PECULIARLY PETE

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  • Trenches Saved Lives

    Photo credit: SDASM Archives

    When one thinks about the First World War, most people tend to think of the trenches of the Western Front, and of a war going basically nowhere for 4 years. That this is a vast oversimplification of the fighting of the war is irrelevant – I am going to argue that the trenches were actually a good idea.

    I must concede that these trenches were not nice places to be. Lice and vermin-infested, dirty and uncomfortable, few troops would have recommended them, especially when they were under fire. The helplessness of being shelled but not being able to move was unbearable for some – the phrase “shell shock” is often associated with the trenches, and it’s not difficult to make the connection. An even more obvious connection can be made with the phrase “trench foot”, a foot infection caused by dirt and moisture trapped inside boots for days on end (though once this was realised, proper cleaning regimes were implemented).

    So why bother with trenches then? To answer that question, we must look at the early history of the First World War. Following the July Crisis, where a Serbian assassin (Gavrillo Princip) had murdered the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne (Archduke Franz Ferdinand), Europe had spiralled into war. In an attempt to prevent a two-front war, Germany marched through Belgium to get at France. Meeting stiff resistance, the Germans were eventually stopped at the Battle of the Marne, where (following an amusing use of Paris taxi cabs) the Germans were forced to retreat. At this point, though the Germans knew that defeating France quickly was now impossible, they could secure what gains they had made, and try their luck in the east against Russia, or perhaps plan a new attack later on. Either way, the imperative was now to secure their position.

    The trouble was that the new weapons of war had enormous killing power and accuracy. The troops themselves were equipped with bolt action rifles, which, provided the operator was sufficiently skilled, could loose of over 10 well placed rounds a minute (the soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force were trained to do 15). Machine guns could do much better than that even, with the heavy machine guns of the era managing 60 rounds per minute. Provided they were well-cooled, many of these machine guns could keep firing without jamming for hours. Artillery had always been deadly, but it was now much more accurate than before, and deployed in quantities that would make anyone’s head spin – in preparation for the Battle of the Somme, for example, the British fired over 1 million shells.

    The combined effect of these weapons was that any soldier in the open either:

    a) Had to come to terms with not being out in the open (or in fact alive) much longer or;

    b) Had to find cover

    And the way that the Germans found that cover was by digging in, on the Chemin Des Dames ridge in their case. They did this principally because it is much more difficult to hit someone in a trench, since you cannot see them from the open. Artillery will have to land shells either very near to or right inside the trench (in which case the soldier could simply retreat to the safety of a dugout) in order to be lethal. The British and French were clearly not going anywhere – and they decided to dig in too. As the sides tried to outflank one another, trenches spread rapidly. Casualty figures plummeted.

    We hear much about the enormous casualties of the war. Indeed, it was a deadly war, but most of the casualties were sustained either in the open warfare of the early stages or in trying to attack the trench lines and other defences of the various fronts. Indeed, the deadliest single day of the war for France was during the Battle of the Frontiers at the very start, and for Britain it was the opening day of the Battle of the Somme.

    Notice that I mentioned “other defences” in the previous paragraph. Many of the Western Front defences evolved beyond simple trenches. The Hindenburg Line (as it was known by the British, the Germans who created it called it the Siegfried Stellung) was a system involving concrete blockhouses, various earthworks, killing grounds and barbed wire. It was designed to save manpower as compared to a trench line, and was in some ways more effective too, but I am getting a little off topic.

    One other advantage of having a fixed line was that medical facilities and supply arrangements could be made much more consistent. A regular stream of casualties from many walks of life was a golden opportunity for medical research, and we owe many modern practices to the First World War, including blood transfusions, the widespread use of X-rays, and basic plastic surgery. Strides were also made (though nowhere near quickly enough) in the treatment of what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the understanding of mental health overall.

    The difficulty, at least from the end of 1914 to 1917, was how exactly the deadlock between the two sides was supposed to be broken. That really is outside the scope of what I am talking about here, but suffice to say the various methods fall broadly into 2 categories:

    – Method 1: Open a new front (hopefully a more mobile one) somewhere else. This had mixed success, and some very notable failures.

    – Method 2: Invent completely new methods of warfare. This resulted in techniques still used by modern armies, and made 1918 much more mobile than the preceeding years (though casualties were still heavy on both sides).

    I am not going to argue that the First World War was a good thing – far from it. But trenches do seem to get a particularly bad rap, and I do think that the reasons for them and the benefits over open warfare are frequently ignored.

    It only remains for me to thank you for your attentions, and bid you a fine rest-of-day.

    February 2, 2019
    1914, 1918, First World War, Great War, Hindenburg Line, Trenches, WW1

  • Why HS2 Being a Bit Slower Isn’t Much of a Problem


    Dear reader, this article (or at least the first two thirds of it) was intended for another publication, so the tone may be slightly different to what you have come to expect, but in any case, I thought it a shame to waste it, and that the point warranted bringing to your attention.

    Headlines were made when, recently, the Chief Executive of HS2 Ltd, Mark Thurston, announced in a meeting with MPs that changes may have to be made to the project to bring it in within budget and on time. These changes include reducing the speed of the trains and reducing their frequency. Suffice to say, these changes caused something of a stir, with comments in the newspapers (notably the Metro) questioning the point of the project.

    In answer to this entirely ill-informed outrage, let us take a reality check. Firstly, we shall deal with speed. It is well publicised that the top speed of the line may be reduced by 30 mph. It seems that those outraged by this supposedly huge reduction could not be bothered to do some very basic arithmetic, since the very same articles that said this also said that the original intended top speed was 225 mph. The top speed would then be 195 mph, which isn’t exactly slow – that’s still 70 mph faster than the 125 mph top speed on the current London – Birmingham route.

    If I may be allowed to speculate, this may not even impact the journey time very much, mainly because of aerodynamics. As should be obvious to anyone who’s ever ridden a bicycle or driven a car, as an object gets faster, the resistance from the air increases. The trouble is, it is not a simple relationship – it is not the case that doubling the speed doubles the air resistance. In reality, if you double the speed, the air resistance quadruples. At the top end of the speeds of HS2 trains, this means the acceleration will be quite slow, so they likely would not spend much time at 225 mph anyway.

    Secondly, we must address the point of train frequency. The train frequency may be reduced from 18 trains per hour to 14 trains per hour, or 7 in each direction per hour. Quite aside from the fact that this still means a train roughly every eight and a half minutes, this should not be a news story at all. Or rather it should have been several years ago. As early as January 2012, the HS2’s review of the technical specification had this to say on the subject: ‘A number of consultation responses expressed the view that achieving an ultimate capacity of 18 train paths per hour… was not feasible, citing international experience where no high speed rail lines currently achieve this’. Needless to say, the recent news should not have come as a surprise.

    No, the part of the recent news we should actually be concerned about is the less obvious point; to quote the Evening Standard “changing from a slab to a ballast track”. Without going too far into the technical details, this means changing from a newer system which requires little maintenance (if installed correctly) to a much more conventional one that, while cheap to lay, requires considerable maintenance over the life-cycle. In other words, we would pay less now but more later, so much so that the overall cost may well be much higher.

