Why do Network Rail still use some imperial measurements?

[Mcr Warrior]

Outside of that, we're only talking about a few things that are entirely about tradition, who will actually notice if their pint of cheap lager contains 68ml less liquid? Could even spin it as a health benefit by reducing the country's drinking...

Of course, if the price were to remain the same, then a reduction from 568ml (one pint) to 500ml (half litre) would effectively be yet another example of shrinkflation. (See also separate thread - link below).

Shrinkflation - examples?

"Shrinkflation" is the business practice where pack sizes of items (often food items) shrink in size or quantity, yet the selling price remains the same, or even increases! An example: Packs of McVities (Jaffa Cakes) Cake Bars came, until recently, in packs of eight and were being sold for £1...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[mike57]

I reckon 25-30 years is the sort of timescale we're talking.

I just cant see any government wanting to grasp the nettle, from a political point of view there is only pain no gain, and the cost would excessive. I think Brexit probably drove the last nail in the 'finish metrication' coffin. If trade with the USA expands at the expense of Europe that will just add to the reluctance.

 

[AM9]

... Roads is the big one to change, and will be a logistical nightmare when it comes time to make the change, but only in the same way as changing to decimal currency was, so it shouldn't be seen as an unopposable obstacle. ...

Road speed limits would be difficult, but maybe they could be changed when because of road pricing, the majority of vehicles have GPS systems that know the speed limit for the specific road.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

While GB railway routes are nearly all still measured in imperial units, it struck me today while staring at some recently relaid track that the components themselves might well be engineered in metric.
That's things like the gauge of the track and the physical dimensions like sleeper separation, and the lengths of straight/curved track.
I saw a plate on a sleeper today which (I think) showed something like "R=15039m" and an arrow one way, and the word "Straight" in the other.
Is this a metric measurement of something?

Where you see new S&C built ready for installation I am imagining it has all been engineered in metric.
Is this a correct assumption?
Does the giant Network Rail key uses to prove that the gauge is correct read 4'8.5" or 1435mm? Or both?

 

[swt_passenger]

While GB railway routes are nearly all still measured in imperial units, it struck me today while staring at some recently relaid track that the components themselves might well be engineered in metric.
That's things like the gauge of the track and the physical dimensions like sleeper separation, and the lengths of straight/curved track.
I saw a plate on a sleeper today which (I think) showed something like "R=15039m" and an arrow one way, and the word "Straight" in the other.
Is this a metric measurement of something?

Where you see new S&C built ready for installation I am imagining it has all been engineered in metric.
Is this a correct assumption?
Does the giant Network Rail key uses to prove that the gauge is correct read 4'8.5" or 1435mm? Or both?

That R = 15039m will be the radius of the curve - still very near straight as it’s such a large number…

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

That R = 15039m will be the radius of the curve - still very near straight as it’s such a large number…

Yes, but is that radius in meters as I suspect, rather than imperial?

 

[swt_passenger]

Yes, but is that radius in meters as I suspect, rather than imperial?

It has ‘m’ as the unit?

 

[nw1]

There are 3 countries that still use principally Imperial measurements. These are USA, Liberia and Myanmar. Only the USA is showing no sign of changing though, the other 2 are gradually going metric. USA will shortly be alone in using Imperial.

It's odd the USA, perhaps the leading country, or certainly one of them, for science and engineering (for which standard SI units are pretty essential) is the slowest in changing over!

Interesting that Canada appears to strongly use the metric system while the USA does not; indeed Canada is more metric than the UK, with continental European levels of usage on maps, road signs, etc.

I personally find some imperial units, like yards and acres, hard to visualise, though I am quite happy with a mile (thanks to its still ubiquitous usage), a foot or an inch.

I think we always did metric units at school, ISTR learning 'weights and measures' in the late 1970s and being taught about the metric (recommended) and imperial (old) system. At home though my parents were more familiar with imperial. Then later on in the 80s I did a lot of scientific subjects at school, as well as maths, and metric/SI became ubiquitous.

The railway's use of chains (which I first noticed in the 80s when the distance markers were clearly painted along the side of the line on the Portsmouth Direct in miles and chains) is an unusual one - the only time I have come across this unit.

 

[BS56]

There is another measurement nobody has mentioned that is the decimal imperial. Britain started to look into this some time back when everybody else was converting to metric. I have a metre long steel rule with all three measurements shown on it. If you have never heard of this well I can tell you that you measure in tenths so a inch is ten tenths two inches is twenty tenths and so on and a hundred tenths is a foot ? Of course you have to start from scratch when using this because it is not the same length as the old inch or a centimetre. The nice thing about it is you retain the old words such as inch, foot etc.. . Frankly I can't stand metric words like Kilometre & centimetre and so on who thought these up. Can anyone throw any further light on this subject like weight , volume , etc .. how far did they get with the conversions.

 

[TravelDream]

I just cant see any government wanting to grasp the nettle, from a political point of view there is only pain no gain, and the cost would excessive. I think Brexit probably drove the last nail in the 'finish metrication' coffin. If trade with the USA expands at the expense of Europe that will just add to the reluctance.

