Why do Network Rail still use some imperial measurements?

[zwk500]

I once saw a comparison of our metrication and decimalisation strategy and the latter was held up as having all the key features metrication didn’t bother with. Especially a known chop date, and a provisional end of the campaign 6 months later, although it was said that it was basically all done and dusted within about 2 months.

But someone proposed earlier the currency change was part of metrication, but I think dont think so, it was just a coincidence, they were always separate programmes.

Even if they were separate programmes, decimalisation proved that metrication could be done, and how to do so. How many people that objected to the loss of £sd at the time now call for their reinstatement?

 

[swt_passenger]

Even if they were separate programmes, decimalisation proved that metrication could be done, and how to do so. How many people that objected to the loss of £sd at the time now call for their reinstatement?

A very very small number, but I think he probably did post in this thread…

 

[Annetts key]

So, how would that work? No lorries, no buses for a whole month? Or lorries and buses on the left, cars and vans on the right, for a manic transitional month of dodgems?

This may have encouraged far more people to travel by train and tube

I don't think the suggestion was particularly serious...

When Sweden changed sides, didn't they ban all road traffic for a day to do the last bits of the swap? If that was Sweden in the 60s, then I shudder to think how long the UK would need now....

The ideal time to have changed was during the first COVID19 lock down… or the next best would be when both Christmas Day and Boxing Day both occur on a weekend, like this year.

But given where we are in this country politically, I don’t see either metrification being fully completed (*) or changing the side of the road that we drive on ever being done.

* meanwhile behind the scenes, out of public view, metric measurements are king. In general, industry prefers metric. Especially as it’s now the de facto standard.

 

[DavidGrain]

I have no idea how to visualise a hectare but I find it is interesting that it is probably the only metric unit which is larger than the imperial unit (unless someone corrects me on that). (EDIT Ok in visualising I work on the basis that a metre and a yard are approximately equal so don't correct me on that)
The US still work in BTUs (British Thermal Units)

My first job when I left school included pricing out the sale of the scrap metal from our factory. I had to work in tons,cwts,qrts x £sd. Fortunately, in those days we had comptometer operators who did the calculations for me. Comp operator was a skilled job for women which has long disappeared.

Back at decimalisation at the company I was working for at the time, we had converted all our wages pay rates, selling prices of our products etc to decimal and I had organised my department to handle this with the minimum of problems. However, I was not in charge of the department that actually prepared the sales invoices. They came to me with a problem. We were not computerised in those days. Apparently what they were doing was converting the prices back to £sd and then doing the calculations using the ready-reckoner books we had in those days and then converting the total back to decimal. I got approval for them to buy an electronic calculator which was several hundred pounds in those days.

 

[Ediswan]

One hundredweight - abbreviation cwt, is one twentieth of a ton (avoirdupois), and is 112 lb. The most common domestic encounter with that was for coal deliveries.

Potatoes used to be sold in half cwt (56lb) bags. The replacement 25kg is very close to that.

 

[DavidGrain]

Potatoes used to be sold in half cwt (56lb) bags. The replacement 25kg is very close to that.

Which is why I visulise 50kg as a hundredweight.

 

[ABB125]

I wonder how many fathoms deep a railway trackbed is?

 

[swt_passenger]

I have no idea how to visualise a hectare but I find it is interesting that it is probably the only metric unit which is larger than the imperial unit (unless someone corrects me on that). (EDIT Ok in visualising I work on the basis that a metre and a yard are approximately equal so don't correct me on that)

Going back to football pitches, someone mentioned the normal size for pro football as being well over an acre. The FA allow quite a range of possibilities, but apparently premier league standard, (unless existing ground size limits it), is apparently now 105m x 68m. So that would be over 0.7 ha, but as a first approximation you could say a Hectare is about one and a half football pitches.

 

[AM9]

Which is why I visulise 50kg as a hundredweight.

Yes 50Kg is 110 lb.

 

[Annetts key]

I wonder how many fathoms deep a railway trackbed is?

As I have no clue what a fathom is…

Joking aside, the depth of a railway track formation is not as deep as most people think.

The traditional arrangement of using steel rails mounted on sleepers, which in turn are laid on ballast, spreads the weight of the train sufficiently that the force transmitted to the underlying ground is less than that of a human wearing stiletto heels (when comparing pressure for the surface area of the heal that makes contact with the ground).

Under the ballast, a membrane is used to keep the ballast separated from the soil.

Normally the formation (excluding embankments) is less than the height of an typical person.