    There really isn’t much else that can be said about this, but in traditional Peculiarly Pete fashion I shall continue. I shall do this by reiterating that the only realistic way to solve the capacity problems of the West Coast Mainline (that’s London to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow) is to build another line. One cannot really widen the existing route without disturbing a great deal more property than HS2 will. One equally cannot extend trains by enough to make much of a difference, especially as far as Virgin trains are concerned, where the limitation is platform length (true, one could extend trains further, but they would spend longer in the platforms, especially with the rather narrow doors required for inter-city trains).

    Besides, extending the passenger trains either does nothing for, or negatively affects, the freight operators who use the route, who would also benefit from the extra capacity. Longer passenger trains also take longer to clear junctions and put more wear on the track, leading to more maintenance work, often at times that are inconvenient for freight. Let us not forget the environmental advantages of railfreight – why use 30+ lorries when 1 locomotive can do the same job? (obviously there are convenience advantages to lorries, but over the long haul these diminish in importance).

    In any case, thank you for reading this slight mongrel of an article. Once again I would advise changing here for any of the other splendid articles on this website, and ask you to retain your tickets for the automatic barriers, and other associated end-of-journey-announcement cliches.

    January 23, 2019

  • The Curious Case of the Mary Celeste

    Dear reader, it is time, I have decided, for a story about a ship. This one, I promise, is a rather good one, as it is not just about the Mary Celeste herself, but rather the mystery that surrounds her, and more particularly her crew. But we shall get to that in due course.

    The Mary Celeste was a merchant sailing ship, a brigantine to be more precise (2 masts, fore mast square rigged, main mast at least partically gaff rigged). As built, she had a length of 99.3 ft, a beam (width) of 25.3 ft, and a draught (depth) of 11.7 ft, though later she would be rebuilt slightly larger in all dimensions. Made principally of timber, she was launched from Nova Scotia as the Amazon in 1861, at a displacement of around 200 tons. Her early history was rather eventful, with a few changes of captain, and quite a few times colliding with things like fishing equipment that she had no business colliding with.

    After colliding with an island in a storm, she went on to be acquired by a new owner in 1868, who renamed her Mary Celeste, which she would carry thereafter. The damage sustained in the run in with the island was also repaired, and the ship was registered in the USA. Following a few changes in ownership, the ship was then put in for refit, during which time (as mentioned) the ship was made slightly larger, the internal layout was changed, and her tonnage increased to just over 280 tons.

    None of this was particularly remarkable for the time, and indeed the ship would probably have been forgotten had it not been for what happened next. On November 7th, 1872, she sailed from New York bound for Genoa, Italy, with 1,701 barrels of alcohol (sources differ as to exaclty what kind, but it was not for drinking. Most likely it was denatured alcohol or similar). This was ironic as her captain, one Benjamin Spooner Briggs, was reported to be a non-drinker. Also on board were the Captain’s wife Sarah, and their 2 year old daughter Sophia, in addition to the rest of her crew, who were by all accounts competent.

    At around the same time, on the 15th November, the Canadian Dei Gratia, another Brigantine (though slightly newer than the Mary Celeste) set sail for Genoa, her cargo being petroleum. Her Captain, one David Morehouse, is presumed to have known Briggs, but how well the pair knew each other is disputed. Some sources claim they dined together the night before the Mary Celeste sailed. This may not be true, but suffice to say they did at least have a passing familiarity.

    The Dei Gratia went about her business as usual, braving the North Atlantic weather. On the 5th December 1872, Dei Gratia was approximately 400 miles east of the Azores when her crew sighted a ship behaving erratically on the horizon, with her sails not correctly set for the strong winds. Morehorse decided to get closer in the hopes of assisting the vessel, whereupon he identified the vessel as the Mary Celeste. Morehouse knew that since she had left 8 days before he had, she should already be in Genoa.

    Attempting to signal the Mary Celeste, the Dei Gratia received no response. No activity was observed on the deck of the stricked vessel, leading Morehouse to send a boarding party to inspect the vessel. They found that water had entered through skylights, and the cabins were wet but otherwise in reasonable order. They found that food stores were ample, but the galley was in a poor state. The main hatches were closed. They found the hold had 2 to 3 ft of water in the bottom, but the cargo was largely intact. One of the pumps had been disassembled – not broken, just disassembled. What they did not find, alive or dead, were Captain Briggs, his wife, or his daughter, or any of the crew. The ship’s single lifeboat was also missing.

    What happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste? Nobody knows for sure, but nobody ever saw them again, alive or dead. The Mary Celeste herself was recovered by the crew of the Dei Gratia to Gibraltar, and went on to be used again, before finally meeting her end (weirdly in an insurance job) years later, having collided once again with an island.

    While we may never know for certain what happened, we can certainly speculate. Let us go through the scenarios, starting with the least plausible.

    Scenario 1: Sea Monster!

    Likelihood: Very unlikely

    So in this scenario a sea monster of some kind comes along and somehow kills all the crew. However, it is odd that the ship’s hull did not appear to be damaged, despite some damage to the rigging. It is also odd that no sea creature large enough and aggressive enough to somehow dislodge every single crew member from the ship has ever been found.

    Scenario 2: Pirates!

    Likelihood: Very unlikely

    In this scenario, pirates of some description come along, and somehow dispose of the crew. Pirates are, however, known for stealing bounty, so it seems very strange that the cargo (the alcohol) was largely intact, save for a few barrels (which turned out to have been made from a weaker wood than the rest). Furthermore, one would expect a pirate ship to have been spotted and reported at some point. It seems odd to me that pirates would attempt to take the ship in relatively poor Atlantic weather, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility I suppose.

    Scenario 3: Mutiny by the crew

    Likelihood: Less than average

    In this scenario, the crew decide that they do not like Captain Briggs and they mutiny. Some unfortunate circumstance meant that neither the Captain (who in this version of events would presumably be put off in the lifeboat) nor the crew survived. There are a few issues with this idea however. Firstly, it only explains why the Captain was missing, not the rest of the crew or the family. Secondly, there were no signs of a struggle on the ship, no blood, no bulletholes, nothing.

    Suffice to say, this case has none of the typical hallmarks of a mutiny.

    Scenario 4: Crew of the Dei Gratia attempting to steal the ship

    Likelihood: Less than average

    It was suspected at the time that this may have been the cause of the mystery. Even if they had not stolen any of the cargo, they would have been entitled to some money for “salvaging” the ship, for insurance reasons. However, by all accounts the crew of the Dei Gratia were upstanding people who would not sink to this level, and they were cleared of this after an investigation at the time.

    Scenario 5: Freak Weather

    Likelihood: Above average

    While there is no record of a freak wave, there were high winds around at the time. Furthermore, although the log book of the Mary Celeste has no entries that mention anything unusual, the locations listed may well be inaccurate due to faulty navigational equipment. She may well have been heading for poor weather and her Captain may have failed to secure the ship in preparation. During the bad weather, Briggs may have felt he had to abandon ship, and the lifeboat may have been destroyed or simply lost.