Don't forget a lot our our imperial measurements are different to US standard ones.

The US gallon is bigger than an Imp. gallon.
The US pint is smaller than the imperial pint.
Americans buy their milk by the quart. We don't use quarts really anymore, but the British quart is bigger than the American quart.
Thee US fluid ounce is smaller than the British fluid ounce.
Our pounds are the same, but they don't often use ounces and never use use stones. It's the same with miles/ yard/ feet as yards are not really used.

The US has moved a long way to metric though. NASA has gone fully metric along with a lot a lot of private industries.

My bold, but bottled beer has to be sold in metric units. We are officially a metric country - the only legal exceptions are the use of miles/yards on the roads to measure distance, and the sale of milk, plus beer/cider on-tap, in pints. Other than this, everything has to be sold in metric. Imperial units can be used alongside metric units, but metric units must always be the most prominent - something that isn't enforced anyway if you go to cinemas and other well-known coffee outlets who sell (illegally) in fl oz. It's no wonder we're in a mess!

Don't most places get away with it by saying 1 pint (568ml) or 12 fluid ounces (348ml) or whatever? In fact, I think most coffee shops hide the sizes away behind the likes of grande or medium.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

It has ‘m’ as the unit?

Yes indeed.
So it's not really true that the civils side of the railway has retained the imperial setup, as some claim.
If track, signalling and OHLE is engineered in metric, that's pretty much the whole railway.

 

[DelW]

Don't forget a lot our our imperial measurements are different to US standard ones.

The US gallon is bigger than an Imp. gallon.
The US pint is smaller than the imperial pint.
Americans buy their milk by the quart. We don't use quarts really anymore, but the British quart is bigger than the American quart.
Thee US fluid ounce is smaller than the British fluid ounce.
Our pounds are the same, but they don't often use ounces and never use use stones. It's the same with miles/ yard/ feet as yards are not really used.

The US gallon is smaller than the imperial gallon - US is 3.785 litres vs 4.546 litres for an imperial gallon.

Their tons are also significantly smaller, 2000lb vs 2240lb for imperial (long) ton.

 

[Annetts key]

While GB railway routes are nearly all still measured in imperial units, it struck me today while staring at some recently relaid track that the components themselves might well be engineered in metric.
That's things like the gauge of the track and the physical dimensions like sleeper separation, and the lengths of straight/curved track.
I saw a plate on a sleeper today which (I think) showed something like "R=15039m" and an arrow one way, and the word "Straight" in the other.
Is this a metric measurement of something?

Where you see new S&C built ready for installation I am imagining it has all been engineered in metric.
Is this a correct assumption?
Does the giant Network Rail key uses to prove that the gauge is correct read 4'8.5" or 1435mm? Or both?

Track gauge and point measurements are now all metric.

So plain line track gauge is 1435mm nominal.
At points (S&C) it’s 1432mm.
Both may be relaxed slightly if on a tight curve.

All the distances within the S&C fittings are in metric.

Torque values (for bolts and machine screws) is in Nm.

In fact, in signalling, apart from an occasional item of equipment that was designed pre-metrication, everything is metric.

There is another measurement nobody has mentioned that is the decimal imperial. Britain started to look into this some time back when everybody else was converting to metric. I have a metre long steel rule with all three measurements shown on it. If you have never heard of this well I can tell you that you measure in tenths so a inch is ten tenths two inches is twenty tenths and so on and a hundred tenths is a foot ? Of course you have to start from scratch when using this because it is not the same length as the old inch or a centimetre. The nice thing about it is you retain the old words such as inch, foot etc.. . Frankly I can't stand metric words like Kilometre & centimetre and so on who thought these up. Can anyone throw any further light on this subject like weight , volume , etc .. how far did they get with the conversions.

The electronics industry does/did use 1/10s of an inch (0.1”). The “standard” chip packages from the 1970s and 1980s (dual in line - DIL) has its pins on this pitch. And printed circuit boards were often laid out using a 0.1” pitch. Now most are specified using metric. Although there are still plenty of components that have a pitch of 2.54mm…

 

[D6975]

The US has moved a long way to metric though. NASA has gone fully metric along with a lot a lot of private industries.

NASA were kind of forced into adopting full metric after losing a spaceshot that was put down to an error caused by their mixed metric/imperial usage. It's amazing that the Shuttle ever got into space as the work was split up between teams, some of which used imperial, some metric. The potential for errors was ever present.

 

[stuu]

Don't most places get away with it by saying 1 pint (568ml) or 12 fluid ounces (348ml) or whatever? In fact, I think most coffee shops hide the sizes away behind the likes of grande or medium.

"Get away with it" is the wrong term. There is no law that says what size any servings or whatever have to be, the only stipulation is it has to be labelled in metric units.

 

[Trackman]

NASA were kind of forced into adopting full metric after losing a spaceshot that was put down to an error caused by their mixed metric/imperial usage. It's amazing that the Shuttle ever got into space as the work was split up between teams, some of which used imperial, some metric. The potential for errors was ever present.

I remember this, something to do with Lockheed Martin using Imperial about 25 years ago.
--
Also did EE or someone similar export a loco abroad in imperial measurements and caused all sorts of problems with the buyer?

