Episode 171: The Morpeth Curve

a speed-restricted curve in the middle of a high speed main line? what could possibly go wrong DONATE TO LUTHERAN SETTLEMENT HOUSE: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1J0GSDKBO4TLV/ref=hz_ls_biz_ex check out our TOUR (new dates added!):April 29: New York Cityhttps://sonyhall.com/events/well-theres-your-problem/?id=18162April 30: Somerville Mass (SOLD OUT!)https://artsatthearmory.org/events/bill-blumenreich-presents-well-theres-your-problem-podcast-2/May 1: Somerville Mass (SOLD OUT!)https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/wtyp/May 2: New York City (SOLD OUT!)https://www.ticketweb.com/event/well-theres-your-problem-sony-hall-tickets/13918973May 3: Washington DChttps://www.unionstagepresents.com/shows/well-theres-your-problem-podcast/May 4: Philadelphia, PAhttps://concerts.livenation.com/well-theres-your-problem-podcast-philadelphia-pennsylvania-05-04-2025/event/0200615211C27E44 see gareth on RAILNATTER: https://www.youtube.com/@GarethDennisTVOur Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ Send us stuff! our address:Well There's Your Podcasting CompanyPO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00November Kelly?

  More, more, more, more path, more problems.

• 0:02Liam McAnderson?

  More path, more problem.

• 0:03November Kelly?

  This is not funny, but I am gonna do it again and you're gonna have to react to it again, so.

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was about to say, yeah. Nova, tell us about, what's, what's been fucking you up today? If you can share.

• 0:16November Kelly?

  So, so I have moved house. It's, it's done. There are some problems with the new place. In the form of like mold and stuff.

• 0:28November Kelly?

  Yeah, this is the thing. What I tried to do is I tried to spend more money to rent a nicer place for a year. Just kind of push the boats out thing, so I'm not gonna have to worry about it. Spend a year here, then I can start stressing about something. Yeah, I forgot that I live here. And so what I got instead was like a regularly shit flat, but expensive. And in the, in the course of like cutting up boxes for recycling, because when you move, you have a lot of boxes. I managed to, like, if you can see here.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Not the cardboard cut.

• 1:00November Kelly?

  Take this finger off. And that was, that was fine, except today, because no food in the house, we got Uber Eats in. And the guy's like, hey, can you come up? Because I don't feel like walking down to your flat. And I'm like, yeah, sure, whatever. Because I'm a friend of the workers. Open the door, bend my finger too far. Blood everywhere.

• 1:22November Kelly?

  One of my new neighbors comes down, is making conversation. I'm dripping blood on like people's Amazon packages.

• 1:30November Kelly?

  Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's great.

• 1:33Liam McAnderson?

  Metal, buddy.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  You gotta show dominance when you move in.

• 1:37November Kelly?

  That's true. That is true. I've bled on this place twice. I've been here less than a week.

• 1:43November Kelly?

  And, you know, one thing I will say is because the decor is very landlord, because it's a rental. A lot of white carpets and you haven't bled until you've bled. Yeah, on a white carpet that you don't own. That's, that's gonna be an awkward sort of.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Did they, did they bring furniture to you, by the way? Did they bring back some furniture?

• 2:05November Kelly?

  They're doing that when I get back from the live show. So like the Tuesday, I'm probably gonna have a bed back. Because what, what they did was I rented, yeah, I rented a two bed. And the day before I moved in, the landlord's like, hey, we took half the furniture out because we were trying to sell it at the same time as rent it. And we had the furniture there to like, advertise it. So I had to get kind of legal on them. And so now they're they're sort of like response to that as well. We'll put one of the beds, you know, back in. So.

• 2:40Justin Roczniak?

  We'll give you half a bed. Yeah. Yeah. Give you a give, give you the, the front half of the bed.

• 2:46Liam McAnderson?

  We're not gonna tell you what half of this.

• 2:47November Kelly?

  Exactly. I'm gonna have to get back to them with, okay, where's the other one? And yeah, like, why is there so much fucking mold in here? So yeah, it's, it's, it's great. It's been going great. I hope that the collection of toxic mold spores currently piloting my body are still good at podcasting.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Well, if your flu game was anything to go by for the last episode of my life.

• 3:13November Kelly?

  Yeah, we're gonna be fine. Fingers crossed. Yeah.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  That was a fun episode. People have enjoyed that, the Tom episode. That's gone down. That seems to have gone down very well.

• 3:21November Kelly?

  One, one other thing I will note is because of the new mixer, I have like fader, like slides, I have to mix the drops down myself manually. So if you want the news to fade out, I have to do.

• 3:39Justin Roczniak?

  Oh. Do you have like, you have like a lever with like a really nice smooth motion?

• 3:43November Kelly?

  It is really smooth, but if I bring it back up too quickly.

• 3:49November Kelly?

  So I have to remember to turn the thing off.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 3:52November Kelly?

  It's like, it's gonna be a whole thing.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  That is, that is, that is some, some mental effort. Yeah.

• 3:57November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 3:58Justin Roczniak?

  I did some volunteer work at Fairfax County Public Access Television when I was in high school and I got a, I got to run the camera switcher and it had a transition lever, like you transition between two different tel, uh, inputs.

• 4:12November Kelly?

  I've got one of those too.

• 4:14Justin Roczniak?

  That lever was so smooth.

• 4:16November Kelly?

  Nice.

• 4:16Justin Roczniak?

  It was incredible.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  No, I'm expected to lift up the box with like,

• 4:21November Kelly?

  I'm not moving this fucking thing.

• 4:25November Kelly?

  No, I'm not touching this. I installed it. I got it working well enough. There is theoretically a kind of a multi-track thing that I can do so that you guys hear a process recording and what's recorded isn't. But I don't want to do that. That's too much work. So

• 4:43Liam McAnderson?

  Fair enough.

• 4:44November Kelly?

  We just go with this and see how it works. Should we do a sync point?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:47Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I was gonna, I was waiting for a break in the conversation to mention.

• 4:51November Kelly?

  Sorry, sorry.

• 4:53Justin Roczniak?

  We're gonna do three, two, one, mark.

• 4:55November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Justin Roczniak?

  That's three, two, one, mark. Okay, hello, and welcome to Well, There's Your Problem.

• 5:04November Kelly?

  Oh, my God.

• 5:04Justin Roczniak?

  It's a podcast about engineering disasters.

• 5:07Speaker 02

  At PowerPoint.

• 5:07Justin Roczniak?

  Which in and of itself is a disaster.

• 5:13Justin Roczniak?

  With slides. I'm Justin Rosneck. I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go.

• 5:19November Kelly?

  I am November Kelly. I'm the person who's talking now. My pronouns are she and her. Yay, Liam.

• 5:23Liam McAnderson?

  Yay, Liam. Hi, I'm Liam McAnderson. My pronouns are he, him, and fuck Microsoft. With us is our fourth, I don't know what you are, man. Introduce yourself.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  I'm the seventh or possibly eighth co-host. Yeah, my name is Gareth Dennis. My pronouns are he and him.

• 5:40November Kelly?

  Nice. Also, if I sound different this episode, it's because I have a new mixer, which I hope to God is working. There will be some adventures with the drops if I try and get them to work.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. And actually, yeah, in front of us right now, I have to do this bit because it's, I've created something.

• 5:55November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's a beautiful cottage, 3,500 PCM. It's got, it's got a new extension.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, someone has put some train in a garden.

• 6:04Justin Roczniak?

  Thomas comes to breakfast type situation.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 6:08November Kelly?

  I really appreciate the free hivers, hivers vests, where there's some like source of viz.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  You're like the little boob tube, kind of crop top type situation. Yeah.

• 6:17November Kelly?

  That's quite cunty. Yeah, there's some like crop type.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  The cop with the old fashioned like bobby hat and the little cunty sort of boob tube type hivers. Yeah, it's.

• 6:29November Kelly?

  Do they still make those? Please say yes. I badly need to see like actual, actual retro reflexive like vest that stops at the tits. Yeah.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  So here's the thing. I have been searching for one of these for years. I have a BR vintage gilet, but I desperately want the BR vintage crop top and I have yet to successfully find one. My hope continues.

• 6:54November Kelly?

  Getting like beach body ready with.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get the dad bod hangs out underneath the boot tube. It's beautiful. I quite like that. Just the guy in a T shirt stood on the side of a Mark III coach in, in, in the, in the, the right of shot here.

• 7:08November Kelly?

  Hmm. I don't even know if that's a T shirt. I think that might predate T shirts. That might be a man in like shirt sleeve order, you know?

• 7:16November Kelly?

  With a hairline they don't make in this country anymore.

• 7:19Justin Roczniak?

  I'm just imagining all these guys, you know, they, they, they, they cut out, they just cut off the sleeves of like orange T shirts and turn them into tank tops.

• 7:27Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Is the, is the house supposed to look like this?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  And, uh, no, no, it's not supposed to have these in it.

• 7:35Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, dear. Oh, okay.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Those are an unnecessary and indeed unwanted addition and we'll explain why.

• 7:40Liam McAnderson?

  Standing on the side of a train, isn't he? Oh, that's very bad.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Yes. And the train's also really mucky.

• 7:45November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's, it's, well, it's done some like, you know, landscaping is what it's done.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. The garden is a different shape to what the garden was before as well. Um, I like this picture. It's quite funny to me. Um,

• 7:57November Kelly?

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  And we're going to explain why, uh, this has happened. But first we have announcements.

• 8:03November Kelly?

  We do.

• 8:04Justin Roczniak?

  We do. We do have announcements, announcements, announce.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. What was the song we decided last time?

• 8:11November Kelly?

  I don't, I don't remember. That, that one's stored on the old mixer. People think it was just me making those noises, but no, it was a complex program.

• 8:19Justin Roczniak?

  Um, we still, we still are on tour next year.

• 8:24November Kelly?

  Yes.

• 8:24Justin Roczniak?

  We've sold a lot of tickets.

• 8:26Liam McAnderson?

  But we need to sell more, please.

• 8:28November Kelly?

  Yeah, weirdly, the place where we need to sell more is New York City, which I understand.

• 8:32Liam McAnderson?

  New York City.

• 8:34November Kelly?

  New York City, but I understand that there's a lot of people in New York City and some of them aren't coming to the live shows, which they should do. They should buy tickets now at the links in the description.