    However, even this most likely theory does have some flaws. The damage to the ship was not going to sink her and being an experienced sailor Briggs really should have known that. He should also have known that the crew had a much better chance of survival on board the Mary Celeste than in a tiny lifeboat, and although it has been said he wanted out of the shipping business, it still seems odd that he should choose to sacrifice himself and the entire crew rather than surviving and exiting the business by conventional means.

    Much has been written about this mystery, most of it fiction. Even given the peculiar nature of the mystery, the whole affair may well have been lost to history had Arthur Conan Doyle (later to write the Sherlock Holmes series) not felt the need to dramatise it further in a short story, where he slightly renamed the vessel Marie Celeste. Almost everything in this short story was fictionalised, including the route of the vessel (which he changed to be from Boston to Lisbon, rather than New York to Genoa).

    I am sure that you will have your own ideas, so please feel free to write them in the comments. Please do also feel free to share this about if you found it even mildly interesting, and make sure to have a lovely evening/morning/day/life.

    January 9, 2019

  • The Peculiar Awards 2018

    Dear reader, the time is now upon us for the first annual Peculiar awards, which are (or at least are intended to be) a bit of a tongue-in-cheek look back at various things I’ve done over the year, which you may or may not find amusing. Bear in mind that this is all entirely my opinion based on journeys I’ve made and things I’ve done, and is far from comprehensive. Without further ado…

     

    Worst Awards

    The first awards are for the worst in various categories, or at least for things of which I disapprove. We shall start with the easiest one, which is:

    Worst Bus Company: Centrebus

    Ideally I would have liked to nominate several companies for each award, but really there was no competition for this one. That winning combination of clapped-out vehicles, rude staff and comically infrequent timetables never ceases to amaze (though not in a good way). It is true that they are not an enormous company, but that really ought not to be an excuse.

    Small wonder that everyone I know who used to travel Centrebus now goes by car. I do hope they’re pleased with their award.

    Worst Railway Station: Birmingham Snow Hill

    While I have travelled to some excellent stations in the past year or so, I have also seen some very awful ones. Despite this, it was not difficult to award this to Birmingham Snow Hill.

    Snow Hill is an excellent monument to the utter folly of replacing beautiful Victorian and Edwardian structures with modern concrete ones, inevitably with a rather grim shopping centre on top. To add insult to injury, the platform buildings appear to be made out of shipping containers. One gets the distinct feeling there that one is self-loading cargo rather than a passenger.

    Honourable Mention: Walsall, for much the same reasons as Snow Hill. The only redeeming feature of Walsall station is the interesting glass shelter on one of the platforms.

    Worst Train Operator: Thameslink

    I’m sure that, if you have read just about anything I’ve ever written, you would have noticed that I am a big fan of trains and railways in general. It follows that this is a difficult award to choose, since I really don’t like saying trains are bad. That said, I also live in the real world and so I must admit, some train operators are bad.

    One may question why I didn’t mention Northern. At the moment, Northern is beset by strikes, cancellations and delays, and they are really not providing the service the North deserves. So why don’t they win? Well, almost nothing that is going wrong is their fault. Not enough seats? Blame Network Rail’s shocking (sorry) record on electrification, Hitachi’s embarrassing  cock-up north of the border (see this article) and the lack of foresight of the previous franchise. Cancelled trains on a Saturday? Blame the Government push for Driver Controlled Operation and the inevitable battle with the trade unions.

    No, this years’ award goes to Thameslink, or to give them their full title, Govia Thameslink Railway (Railway is a bit misleading since they actually only run trains, but we’ll gloss over that). This is a huge management contract (yes, not a franchise) that spans Thameslink, Great Northern, Southern and Gatwick Express. You don’t need me to tell you about the failure of the May timetable, or the chaos on Southern, or the crap seating, since if you’ve been to London recently you’ll know all about it. I know I’m kicking a dead horse here, but the facts are inescapable. It doesn’t help that the new Thameslink trains, which are supposed to be a great leap forward, are painted exactly the same as the trains they replaced, so no-one who might be tempted to travel by train has any idea anything has changed.

    However, the Department for Transport doesn’t get away scot free, since they are responsible for the management contract nonsense. This means that all the revenue goes directly to the DfT, and then they pay a fee to Govia to manage the day-to-day running. Thus Govia are plugged directly into politics, rather than customer service, and have little incentive to do better.

    Most Laughable Statement by A Train Operator on Twitter: LNER

    This award almost went to Thameslink, for claiming that their service was “Poundland Cooking Chocolate”, which is completely inaccurate since Poundland Cooking Chocolate may be obtained reliably in clearly advertised places during clearly advertised opening hours, which is more than could be said for Thamselink this year.

    No, this goes to LNER, for calling their livery a “new look” several times, despite the fact that the only change was rubbing off the Virgin logo and writing LNER (with the N pointing Northwest, obviously). I suppose next time I put on slippers I’ll be flaunting my “new look” around the house…

    Tourist Attraction That Isn’t Worth Your Money: Titanic Belfast

    I know this may come as a surprise, but the problem with Titanic Belfast is that there are few actual artefacts, because Titanic herself now lies in pieces on the bottom of the Atlantic. The designers of this museum have tried to compensate by making it one of these interactive experience type things, and by making the building striking to look at, and it’s not awful, but it’s not worth the £18.50 adult ticket price.

    Most Unpleasant Surprise: The Demise of Virgin Trains East Coast

    It may be outside the media narrative, but Virgin Trains East Coast managed to succeed in running more trains, refurbishing their entire fleet in record time, and paying more to Government than the state-owned East Coast did. When they fell into financial trouble (through premium payments to the Government), the Government decided that rather than renegotiating, they’d give it to the state-controlled Operator of Last Resort, LNER, who have no links whatsoever to the much-loved steam railway and are instead run by Canadian firm SNC Lavalin, not the two British companies (Virgin and Stagecoach) who ran Virgin Trains East Coast.

    It would appear that this was done so the Government wasn’t seen as “giving in” to a private company. It shows just how far from the reality the political narrative on the railways is these days, so expect to see more of this kind of nonsense in 2019.

     

    Best Awards

    Right, now that rather long and dull worst section is over, time for all the awards that might actually be worth winning.

    Most Pleasant Surprise: Megabus

    Yes, this year’s award goes to Megabus, for actually being pretty decent despite billing themselves as a budget coach operator. True, they’re not especially fast, or really that punctual, but hey, no coach operator really is, and you get a reasonably comfy seat (Thameslink take note), power and Wi-Fi. Add in a handy website and you have the makings of a worthy winner.

    For more, see this article I wrote earlier in the year.

    Honourable mention: Birmingham New Street First Class lounge. I was not expecting much, since Birmingham New Street is certainly not an elegant Victorian or Edwardian station (though it has improved considerably in recent years). However, the First Class lounge was clean, the service was excellent, staff polite, the furnishings tasteful and the self-service catering well stocked.