 

[Irascible]

Frankly I can't stand metric words like Kilometre & centimetre and so on who thought these up.

Centi - 100, milli - 1000 etc ( French ), they make sense, just cumbersome to say, which is why we still use feet & inches as estimates in discussion. You can always use BSI metric feet ( 30cm ) & inches/yards etc if you want. Klick is verbal shorthand for km also.

 

[XAM2175]

Don't most places get away with it by saying 1 pint (568ml) or 12 fluid ounces (348ml) or whatever? In fact, I think most coffee shops hide the sizes away behind the likes of grande or medium.

"Get away with it" is the wrong term. There is no law that says what size any servings or whatever have to be, the only stipulation is it has to be labelled in metric units.

The metric measurement has to be the more prominent, however - so you'll see it as "568 mL (1 pint)".

NASA were kind of forced into adopting full metric after losing a spaceshot that was put down to an error caused by their mixed metric/imperial usage.

I remember this, something to do with Lockheed Martin using Imperial about 25 years ago.

The embarrassing incident in question was the Mars Climate Orbiter being flown into Mars rather than into orbit around Mars in 1999. NASA had already fully converted to metric by this point - the fault was Lockheed Martin's, as they provided a piece of trajectory calculation software that output total thruster impulse in pound-force seconds despite NASA's requirement that it output in newton-seconds.

 

[miklcct]

Centi - 100, milli - 1000 etc ( French ), they make sense, just cumbersome to say, which is why we still use feet & inches as estimates in discussion. You can always use BSI metric feet ( 30cm ) & inches/yards etc if you want. Klick is verbal shorthand for km also.

The verbal shorthand of kilometre is usually just "k". For example, a 10k race.

 

[AM9]

The verbal shorthand of kilometre is usually just "k". For example, a 10k race.

Actually, 'k' is verbal and written shorthand for 1000 or 'kilo' as in 50k (pounds, dollars, euro), or a 25k crowd as well as a race length. The unit being expressed in its thousands is understood in the context of the conversation.

 

[fairysdad]

Road speed limits would be difficult, but maybe they could be changed when because of road pricing, the majority of vehicles have GPS systems that know the speed limit for the specific road.

The cynic in me sometimes reckons that they'll keep the same number for speed limits but just change the unit it refers to, effectively halving the speed limits across the country overnight...

 

[birchesgreen]

Centi - 100, milli - 1000 etc ( French ), they make sense, just cumbersome to say, which is why we still use feet & inches as estimates in discussion. You can always use BSI metric feet ( 30cm ) & inches/yards etc if you want. Klick is verbal shorthand for km also.

Don't really see how its more cumbersome saying metric units, just what you get used to.

 

[rower40]

My late mother's 1953 MG had exclusively Whitworth threads on all threaded components, EXCEPT the Bosch Spark plugs which were a metric thread.

Road speed limits would be difficult, but maybe they could be changed when because of road pricing, the majority of vehicles have GPS systems that know the speed limit for the specific road.

My car automatically spots roadside signs, and displays the current speed limit on the dash. The limit sign turns red if the car's speed is greater than the limit. But until I took it to the dealer last week to have this fixed, the limit sign was turning red if I went over that number of km/h rather than mph.
Fortunately the Toyota Dealer didn't charge for fixing this.

 

[Factotum]

The verbal shorthand of kilometre is usually just "k". For example, a 10k race.

A lot of outdoor people and the military refer to the kilometre as a click

 

[MattRat]

Of course everyone knows how many inches in a mile , but few know how many cm's in a km

100,000cm. 100cm in a metre, 1,000 metres in a kilometer. 100 times 1000 is 100,000. Millimeters are easy to extrapolate from this also, as 10mm is 1cm, so times 100,000 by 10 to get millimeters, and your get 1,000,000mm.

 

[AM9]

100,000cm. 100cm in a metre, 1,000 metres in a kilometer. 100 times 1000 is 100,000. Millimeters are easy to extrapolate from this also, as 10mm is 1cm, so times 100,000 by 10 to get millimeters, and your get 1,000,000mm.

The dreaded centimetre. The engineer's curse.

 

[InOban]

Quite. That's why that piece of timber is 100×50, not 10×5, and that spanner is 10mm.. And the Ångstrom unit has fallen out of use.

 

[AM9]

Quite. That's why that piece of timber is 100×50, not 10×5, and that spanner is 10mm.. And the Ångstrom unit has fallen out of use.

It never fails to amaze me how educated people* insist in using an obsolete metric measurement yet wouldn't dream of talking about 3.5cm films
* not in measurement terms anyway.

 

[MattRat]

It never fails to amaze me how educated people* insist in using an obsolete metric measurement yet wouldn't dream of talking about 3.5cm films
* not in measurement terms anyway.

Well that would involve some form of conversion (mm to cm), and god forbid we have to do that....

*sarcasm*

 

[AM9]

Well that would involve some form of conversion (mm to cm), and god forbid we have to do that....

*sarcasm*

It was easy when we had real measurements because with our six toes on each foot, ... er, no I've never noticed before that there are only five.