[Default] On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 12:40:23 +0100, Malcolm Nixon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> finished tucking into their plate of fish, chips and mushy peas. Wiping their mouth, they swiggged the last of their cup of tea, paid the bill and wrote::
>On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 11:09:27 +0100, Brian Dominic ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>> >>The bean counters decided years ago that maintaining a fleet of >>breakdown cranes "just in case" was money down the drain - similarly >>with snowploughs! > >I think you are right about the cranes. They were old and obsolete, >modern cranes available by specialised contractors were seen as the >way forward. They can be huge as I showed in links to video >clips about the Cumbria crash, and the chassis is too big to move by >rail - so Adrian's idea of dismantling would be a non starter. > One of the advantages of rail-mounted cranes was that they could be moved easily and positioned by rail - obvious when you think about it! >Brian - I thought Derbyshire ( which ISSR is where you are ? ) gets >plenty of snow. You get more than us up here in Scotland - especially >Matlock, Glossop ?? > To borrow a phrase from the railways: this fall was "the wrong sort of snow". It was wet snow on one night only (7th - 8th December 1990) and the temperature was around freezing, so it stuck and froze on the lines rather than falling off, which it does normally. It only affected lines running east - west (perpendicular to the wind direction) and the damage caused in one night took over two years to remedy! Brian L Dominic Web Sites: Canals: http://www.brianscanalpages.co.uk Friends of the Cromford Canal: http://www.cromfordcanal.org.uk (Waterways World Site of the Month, November 2005)