    Best Bus Company: National Express West Midlands

    Platinum buses, good value passes and regular timetables. What more can one ask for? I have gone on about this before (see this article) but suffice to say, as buses go, you can’t go far wrong.

    Honourable mention: First
    This comes for literally no other reason than the fact that they run one bus in Birmingham (the 144, in case you were wondering)  and it is quite amusing to see all the National Express buses dwarf a tiny little green First bus. At least they tried, I suppose.

    Best Railway Station: Rothley, Great Central Railway

    I will grant you that this one isn’t on the national network, but it is one of the nicest places I’ve ever been. Rothley lies near-ish the village from which it gets its name, just south of Quorn & Woodhouse. It has been beautifully restored to its Edwardian condition, in almost every detail (if you don’t believe me, have a look at old postcards of the station). Ellis’ tea room is also well worth a visit, if you have the time.

    Honourable mention: Birmingham Moor Street. By far the best station in Birmingham, with consideration given to the stations heritage at every turn. Concrete is very hard to find here – it’s all lovely brickwork, ironmongery and glass. The Centenary Lounge is also a lovely place to stop for a coffee, having been done up in a wonderful art-deco style. It’s not cheap, but these coffee places rarely are anyways.

    Best Train Operator: Chiltern Railways

     

    While there are many good candidates for this award, Chiltern has just clinched it. The obvious question is why, in a year when I have travelled first class, at 125 mph, on tilting trains and grand old High Speed Trains, have Chiltern, a relatively small operator, clinched it?

    All I can say is that they get the basics right. On their silver trains, even standard class has impressive legroom, curtains, proper sized tables, tasteful furnishings and plenty of natural light. The old mark 3 coaches have really been brought up to date, with doors that fit flush to the bodyside, a far more pleasing result than some newer rolling stock. Not that there are any fancy gimmicks – the train doesn’t tilt, it doesn’t reach particularly high speeds and it doesn’t do any bi-mode or electrical magic.

    Now I will grant you that not all their trains are quite that good, but even on their more basic diesel multiple unit trains, the seats have plenty of padding and the interior environment has been made pleasant enough, at least on those serving Birmingham Moor Street. Other operators (and the Department for Transport) would do well to take notice.

    Tourist Attraction That Is Worth Your Money: National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

    While entry is technically free, they do ask for a voluntary donation of a few of your hard earned Great British Pounds, which is definitely worth it.

    For your few quid, you get a museum packed to the eyeballs with stuff, from well over 6000 years ago (in fact, I never managed to get through the entire Early Peoples exhibition, despite spending hours there) right up to more recent stuff (huge numbers of old computers, aeroplanes, cars, and so on). Basically, if you are in Edinburgh, do go along, you won’t regret it (but you will want to go back).

    Conclusion

    This year, as (hopefully) I have been able to get across, has definitely had its fair share of good and bad. Although I didn’t try to be comprehensive, if there’s anything glaring that I’ve left out, please do let me know.

    And finally, a small thank you. Yes, I know this isn’t exactly a popular website and I know that much of what I write is waffle, but I really do enjoy writing this stuff and I’m rather glad that you (yes, you, the handsome/beautiful/charming /devilishly clever one reading this on your computing device of some description) do read this stuff, if the people I talk to are anything to go by. I do hope to bring you some more regular content in 2019, but as usual I cannot promise anything.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    December 31, 2018
    2018, Awards, Best, Bus, Rail, Stations, Worst

  • Pearl Harbour’s Little Brother – The Battle of Taranto

    Dear reader, it is customary, in the opening paragraph of one of my articles, to remind you of something you may know, as a springboard to letting you know about something that I think you don’t, but may find mildly interesting. Today differs only in that I have inserted this paragraph before that usual first paragraph, which is now the second.

    You are, dear reader, most likely aware of Pearl Harbour, the US Navy base in Hawaii that was attacked on the 7th December 1941 by aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy, taking the US forces by surprise and putting a serious (though as it proved, rather short term) dent in the naval capability of the United States. This attack brought the United States into the war, and is thus considered quite important. What you may not know is that the Japanese plan was based on the success of an attack just over a year earlier – by the British, on the Italians.

    Let us take a step back and consider for a moment why Britain was attacking Italy in 1940. The war had begun in 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany. Poland had quickly succumbed, and then in early 1940, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and then France were all conquered by Germany in quick succession, leaving just Britain on the allied side. Following a victory in the summer of 1940 in the Battle of Britain, the UK continued to fight.

    Meanwhile, Germany’s ally Italy had not been idle, and was already engaging the British in British Somaliland and then Egypt. While the Italian army was not up to the same standards as the British, the advance continued and the British were pushed back as September progressed. It was immediately obvious that  the Mediterranean sea would also become a battleground, as both the British and Italians needed to send supplies using it.

    Here there arose a problem – the Royal Navy may well have been one of the most powerful navies on Earth at the time, but it had ships all over the place, to guard the Empire (which was still rather large). Increasingly, there was a need to protect convoys of supply ships from America to the UK, and so ships had been diverted. If that wasn’t enough, there was still the threat of German invasion of the British Isles, so ships had to be kept at home.

    It became clear that the British would not be able to gain control of the Med simply by having a naval battle with the Italians – they would have to get sneaky. And so they decided to use aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm (the arm of the Navy whose job it is to fly aircraft, generally from aircraft carriers) to sink the Italian fleet in port at Taranto. The attack was codenamed Operation Judgement.

    Originally, the force was to have comprised 36 aircraft from both HMS Illustrious and HMS Eagle, but in the end since Eagle was battle damaged she had to retire, leaving only 21 aircraft from Illustrious. I should explain that these were not cutting edge, fast mono-planes, but instead slow, rather outdated Swordfish bi-planes, from the delightfully named Fairey Aviation Company. They could, however, carry a torpedo and they were very durable.

    Nonetheless, on the night of the 11th November 1940, 21 of the brave little Swordfish took to the air from the deck of Illustrious. 11 of them carried torpedoes, the remainder armed with flares and bombs. The plan was rather simple – light the Italian ships up with flares, and then send in the torpedo bombers to put nice big holes in the sides of them.

    At around 2300, the first wave arrived, minus one aircraft that had turned back (possibly due to engine trouble, but they were in complete radio silence so none of the others would find out why). Italian ships were duly lit up and the torpedo-armed Swordfish began their attack. Over the next 10 minutes, and despite heavy anti-aircraft fire, 7 Italian ships would be crippled, including the battleships Littorio (she suffered 3 torpedo hits), Caio Duilio (she suffered one torpedo hit) and Conte di Cavour (she was sunk in harbour, having suffered multiple hits).

    The second wave of Swordfish began their attack around midnight. The Italians, now realising what was going on, had 800 anti-aircraft guns awaiting them, and these opened up as the flares once again lit up the night. It is surprising that these guns had little effect, although to be entirely fair, the second wave was formed of just 8 aircraft, and it was, as previously stated, the middle of the night.

