Airships could help house-building take off
The house-building industry is clearly beginning to move off site into factories (“Modular construction,” PE March), which will cause some problems in the future. One of these will be the logistics associated with the off-site production of building modules, and especially their transport to site.
It is obviously beneficial to produce ready-for-occupation modules in a factory, transport them to site, and place them on ready-made foundations. The problem lies in the transport of the prefabricated units from the factory to site. The size of unit that may be transported by road without police escort is 4.9m wide by 9.9m long, which places constraints on the design.
If government plans to have 350,000 homes built annually by 2020 were to materialise and if a substantial proportion of these were to be produced off site, the roads would find it difficult to cope with the extra traffic.
The solution may lie in the cargo airships in advanced stages of development in the US, Russia, Germany and the UK (“Return to the skies,” PE April). Today’s airship development is serious enough to have gained financial support from major companies and government agencies, and the chances of success are claimed to be good.
Further development work would be encouraged if companies such as those engaged on off-site production of building modules were to signal their interest in using airships for transporting their products. It will no doubt take some years for factory production of building modules to reach substantial volumes, by which time the cargo airship may have become a viable transport option.
The transport distances for building modules in the UK would be a maximum of a few hundred miles. On site, the modules would be lowered from the airship straight onto the foundations. Transport by airship would eliminate the constraints on size and weight imposed by road vehicles, and would also be quicker.
In due course, major haulage contractors may find it attractive to invest in airships as an alternative to lorries for transporting heavy and bulky goods.
Generally unsuccessful attempts have periodically been made to revive the airship since the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, but airship technology may now be on the road to success.
Antony Kaye, Ekerö, Sweden
Strength in numbers
You ask if steel is necessary to Britain (Editor’s comment, PE April).
The question is really whether Britain is an independent place or is a part of a wider whole. If we aspire to be totally independent, then yes we need such industries (and many more besides). If we are willing to forgo such independence, provided we can pull our weight in supporting the common wider good, then no!
There is a bigger question that will test Britain’s strategic view of the future: do we want to be part of the EU or not? There are many factors that provide an attractive argument to a decision to leave but there is one not to leave that is, in my mind, overwhelming: Britain needs to be part of a larger free market so that the shortcomings in our product range can be balanced by strength in others without interference or the need to develop complex and politically volatile ‘contracts’ to allow access.
So do we adopt an independent policy and keep steel warts and all, or do we acquiesce to the wider opportunity and only keep the excellence that we can freely compete with on a world market?
In global terms, the rest of the world is engaged in an unbalanced trade war with the Chinese. We need to stay with the rest of the world to stand a chance of toughing it out.
Dr Paul Naylor, Camberley, Surrey
Rail reversal
I think it is time you got the rail double-arrow symbol the right way round (8 Questions, PE April). I think you’ve used it before like this. In the UK we drive on the left as do the trains.
Michael Ross, Exeter
Invest for our future
I was at the physiotherapist the other day where I came across your magazine and an article on diversity. I sympathise with the author and her experiences of sexism.
How things have changed. I graduated in mechanical engineering in 1969 after completing a ‘thin sandwich’ degree sponsored by AEI Turbine Generators (which became GEC Turbine Generators) in Trafford Park, Manchester. Throughout my apprenticeship I experienced no sexism – not even during my six months on the shop floor where I worked in several sections including on a lathe, testing samples in the foundry, balancing rotors and testing turbines for power stations.
I was even allowed to work 12-hour shifts while testing was carried out over several days even though, in those days, the law limited the number of hours that women could work. I played darts daily with the guys on the shop floor and went to several United matches with them.
The only disappointment was not being allowed to participate in sea trials but this was a restriction imposed by the Royal Navy, not by the company.
Maybe the problem is that we no longer have a large manufacturing base due, largely, to the lack of foresight and engineering knowledge of our mainly arty-farty politicians.
Manufacturing our own steel and building our own power stations and ships is the only way to ensure a prosperous and secure future for all.
Angela Mckay
Fall-out from fracking
Mike Farish’s article gives the same misleading impression as the rest of the proponents of fracking that once a well has been drilled that’s the end of it – clear the site and off to the next green field (“Safeguards for shale gas,” PE April).
In all the projects I’ve worked on, the following production parameters are rigorously assessed and form a major part of the planning process: how do the ingredients and additives get to site? Where will the utilities come from and be stored? How is the product despatched and how many/what type of transport movements will be required?
So far, we have seen little or no forecasts from the proponents about any of these topics. The exploratory drill may take only a few weeks but once fracking starts these aspects will have to be in place for years.
Most proposed sites in the UK are semi-rural and not equipped for hundreds of HGV/tanker movements per week.
The water to be pumped in is not recoverable yet we are led to believe there is a water criticality in the UK.
There is no shale gas pipeline network so presumably all product leaves the site in pressurised tankers.
The planning/appeals process should include expert witnesses to challenge the proposal on behalf of those affected by the development – the local residents – so that the full lifetime cycle is assessed.