• 8:48Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, we have, uh, Sony Hall. Uh, we still have tickets available for the April 29th show there.

• 8:56November Kelly?

  Sony Hall, are we allowed to call ourselves Broadway performers after that?

• 9:00Liam McAnderson?

  I'm going to anyway.

• 9:02November Kelly?

  Broadway performer, plane crash survivor, uh, other qualities.

• 9:07Justin Roczniak?

  It was formerly a Broadway theater, but it is no longer.

• 9:11November Kelly?

  Did they move it? Did they pick it up and move it? De-consecrating the Broadway theater? They take the secondary relic of Judy Garland out of it?

• 9:21Justin Roczniak?

  It is essentially a de-consecration situation. Yeah.

• 9:24November Kelly?

  Fuck.

• 9:25Justin Roczniak?

  Um, to the best of my knowledge.

• 9:27November Kelly?

  Can I describe myself?

• 9:28Justin Roczniak?

  Doing, you know, musical theater there. It's not a Broadway theater.

• 9:32November Kelly?

  What if I say, what if I do a song? What if I put a song in the show?

• 9:36Liam McAnderson?

  We're gonna say.

• 9:36Justin Roczniak?

  If we, if we hire, if we hire Lin-Manuel Miranda to, well, there's your problem.

• 9:42November Kelly?

  Do some raps about the.

• 9:45Liam McAnderson?

  The Six to Six Days of Sodom for the hip hop opera on ice. Yes. Roz, you could sing the, the, uh, what, what's the?

• 9:53Justin Roczniak?

  The Gilbert and Sullivan opera. The major general song.

• 9:57Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Justin Roczniak?

  Just do the major general song.

• 9:59November Kelly?

  Obviously, like, like a boxing match, we'll begin each show by with a sort of mandatory singing of the National Anthem.

• 10:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 10:07Liam McAnderson?

  I think that'd be very funny to do.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Has, so, so that, so that's New York. How's the Fillmore looking? Have, has it been filled more?

• 10:14Liam McAnderson?

  It has been Fillmore, but keep filling it. We need you to keep filling it.

• 10:17Justin Roczniak?

  You still gotta keep filling the Fillmore. Yeah. There's still a lot of tickets there. Um, unfortunately, both Somerville shows sold out because I don't know, people in New England are freaks.

• 10:29Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 10:32November Kelly?

  It's just, you give them something to do in summer and in the depths of a New England winter, they'll, they'll, you know, pay for anything, you know? It's what we're selling them is a warm evening indoors, you know?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Some hope.

• 10:45Justin Roczniak?

  So there is also still tickets available in Washington DC.

• 10:51November Kelly?

  Yeah, federal surveillance agents, please make your way to the historic, I forget the name of the theater.

• 10:58Justin Roczniak?

  It's a, it's, it's, it's not a historic theater. It was a trolley car barn.

• 11:03Liam McAnderson?

  And we're gonna get it. We're gonna get, I assume some sort of a in-depth building tour.

• 11:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. If you're, if you're in the like the, uh, the marine barracks that are adjacent to it, um, you know, buy some tickets because it's right there. I'll see if I can get crayons in the bar menu.

• 11:22November Kelly?

  Just a little martini with a crayon sticking out of it.

• 11:26Liam McAnderson?

  It's like what Applebee's did, the Mountain Dew martini with the, with the buffalo wild wings. They have a Dorito, uh, the Dorito, what's that called garnish?

• 11:36November Kelly?

  Hmm. Yeah, we, we will be searching people on the door to make sure that they don't have any charms with them. It will be, it will be marine safe, you know, like some places that some movies have like an autism friendly screening of stuff. This will be a marine friendly show.

• 11:50Justin Roczniak?

  It will be very marine friendly. If you, if you are a marine, we will not discriminate.

• 11:56Liam McAnderson?

  I found a recipe for a Cheetos Mountain Dew mule.

• 11:59November Kelly?

  Oh God, that's, that's not Marines. That's cavalry scout. That's I.

• 12:05Liam McAnderson?

  This is, I am a diseased human being. Hold up. Uh, there you go. More smiles with every bite.com.

• 12:12November Kelly?

  I, I, I look forward to like playing every possible military town. I look forward to playing Virginia Beach. And we just, we just get the seals in, you know?

• 12:23Liam McAnderson?

  Hopefully they don't say anything about starting a conk, whatever.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Step, step one, a slice of lime dusted with crushed Cheetos to garnish.

• 12:34Justin Roczniak?

  You're dangerously close to revealing our secret Langley show.

• 12:39November Kelly?

  Oh yeah. I mean, they'll get us back in there for that.

• 12:43Justin Roczniak?

  Handsomely.

• 12:44November Kelly?

  Yeah, we're just, we're doing a tour, but it's, it's like Langley Falls, Fort, uh, Fort Meade, Fort Belvoir. You know, nowhere else. Yeah.

• 12:54Liam McAnderson?

  I, uh, I, I do like the idea of that, of like them like hustling us through the whatever, uh, Pentagon Burger King.

• 13:01November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Liam McAnderson?

  We got you onion rings. That's all you get.

• 13:07Justin Roczniak?

  So anyway, yeah.

• 13:08Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 13:09Justin Roczniak?

  East Coast tour is happening. Buy tickets, especially in Philadelphia, because again, we need to fill more seats in the Fillmore. You bought enough tickets that it's early to say, but another tour will probably follow in a different geographical location.

• 13:26November Kelly?

  This is the thing, if you can't make it to the East Coast and but you still want to see us, then your ability to like. Well, yeah, that's it. But your ability to either travel to it or encourage people who are local to buy tickets will directly impact our likelihood of coming to your location. So, you know, put your thumb on the scales there, please.

• 13:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 13:46November Kelly?

  Cause I want to see more of the these United States, you know?

• 13:49Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Never better time to go to Duluth, Minnesota.

• 13:55November Kelly?

  I'm, I think there have been better times, given the news about the shit that's happening to trans women in Minnesota lately. I listen.

• 14:02Justin Roczniak?

  Minneapolis, they're, they're, they're not as friendly there.

• 14:05November Kelly?

  Okay. Well, either way, if anybody tries to get Minnesota nice with me, I'm going to try and get Tom to do security for me.

• 14:12Liam McAnderson?

  That's fair.

• 14:13November Kelly?

  Just get like choke slammed onto some light rail tracks, you know?

• 14:16Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. All right. That was the announcements.

• 14:20Liam McAnderson?

  You forgot my announcement.

• 14:21November Kelly?

  You have an announcement.

• 14:22Liam McAnderson?

  An announcement, you do.

• 14:23Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, you do have an announcement.

• 14:25Liam McAnderson?

  Asshole.

• 14:26November Kelly?

  Sorry.

• 14:27Liam McAnderson?

  Hey, so I know that I just called one of my colleagues an asshole on the air, but have you considered donating toys? Uh, so the place I work, Lutheran Settlement House, uh, I, I am in charge of the, oh God, I don't know if I'm in charge, but they, they tell me that I'm in charge of the toy drive.

• 14:44November Kelly?

  You're like a boy king.

• 14:46Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh God, I, with my trusted advisor. So I'm sure will never do anything to me.

• 14:52Liam McAnderson?

  So yeah, I work at a place that, uh, does domestic violence counseling that works with the homeless population that works with families in crisis. Uh, and we need your help, uh, the same as we do every year. Uh, we have, we are undertaking the largest, uh, uh, how would I say this toy distribution system we've ever, we've ever done. We're really proud of it. Uh, uh, so please donate that. And a second list, if you hate children, but love old people. We are also collecting donations for our pantry and our senior center so that we can, which is where I do spend a lot of my time in the senior center, helping, helping my beloved seniors

• 15:33Liam McAnderson?

  not get phone scammed and listening to them just complain at each other. It's amazing. I love old people.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  That is all of their time, avoiding scams.

• 15:42Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. And they're just like, oh, will you like, my favorite thing is it's gotten out that I'm pretty good with technology and they're just like, Liam will fix your phone. And I'm just, it's the most cracked thing you've ever seen. I'm just like, I need you to, to take this and chuck it into the Delaware.

• 15:58Liam McAnderson?

  No, no, because your phone's mostly in one piece. Well, that's true. No, I just have. I've never seen. I have other, I have other old people problems with my phone. I know. I've seen your high vis keyboard with your low vis back. It just doesn't make any sense, Roz. Oh my God.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  This is a new thing that we're going to discuss every episode, isn't it? How stressed you are by Roz's phone?

• 16:19Liam McAnderson?

  You guys, well, Nova also, I think, as a walking tech bay herself.

• 16:24November Kelly?

  I, those hard drives, they survived. They made the trip.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, they're still inside the case of your computer.

• 16:32November Kelly?

  I very carefully wrapped that case.

• 16:34Liam McAnderson?

  Mark for me?

• 16:35November Kelly?

  I don't know what any of those words mean. I, I took, I took this computer. I wrapped it very gently in bubble wrap. I put it in the back of a hire car and I, I very kindly got it driven over to the new place. I unplugged it. I replugged it. It's, it's all good. It's fine. It works. So no dramas, please do not like, like everything is, okay, make some noises, right? But that's fine. So do I. It's called getting old, you know? But we're not in the business of shaming my computer for whatever she does, you know? But that's, those are her choices.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  There's only one loser who has RGB on his computer and that is me. So.

• 17:16November Kelly?

  I have, I have hella RGB on the new mixer. It's not optional. It looks like a.

• 17:20Liam McAnderson?

  I have a limited amount of RGB on my desktop.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Do you remember when Trump was in court and his lawyer had a had a Republic of Gamers laptop with the RGB?

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Just add the judge.

• 17:33Liam McAnderson?

  My, when we got my wife's engagement ring design, thank you patrons, they used Razer gaming laptops to run CAD.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  I mean, why do you have?

• 17:46Liam McAnderson?

  The woman, the designer takes out this like, you know, colossal gaming laptop and sort of slams it down on the desk. I'm just like, ah, wow. I haven't, yeah, yeah. This is for Leo.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So we should, we've derailed ourselves spectacularly. We've not even reached the.

• 18:05Justin Roczniak?

  Someone's garden.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've, we've, we're still in the garden. We need to escape the garden and talk about the doggone news.

• 18:11Justin Roczniak?