    As the time reached 0120 on the morning of the 12th, the first Swordfish returned to Illustrious. Over the next 90 minutes, 17 more would land safely on her flight deck, leaving only 2 aircraft shot down. Tragic though this sounds, it must be remembered that this was an extremely low casualty rate for an operation of this kind. 2 of their crew were killed and 2 taken prisoner. It must also be remembered that this pales in comparison with the severe damage to 3 battleships and 2 cruisers of the Italian navy, along with oil stores and other shore facilities destroyed or badly damaged by bombs.

    Though the Italians had detected the aircraft sent on reconnaissance for the attack, they did not have good radar with which to detect the Swordfish, and were thus caught almost completely off-guard. Their vigilance was also poor.

    What did the world learn? Well, this was the first time a fleet had been defeated without ever sighting the opposing ships, and proved what some had already begun to suspect – that aircraft, not battleships, would be the weapons of the future. Admiral Andrew Cunningham, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet at the time, would say: “Taranto and the night of 11 November 1940 should be remembered forever as having shown once and for all, that in the Fleet Air Arm, the Navy has its most devastating weapon”.

    Alas, this topic should really be given a much more thorough perusal, so if you are interested, I would highly recommend looking into it – I am sure there are many more interesting details than revealed here. If not, you can at least pass this article on to someone else who might enjoy it.

     

     

    December 2, 2018
    Fairey Swordfish, Fly Navy, Navy, Swordfish, War, World War 2, WW2

  • Leaves on the Line is Actually Not a Terrible Excuse

    Dear reader, I am sure that, if you live in the UK, “leaves on the line” is an excuse you have heard for the late running of a train. I am also sure that, if you have any sensory capabilities at all, you will have noticed that it is autumn, and, therefore, there are leaves falling from the trees.

    I will admit, it is not immediately obvious that these would cause a problem for trains. After all, trains tend to be large and quite heavy, whereas leaves are neither of those things. It is also true that a railway (at least in this country) tends to be a substantial construction, so much so that the track is often referred to as the “permanent way”. The question then arises as to why, if this is all true, leaves on the line should be a problem.

    To answer this question, we must first look at what makes trains so efficient, and to do that, we need to look at cars. You see, a car has rubber tyres, which run on a tarmac road. Both of these surfaces are rough, and as a result, the friction between them is high. Even when it is wet, the contact between tyre and road is not lubricated since the tyre is designed to channel water away from the contact (in all but the most extreme cases), and your car still grips the road. The other thing about car tyres is that they are quire wide and, therefore, the contact area is large, so even if some of it is slippery, chances are a good tyre will find grip somewhere.

    Trains are very different. Wheels on trains have steel tyres, which are very smooth, running on a steel rail which is also very smooth, leading to very low resistance. This is great in normal conditions, since the rolling resistance is very low and you can transport large loads with relatively little effort. However, as the wheels are quite thin, and there is not much “spring” in them, the contact area for each wheel is about the size of a pound coin. Suffice to say, it is very easy to get a train wheel to slip, with very little of the rail needing to be slippery.

    Now, it might surprise you to learn that the problem is not leaves per se. Dry leaves are, in themselves, not that slippery. Unfortunately, as leaves get crushed between the wheel and the rail, a leaf mulch is created. Add in a little water from rain, and perhaps some grease and other contaminants,  and you now have something akin to washing-up liquid on the rails, which the train will find it near-impossible to grip. Given that a mature tree might have some tens of thousands of leaves, and that there are 20,000 miles of track in the country, this is no rare problem.

    If the train cannot grip the rail properly, it cannot accelerate nearly as fast, and, equally, cannot brake properly either, without the wheels locking. This is potentially very dangerous, and so trains tend to travel at lower speeds, further increasing journey times and delays. Of course, when the poor passengers are told, there is not time to explain the problem properly, hence the “leaves on the line” excuse.

    Of course, railway engineers have not been sitting idle while the problem persists. Most passenger trains in the UK are now equipped with a system called WSP, or Wheel Slide Protection, which is a bit like your car’s anti-lock brakes and traction control rolled into one. However, while this does mitigate some of the problem, the train will still be slower if WSP is constantly cutting power to avoid slipping, or varying the brake to find grip. It does at least reduce the damage done to the wheel (and the rail) by slipping – which can be very expensive indeed.

    Another solution is the use of (and I apologise for the all the acronyms) RHTTs, or Rail Head Treatment Trains. These (very noisy) trains go around the network every autumn, spraying a substance called “sandite” onto the rails, which is a sort of gritty paste-like substance, improving grip dramatically. This is only a partial solution though, and the rails must be treated regularly if it is to be effective.

    The obvious solution is to just get rid of the trees next to the railway. This, like so many things in life, is much more complicated and expensive than it may seem. The decision to fell trees cannot be taken lightly, as the roots of trees may be helping to stabilise earthworks the railway depends on. Furthermore, tree felling near railways has come under fire from environmental groups such as the Woodland Trust and Greenpeace (not helped by some very dubious reporting in the Guardian newspaper). For tress not technically on railway land, landowners must be consulted, which can lead to its own problems, and, apart from anything else, felling a tree next to a railway line must be done with great care to avoid it falling onto the railway itself.

    One charge that could be levelled against the railway is that “this never used to happen”. And for once, the people saying this are, by and large, correct. In the days of steam, there were few trees next to railway lines, and consequently, there were few incidents of leaf mulch on the line. Why was this?

    Well, steam engines tend to produce sparks (after all, they rely on a large fire to work), and these sparks, when hitting dry vegetation, can lead to fire. Lineside fires were something that the old railways were understandably very keen to avoid, and so they made sure that linesides were kept perfectly manicured. Any tree that sprouted in this environment would have to come to terms with being on fire before or being chopped down long before leaves on the line became a problem.

    However, with steam trains being phased out in the 50s and 60s, lineside fires became less of a problem. The new diesel and electric trains did not produce sparks, and so the linesides could be left alone (which was quite convenient because it saved British Rail a lot of money). In fact, for a while, British Rail banned steam engines (even those run privately) from its lines entirely, partly to prevent lineside fires. Vegetation growing on the now-not-well-looked-after linesides has unfortunately resulted in the current situation.

    The supreme irony at the end of all this is that this article was itself delayed, though not through leaves. I have been rather busy, as mentioned in the public service announcement, but I have also begun writing for other places, which has rather taken up my time. Do not fear though – I will still be writing on here, just not with the frequency to which you may previously have become accustomed.

    It only remains for me to wish you an excellent day, and ask politely for you to pass this on to whomever might find it useful and/or interesting.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    November 13, 2018
    Autumn, British Rail, Excuses, Leaves, Rail, Railways, Trains

  • Why “Just put another coach on the end” is Not a Good Way to Run a Railway

    Dear reader, you have almost certainly heard this phrase uttered on a crowded train somewhere in the country, or, in an unthinking moment, uttered it yourself. In this article, with hopefully a little less waffling than usual, I hope to explain to you why this is very difficult and is rarely done, and hopefully in the process you will learn a little about how the railway works.