Ian M Nicholson, Stockport
Facts of life in the EU
R Bullen states that there are no facts on which to base a decision on which way to vote in the EU referendum (Letters, PE April).
What concerns most people is population growth. The prime minister was well aware of this and the subject was the main focus of his negotiations with the EU which failed miserably on this score, since when the debate has been steered in the direction of scare stories about the dire consequences if we leave. As Bullen says, there are no facts to back up these claims.
Why not look at the problem the other way round with facts and first-hand experience of what happens if we vote to stay in the EU?
We know that we cannot control who comes into the country if they hold an EU passport. We also know that the EU is hell bent on expanding its empire in east Europe and Turkey. It is probable that the non-EU immigrants in Europe will, in time, acquire citizenship and a passport. The potential for future population growth in the UK is alarming.
We know that the EU is an undemocratic organisation run by people whom we cannot vote out of power. Corruption is rife and the organisation has failed year after year to get its accounts approved by its auditors. The share of trade that the EU enjoys is declining.
We know that the euro was a catastrophic mistake that is causing misery in southern Europe. The EU leaders have no answer to the problem that is acceptable to all the countries involved, and we can expect more crises when the referendum is over.
It is all very well for the big bosses to promote staying in, but how many of them travel to work by normal priced fares on public transport? How many rely on the NHS and state schools? How many have housing problems or have concerns as to how their offspring will get on to the housing ladder? Have they spoken to their smaller brethren who don’t have the resources to cope with the EU regulations?
If people want to live in an overcrowded island anchored to a failing governing body that has no intention of revising its disastrous policies for which we have the facts, then the answer is simple. Any other considerations pale into insignificance.
Royston Edwards, Cobham, Surrey
Unwarranted suspicions
I found your article “Engineers’ traits ‘linked to terrorism’” disturbing, to say the least (News, PE April).
PE essentially published a bogeyman article about how Muslim engineers feature highly in terrorist groups (“dramatically over-represented”) without mentioning the obvious fact of tens of thousands of non-Muslim engineers working in the British arms trade, the fruits of whose labour rain terror on millions of innocent civilians. These are no less than acts of terrorism as well, in my opinion.
So before anyone gets troubled and thinks they might need to keep an eye on their Muslim colleagues, compared to the amount of terror created by non-Muslim engineers, Muslim engineers could well be the least likely group of engineers to be involved in terrorism.
What do our Muslim engineering colleagues think about this article?
Bill Boggia, Ballater, Aberdeenshire
What made Gresley great
Some of Sir Nigel Gresley’s greatest achievements were his express passenger locomotives and the 126mph record of A4 Mallard and the earlier first authenticated 100mph run by Flying Scotsman, as you state (Archive, PE April). But the choice of the accompanying photograph is surprising.
The photograph is of LNER 10000, his one-off 1929 experimental 4-6-4 high-pressure water-tube boilered W1 class, referred to as the “hush-hush” due to its secrecy (it never carried a name). Following extensive testing and modification, it was probably one of Gresley’s greatest failures as it never performed as expected and was later converted back with a conventional-type boiler.
What Gresley is rarely remembered for are his superb designs of passenger rolling stock and his pioneering work on vehicle articulation, used for the Silver Jubilee express service and his suburban sets, something never widely adopted on UK railways apart from on the Docklands Light Railway and Tyne and Wear Metro, and Eurostar, but that was based on a French TGV.
Steve Beck, Rainham, Kent
But Aspinall had the edge
Sir Nigel Gresley trained with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway under Sir John Aspinall (Archive, PE April). The pupil did not eclipse his master.
Gresley’s three-cylinder conjugated valve gear was prone to wear and not practical mechanically. Similar to the failure of Mallard on 8 June 1948, Mallard also failed on 3 July 1938 when it reached 126mph downhill and could not make the return journey due to bearing failure. The recent supposed replica of Gresley’s P2 does not use his conjugated valve gear.
Sir William Stanier FRS built four-cylinder locomotives, a simpler mechanical solution.
Aspinall’s Atlantics were built for speed. They had the largest boiler (positioned high to minimise lateral loads on the track) at that time and one had the first superheater to be fitted to a British loco. They had 7ft 3in diameter driving wheels resulting in gearing 8% higher than the Great Western’s City of Truro.
Aspinall conducted many experiments on trains with a dynamometer car. On 15 July 1899, an Atlantic, pulling a test train, left Liverpool Exchange station for Southport and ran at 100mph. This was five years before the City of Truro.
The journey from Liverpool Exchange to Southport is 18.5 miles. There are speed restrictions until Waterloo Station, five miles from Liverpool. The train left Exchange station at 2:51pm and passed milepost 17 at 3:03.75pm. The time therefore to 17 miles was 12.75 minutes, an average of exactly 80mph. It is well-nigh impossible to envisage a scenario in which the train did not reach 100mph.
Not content with this, Aspinall completed the electrification of the line in 1904, the first mainline electrification in the UK.
The London and North Eastern Railway and Gresley had an excellent public relations department, continuing now with the Gresley Society.
Francis Brian Cowell, Hucclecote, Gloucester