  The, the, the doggone news. Yeah.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  Doggone news.

• 18:15Justin Roczniak?

  The gosh darn news.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Sorry, Devin, you don't have to edit the car and again this time. Thanks for doing the last time. It was very funny.

• 18:24November Kelly?

  I have to do, I have to fade that down manually, by the way, I hope you realize.

• 18:30Justin Roczniak?

  Let's talk about Matt Gaetz.

• 18:32November Kelly?

  Hmm. The, the sort of highly pompadour'd man with a penchant for Venmo-ing underage girls.

• 18:43Justin Roczniak?

  Maybe he was just buying, buying them McDonald's, you know?

• 18:46November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:47Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, definitely not sex crimes.

• 18:49November Kelly?

  With the little Venmo notes that say like, for, for being my cool friend or whatever.

• 18:57November Kelly?

  Yeah. So he, he was Trump's first pick for Attorney General to trigger the libs and also to get out ahead of this like congressional ethics investigation, which was looking into the Venmo-ing. And then the Venmo stuff leaked again. And he has now taken his name out of consideration for Attorney General because like, everybody in Congress hated him. Even the MAGA people hated him. So.

• 19:22Justin Roczniak?

  I was about to say, it was like really well known. This guy was like an insane sex pest.

• 19:27Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we knew that a while ago.

• 19:30November Kelly?

  Yeah, just kind of this back, this backcombed nonce was like. You know, really in consideration for the job of like, you know, America's senior like chief legal officer.

• 19:41Justin Roczniak?

  He's a very square head.

• 19:45November Kelly?

  He looks so wrong.

• 19:46Liam McAnderson?

  They all look like freaks, dude.

• 19:47November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, no, for real.

• 19:49Liam McAnderson?

  I know that I also look weird, but like, nah.

• 19:51November Kelly?

  Different kinds of weird.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  You know, AI generated.

• 19:55Justin Roczniak?

  I come from a, I come from a family of square heads, but this guy, this guy's a square head.

• 20:02November Kelly?

  Yeah, the back homing is really not doing him any favors and I don't know why he, why he does that, you know?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  As, as a man with an enormous forehead and an enormous chin, I, I've made different decisions about what I would do with my head.

• 20:16November Kelly?

  He has like a, a, a hairline, like a staple. It's remarkable.

• 20:21Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, it's just, huh, huh, yep.

• 20:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, nonce.

• 20:25Liam McAnderson?

  Like a soccer goal, yeah.

• 20:27November Kelly?

  Hmm, like a, like a square bracket. It's, it's really quite something.

• 20:31Justin Roczniak?

  It, it, it, it looks like a parody of a Republican congressperson.

• 20:36November Kelly?

  Hmm, yeah, I, I, I feel increasingly, and I, I've been thinking this too about Nancy Mace, the, um, uh,

• 20:42Liam McAnderson?

  What a vile human being.

• 20:44November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the representative who's like going, uh, going all in on transphobia, that I feel like more and more I'm, I'm living in a world that has been illustrated by, uh, Garth Ennis. Because all of these motherfuckers look like preacher characters. It's, it's like unnerving to at this point. And I, I, I know it's a case of like, yeah, they look like the thing because the thing is like drawn and, and written in imitation of people like them, but still. You know, I, I, this stuff was supposed to be exaggerated, right?

• 21:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 21:16Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 21:16Justin Roczniak?

  I mean, the other thing is, I'm, I'm wondering exactly how this is gonna, you know, go over with the MAGA crowd, you know, since, or especially the Q crowd.

• 21:24November Kelly?

  It's the steal. This is the steal. We are starting the steal right now.

• 21:28Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, we gotta do it.

• 21:29November Kelly?

  Um, I mean, it's not only, it's not only Gates, right? The, the nominee for Secretary of Defense is this guy Pete Hegseth, who Trump knows from.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Also a sex pest.

• 21:37November Kelly?

  Yeah, also a sex pest, like allegedly full on rapist, um, but who, uh, Trump recognizes from being a part-time host on Fox and Friends.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 21:49November Kelly?

  And he was like, I don't know, like an infantry captain or something. Um, and who's, who's deal is like, oh, we're going to take women out of combat roles. And we're going to like de workify the military. And the whole like NatSec ghoul establishment is like, well, obviously the rapes are fine, but I object to his policy of like, not knowing what he's doing in a managerial sense, you know? Yes. And so, so, you know, fingers crossed for the steel. Shout out to the, the America's horrifying, blood drenched genocidal institutions. Because, uh, you know, disrupting them in this way is somehow worse. Yeah.

• 22:26Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 22:26November Kelly?

  And I still can't believe she fucking lost.

• 22:31Justin Roczniak?

  Speaking of genocidal institutions.

• 22:37November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's formal now. Um, arrest this man.

• 22:41Liam McAnderson?

  Going to hell.

• 22:42November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 22:42Justin Roczniak?

  The, uh, the, the, the International Criminal Court, I almost said the Interstate Commerce Commission. The International Criminal Court.

• 22:50November Kelly?

  The Better Business Bureau.

• 22:52Liam McAnderson?

  They issued a warrant for the arrest.

• 22:56Justin Roczniak?

  Has issued the war warrant for the arrest of Benny from Cheltenham High School.

• 23:01November Kelly?

  Mm hmm. While, while you were cheering, uh, go Israel or go Palestine, I was cheering, go Robert Mueller and the rule of law.

• 23:10Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly.

• 23:12November Kelly?

  International humanitarian law has come good, sort of. Um, and they've, they've issued two or three arrest warrants. Um, one for Netanyahu, one for Yoav Galant. Um, and then one for Mohammed Daif, who is not like officially dead. The other two Hamas guys they were going to charge are officially dead, which kind of limits their ability to, you know, charge them with anything.

• 23:36Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that, that's, that's, that's quitters talk. You, you, you look at average, I know. I mean, this is.

• 23:42November Kelly?

  Like.

• 23:43Justin Roczniak?

  There's historical precedent.

• 23:44November Kelly?

  Scooping the remains of a guy who was killed in an airstrike that blew up three hospitals and collateral damage into the box in The Hague. To be like.

• 23:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I'd, I'd make a joke about collecting body parts into bags and putting them on the chair, but.

• 23:59November Kelly?

  Seen it multiple times.

• 24:01Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I've seen too many pictures of that, but I mean.

• 24:04November Kelly?

  Yeah, well, I mean, listen, Inshallah, you know, someday Benjamin Netanyahu's body parts are gonna get scooped into something. But for the moment, the the sort of like implications of this are that so every every state that's party to the International Criminal Court statute is like obliged to arrest him and if they like, you know, enter their state. The US is not a party to the ICC. So you can go to you can go to the US, you can go to Russia. But like anywhere in the European Union or in the UK. And like we've seen different states have different approaches. But like ultimately, the the line is, you know, we don't like it, but we're gonna have to go along with it. Right. Because it's like

• 24:47Justin Roczniak?

  Didn't Kyrstarmer say, nah, I'm not gonna arrest him?

• 24:50November Kelly?

  He didn't go that far. He just kind of prevaricated. The line here is I'm not gonna deal in hypotheticals, which is bullshit. He's he is a lawyer. He's a human rights lawyer. He knows better. But yeah, that's that's the line pathetic as it is. He can only triangulate. That's he is only capable of that now. Yeah, it was interesting seeing like it has implications for it. It makes it that much harder for for like the UK to continue to justify selling arms to Israel. Like it makes that much more difficult. I mean, I say much more difficult, marginally more difficult.

• 25:21Justin Roczniak?

  Embarrassing at the very least.

• 25:23November Kelly?

  Exactly. And then, yeah, yeah. So that's so that's something. Yeah, it's kind of like, all of this IHL stuff has been like, I say this as someone with like an interest in the law. It's you see a lot of legal people be like, well, it's it's not nothing, right? And it's like, well, that's true. But when you look at the actual kind of like facts on the ground of what Israel is doing and has done for a year plus at this point, not to mention, you know, decades before this. Yeah. It, you know, it's grossly inadequate. And of course, the ICC has no way of enforcing this, and it can have none. The genocide is still happening. And it's it's only getting more and more dire for people in Palestine right now.

• 26:05November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah. And I think the thing is, right, the US is very clear that it has no interest in using the ICC except as a means of like disciplining it. It's its enemies when it's convenient.

• 26:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, right.

• 26:17November Kelly?

  And the fact that the ICC has now taken action against a US ally is important in itself.

• 26:23November Kelly?

  We will see what comes of this in the long run, but I don't look to this to have any kind of like gross effect on like the genocide. Or even on Israel necessarily, I think this is one of the ones where you have to look at it as a long game. And the sort of punishment such as it is, is you don't get to go shopping in like Paris anymore.

• 26:46Justin Roczniak?

  I I was gonna say, I mean, if he's making a state visit to one of the few countries he's still allowed to go to. They they better do a lot of maintenance on whatever plane he's going on, because that's gonna be a real real short list of alternate airports if there's a problem.

• 27:02November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:04Liam McAnderson?

  Gander immediately arrested, yeah.

• 27:06November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, good job. Israel has a free and un- yeah, it's a good job. Israel has a free and unmolested supply chain for these things right now.

• 27:15November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Wouldn't it be a shame if their supply of Boeing components?

• 27:20November Kelly?

  No, no, no, keep keep them on the Boeing parts and give them all the newest ones.

• 27:27November Kelly?

  Midair on the way to DC, little red triangle appears on one of the passion passenger hatches, you know?

• 27:33Justin Roczniak?

  What is the Israeli state aircraft?

• 27:36November Kelly?

  Um, so they have one. It's a seven four seven. It has it has a stupid name like the wing of Zion or something.

• 27:44Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, you're fucking kidding me.

• 27:46Justin Roczniak?

  You need two wings.

• 27:47November Kelly?

  Yeah, it is. It is the wing of Zion. It is a Boeing seven six seven, and it belongs to the Israeli Air Force. Technically, I guess, depending on how you counted, it's the Israeli Air Force plane that's done either the most or fewest war crimes. So, you know.

• 28:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Hey, see, that's that's the problem there. They got one of the good Boeings.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a shame. That's a real shame.

• 28:10November Kelly?

  I think, I think, listen, we just got to get in now.

• 28:14November Kelly?