    To explain, we have to go back in time to, oh, I don’t know, about 1955. In 1955, Britain’s railways were largely steam powered, and the vast majority of trains were formed by a steam locomotive at the front and a set of coaches behind. When summer came, miles of extra (usually very old) coaches that had been stored in sidings all winter were used to cover holiday trains, and thus people standing on such trains was a relatively rare occurrence. Idyllic as it sounds, there were two principle problems with this system.

    Firstly it was completely uneconomic. Coaches sat in sidings do not earning money, and all the while they were taking up space on track which cost money to maintain, and land which British Railways (as it then was) frequently had no other use for. During summer, these coaches would then have to be shunted onto other trains, and, while they were being moved around, they were: 1) taking up even more space on the network and 2) still not earning any money. This is all without mentioning the extra guards, shunters and locomotives needed for the whole affair.

    Secondly, the standards of maintenance were wildly different between coaches. Frequently, the difference in age between the extra coaches and the newer ones they were coupled to was many decades, and it really showed. Granted, many holidaymakers were glad to have a seat, but as time wore on, old, dirty, and late trains became less and less acceptable.

    As time went on, coaches began to be organised into fixed “rakes” or “sets”. This meant that each coach in the set would cover the same number of miles as the others in the set, and would have the same maintenance and cleaning applied to it. It also meant that one could plan exactly which coaches would be where with much greater ease, and timings could be made more consistent, since the locomotive (now diesel or electric) would always be pulling the same load. One problem remained, however – the locomotive would somehow have to be put on the other end of the train at the end of the line. Again, there were two ways of doing this.

    One could, using another running line and 2 sets of points, “run around”, that is, run the locomotive alongside the coaches and put it on the other end. Needless to say, this meant that you now could not use the other line for anything else, significantly reducing the number of trains you could have at a station at any one time.

    The other way was to leave the locomotive on one end, uncouple it from the train, and put another locomotive on the other end. This was very common at terminus stations where space was limited, but had the severe disadvantage that the incoming locomotive would spend a long time not doing anything on the other end of the train, having to wait for the train to clear the platform before moving off. It also meant the outgoing locomotive would have to run with no train (called a “light engine” move) to attach to the other end, not earning any money, and wasting network capacity, in the process.

    Clearly, neither solution was ideal, and the problem of having locomotives on the wrong end was (generally) solved in two ways. Firstly, one could use some form of driving cab on the coach at the other end of the train, sending electronic signals that the locomotive would interpret to push the train along while the driver could still see where he was going. Often (but by no means always) these cabs were put the end of empty guard’s vans, creating the familiar Driving Van Trailer or DVT. You can still see this kind of train today, and (despite early teething problems) it is an effective solution.

    The second, and much more radical, solution, is to dispense with the locomotive entirely. Instead, you put all the equipment powering the train under the floor of the train, and just put a cab on either end of your set of coaches. This kind of train is known as a “multiple unit” (often shortened to “unit”) and they are by far the most common kind on the network today, due to their efficiency and usefulness. (Though actually they’ve been around in one form or another for decades).

    Each unit is put on a “diagram” – that is, a set of services and empty moves throughout the day. This is handy since you know exactly how many miles the unit has done and thus how much maintenance is required. For a diesel unit, this means that you vastly reduce the risk of running out of fuel, since you can make the diagram shorter than the number of miles it can cover. This system also makes the best use of available trains, since each diagram is several hundred, or a few thousand miles per day (the most hardworking train fleets cover about 2000 miles per train per day).

    Units may be coupled together to form longer trains, without any loss of performance, though this is not always ideal. Say you have 2 units. Sure, you can couple them together, so one service has twice the capacity, but you have simultaneously halved the number of services you can run. This also creates complications as much depends on which end of the train each unit is at, as it may then not be in the right place to form the next service on its diagram. In fact, trains straying from their diagrams create many headaches for train control teams, maintenance crews and so on, so generally this is to be avoided, even if it would ease overcrowding.

    Crowding in itself is frequently unavoidable at peak times. To seat everybody on a commuter train into London would require a farcically long train, formed of many units and certainly a train that would take a very long time to get people onto and off of. What can be done is to have units with enough room for people to stand comfortably, and try to have many units together for the peak service, without prejudicing more lightly used lines. Suffice to say, there are many teams of people, from planners to controllers to maintenance crews to platform staff, who are trying to make this all happen, but on a system as complicated as Britain’s railway things do go wrong. I would urge you all to be a bit more forgiving to this hard working lot.

    In any case, I am afraid this article terminates here. Thank you for reading with Peculiarly Pete, please take all personal belongings, unruly children, lost umbrellas, sunglasses, copies of the Metro and any other detritus with you. Please also mind the gap between the theory and reality. Here at the end of the article, onward connections include:

    • This video, or at least the first 6 minutes, explains diagrams a bit better and is highly recommended. A bit old but well worth the watch
    • This article of mine, which although not directly on the topic, explains some of the complexities of our railway system
    • And finally, if you’re really interested, go to a busy station like Birmingham New Street or any of the London Termini (Euston, King’s Cross etc.), and just observe for a while. The complexity of the system, and the reasons for having units, become apparent after a while

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    October 27, 2018
    British, Coach, DMU, EMU, Multiple Unit, Rail, Railway, Train, Unit

  • The Joy & Despair of Commuting By Bus

    Dear reader, you may have noticed, having read many of my previous articles, that I am very much in favour of railways. And there are many good reasons for this, from the sheer economy that comes with steel wheels running on a steel rail, to the incredible safety record of Britain’s railways. However, in some circumstances, one must leave the steel ribbon behind and use a bus, on a road of tarmac.

    Firstly, I would like to clarify that I am not talking about coaches here. If you do want to see my take on coaches, see this article on Megabus. Buses differ substantially, and tend to be used on much shorter trips, and thus end up with many commuters on them, notably in cities. They are also, unfortunately, a fair amount slower by virtue of the sort of roads they travel on, than the aforementioned coaches.

    The operator of choice in this case is National Express West Midlands, who run the majority of the buses in Birmingham (there is some confusion as they do not run coaches, unlike the parent company, National Express). NEWM (as I shall now refer to them) seem a rather confused company at first glance, since they do not seem to be able to decide on a livery.

    Many of their buses are in an older livery, with a sort of red triangle on the front third of the bus, and white over the rest, save the windows which occasionally get a black band around them. Other markings, for particular routes (and their virtues) do make an appearance on some buses. This is a poor choice of colour scheme since the white shows road dirt, rather than the paintwork, off, and colours one’s perception before even stepping aboard. The route markings are a neat idea, but fail to disguise the fact that most of the bus is very plain, at least to look at.

    Some are in a newer crimson livery; a much more pleasing result. A slightly darker shade of red adorns the section of the bus below the windows, and hides dirt much better. The pattern is a far more modern “swoosh” at the front (hard to explain unless you’ve seen it yourself) and the overall appearance is that bit nicer. Not that I have seen many of these in my neck of the woods, but it’s nice to know they exist.

