u/guywouldnotsharename

In my experience the cotswold line trains are busy from London to oxford, but most people get off there. A 5 car would really struggle on the first part

Railcam is pretty decent, people can input what they've seen, there's not a publicly available exhaustive list anywhere unfortunately.

Joining a lot of Facebook groups for the local area, and for the classes of loco you're most interested in. Generally making freinds with other train spotters is a good way of being in the loop.

There are a lot of patterns, and the same locos will often stay on the same working for a while (you'll learn which ones swap a lot and which don't in your area).

Things like 37s and 56s are pretty rare now, 37s can end up on multiple unit drags operated by ROG.

Outside of that 37s are most often found on colas test trains, and one of the York rhtt ciruits.

56s are currently mostly on RHTT runs out of coleham and Carlisle. though hopefully at some point the DCR pair will start doing some more work again.

Well, from January it'll go down to 4 quid a day with the bus fare cap being reduced to 2 quid.

Maintain track is actually really quite expensive, and bad things happen when track isn't maintained. Even at low speed it's not unheard of for trains to break the track.

I mean eventually, hence the number going down, but a 9 car is allowed to lose 2 generators and stay in service, a 5 car can lose 1.

You just have to look at GWR, they've been running a moderately functional service with many IET generators out of use for a good while now. I think it peaked at over 100 out of use.

My experience with the bahia is that the rig tension is limited by the fact the tensioning system maxes out. Of course you could modify it to let you pull more on, however with a plastic hull like that it'll just bend the hull.

I would be try to find a rigging guide which has a mast head to transom measurement, that should tell you if the rake is about right. But that measurement will always be done with the rig tension on.

The only criticisms I've heard of the aero from older people (admittedly ones who probably have at least a decade on you) are that after a capsize it's harder to get back into than a laser. Of course if you're fit enough to climb onto the centre board it's not really a huge issue.

Also I think in light wind it's a bit worse on the knees, though the guy who told me that has 2 decades on you haha.

Yeah it's a UK thing, there's a test on rules followed by them playing some videos at you each of which contains some potential hazards. You have to click when you recognise the potential hazard.

The better question is why would you want either of those. The only time I was ever in an evoque it felt like an inverse tardis. You open the door of your big car and sit down in what seems to be a small car.

The wings just exist to allow you to get your weight much further out, the B14 has them because the sails are much bigger than something like an ILCA, if it didn't you'd need to be like 120kg each to keep the boat flat.

Some helms like the crew to contribute to strategy and spotting shifts etc. Others like to do it all themselves. The tactics upwind are similar to single handers, wind shifts and clear air etc, the difference upwind comes from the fact that you lose a lot more in a tack than an ILCA so you generally tack less.

Downwind tactics are very different because of the spinnaker, you'll basically never sail dead downwind.

The common mistakes when you're new in a skiff I've seen often are the same as in any new boat. A lot of falling over because things are in different places and you trip over stuff, some of us never stop doing that one...

Overall my main advice would be listen to the helm, assuming they're reasonably experienced they'll be able to talk you through stuff, oh and enjoy it skiff sailing is amazing.

I've been doing some teaching in one recently and found it to be quite well thought out, at least compared to some training boats. It sails nicely with 2 people, which is what I would recommend if you want to race it. But it's big enough fit 3 adults comfortably so 2 adults 2 children should be OK.

For such a large boat it's reasonably responsive. There's also a trapeze kit which opens up some fun for the kids once you feel comfortable with the boat.

Worth noting that this does include heritage railways which will account for some of that. Looking at the north the Wensleydale and North Yorkshire moors railways look very significant

Depends on your boat but a lot of dinghy centre boards float. In many dinghy the done thing is an elastic with a hook which you clip on which holds it down. It also stops it disappearing into the hull if you invert

As far as I know it's all manually. There's not that many railtours.

There's a lot of heritage railways around the country, if you give a rough geographic idea we can give some suggestions?

From looking at it it seems to be a first TransPennorthern service as well

Ironically the only time I ever would pay any attention to this is for the monarchy. If your whole thing is hereditary rule of the country then where your ancestors come from is quite interesting. If you are working at a checkout at Aldi, I really don't care.

It's not a lie though there is one thing that's a little unclear.

Firstly it's not a lie only 1 person can book the journey you're trying to book at that price. The next person it will be more expensive, usually not by much but by a little.

The part confusing thing is that trainline is not brilliantly designed and shows this on both the outbound and the return, the reason this is showing for every train will be that there was only 1 ticket available at that price on your outbound. Which does technically make it true that only 1 person can do the journey that you're trying to book, though showing that on the returns as well is a bit pointless.

Correct yes, this and basically every skiff or asymmetric dinghy I've ever sailed does inside gybes.

Agree with this, I'm at oxford and I think the general pattern is those who needed to work hard before, not to be confused with those who did work hard even though they didn't need to, struggle a bit more academically.

Whereas those who didn't might not struggle academically as much, but will still struggle, and that will lead to mental struggles for some.

For me, and i think a significant majority of other spotters, the bog standard passenger trains are almost ignored.

Sure you might tick it off the first time you see it but that's probably just to kill the time whilst you wait for the thing you actually wanted to see. Generally most people are more interested in charter trains and freight trains which don't have the same boring regularity of standard passenger services.

Edit, also the community aspect is quite nice I really doubt I'd still be doing it so much if it weren't for that.

from what I've heard GBRF does have a higher proportion of rail enthusiasts at all levels than the other companies. Which shows In all the heritage liveries they do.

The 88 is bi mode, the 93 and 99 are tri mode because they have batteries. The main issue with the 88s was poor performance away from the wires, which the 93s and 99s seem not to suffer from so far.

I'd have to imagine Bond would take the Heathrow express, couldn't imagine him on the lizzy line.