  You know, if you're if you're looking at trying to change the system from within, you get a job at Boeing. You you work your way up to the kind of like international, like government procurement side. And you try as hard as you can to get them a brand new plane. You really sell that to them.

• 28:31Justin Roczniak?

  If you're making spare parts, if you're making spare parts for a 767, isn't that like Spirit Aero Systems or something? I don't, I don't understand the supply chain here.

• 28:40Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I don't think any of us do. I think that's on purpose.

• 28:43Justin Roczniak?

  That's a good point. Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, jeez.

• 28:46November Kelly?

  Well, I mean, listen, we're not going to see them in the Hague. I do think it would be funny if you had some kind of paperwork mix up. And Matt Gaetz ends up in the Hague and Benjamin Netanyahu ends up in like federal pedophile lockup.

• 29:00November Kelly?

  In like segregation, in like some federal correctional institution. I think that would be funny.

• 29:07Justin Roczniak?

  Speaking of people who should go to the Hague.

• 29:10Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, boy.

• 29:10Justin Roczniak?

  I have one further news item.

• 29:13November Kelly?

  Fully cut you off there.

• 29:15Justin Roczniak?

  They're still fundraising.

• 29:16November Kelly?

  Jesus fucking Christ.

• 29:18Liam McAnderson?

  Did you send this?

• 29:20Justin Roczniak?

  I have never replied in anger to a fundraising text before, but I did reply in anger to this one. Which was asking me to sign a thank you card for Kamala Harris. You're an amazing campaign.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 29:39November Kelly?

  No, that's, that's, that's

• 29:41Justin Roczniak?

  Unreal.

• 29:41November Kelly?

  Beyond insulting. Jesus Christ.

• 29:45Justin Roczniak?

  I, I don't know what I want to say.

• 29:49November Kelly?

  No.

• 29:51November Kelly?

  You want to say some things that maybe we can't say. And I think I've already like, I'm touching the limit of that with some of the Netanyahu stuff, to be honest. We'll let Devon make a judgment on that.

• 30:02Justin Roczniak?

  It's, it's difficult to go through an election like that. And then they have, they have the goddamn, they have the gall to ask you to sign a thank you card.

• 30:15November Kelly?

  What, like, I halfway understand soliciting donations because they're badly in debt because they were raising no money. But like, the, what does the thank you card do? Like, what?

• 30:27Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know.

• 30:28November Kelly?

  Okay, okay.

• 30:30Justin Roczniak?

  I somehow wound up on the Trump fundraising list as well. They also asked me to sign a thank you card.

• 30:36Liam McAnderson?

  For what? He doesn't know how to read.

• 30:40Justin Roczniak?

  No, if I, if I really wanted to thank Trump, I would send him a burger.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Yes, that's it.

• 30:45November Kelly?

  This is, this is the saddest thing about it is aside from all the other things, a perfectly good fast food job passes Donald Trump's life by again, you know?

• 30:54Justin Roczniak?

  I was about to say.

• 30:55November Kelly?

  He's not gonna get to do it. He has to be president for another four years instead of like.

• 30:58Liam McAnderson?

  He doesn't want to do it. He's, he was.

• 31:00November Kelly?

  Being a line cook.

• 31:01Liam McAnderson?

  He was born to be a winning contestant on RuPaul's Drag Race and fortunately fate has pushed him.

• 31:10November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 31:11Liam McAnderson?

  I'm right, I'm right and you know it.

• 31:17Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, boy.

• 31:19November Kelly?

  Would not be the first MAGA drag queen, I'll say that.

• 31:22Justin Roczniak?

  I was about to say, it would be interesting to see how Trump is reincarnated in the cycle of Samsara.

• 31:34November Kelly?

  This, I'm.

• 31:35Liam McAnderson?

  I know, I know.

• 31:37Justin Roczniak?

  Everything's miserable.

• 31:39November Kelly?

  Every, we live in hell still.

• 31:40Justin Roczniak?

  We live in hell.

• 31:41November Kelly?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about the Sarah McBride stuff in like, you know, next episode when it's had a chance to develop a bit because I got some talking to do about that.

• 31:50Justin Roczniak?

  Wait, is she that?

• 31:52November Kelly?

  Oh, she's, yeah, she's the first trans congressperson.

• 31:55Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, God.

• 31:56November Kelly?

  Um, who was like endorsed by AIPAC and like, you know, AIPAC fundraised for her. And then when she got into office was predictably like the target of, oh, we're gonna ban her from all the bathroom shit. And her response was, you know, rank cowardice, like, oh, I don't even, I don't even need to piss, actually, ever. Um, it's fine.

• 32:17Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, a lot of, a lot of stuff rubbed me the wrong way about that on, uh, too.

• 32:21November Kelly?

  Yeah, this is a distraction from the economy or whatever. And it's, what the fuck? That's your bathroom. Like, if you can't, if you can't fight for yourself in a very like personal, yeah, exactly. Like, it's just shameful. It's absolutely shameful. But, you know, what other kind of representation would trans people gonna get out of like someone who is gonna go to the US Congress, you know? Like, you can always hope we were gonna get someone like, you know, Rashida Tlaib or whatever, but. Uh, you know, few people are as lucky. Um, so.

• 32:51Justin Roczniak?

  Nah, I, I mean, she's from Delaware. She's there to represent one building in Wilmington.

• 32:56November Kelly?

  Yeah, I mean, she was, she was Biden's fucking protege, like genuinely, which is one of the reasons why Biden is like unusually woke on trans stuff. It's why he's like Mr. At least three genders. Um, and it's, and it's like, well, what a fucking legacy you set her up with, man, you know? Fucking tried to be president until you're 86, uh, lose, you know, drop out and retire widely hated and then hand her the most hostile congress in like living memory.

• 33:23Justin Roczniak?

  Mistakes were made.

• 33:24November Kelly?

  It's like, Jesus Christ, it, it, if God sent me a mentor like that, I would assume he was punishing me.

• 33:30Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah, I'll buy that.

• 33:32November Kelly?

  At that point, you're like actively the opposite of a mentor. You're more like a kind of enemy, you know?

• 33:38Justin Roczniak?

  What's the word for you believe God exists and you hate him?

• 33:41Liam McAnderson?

  Catholic. Dysatheism or messenthism.

• 33:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 33:47Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, um, that was the goddamn news.

• 33:54November Kelly?

  Ooh.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  We have to talk about, um, we have to talk about trains. It's a trains episode and, uh, folks, they've given me the reins on this one. I'm so sorry.

• 34:02Justin Roczniak?

  The reins to the trains.

• 34:04November Kelly?

  And trains.

• 34:04Justin Roczniak?

  The reins to the trains. Mainly on the planes.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  So, so we have to talk about, in fact, not the trains, but this time the, the, the tracks, the railway alignment. Um, what are railways? Well, railways are formed of, of straights, uh, insert joke here.

• 34:21November Kelly?

  That's, I was gonna say, I'm not sure that's always true. I've seen some of the pride leveries.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Well, quite. Um, yeah. So, so, you know, railways, ideally, the ideal railway is a straight one, right? But sometimes a thing is in the way.

• 34:32Justin Roczniak?

  So we did an episode on that.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. Sometimes a thing is in the way and therefore you need to do something different, which is, yeah, you have the, you have the, the, the high line, you have the, the airline. Or you put a curve in it. Next slide, please. Nova, this is a picture I took on the East Coast Main Line and it very nicely makes and proves your point about what the railway environment is and the fact that it's gross. It's this color. This is the color you were talking about.

• 34:57November Kelly?

  Yeah, it looks like an accumulation of a lot of sort of like brake dust, like mud.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  And poo. That's you can see toilet roll in the, in those F23 sleepers there. Yeah, this is like three minutes past four in the morning.

• 35:15Justin Roczniak?

  Direct drop toilets?

• 35:17Speaker 02

  To be fair, this was not anymore, but this was before we banned them. This was, this is one of those things that was like alarmingly recent, like interracial

• 35:27November Kelly?

  marriage in America, you know, you're like, you look it up and you're like, wait a second, that's, that's too late a year for that, you know?

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Well, the poo and the flushing was absolutely during my time of being on track. For example, right, this, when I took this photo, this is a curve. Look, it's a curve. It's bendy. The railway is bendy. We've put a bend in it. We've linked up two straights with a curve.

• 35:49November Kelly?

  This is why you don't want the like high vis crop top is you want something with as much coverage as possible. That's going to, you know, repel water as well.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  You particularly want a collar that you can flip up.

• 36:01Justin Roczniak?

  Train goes around the corner and then angular momentum from the poo flings it over to you.

• 36:07Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, poo shot. Yeah.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  If you, if you see some Brock and Spectre coming from an oncoming train, that's when to look away. There's one for the real heads. Anyway, right. So, yeah, curves. Here's a curve. And next, so this is a curve. They exist and you'll notice something funny about this curve, which is that one of the rails is higher up than the other rail.

• 36:28November Kelly?

  It's canted.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  It's canted. Yeah, we're going to talk about cant. Next picture, please.

• 36:34November Kelly?

  It's categorical imperative that we do this.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Yes. So here's a nice picture of, this is, there's such vibes from this picture. This picture makes me very happy. It's a, it's a lovely class 86 hauling a rake, just a list of very weird coaches at probably like 95 miles an hour up the West Coast Main

• 36:55November Kelly?

  Just, just, just, just put any old shit on the back of it.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, there's like a G U V, like a genuine utility van, there's probably a brake van, there's another general utility van. It's possibly a post train this one. Anyway, it's all kind, all kinds of shonky. You'll see that it's, that's, it looks like it's falling over. It looks like someone slightly tipped it over. It's because it's on a canted curve.

• 37:16November Kelly?

  Um, is this what a camber is?

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's a bit like a, so people often go, well, you know, when you have a race car or even just a normal car and you go around a curve and the, the road is banked. You know, you have bankings on those old race car, race car kind of tracks. It's a similar thing. And if we go next slide, please.

• 37:32Justin Roczniak?

  See, in the United States, we call this, uh, uh, super elevation. And in most places, you're not allowed to do it because the freight trains don't like it.

• 37:40November Kelly?

  Hmm. You, you just have a bunch of like open coal wagons that are now dumping coal out of the side.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Exactly. So, uh, and there's another, another episode. Actually, you know what? Rail Natter is the place to go where we'll get into the deep lore of exactly why and how you apply can and how much and so on. Because good God, uh, I can talk about it for too long and I'm not going to bore all of the hogs with this stuff. Um, the hogs are like, no, do it, do it, please. But no, no, I'm not going to do it now. Uh, another time maybe.