    The best, however, I have saved for last. In the same pattern as the crimson buses, the “Platinum” buses have two-tone dark grey exteriors, which would run the risk of being bland, except for the large, eye catching advertisements for the buses on the sides, applied directly to the paintwork (though I suspect they are stickers). It is interesting that NEWM really do like to shout about themselves a lot more than the trains do – then again, the trains have no shortage of passengers, but I digress.

    Waiting for the bus is a far less predictable experience than waiting for a train. It is far easier to run trains at regular intervals because timetable planners for the stopping trains already know when faster trains are going to be where, and so can fit their trains around them. Road traffic is a far harsher mistress – the traffic does not run to a timetable, and this has the sadly inevitable result that even though you might dispatch the buses at intervals, they tend to bunch up and get stuck. The result is the familiar “wait ages for a bus, then 2 come along at once” phenomenon, at least on weekday mornings. This is in spite of the promised 10 minute frequency.

    That said, when the bus does eventually arrive, things begin to improve. Like the local trains, one has the option to use a smartcard. In Birmingham, these are called “Swift” cards. Mine is handy since I’ve got an unlimited bus travel one, that works out as almost ludicrously cheap per day, and makes life much quicker when you get on. Even if one doesn’t have a card, the ticketing system (almost) couldn’t be simpler – £1.50 for a short hop, £2.40 for a slightly longer single, £4.60 for a day ticket (valid on all their buses). One can even use one’s contactless bank card to avoid coins (interestingly, NEWM do not give change, there is just a slot to put your money in when you ask for a ticket).

    How things go from here really depends which sort of bus one finds oneself on. If you have the older red and white ones, the interior greets you with cold indifference – the seat fabric is an unappealing series of grey dots on a grey-er background of dark, dull grey, the interior scheme doesn’t really match and one gets the impression that the appearance to passengers was quietly forgotten at some point during the design stage.

    However, if you find yourself on a Platinum bus (the big grey ones) you are greeted far more warmly. Seats have a nice pattern of red dots on grey, with leather headrests and much more legroom than you would expect from a bus (good work, designers). The USB power sockets are a nice touch, and their little blue lights match the uplighting on the stairway glass. Sitting down, the seats are at least as comfortable as they look, and the whole interior “fits” together much better. It even looks quite classy. This standard of interior design is unfortunately becoming rarer on the railways, where price for the leasing company, operator, or the Department for Transport seems to be the biggest consideration, not, as one would hope, passenger comfort.

    The aforementioned joy of commuting by bus is having the comfortable seat, and the commanding top deck position, while kicking back, reading today’s Metro and generally relaxing on one’s way. This situation is improved enormously if there is no traffic and no annoying school children (of course, un-annoying school children are allowed). If one can get the left hand front seats to oneself (the right-hand ones have no leather headrests, much to my chagrin) one looks out through tinted glass and can enjoy one of the best views of Birmingham it is possible to get (though of course what you make of Birmingham is up to you).

    Perhaps here the Metro itself deserves a mention. I am assuming most people are aware of this free newspaper; after all, most railway stations have a container for these things, at least outside London, and buses (even the thoroughly mediocre Centrebus) have containers for them. In London, one can have both the Metro and the Evening Standard, but I digress. The Metro has to cater for everyone using public transport; a difficult task further complicated by the constraint of the paper’s low cost. I do believe, however, that the final paper is a perfectly acceptable rag, with most of the pointless bickering and gossip of the tabloids filtered out and some reasonably well put together actual news stories. Don’t expect any long reads or proper investigative journalism, but as a morning briefing, you could do far worse. And if you were driving you wouldn’t get any sort of free paper, nor would you be able to read it while travelling, so there is that advantage.

    The time now comes for me to tell you, dear readers, about the downsides to commuting by bus, the aforementioned despair. First off, the traffic creates not only the problem of buses bunching up, but it also means that getting anywhere becomes a very slow process. Crawling along in traffic is never fun, and lengthens the door to door travel time enormously, in some cases to the point where it is actually quicker to walk (I am told that in London the problem is so bad that in the majority of cases, walking is quicker).

    On the subject of other modes of transport being quicker, a friend and I decided to compare bus with train, with a very direct comparison of going form one point to another, with neither being a station for either mode. Now, this isn’t as daft an idea as it sounds – although the trains are much quicker, they are a bit less regular, at least in theory, and if the bus could get a good run through the traffic, there was some potential for me to win this race. I didn’t. Even in (almost) ideal conditions, when I got on a bus straight away, and the traffic was relatively light, and then I ran in a rather undignified fashion through the charming streets of Birmingham, my friend still beat me comfortably by a few minutes. Repeating the experiment provided the same result.

    Much like trains, buses also get crowded in the morning and evening peak. I have concluded that, in order to be really comfortable on the bus, one needs to be on a bus before 0800, or preferably at about 0730. This is before the traffic has really got going, before most school children have arrived and before most people can be bothered, at least in Birmingham. This creates the rather obvious problem of a rush to get up, dressed, have breakfast (the most important meal of the day, as I am quite sure no-one has ever condescendingly told you), clean one’s teeth and pack one’s bag, in order to be at the bus stop in reasonable time. I personally see it as worth it for a quiet bus and an almost guaranteed copy of the Metro, but I can see how it *might* be a disadvantage for some.

    Alas, after that 1,521 word tirade, we must come to an end, and press the proverbial stop bell, waiting to get off the article, thanking the driver as we go by. And out we go, onto the rest of the wide, wide internet (hopefully to spread the word about this article). It only remains for me to thank you for reading, and politely remind you to keep your feet off the seats.

    — Photo by Luis Quintero from Pexels —

     

     

     

     

     

     

    October 21, 2018
    Birmingham, Bus, Buses, Commuting, National Express West Midlands, NEWM, Travel

  • Why the Humble Compact Disc should be Re-evaluated – by Dominic Meakin

    Dear reader, you may know, if you saw the public service announcement, that I have been a touch busy recently. One way that I can still provide meaningful content is to invite guest bloggers, and indeed the article you are reading was not written by me, but my good friend Dominic. Without further ado, take it away Dominic…

    On embarking on a new academic year at University, I have noticed that as expected there are a number of minor changes to the various study spaces. Most changes were uninteresting to my mind, or were already in progress last year. Nonetheless, when needing to send some files that I had stored on a CD-R via the computers in the study space I realised that not a single computer had even a single driver installed for the purpose of reading a CD; not even a CD drive. Yet this is becoming even more commonplace on the computer market, with fewer laptops and PCs being shipped with an inbuilt drive. Is this the precipice for the downfall of the CD? A quote from a lecturer last year only adds to this long-held suspicion: “It’s on a CD… are you all too young to know what a CD even is?”