Maybe a civil engineering (P.Way) member can correct/fill in the details better than I have.

 

[AM9]

I know you meant to put “eighth” but someone might not…

Yes I know, thanks for pointing it out. I was using a phone to send that which I find slightly more cumbersome.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Nov 2021 ==

As I have no clue what a fathom is…

Joking aside, the depth of a railway track formation is not as deep as most people think.

The traditional arrangement of using steel rails mounted on sleepers, which in turn are laid on ballast, spreads the weight of the train sufficiently that the force transmitted to the underlying ground is less than that of a human wearing stiletto heels (when comparing pressure for the surface area of the heal that makes contact with the ground).

Under the ballast, a membrane is used to keep the ballast separated from the soil.

Normally the formation (excluding embankments) is less than the height of an typical person.

Maybe a civil engineering (P.Way) member can correct/fill in the details better than I have.

6ft.

 

[snowball]

Wasn't it the case with UK metrication programme that the Thatcher government came in and cancelled what remained of it?

 

[Irascible]

As I have no clue what a fathom is…

An unfathomable gap!

To be fair that is a very nautical measurement, wierdly given it's roughly person hight you'd think it'd be used more. 2 yards is also easy though...

If we're talking about which side of the road to use ( presumably because something something European rather than stayimg with other big islands ), how about which track? that is far less clear cut.

 

[Annetts key]

… how about which track? that is far less clear cut.

But that’s easy, all of them should in my humble opinion, be bidirectional.

I’ve actually seen up direction trains going up the down line, and at the same time, down direction trains going down the up line. The reason this was happening was there was a fault with the signalling system that prevented normal direction running on one of the lines.

And in T3 occupations, engineering trains and on track machines move in either direction on any line anyway.

 

[Trog]

0.38 fathoms bottom of sleeper to bottom of sand blanket for a main line. Assuming 0.21 fathoms of ballast and 0.17 fathoms of sand. The sleepers themselves being about 0.11 fathoms deep.

 

[ABB125]

0.38 fathoms bottom of sleeper to bottom of sand blanket for a main line

About 3 spans, or 3.5 links!
Or, just under one Roman pace.

 

[AM9]

About 3 spans, or 3.5 links!
Or, just under one Roman pace.

Or just under 7 hands, as we're might be talking about iron horses.

 

[Dr_Paul]

How many people that objected to the loss of £sd at the time now call for their reinstatement?

I was working in a grocery shop when metrification of money took place. Much easier working in pounds and new pence than the old system. A few years later, I had to do some calculations in £sd, I can't recall why, and I really had trouble doing it, although I'd been perfectly fine with it just a few years before. On the other hand, I still call a 50p coin a 'ten-bob bit'. From what I remember, most people took to the new system as it was much easier to use, although many for some time mentally converted a price into old money to get some idea of its cost, 'Fifteen p, that's three bob.'

 

[OzLoon]

I know you meant to put “eighth” but someone might not…

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Nov 2021 ==


I once saw a comparison of our metrication and decimalisation strategy and the latter was held up as having all the key features metrication didn’t bother with. Especially a known chop date, and a provisional end of the campaign 6 months later, although it was said that it was basically all done and dusted within about 2 months. I suspect Australian metrication policy was much more well defined and with targeted dates for various changes.

(snip)

As I remember, there was a strategy to have metrication applied early and hard in horse racing - out went miles and furlongs and in came metres very quickly, and at all venues. My memory that this was done to get 'the ordinary people' used to things and comfortable with the concept. There's still some references every now and then to some of the feature races, like The Melbourne Cup, in the old terms - two miles - but that's done for nostalgic purposes rather than being an act of resistance, and means SFA to anyone under 40.

It took quite a while for road-signpost distance signs to be changed especially in regional and rural places, and for a time the old signs with miles references remained, with little yellow attachments with the kilometres distance subsequently added. There were all sorts of accessories for car-owners to have their speedo and odometer now read in kms rather than miles - speed signs were rapidly changed all over the place in what must have been a complex job to organise. But I think the change was done well here, and with none of the cultural baggage that seems to have infected parts of the UK. And I suppose because the nation was heavily in favour of post-war immigration, as the bulk of newcomers outwith the UK came from countries fully conversant already with the metric system, by the mid 1970s it wasn't such a jump to take on.

We've never had the cultural aspects of metrication being something imposed on us by a suspicious outside organisation - the blasted EU, for some UKers; or the Commies, for some of our Yank friends - so it's been free of those entanglements thankfully.