• 38:06November Kelly?

  Fully hit the Trump. They want me to do it. Should I do it?

• 38:12Speaker 02

  I'm gonna talk about it. Anyway, right. So, um, next slide, please. Oh yeah. We've done the next slide. No, not next slide. Keep reading this slide. That's fine. We're on the slide. So the reason we, the reason we tipped the train over is because when a train goes around a curve, you get an outward force from curvature. That's kind of obvious. Train goes around a curve. It wants to fall off the other way. So we tip the tracks up to kind of tip it inwards to kind of cancel out that outward force. So we're kind of balancing outwards and inwards forces. Um, so yeah, this is an engineering bit. We're going to get, we're not going to go into any detail. Forces, well, we're going to go into a little bit of detail, a little bit. We can, we can, we can get, we can get into a bit of detail because we're going to talk about, next slide, please. Newton's second law. Ooh, F equals M A. Force equals a mass times acceleration.

• 38:55November Kelly?

  Uh huh. And therefore acceleration equals force over mass.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Exactly. You can rearrange that to mean that you can convert. So if, if you've got a train, uh, if you've got forces going inwards and outwards, um, and the mass is the mass of your train, then the useful thing you can do is go, well, if I've got an acceleration in and an acceleration out, um, I can therefore ignore the mass of the train, which makes my calculations a lot easier. So that means.

• 39:18November Kelly?

  I'm, I'm still beaming from rearranging a very simple equation. Like I got a good grade in podcasting.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Did it be, it was beautiful.

• 39:25Liam McAnderson?

  It's possible to achieve.

• 39:26Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, it's really nice when you can derive like a lot of complex information out of, you know, an equation that you learned in high school.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, that's kind of why it's fun to show people who did this and thought, why the fuck am I learning Newton's second law? This is useless to me. Well, we're about to explain why it isn't, which is designing railways. So the useful thing about doing this rearrangement is that we can, next slide, please, take our forces and we can, next slide, please, turn them into accelerations. So we have, so we have outwards acceleration and an inwards acceleration. I think I've accidentally left animations in this one. So Roz, if you click forwards twice, there we go. And there we go. There are some equations. You don't need to know them, but outwards acceleration, anyone who's a real nerd will know that's the equation for rotational acceleration. It's the speed over the radius, it's speed squared over the radius.

• 40:19November Kelly?

  The inwards acceleration is Clearly, a formula for generating the French month of August.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Out?

• 40:25November Kelly?

  Out?

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Out?

• 40:26November Kelly?

  There's a cute name for Parisians who stay in the city in August when everybody else goes on holiday, which is Oushe, like Augustinians, if you like.

• 40:37Liam McAnderson?

  I like that. That's fun.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  That's nice. So our acceleration is that. And then also to get the inwards acceleration from tipping your train over deliberately, it's basically a component of the acceleration due to gravity. So that's what that equation is. And that relates to the cant, which is, as Roz said, super elevation, which we represent with an E. And then it's over the, also the track gauge makes a difference. So if you've got a really wide track gauge, you have to tip the track over more to make the same, same result. So if you have narrow gauge, you don't have to tip it up as much and you get the same result. Anyway, doesn't really matter a huge amount in this situation. You can make those two things equal to each other because if you've tipped the train up enough that the inwards acceleration is equal to the outwards acceleration and they cancel each other out, make those two things equal to each other, do a load more formula scrambling and you get, next slide, please, which is

• 41:23Speaker 02

  on my mug, which I'm currently holding up to camera that none of you can see. Look at the mug that says E plus D equals 11.82 V squared over R, because that's the cant equation. And that's what makes us make a railway do the shapes that it does. Hooray. Yes, this is the cant equation.

• 41:38November Kelly?

  It's so cool to have a profession that you can reduce to like as a fundamental equation and everything else is built around it, you know?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  It is. I like this, which is why I put it on a mug.

• 41:46Liam McAnderson?

  Go and study it.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I put it on a mug because I like it so much. Yeah. So this is basically like the amount that you tip, the amount that you lift one rail above the other determines how fast a train can go around a curve, basically, for a given radius and such and such and such. And if you've got things like, well, acceleration due to gravity is a constant, the track gauge is a constant, and also the conversion from like meters to kilometers is a constant, then you can smoosh all those together and you get the 11.82 number.

• 42:15Liam McAnderson?

  Is that how you call it, smoosh it together? Is that the term?

• 42:18Speaker 02

  That's the official term, smoosh it together. Yeah. And so when we build a railway, we don't apply equally beam cant. So we don't tip the tracks up so much that they equal, that we cancel out the average acceleration because that's bad for a variety of reasons, including, as you said earlier, freight, like freight goes slower than passenger stuff. So you might be in a situation where like, if you stop there, it tips over. Yeah. Well, I mean, certainly does a lot of mess to the low rail and you get a lot of horrible shelling and you wreck your sub grade and you maybe split your sleepers and all sorts of bad things. And in fact, the next slide, please, is very useful because, well, no, it's not. This is all the stuff that then tells me.

• 42:57November Kelly?

  Another deficiency. If you have, if you're firing piss and shit out of the side and it's the side going upwards, what you've created is a kind of toilet mortar.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  So these are the, these are the standards which allow us to understand how much cant we actually need to apply for a given railway. And this is very fiddly and this is obviously just like skimming the surface.

• 43:15November Kelly?

  About as complicated as cant, like philosophy.

• 43:18Justin Roczniak?

  Table nine transitions.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  That's it. So transitions, this is, this is about.

• 43:24November Kelly?

  Fucking endless.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is it. Table nine transitions. That's it. So you don't need to know all this. Well, basically like this is, this gets fiddly for all sorts of reasons, mostly because it impacts like the amount of cant you use and speeds and stuff. It's less about safety, certainly in the short term. It's more about like maintenance and comfort and how quickly I have to replace materials and all this stuff. Much sooner that it results in like really bad things happening. But if you get this really wrong, next slide, please. The bad things can.

• 43:52Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 43:54November Kelly?

  Is that an ICE doing the bad thing?

• 43:56Speaker 02

  No, it's a, it's a, it's a Spanish, it's Renfa, it's the Santiago de Compostela. I think that's right. Um, derailment. They're, they're actually signaling reasons why this happened. But what it did was it ended up throwing a train at way too high a speed around a very tight curve. And well, uh, yeah, I should have done a content warning. If you don't like trains smashing up, this is not the episode for you visually.

• 44:18November Kelly?

  Not loving the fuck this webcam in particular angle.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that webcam did not survive to tell any more tales. Um, yeah, this is, this is bad folks. So if, and a general rule of thumb, this, this will be useful, is that going around a curve, you can generally go around a curve about twice the design speed in a train. I wouldn't recommend trying this too often, but you can generally.

• 44:44November Kelly?

  Frightening, but not lethal to webcams or passengers.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you can exactly. So, so like if you're, if you're below twice the design speed, the chances are you're doing all right. Um, obviously that varies on a lot of things, but that's a rough rule of thumb, right?

• 44:57November Kelly?

  Just half listening to that in my train driver orientation and being like, okay, cool, gun it.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, got it. Got it. Yeah. Okay. Good. Design speed plus a bit. Yeah. No, of, of like, the reason I say that is just to give an indication of like, we don't design curves on the edge of you might derail. We're designing them way below that because obviously you're putting a lot of extra forces into the rails to drive it fast. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we don't have to look at this horrible smash anymore. We're going to look at something even more horrible. Next slide, please.

• 45:26November Kelly?

  It's made of the mould that there is in my flats. Like this is, this is what the country looks like from space. People don't tell me this.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  It looks like, it looks like a scab. This picture looks like a grayscale scab and rightly so, because of course we're looking at a picture of, um, Britain and also Northern Ireland is attached as well.

• 45:45Liam McAnderson?

  The north of Ireland.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yes. Sorry. Correct. Yeah. The north of Ireland is also in this picture for some reason. Yeah. So, uh, this is, this is Britain. Uh, it's very, it's, it's very soggy. It's very smelly. Uh, it's quite small and quite hilly. So. If say it's the early 1800s and you're building a nascent railway network and you've decided that you think it's a good idea to link like London to Scotland. Roz, can you John Madden London for me?

• 46:11Justin Roczniak?

  It's like here-ish, right?

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Here's your geography testing. Yeah, like, yeah.

• 46:16November Kelly?

  Yeah, that's about, yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.

• 46:19November Kelly?

  You're a little bit west, you've hit like, kind of, I don't know, like stains or something.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're like a little bit into like Thames, like, yeah.

• 46:24Justin Roczniak?

  This is like here-ish.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:27Justin Roczniak?

  There we are.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  And now the bigger test, can you, can you circle Scotland, please?

• 46:33November Kelly?

  Where's this line going?

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's Scotland.

• 46:36Justin Roczniak?

  Here-ish, right?

• 46:37Speaker 02

  Like more, more south, more, there's more, no, we have more territory than that. We fought hard for that bloody territory, Roz.

• 46:44Justin Roczniak?

  Here-ish as well.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Yes, that's more like it.

• 46:47Justin Roczniak?

  Okay, okay, that's like, where do the mountains start, you know?

• 46:50Speaker 02

  I like, yeah, basically, I like the fact that we have stolen a little bit of Northumberland there, which is very pleasing to me. So, yeah.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Fuck you, Berwick, we've got you back, you pricks.

• 46:58November Kelly?

  Abby furious.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:01Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know, I think y'all are gonna do a better job with, with, you know, Newcastle than the English can do.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  So, so you'll notice something about this.

• 47:11Justin Roczniak?

  Get that Tyne and Wear metro.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Oh, exactly. That is pretty, that is, I do quite like that. Although the old trains are going, which means that you go, the new trains don't let you sit at the front and pretend you're the driver, which makes me very sad.

• 47:22Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, bummer.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  I know, I know, why do they take the nice things from us?

• 47:25November Kelly?