    The Compact disc was born out of long development of a videodisc format. Phillips (famous for their 1962 development of earlier tape formats, the Compact Cassette) had released their long anticipated Laserdisc format in 1978 (Although then it was called videodisc in Europe and rather more amusingly ‘Discovision’ in the US), at the dawn of the mainstream home video-cassette formats, such as Sony’s Betamax and JVC’s VHS. While initial sales were promising, it was ultimately a market failure even with a brief revival later amongst film buffs. However the stage had been set for an optical disc format – to the engineers at Phillips the benefits of reading information in this fashion was clear. At Sony, similar developments were taking place in the engineering labs while the accountants were also similarly anxious from it’s own market failure in the form of Elcaset.

    When both companies realised that they were working on essentially the same thing, they formed an alliance much like the previous decade’s Anglo-French Concorde project. And much like Concorde this was a product far removed from the existing market leaders. Upon the release of the Compact Disc between Sony and Phillips to much fanfare on the 17th of August 1982, people were still squabbling over the much-derided release of Queen’s ‘Hot Space’ the vast majority of which were probably owned on LP rather than on Cassette even with sales of LP and singles on the retreat. However, while cassettes would take the crown from LP and singles later in that decade, it was to be short lived as by 1991 CDs were king of sales. Much to the relief of both companies Compact-Disc was a roaring success.

    At the time of release another revolution was taking place elsewhere on the consumer electronics market. In the UK Sinclair unveiled one of the first truly affordable home computers which would ignite the computer boom here. Commodore released its own affordable development of its existing computer line which featured a storage format that had previously been generally considered suitable only for a business environment – the Floppy diskette. While the UK doggedly stuck with the compact cassette as a storage medium due to it still being astronomically expensive here for the lion’s share of the 1980s, it was a hit with the Americans. However, a 5 ½’’ diskette (which Sony was producing amongst many other suppliers of blank media) held only a laughably small 1.2 MB (at best) by today’s standards. In order for the compact-disc to be a successful competitor to the contemporary formats it needed a mammoth amount of data to handle for the time. In fact it could hold up to 700MB of data. It did not take long for discussions of whole libraries to be held on one hand held disc in hurried excitement. Indeed, not long after the Red book standard for the Compact Disc was published, the Yellow book was introduced to specify how such a format could be expanded into computer storage. Around the same time a way of writing and reading the disk within a compact space was developed and the CD-ROM as well as CD-R was added to the mix.

    While other competitors including Phillips own Digital-Compact-Cassette and Sony’s Minidisc formats have come and gone, the CD has remained the dominant format for many years. In this present time there is a new competitor which seems to be the very opposite of dying away: online streaming. With the introduction of the mp3 format and a suitable number of players (most notably Apple’s iPod of 2001) and the vast expansion of online services such as Spotify, iTunes and Amazon Music it has never been easier to access music at the touch of a button. At the same time it almost seems that the venerable CD is in terminal decline. Even the old LP and Single as well as cassettes of yesteryear have taken the music publishers by surprise in their resurgence against the CD.

    These formats each have their own unique advantages and quirks, but the poor old CD is seemingly becoming more and more irrelevant to today’s society. So I thought I would put together the virtues that CDs still have. In fact CDs are even better than they were upon introduction back in the 1980s. Never to keep still, Sony and Phillips have introduced improvements to the manufacturing process and the resistance of CD players to the dreaded ‘CD skipping’ issue that plagued early portable players. Away from the development labs, studios have developed experience in mastering CDs, which in the early days was poorly optimised for the format.

    One key advantage of most respectable CD releases is their increased dynamic range (the range in volume between the quietest and loudest parts of a piece), although ironically one of the most damaging events to the reputation of the CD was the ‘loudness wars’ which achieved precisely the opposite. In the 1990s some studios realised that the 700MB capacity of the CD could hold a large amount of music on 1 disc through aggressive compression. Soon this caught on as it made it cheaper to produce a long album on 1 disc than 2. This could in extreme circumstances reduce the music held on the disc to a tinny mess, and started to sow seeds of doubt in the capabilities of the format.

    Happily, though much of the range produced from this era has been re-released onto remastered discs with the artificial compression removed. So much so, that in comparison to the now ubiquitous mp3 and others such as .ogg found online, conceived in an age when many computers were hooked to 56k modems, a well-produced CD can outclass the streamed equivalent. I have been fortunate to have sampled music in a variety of formats; from open reel recorders running at 15ips to LPs, and mp3s but I can say that few can match the quality of a well-produced CD. The only format that I’ve come across at least that has noticeably outperformed a CD would an open reel recording, but this was a format intended, in the most part, to reside within the walls of a professional studio.

    An advantage shared by many formats away from the streaming services is that it is a physical copy of the music. While one may download music and save it on a phone or computer, most people do not do this and a reliance on streaming as the primary source of music can build up a fallibility when disconnected from the internet. Having a collection of music to hand either at home on a shelf or stowed away in your bag for listening on the go can be more appealing than opening a page and retrieving it from storage on a device. Seeing the cover and having additional material which cannot be provided on a downloaded or streamed copy of the music can add to the experience of listening to an album. Ownership of each copy is a contentious issue associated with streaming music. When one streams a piece of music they only have an agreement to play the music for their own use. The streaming service and the publisher ‘owns’ the copy of the music rather than the customer. This can allow the streaming service to remove the right to access customer’s music if they deem it necessary. However with physical media once the customer purchases their copy they may play it as much as they wish and in any way they see fit within the legal confines of copyright law.

    These are just some of the reasons that the CD can still hold light in today’s market. Whilst the decline and fall of the CD is set to continue its course, (perhaps because many of the interesting features about the CD are hidden from view unlike some of the older formats which have found new life) maybe the next time you are looking to buy an album you might want to consider adding a CD copy to that list.

     

    October 14, 2018
    CD, Compact Disk, Computers, Guest, Technology

  • A Public Service Announcement

    Arrow

    Good (insert time of reading) dear reader. There are some issues with my blog that I felt merited your attention (all in good time of course). In no particular order, these are:

    The site identity has been changed, on the day I am writing this, just a bit. I was quite fond of the old one, but I gather it was rather inconvenient since if you wanted to read an older article you had to scroll down a very long way. This new one should be a little easier, but if you have any particular objection to it, don’t hesitate to let me know by whatever means is most convenient.

    I have never really had a regular schedule, but these days the schedule of sorts may become even less regular, due to an unusually busy period. The last post was on September 30th, which at the time of writing was just over a week ago. This is rather inconvenient if you enjoy (though even if you like suffering through them the point stands) my writings but do please be patient; if  I have a good idea for a post, I shall attempt to write it up.

    If you came here from my personal Facebook, then you might have noticed that every single one of my posts has been linked to there. While this is a useful way of getting the word (or should that be words) out, it may be getting rather annoying. If so (or, on the contrary, if not), if you could let me know, that would be greatly appreciated. I suggest if you (by some miracle) enjoy my content, and I decide to cease Facebook services, you follow this blog via email. Don’t worry, it will not spam you with emails, but you will receive an email every time I post something, notifying you of this fact.

    Regular programming will resume… as soon as is reasonably practicable.

    October 7, 2018

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