. The returned bread just went into the waste bin at the shops and then probably into landfill.
All in all it’s a sad tale, which shows that often the reasons for things being the way they are, are not what you’d expect.
I’ve also just watched the BBC Breakfast report on 50 years of the awful sliced loaf. No wonder there are so many coeliacs or those that are allergic to wheat-based bread in the UK, judging by what goes into it. All of those bakers years ago were right!
The Anonymous Widower 