  Yeah. Come to Britain, come to Britain.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, do, do that. So, this map, by the way, is a topographical map. So it's showing where things are hilly and where things are not hilly. You'll notice on the east of England, if you're going from Scotland to London, the east side of England there is quite flat, whereas the west side of England isn't. And actually, on the east side, you can see there's quite a nice route. So if you want to create a fast link from London to Scotland, the obvious, you know, this, this is the obvious priority for the railway barriers at the time.

• 47:51November Kelly?

  See where you've drawn the, the sort of like overlap between your two Venn diagram circles of Scotland? You inadvertently put a line right through the central belt. And so roughly speaking, on, on the west side of that is Glasgow, on the east side of that is Edinburgh. Your two, your two largest cities, conveniently.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:12November Kelly?

  Edinburgh is the capital and Glasgow isn't.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  The only part of the, the only urban economy that really works well outside of London is the Scottish Central Belt, because it's a huge area connected by lots and lots of really good public transport.

• 48:23November Kelly?

  I like to call it Megalopolis.

• 48:26Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, no, please don't call that.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  So railway barons, they are wanting to build railways to connect major cities and connecting London up to Edinburgh is an obvious, obvious main link. So we have to start talking about some guys. Next slide, please. Here are our guys. We come upon a battle between a large guy, George Hudson here on the left.

• 48:47November Kelly?

  We come upon a battle between this guy on the left and his own waistcoat buttons, you know. Believe me, I've been there.

• 48:53Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, same.

• 48:54Speaker 02

  And so it's the large guy on the left, George Hudson, and this twink on the right here.

• 48:59November Kelly?

  Jesus Christ.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Called Edmund Beckett.

• 49:01November Kelly?

  You can really just say anything these days, can't you?

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Nah, he's not quite twink. He's got a sideburn. He's too much sideburn for a twink.

• 49:09November Kelly?

  He's wearing like a solid, like, vertical four inches of cravat.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  It's incredible. It's taller than his head.

• 49:16November Kelly?

  Imagine, imagine a noise happening behind this guy and how he would turn around, you know?

• 49:22Speaker 02

  It's like Batman. Yeah, it's like George Clooney's Batman.

• 49:25Justin Roczniak?

  He looks like, like, what's the, what's the cat, the big cat that's like, has the, can turn all the way around?

• 49:32Liam McAnderson?

  Do you mean an owl?

• 49:33Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, no. I mean, I mean, I mean, the cat that does it, not an owl. It's like a serval or something.

• 49:43November Kelly?

  What?

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Sorry, the idea was going cat, and then I was like, you mean an owl?

• 49:49November Kelly?

  Yeah, good, good, like, cat that can turn all the way around.

• 49:52Justin Roczniak?

  No, no.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Forget this podcast that we're doing. I need to know what this is you're referring to.

• 49:57Liam McAnderson?

  Serval is a cat, yeah. I, I just don't know that they can turn the whole way around.

• 50:02November Kelly?

  Cat's writing reflexes? Cat that can turn head all the way around?

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 50:07November Kelly?

  Um.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  Cat's will tilt their head. I'm just gonna quietly point out while no one's paying attention that actually the guy on the right here, Edmund Beckett, like, probably a horrible man, but kind of, kind of, kind of serving, kind of actually a little bit here.

• 50:22Liam McAnderson?

  You love that phrase, don't you, bud?

• 50:24Speaker 02

  I really do, yeah. I listen to too much Kill James Bond, that's the problem. So I just, I, I think a lot, I think a lot about people who serve.

• 50:31November Kelly?

  Justin, do you mean a mague?

• 50:34Justin Roczniak?

  Is it a, maybe?

• 50:35November Kelly?

  A little, little Mexican wild cats?

• 50:39Justin Roczniak?

  This is like a bigger, this is a big African cat I'm thinking of.

• 50:42Liam McAnderson?

  Beautiful.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm looking at this guy. Oh.

• 50:46Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, man.

• 50:50Justin Roczniak?

  No, this is the one.

• 50:51November Kelly?

  We, we, we are so fucking good at this.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  It's really good to do podcasting.

• 51:00Liam McAnderson?

  All way around.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  I love all of us are desperately deploying our best.

• 51:05November Kelly?

  What are you thinking of? What are you?

• 51:08Justin Roczniak?

  I had to go back through Will Manickers tweets to figure out what this cat is.

• 51:11November Kelly?

  Oh, god damn it.

• 51:12Liam McAnderson?

  No, no, we're not doing that right now. Get, get back, get back.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Listeners and viewers, we will conclude this discussion off, off mic and Devon will provide the results to you all. So that we know, thank you, Devon, so that we know what the hell is Roz is talking about because at the moment, none of us do.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  So the thing about these two boys, Hudson and Beckett, Hudson is known as, as kind of like the railway king. He'd overseen several railway companies to kind of form a network around, well, centered around York, actually the city that I am in, the old York. He kind of like this guy was pretty vicious corporate operating wise in the way that like early Victorians were, they were all maniacs. Included, so he had, he built a railway network and it included a link to the Scottish border.

• 52:00November Kelly?

  Snuff and branding.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Like the, the things he was doing to his brain would make anyone a maniac in fairness. So it connected, his vast network connected to the North British Railway, which went from Edinburgh to Berwick, which he had also part financed, by the way. And southwards, he had linked his railway to the Midland Railway at Normanton, which meant that he had a London connection. He had built a railway or part financed and made negotiations to get trains that could run from Edinburgh to London.

• 52:27November Kelly?

  Weeping because we don't know how to do this anymore, it seems like.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Yes, it's, well, this is it. Beckett, meanwhile, in a flex that today's MPs still insist on pursuing. He was the richest guy in Doncaster, the northern city of Doncaster, and he was MP for the West Riding of Yorkshire.

• 52:44November Kelly?

  Resisting a cruel joke about Doncaster there.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  There are so many cruel jokes about Doncaster, a place I have a soft spot for, but the mid center of Doncaster is an absolute dump. It's dreadful. Sorry, everyone in Doncaster.

• 52:58Liam McAnderson?

  You deserve to suffer.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is, this is the thing. And he is, so he was MP, so he was the richest guy in the city and it's MP. Normal, normal situation. He wanted a more direct route to London that didn't faff about getting Wibley in Derbyshire. Hudson, so he basically started putting forward some railway proposals.

• 53:15November Kelly?

  Like fuck Derbyshire, fuck mine, fuck shoes, don't care, you know.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Derby, we'll come back to Derby in a second because it clearly makes him angry. So he put forward a plan that was basically a straight line from Doncaster straight, you know, and York straight to London.

• 53:29November Kelly?

  He was one of the like high-speed rail diagrams guys. He would have been a poster.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Because the thing, well, we looked at, well, we looked at Britain and it was flat on that side. So it makes some sense. The only problem is there's basically no population between like York and Doncaster and London. If we ignore Peterborough, whatever, no one cares about Peterborough. Going straight through Peterborough, straight line to London. Right. So Hudson was not happy about this because it would directly compete with his route that he just spent a lot of time and political effort creating. And, and as often happened with early railways in the 1830s and 40s, shenanigans ensued, including an episode where Beckett and Hudson like had a shouting match in Derby Station where Beckett called Hudson a blackguard.

• 54:09November Kelly?

  Them's were fighting words back in the day.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Exactly. Calling someone a blackguard is like, is that, I mean, is it a slur? It might be a slur. I don't know. Is that a, I hope it's not a slur.

• 54:18November Kelly?

  That's a, based on my deep, deep understanding of this stuff, which is having watched Barry Lyndon, a film set in a different century. Yeah, no, actually set in the same century. So it's all good. Having watched Barry Lyndon, that, that's a dueling offence, you know.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. Calling someone a blackguard is like, oh, so yeah, 1845, they were shouting at each other in Derby Station, which, you know, people always shout at each other at Derby Station. So it's something that's, that's gone through the ages. Anyway.

• 54:44November Kelly?

  Engaging and telling Jacob Rees-Mogg, I'm engaging in like Victorian values, having a fight in Derby train station.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 54:52November Kelly?

  I found the cat. What is it? Tell me about this cat.

• 54:56Justin Roczniak?

  It's a serval. It has a very long neck.

• 55:00Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we that was our first guess.

• 55:01Justin Roczniak?

  Serval cat.

• 55:03Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we know.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Oh, its ears are the size of its head.

• 55:05Liam McAnderson?

  We already looked at it.

• 55:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 55:07November Kelly?

  Okay.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  That's a handsome little, little creature.

• 55:10Justin Roczniak?

  There's one that goes around Twitter every once in a while where one of them is like turned all the way around.

• 55:15November Kelly?

  Huh, okay.

• 55:16Liam McAnderson?

  Backwards head.

• 55:17Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, hey.

• 55:17November Kelly?

  Yeah, I, I, I like these animals. These are, this is a good, this is a good feline right here. Yeah.

• 55:23Justin Roczniak?

  I just get some big ears. He's got some, I imagine, just a little bit larger than an ordinary cat, probably more violent as well.

• 55:30November Kelly?

  Very, very expressive face.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  That will tear your throat straight out of your neck. Yeah.

• 55:34Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, good stuff. Well, that's been cat corner.

• 55:37November Kelly?

  Show one of these to Milkshake and be like, look at your, uh, you know, look at your compatriots and feel a day.

• 55:44Justin Roczniak?

  I, I believe Milkshake could make friends with a serval. I think Milkshake could make friends with basically anyone except Pizza Boy.

• 55:50Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Oh, I'm friends with Milkshake.

• 55:53November Kelly?

  Oh.

• 55:54Justin Roczniak?

  That cat is basically a dog.

• 55:58Liam McAnderson?

  We are, we are blessed to have him.

• 56:00Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  So having shouted at each other in Derby Station, these two boys did much wrangling and a significant amount of outright bribery and corruption. And, and but Beckett, Beckett wins. The, the, the rich MP from Doncaster wins and manages to get his straight line to London approved in Parliament. Uh, and this would be called the Great Northern Railway. Uh, next slide, please.

• 56:20Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Which meant that we had the makings of our East Coast route. So if we hop forwards again, you can see that route and it looks, okay, it doesn't look quite as straight as you might imagine, but the, the bottom half of it is pretty much straight. Like it's, it's a straight line from London to basically Peterborough. And then it's another straight line from Peterborough to Doncaster. It's that bit, the, the Great Northern Railway bit is really straight.

• 56:40November Kelly?

  Over, over flat-ish land? You get some nice seaside views?

