Keep Taking The Medicine
On Sunday, I usually fill up my daily pill-boxes.
I use my old Coaguchek strip containers, which each box having the pills for one day.
Eleven White Boxes
If I find that I can’t get seven sets of pills, like last Sunday, I know it is time to get my boots out and go to Boots for some more.
The great advantage of individual boxes, is that when I go away, I just take an appropriate number of boxes – two more than the nights I’m away.
Counting out the pills has been a lot easier, since my doctor decided that one pill wasn’t needed any more.
So now, I just put 4 mg. of Warfarin (one blue and one brown), a statin, two other drugs and two vitamin pills in for each day.
I check my own INR and have used 4 mg. a day, for a couple of years now and it tends to hover around the 2.5 level, that I need.
I test myself bi-weekly and only if it is below 2.2 or above 2.8, do I take any action.
Usually, I just stick to the 4 mg. and retest the next day. Very often, it has bounced back, as it was probably something I ate or drunk. Or it could be the weather, as the INR can rise in sun or fall, when you get back to miserable weather.
Some doctors may not like that I choose my own level of drug, but setting the level, is just the sort of problem for which I have a B. Eng degree in |Control Engineering from Liverpool University.
Some of the regimes, I’ve had from doctors and their systems, are pretty complicated and I suspect quite a few patients get confused.
Keeping Your Wiring Tidy
I have form in this area.
- One of my first jobs was designing and building small pieces of control electronics for industrial plant.
- I built small tuners for a company in Felixstowe.
- Later at ICI, I built instruments for installation on chemical plants.
So I learned from about sixteen, that your wiring always has to be neat and colour-coded.
I also remember at ICI, how Neil Saville developed a computerised design program in the late 1960s, to layout and colour-code the wires in a chemical plant.
So I was drawn to this article in Rail Engineer, which is entitled Safety, sustainability and security polymer cable troughing.
The article is about Trojan Services, based in Hove, who have developed various cable troughs and other products for the rail industry, made out of recycled polypropylene.
The article is very much a must-read, which shows how good design can transform the most mundane of products.
The pictures show some typical cable ducts.
Old Ford Water Recycling Plant
This plant just off the Greenway takes raw sewage from the Northern Outfall Sewer and converts it into clear water for non-potable purposes on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
I visited it during Open House 2016.
We need more plants like this, to make better use of the water we use.
Fulwell Station And The Drainage Works
On my way back to Waterloo on the Shepperton Branch Line, I just had to visit Fulwell station and the drainage work, I wrote about in If Your Train Is Late Should You Blame Henry The Eighth?.
I took these pictures.
It is a substantial piece of engineering.
- The water is collected from the area of the tunnel into a large tank on the station side of the tunnel.
- The water is then pumped to the lagoons at Fulwell Junction.
- When there is available capacity, the water is drained away, using the drains under the Kingston Loop Line through Teddington.
- The electricity requirement was high and required a separate supply and sub-station.
- The pipework isn’t small.
According to this press release from Network Rail, the works are costing £6 million. This picture of flooding at Fulwell station is from the document.
Flooding At Fulwell
This map from carto.metro.free.fr, shows the lines in the area.
Lines At Fulwell Station
I heard comments like these, from several of the locals.
- The flooding has been terrible at times in recent years.
- If the works cure the flooding they’ll be very pleased.
- They’ll be glad to get the footpath reopened.
- But I didn’t hear any complaints of too much noise.
It does seem to me, that a November 2016 completion date could be possible.
If you were an engineer working on this project, would you want a dry winter or a very bad one, to give the system the sternest test, the Devil can devise?
Final Thoughts
I suppose the only other thing that could be to clean the water and use it for watering one of the golf courses in the area. But probably the cost of the treatment plant, which would be something like the Old Ford Water Recycling Plant, would be too much.
As to hiding or burying the pipe, I suspect that there is a plan for this, possibly using nature’s camouflage and/or lots of soil.
The station is also a good example of traditional cable ducting, but the design probably predates the system I wrote about in Keeping Your Wiring Tidy.
I’ll go back in a couple of years and have a take a butcher’s.
Hopefully, it will still look like a job that has been well done!
If Your Train Is Late Should You Blame Henry The Eighth?
I have just read this fascinating article in the Rail Engineer, entitled Fulwell’s Blue Lagoons.
This is the first paragraph.
What do we have to thank – or blame – King Henry the Eighth for? The Church of England? Some very ruined abbeys? The fashion for padded shoulders? Flooding and subsequent train delays on the Shepperton branch?
Yes, they’re all down to him.
Henry’s need for water at Hampton Court Palace, meant that a whole series of problems were left for Victorian railway engineers, when they built the Shepperton Branch, that have persisted to the present day.
Read the article to find out how Network Rail have hopefully solved the problems.
This Google Map Shows the area around Fulwell and Strawberry Hill stations.
Between Fulwell and Strawberry Hill Stations
The tunnel talked about in the article is to the West of Fulwell station.
Is The Sun The Future Of Energy?
I get up early and usually watch the BBC Breakfast programme.
On Sunday, this usually includes the short version of the BBC News on-line program Click.
Sometimes, it is rather wacky, but today they reported on something that will effect us all; solar power.
If you’d like to watch the short version of Click, it’s here on the BBC web site.
