User talk:JzG

Discretionary sanctions

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Smelling pistakes

In addition to bone-deep burn scars on my left hand I now also have C7 radiculopathy, so my typing is particularly erratic right now. I have a spellcheck plugin but it can't handle larger text blocks. You're welcome to fix spelling errors without pinging me, but please don't change British to American spelling or indeed vice-versa.

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God Jul och Gott Nytt År!

Gråbergs Gråa Sång is wishing you the season's greetings.
Whether you celebrate your hemisphere's solstice or Christmas,
Diwali, Hogmanay, Hanukkah, Lenaia, Festivus,
or the Saturnalia,
this is a special time of year for (almost) everyone.

Railways, Dim ond Dyn!

Drmies has a bus stop. You have a whole railway station.

Out Of London, PWG Coombs. It has a lineside hut, not a fogman's hut, alas.

Looking at Llandinam railway station here, I had some questions and I thought of you. Do those signs mark the end of the platform? And is that the signalman's hut? Uncle G (talk) 16:23, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

• Uncle G, Heh! That is very much nott he station, is it? The white circle with the black stripe? That is a speed limit sign for the road - national speed limit applies (in this case 60mph). There's a level crossing ([1]), and you can see the actual station location on Street View (on the B4569, not, as you might expect, Station Road). We don't have signallers' huts, there were things called fogman's huts back in the day though. There's one in my train painting, I will grab a picture. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:37, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
  • Road trains limited to 60 miles per hour (97 km/h), eh? But can reach that right off the platform. Impressive.

    I cannot readily accept your self-published source when I have an English from Greater Manchester Built-up Area (cymru), Dim ond Dyn.

    In the signalman's hut is placed a battery, one pole of which is to earth, the other to the electro-magnet.

    — Axon, William Edward Armytage (1875). "Railway signals". The Mechanic's Friend: A Collection of Receipts and Practical Suggestions. D. Van Nostrand., page 133

    Uncle G (talk) 09:51, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

    • That's a signal box. They started off as shelters for people running ground frames and developed into standardised and in some cases ornate edifices. I need to get my railway operations books out and write an article on fogman, it's a rather interesting topic IMO. Guy (help! - typo?) 12:59, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
      • Well signalman's huts do appear to be scattered throughout history. I suspect that the Legends of Tomorrow have had a hand in this. This seems like a brilliant opportunity for a cross-over, Dim ond Dyn. We can correct history to match Wikipedia.

        I know that you can get the Heart of Gold to travel through time, but the only time when you've done that you've been hung-over and in an artificial universe. So perhaps we should cross-over to User talk:Drmies and ask to borrow the TARDIS so that we can undo the Legends' dastardly work.

        We've certainly got our work cut out for us. There are signalman's huts in the Railway Engineer and all over the place. The first major stop appears to be Reading in 1921, though. Some bloke named Henry Ralph got a whole bunch of articles published in a column in the Reading Standard from 1921 to 1922, which later got collected in book form.

        When writing my last paper I was uncertain if the ancient signalman's hut and signal could be reproduced.

        — Ralph, Henry (1922). "Signals, Ancient and Modern". Railway Days and Railway Ways, Being the Reminiscences of a Great Western Railway Man. Reading Standard., page 22

        If we can get this excised, then perhaps the butterfly effect will stop Colin Maggs from ever writing about signalman's huts.

        One of the outcomes of the inquiry was that all points outside Salisbury were to be worked from the level crossing signal hut. Accordingly, a small ground frame was provided outside the signalman's hut.

        — Maggs, Colin (2013). A History of the Great Western Railway. Amberley Publishing Limited. ISBN 9781445613000.

        Drmies has the library card, not I. So perhaps you should bring along your cycling proficiency certificate and we can convince either M. Ralph or the editor of the Standard that we are from the War Office and that knowledge of signalman's huts is an official secret. If loose lips don't sink ships in this case, they might interfere with the 17:38 to Bognor.

        Plan B is of course to discredit M. Ralph after the fact. Drmies did it to Prime Minister Harriet Jones with one question. I think ours should be: Well, yes. But Henry Ralph is a retired Great Western Railway official. What on Earth would he know about trains?

        Bloody Legends, eh? Vandalizing history so that it doesn't match actual Wikipedia.

        Uncle G (talk) 16:12, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

        • Uncle G, the Reading Standard? I live in Reading and have never heard of this. I wonder if the archives are now part of the Reading Post or Reading Chronicle? Anyway: I am reasonably sure that mentions of "signalman's hut" are in fact references primarily to signal boxes. It's clear from the few professional references that the term refers to a building containing a lever frame. Perhaps they are describing smaller boxes without block instruments, but it's unclear to me where you would find such a thing. It's possible that they are actually talking about fogman's huts, though. The Western, in particular, had huge numbers of these, typically located near distant signals. They genuinely were huts, about the size of an outhouse, containing the fogman and his lamp, a supply of detonators, and if he was lucky a brazier. If visibility was below 200 yards the fogman would place detonators on the line in advance of the signal, to warn trains if it was set to caution. So I'm not disputing that the term exists, but I am saying that, as used, it probably doesn't apply to a hut (in the sense of shed) but instead to a more substantial structure. Maggs is referring to a level crossing operator's hut, which may indeed be much less substantial as it often did not have a lever frame - a crossing between signal boxes would be manned, but the crossing operator would contact the signaller Up or Down from the crossing to set the signal at danger, from my reading of the manuals. But this was a station with a crossing, and that would normally need a frame to operate starter, home and distant, and potentially a crossover as well.

          So it seems to me most likely that this is informal language. The only images I can find that are explicitly listed as a signalman's hut appear to be for permanent way men (which would include fogmen), with no evidence of any signal operating equipment.

          Of course it is All Very Different Now. King's Cross is signalled from York ROC! That's no hut. I think KX power box closed last month. There is also a big problem with user-worked crossings, which have no staff. They are just about the most dangerous thing on Britain's railways. Guy (help! - typo?) 16:29, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

          • Well at least you won't have to cycle any great distance once the TARDIS has landed. I only know that the book itself said that it was from The Reading Standard on its title page. Uncle G (talk) 17:19, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Uncle G, 1891–1963 - so it folded before I was born. That explains it. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:27, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Thorn Cycles

The article Thorn Cycles has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Fails WP:NCORP

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Nomadicghumakkad (talk) 08:39, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Hey hey, age of an article is usually not a rational for notability. Please add more sources. I have good faith that they exist like you said and you will add them. When I searched, I didn't find anything and hence proposed. Thanks! Nomadicghumakkad (talk) 14:55, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Removal of my comment

Hi! Was the removal of my comment at RSN [2] inadvertent or intended? (In the latter case, why?) Thanks. NightHeron (talk) 14:15, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

NightHeron, inadvertent, sorry. I was EC'd I think. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:54, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Never mind. It's been restored. No problem. NightHeron (talk) 14:18, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

On a similar topic to the heading above, saddened that my reaching out wasn’t even worth a reply. starship.paint (exalt) 14:38, 1 May 2021 (UTC)

Starship.paint, it will be at some point, but not right now. I've just put in a very long day, I lost a friend to COVID last weekend, and two of my friends in Bangalore lost relatives yesterday - one had to go and collect a newly-orphaned nephew, and another friend was in a flat with someone who just died.

My tolerance for wingnuts is low. Your comment says: too low. I hear you. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:56, 1 May 2021 (UTC)