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's pretty flat. And, and so you'll see it generally pretty flat. And okay, there are some kinks here and there once you get further north.

• 56:52Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, monsters.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Well, exactly, you know, who am I to kink shame? So this was formed of several bits. So, so at the northern end, we've already, the Scottish bit was the North British Railway, which was Edinburgh to Berwick. That opened in 1846. And what eventually kind of goes called the Northeastern Railway, which was built from like lots of other bits of railway, the York and, uh, North Midlands and the, the, the, the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway. Anyway, that was basically finished in 1847 and then Beckett's Great Northern Railway was finished in 1850. So you have the, what we call now the East Coast Main Line. So great, marvelous. Now, one bit of, you know, the various kind of constituent companies and rackets that eventually formed the Northeastern Railway included a thing that

• 57:35Speaker 02

  was called the Newcastle and Berwick Railway. Here is, next slide, please. Here is the notice of that thing opening. Look, it's all the, when they, when they used to do all fonts and they've even accidentally rotated the word two sideways. Why have they done that? I do not know, but they have.

• 57:50November Kelly?

  This is, this is some great type work, you know?

• 57:53Speaker 02

  It is, it's nice.

• 57:54November Kelly?

  Got the little train on there.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  And there's a train, yeah. There's a little train with a little, a little guy.

• 57:58Justin Roczniak?

  I like the difference in line weights on the N here.

• 58:01November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 58:03November Kelly?

  Reminds me of the, um, label on a pair of Levi's, you know?

• 58:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, um, so this railway, this bit, the Newcastle and Berwick Railway, so this went from the Scottish border south to Newcastle. This was like the linchpin in Hudson's plans because it would allow him to link to the, to the North British Railway alongside his kind of emerging network in the North East and he would basically be able to control the whole lot. Right. So this is the problem though, which was that the former Prime Minister Earl Grey and his presumably web-footed son Viscount Hoick did not want a railway intersecting their estate.

• 58:39November Kelly?

  Yeah. I mean, listen, if the train goes by, rattles your teacups, which you drink your kind of like bergamot flavoured tea out of.

• 58:45Speaker 02

  Exactly. Which is, which is not nice. So they didn't want that happening. They thought it would, you know, like scare the pigeons or, or make their, you know, make all their cows give birth or whatever. I don't know. And so further shenanigans ensued, including a, they basically created a new railway proposal that avoided their land conveniently. And they called it the Northumberland Railway. And, and they got Isambard Kingdom Brunel to become the engineer of the railway.

• 59:09November Kelly?

  The engineers signed up to the thing.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Literally, they got the, the Musk slash Santiago Calatrava of his day to, to come along. And of course, what did he propose as the way that the trains would work on that railway? Atmospheric system. He proposed an atmospheric railway.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  For that alternative.

• 59:27November Kelly?

  Investing heavily in bacon grease futures.

• 59:31Justin Roczniak?

  Lot, lot of horse viscera gone.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. A lot of horse. So, so that was, so a friend of the show, the atmospheric railway was proposed by Brunel for this alternative railway. The trouble is, um, by the time both proposals were being considered in parliament in 1845, Brunel's atmospheric railway had already been, had already kind of proven itself as being complete shit. Um, uh, and so the Northumberland Railway was rejected. And so Hudson had defeated, um, the former prime minister and his weird little son. So, um, Hudson.

• 1:00:00November Kelly?

  Throwing my teacup on the ground in anger.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:00:04Liam McAnderson?

  This will not stand simply.

• 1:00:06Justin Roczniak?

  Oh my God, I'm going to have to deal with a little bit of noise every now and then.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I know. Right. Um, it had come at a cost though. Um, here, next slide, please. Cause here is a map and in the middle of this map, this is a very old map. This is like 17 bullshit.

• 1:00:22Liam McAnderson?

  17 bullshit.

• 1:00:24Justin Roczniak?

  1700 and fuck you.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  This is a county map and in the middle of it is Morpeth.

• 1:00:32November Kelly?

  They don't make names like Bedlingtonshire anymore.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  No, I know. Right.

• 1:00:38Liam McAnderson?

  High House.

• 1:00:39Justin Roczniak?

  You've already named all the things that can be named in Britain.

• 1:00:43Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. Not hole in the wall, hole on the wall.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's when you, yeah, that's when you get to places that are called things like lost, uh, that you realize that we, we ran out of names for things. Kind of quite early on. Actually, we, yeah, a lot of our names make absolutely no sense. You're just bollocks. So yeah, that's a fair point. Anyway.

• 1:01:00Justin Roczniak?

  The town of Westward Ho.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03November Kelly?

  Don't miss the exclamation mark.

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  The exclamation mark is important. That's right. You have to put punctuation into your town names.

• 1:01:09November Kelly?

  It's like an accent mark, you know?

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, Morpeth, um, at the time was, it was like a castle and major market town, like a properly major market town, actually. And, but the, the problem with it is that the terrain around it is very hilly and steep. And there's a river wrapped around, uh, one side of the town. So this is a problem. Um, and if we go to next slide, please. To deal with this, to deal with Morpeth, Morpeth wanted to be connected to the railway, fine. Originally, it was going to be on a little branch line, which would link to the main Newcastle and Barrett railway route. But in drumming up local support for Hudson's railway, when he was competing with this like bullshit Northumberland railway atmospheric thing, Hudson had changed the main route to run through Morpeth. Next slide, please. And you can see, the problem with running through Morpeth is that all that steep hill

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  stuff means that you need a lumping great 98 degree kink in your railway alignment, which is, it's a kink. Once again, we are kink shaming. This is a very kink shamy episode. So if I'm cancelled because of that, I can only apologize. Next slide, please. So you will see that this is a big kink, and the original route shown here-ish would have kind of avoided this entirely. The thing is, though, at the time, it doesn't really matter that much, because trains weren't going that much above 30 miles an hour. So a 90 degree kink isn't that much of a problem. So it's okay.

• 1:02:26Justin Roczniak?

  You're going like 30 miles an hour, you're fine.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Justin Roczniak?

  This is a high speed curve right here.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:02:33Justin Roczniak?

  High speed, 28 miles an hour, you have to slow down too.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Exactly. So next slide, please.

• 1:02:39Liam McAnderson?

  Blistering speeds, yes.

• 1:02:41November Kelly?

  If the perfect, you have slightly pull back on a perfectly polished brass lever.

• 1:02:48Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, oh, this is, this is delightful.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Look how happy all these, so the line opened.

• 1:02:53Liam McAnderson?

  The Queen, no fucking thanks.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, fuck those guys.

• 1:02:56November Kelly?

  Fascinated with this flag situation here. We have a, we have a like, pre Northern Ireland Union flag, I guess, with a red washed out and a red ensign?

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't, I don't fully understand.

• 1:03:09November Kelly?

  On the like Royal Coach as well.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, yeah, there's, there's a lot going on here.

• 1:03:15Liam McAnderson?

  Blowed up by a nail bomb.

• 1:03:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, this is it.

• 1:03:19November Kelly?

  Really on some like IRB supporting shit, you know?

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  So, yeah, the line opened in full on the 1st of July, 1847, and everyone was very pleased with themselves. Until Hudson ended up in debtor's prison for fucking everyone around him over, partly in the aftermath. Of his battle with Beckett and and kind of defeating or trying to defeat the Great Northern Railway. So boo hoo for for George Hudson. He kind of his career is ruined.

• 1:03:45November Kelly?

  Maybe maybe some of these guys would be maybe would be a bit better off if we brought debtors prison back for a specific kind of guy.

• 1:03:53Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:53November Kelly?

  I kind of want to send Elon Musk to debtors prison, you know?

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  It feels like a and it wasn't a nice experience like that. And if Musk will never go to prison, but if he actually did, he would go to the prison that's not really a prison in inverted commas. And he would never start.

• 1:04:07November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  Debt debtors prison was was horrible and I want that. That's, you know, we've talked about I'm I'm anti-prison, except having debtors prison. I want debtors prison. I think that's a good prison.

• 1:04:18November Kelly?

  Stalin, oil executives to the fucking Gulag immediately.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Gulag them. Yeah.

• 1:04:23Justin Roczniak?

  They're just gonna put every college educated person in America in there instantly. Like you graduated, go straight to debtors prison.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  We have to. So if we jump forward to a slide by 20 years, something went wrong, something, someone has stabbed a train here. That you were looking at a train that has been stabbed.

• 1:04:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. I was looking at the lack of cab. I didn't even notice this.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the cab is missing, but also someone has stabbed the train. I think it's important that we really emphasize how much that train has been stabbed. And so, Ross, you want to read a date?

• 1:05:02Justin Roczniak?

  On the 25th of March, 1877.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, the up express from Edinburgh to London was making its way southwards. And it went around the curve and it tipped over. It fell over. And it was navigating its way through the curve, locomotive tipped over at a badly maintained joint. So it's like, it was like, it was going too fast around the curve, very likely. And we'll talk about that in a second. Hits a badly maintained joint, went oop and fell over. And so, yeah, whoops. The the train scattered, you know, the the coaches behind it. I mean, it's a bit like the picture previously. Like those coaches are made of nothing. They're made of splinters and and paraffin. And it's not good. So the train behind it scattered.

• 1:05:43Justin Roczniak?

  I have a question. I thought up was away from London or no?

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  Up is no up is

• 1:05:48November Kelly?

  Up is to London because London is more important.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Yes, up is to London. Down is away from London. Yes, that is confusing. So yeah, the train scatters, bits of it telescope behind it as it stops abruptly. Like the thing basically tips over and the train sort of rams into it from behind. So from, I'm going to quote from the Board of Trade report because this is horrible. The passenger carriage, which had been the third vehicle in the train dashed into the tender, lodged its leading wheels in the tank and was completely destroyed. And one of its passengers was found dead in the tank of the tender. Whilst another was jammed against the end of the tender. So not so good. So all the meat sacks, i.e. passengers, they didn't do well in that first coach. So five passengers died and 17, I quote, complained of injury.

• 1:06:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, well, you would. You know, you can complain all you want. You have to have a positive attitude.

• 1:06:44November Kelly?

  What do they expect for that lousy 25 cents to live forever?