They have two segments that show the improvements coming in solar energy.
- In the first, the program shows how Oxford University are using better materials to improve the efficiency of panels.
- In the second, the program talked to a Swiss company called Insolight, who have developed a replacement panel that moves to focus the sun’s energy on highly-efficient tiny solar cells, which gives an efficiency of 36%.
Never underestimate the ingenuity of scientists and engineers to create a more efficient world.
Phince Philip On Crossrail
Matthew Parris , who admits he is no royalist, has an article in today’s Times entitled The Debt We Owe To A Thoroughly Modern Philip, in which he praises Prince Philip’s attitude to engineering, science and technology amongst other things.
He finishes the article like this..
Earlier this year, at 94, Prince Philip descended into the main tunnel of London’s Crossrail project to see more. They told him it would open in 2018.
“Too late foe me,” he said. Then he thought again. “Or perhaps not.”
I hope not.
I would agree with Matthew.
Network Rail’s Mobile Maintenance Train
I wrote about this train in How To Work Outdoors.
It was parked outside the Plasser depot in West Ealing.
How Not To Handle An Environmental Issue In A Large Project
On my holiday in Poland, I met someone, who lives on the route of HS2.
They told me that a million tons of tunnel spoil will be dumped on farmland in the Chilterns.
I was rather surprised to say the least, as having followed major projects for the best part of forty years, I know that project managers, engineers, architects and construction companies, don’t want hassle from what are collectively termed Nimbys, so they do their utmost to design projects, so that disruption and damage to the environment is minimised.
Crossrail had its problems early on, as Mayfair didn’t want the rsailway or the disruption of ten years of construction. So they devised a strategy based on openness and archaeology, which sold the project to Londoners, as something more than a railway. They have also been very helpful in giving access to the general public in events like Open House.
So I typed “HS2 tunnel spoil” into Google and found this article in the Bucks Free Press, which is entitled HS2 tunnel spoil to be dumped in Chilterns AONB. This is an extract from the article.
The announcement was made by HS2 Ltd’s Country South Area Manager Neil Cowie at a community forum in Little Kingshill on Tuesday.
He said it would be placed within a ‘sizeable area’ within two or three miles of the planned tunnel portal at Mantles Wood near Amersham – but he added HS2 Ltd did not want the location to be made public yet.
Mr Cowie said: “Rather than taking it longer distance along highways, we’ve taken some additional land alongside the route which we will landscape.
“When it’s finished it will be properly landscaped and will look very nice.”
I’m no diplomat, but it does seem a rather poor statement, which probably came out of a forum, where things were not up to scratch.
I’ve been to several Transport for London foums about projects like Camden Town station, Crossrail 2 and Hackney station and at each one, there has been an architect, engineer or project planner, who understands in detail what is proposed.
A later statement in the article says this.
In a later statement, HS2 Ltd said: “We will not being be depositing spoil/excavated materials from tunnelling in the AONB – it will be excavated materials from the cuttings going through the AONB. All tunnelling excavated materials from that part of the line will be taken out via the Colne Valley construction site.”
When dealing with any sensitive project from a children’s playground upwards, you must get your facts right! Once errors are in the local culture, they can only be eradicated with great difficulty and tremendous expense.
With respect to HS2, my project management and engineering instincts lead me to the conclusion, that HS2 will probably come up with an innovative and non-disruptive way to remove the tunnel spoil from the area.
If they don’t, then they don’t deserve to be building the line.
Central Masts At West Ham Station
West Ham station has been upgraded over the last couple of decades. Wikipedia says this.
In 1999 platforms were re-established on the line from Fenchurch Street, now operated by c2c.
So it would appear, that the following pictures showing the overhead electrification, which dates from around 1999.
Almost uniquely for the UK rail network, the masts are in the mid-point of the two lines, with the wires cantilevered on either side.
Flimsy they are not! They have certainly been designed to survive a direct impact from a runaway Class 66 locomotive pulling several hundred tonnes of imported Chinese steel.
But as I said, the central masts probably date from 1999, so I suspect if similar structures were to be used in the electrification of the Gospel Oak to Barking Line, they would be designed to look better and probably be stronger and lighter too! I used to know a lot about using structural steel, and remember an expert telling me, that lighter structures are sometimes actually stronger.
Look at this picture from Upper Holloway station.
Looking West At Upper Holloway Station
It would appear that Murphys have piled around the crossing by the signal box to put a traditional portal frame across the railway to support the overhead wires. Some fifty metres behind me is a bridge that is being rebuilt over the railway.
So could the wires be installed through the station, by supporting them on the frame by the signal box, the bridge and several central masts, designed to fit between the tracks in the station area.
After seeing what was done in 1999 at West Ham station, I believe that an expert structural engineer could design a central mast to support electrification in the challenging conditions of Upper Holloway station and all the other difficult locations on the Gospel Oak to Barking Line.
There are advantages to this method.
- All of the platforms are untouched by electrification works.
- The number of piles to be driven at the side of the railway is reduced. This type of piling has caused problems in the past.
- Piles are positioned in the firm track-bed between the rails.
- Some piles will be positioned on viaducts. I suspect, that as the viaducts of the line seem sound, this would not be a very difficult problem.
- All work can probably be done by using a crane on the railway.
It does seem to me, that central masts could make the electrification easier.
The Anonymous Widower 