• 1:06:48Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So next slide, please. So the Board of Trade report suggested that it was poorly maintained track that was the culprit and that the train was not necessarily speeding. But I would say, given the damage describing the report, it's really difficult to believe that this wasn't just because the train was actually going too fast through the curve. At this point, trains were getting a bit quicker. I can believe that this train was actually gunning it and had reached like 45, 50 miles an hour and tipped over. I really suspect strongly that's actually what the case was, but they didn't really have anything to prove it because it was 1877. But the report did make an interesting observation.

• 1:07:27November Kelly?

  CSI, just some kernel with an incredibly wide moustache looking at it with a magnifying glass.

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:34Justin Roczniak?

  Did they have speedometers?

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  And no, they didn't. They had a coach that would measure. Well, they did two things. Either they had a guy with a stopwatch or with a watch that he would count the time, or they had a dynamometer car. So they did. I think they did have quite primitive dynamometer cars even in the 1870s, 1880s. Someone shout at me if I'm wrong about that. But for the most part, they were just timing things with a watch.

• 1:07:59Justin Roczniak?

  So we're going, we're going, we're still in Pennsylvania railroad mode here where they didn't install speedometers until like the 50s.

• 1:08:06Speaker 02

  Correct. No, I severely doubt there were any speedometers on these trains. But again, people, someone else might be able to correct me on this. I'm not a steam train guy. I'm not sure. Particularly steam trains from the 1870s.

• 1:08:16Justin Roczniak?

  No one knows anything about those things.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, quite. So the report made an interesting observation, which I'm going to read, which is it would obviously, it would obviously be better if a deviation line could be constructed to avoid the use of so sharp a curve on a main line traversed by the fastest trains between England and Scotland. And so long as this curve exists, it is necessary to employ moderate speeds only in passing around it. So some foreshadowing there.

• 1:08:39November Kelly?

  So we've identified a problem. We are now going to engage in one of the favorite British pastimes of doing, I imagine, fuck all about it.

• 1:08:48Liam McAnderson?

  Passing the potato. Yes.

• 1:08:50Justin Roczniak?

  Seeing some foreshadowing here, which is very similar to a much more recent realm and very close to home.

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, quite. So nothing was learned decades past. No, but you need to line something up for this next, this next slide transition, actually.

• 1:09:07November Kelly?

  Do I? Oh, God.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  Because we're jumping forwards to nearly a century later. And nearly a century later, we have the USSR drop plays.

• 1:09:17November Kelly?

  Oh, God. Oh, God. Fuck. Okay, I gotta add this shit immediately.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  You've got to find it.

• 1:09:23November Kelly?

  Fuck. Customize smart pad. Your road caster tool will be placed into transfer mode. What does that mean?

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  Wait, I can, wait, I can do this. I can do this in my own way, which is slightly different, which is.

• 1:09:35Justin Roczniak?

  Uh huh.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  There we go. It's not quite as good if that's come through on the, which it should have. Yeah, no. So yeah, it's BR. We've got BR. It's a, it's a central air. We have British Rail. Everything was bigger and faster and busier. And next slide, please. We have trains that look like this. Look at this thing.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  It's a Deltic.

• 1:09:56Justin Roczniak?

  Opposed pistons.

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  Yes, it's got an engine that has pistons that face each other. It's a triangle.

• 1:10:02Justin Roczniak?

  Wow, that is just the most bonkers engine design imaginable.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  Just utterly nuts, but the noise it makes is beautiful. Just like a proper like.

• 1:10:12November Kelly?

  It's, it's been a running thing that some people have noticed that whenever I see something that isn't a Deltic, that looks kind of like one, I go, oh, Deltic. So when there actually is one, I thought I would fuck them up by not saying it.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it.

• 1:10:25Justin Roczniak?

  For, for those of you who are in audio only, we are looking at a Deltic. The thing that was unique about them is they used a opposed piston engine, where you had two cylinders facing each other in each, what's it called? In each cylinder and those cylinders were arranged in a triangle, driving three crank shafts. It's completely bonkers design.

• 1:10:50November Kelly?

  Like, like the Greek letter Delta. I guess strictly speaking, you should call this a deltoid. The, um, yeah.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes, but Deltic sounds cool.

• 1:11:00November Kelly?

  Deltoids are seething, you know?

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this thing with its, with like, yeah, with many pistons all firing at each other, makes a wonderful noise and it has a very funny looking nose as well. And they are, they're, they're cool. I love these things. They had quite a short life in service, but actually they're, they're, they're great. They, they really sped trains up along the East Coast mainland, actually. And it meant that we were running trains really fast at 100 mile an hour speeds. So we're going way faster than they were back in the 1870s.

• 1:11:28Justin Roczniak?

  I like how it's just like, yeah, this is the really fast train. Did you streamline it? No, this is just a blunt end.

• 1:11:35Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, we will, we will overcome the air. We will not go around it.

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. When you hear the sound this thing makes, I wouldn't want to put streamlining on it either. So, um, yeah, Roz, could you do the honors, please, on this, uh, on the notes here?

• 1:11:48Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, on the 7th of May, 1969.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Nice. This plump beast of a Deltic is hauling the Aberdeen sleeper northward. So we're going northwards this time. The train consisted of 11 coaches. It's a sleeper train and they're all Mark Ones, which we've talked about before in previous episodes in relation to crashworthiness. They're not good. They're, I mean, they're absolutely rubbish by today's standards, but back then they weren't good, but they're also like not that bad. They're much better than everything that had kind of gone before it. So anyway.

• 1:12:17November Kelly?

  Yeah, we made this one out of like, you know, wood as opposed to paper.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Well, this one, it was steel. It was steel. There was steel.

• 1:12:25November Kelly?

  Steel instead of wood, yeah.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, steel instead of wood. So this thing was like, okay, but by the standards of the day. So back in the, in the 60s, kind of as it is today, really, route knowledge. So that's where a driver has to know where things are along the route. So they know where to brake, where to stop, where to, you know, at what point they've passed the chat, you know, when a signal's coming. They have to have all this knowledge in their head. This is why drivers are extremely skilled people because they have to like basically teach themselves to have ADHD, which is, which is an extremely challenging skill to do. So, so like route knowledge, very crucial.

• 1:12:56November Kelly?

  You could just have the army step in to run the trains.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. As the train, so this train's charging towards Morpeth on the downline. It passed, you know, it passes various kind of key points for recognizing for the driver to go, right, I need to slow down now. And, and it was dark, but they were, you know, they're pretty evident. So one of these key points was Stanington signal box and there's a level crossing near it, both of which were illuminated. So as the train goes through the level crossing, signal Sierra 13 comes into view. And this was the marker for any train running under full speed to shut off power. So basically you start coasting before you then apply the brakes a little bit later. So the, the line rises, it kind of, you start going up a hill after, after signal Sierra 13 and the combination of having no power and the incline kind of starts slowing down the train quite nicely, right? So just before

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  the summit of that incline was, it was a kind of a gate box called Clifton Crossing. This thing wasn't lit. So the, the train reaches this gate box and there's a signal beyond it that comes into view, which is, which is called Delta 15, which is where a driver would typically make their first Actual brake application to start slowing the train down to about 60 miles an hour before then slowing down again to 40 miles an hour to go around Morpeth Curve. Morpeth Curve, that's the episode. So foreshadowing about this may not go well. We've had a date. The driver of the train, Lesley Byers, reaches this signal, but didn't do anything. So the power had been shut off at signal Sierra 13, but after that, the driver stopped making

• 1:14:29Speaker 02

  inputs. And actually, just as the train kind of passed that second signal, the second man in the train, because they still have those then, a guy called Clifford Graham, realizes the train was not slowing down quickly enough and like gets up to go across and basically apply the brake. This kind of triggers Byers into going, oh, fuck, shit. Oh, yeah. Clocks back in and makes a full brake application. This was not enough. Graham was thrown to the floor because of how sharp that braking was. Yeah, Morpeth Curve with its speed restriction of 40 and a train approaching it at 80.

• 1:15:00Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, that's not ideal. Not ideal.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  What was I saying earlier about the design speed and also how quickly you maybe can get around a curve? Next slide, please.

• 1:15:10November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Speaker 02

  This went poorly. So, yeah.

• 1:15:13Justin Roczniak?

  You roll the dice. Sometimes you get a critical one on this one.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, this did not, this was bad. This made a real mess. Yeah, the train derails horribly. Actually, you can see that these Mark One coaches have actually done remarkably well. Actually, they've held together pretty well in this crash. They've broadly stayed in line, which is really important in derailment. Like, as soon as you've got things like kinking and knocking in and like twisting and overriding each other is when the bad things happen. But in this case, like for the most part, they, so actually, if we go to the next slide, six people were killed, by the way, in this, and a fellow 21 were injured. If you go to the next slide.

• 1:15:48Justin Roczniak?

  I was just gonna remark on the big hook here. This is a really big, big hook.

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  That's a, that's a, that's a duck train sized hook there.

• 1:15:57Justin Roczniak?

  It's bigger than what we got in America.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, you guys need to get yourselves a big hook, you know. So, the train mostly stayed in line, which is why the fatalities were so small, actually. James, go north. Actually, the locomotive stayed on the tracks like it. The Deltic was fine. It was great.

• 1:16:17November Kelly?

  Those things are unkillable, you know?

• 1:16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it stayed on the track because it was that bit heavier. It actually stayed on the the tracks. That it had that much more force down into the the wheels to keep it on the track.

• 1:16:26November Kelly?

  People don't even know this, but technically they don't even need rails, you know? You can just point them in a direction. It makes its own.

• 1:16:32Justin Roczniak?

  The Canadians did that once.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so this, the Deltic went round and it made its coupler stayed intact with the vehicle behind, which was like a brake van, which it basically like dragged along like a shopping bag loosely dragged on the floor.

• 1:16:46November Kelly?

  Just like, no, the rest of you are coming with me.

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  So the the coupler behind that broke and then the train sort of scattered. But this like, this like kind of brake van was just going to drag around to the point where like smashed into Morpeth Station around the other end of the curve and like made a mess of that station as well. And yeah, so so the locomotive stayed on the rails, the lighter carriages had scattered behind it. And yeah, Morpeth Station got bashed up by this kind of dragged brake van kind of being swung around like a mace. And yeah, no one is injured in the station, thankfully, because it was empty because it was the middle of the night. So actually.

• 1:17:18November Kelly?

  Two guys having a fight on an opposing platform, just getting wiped out by a brake van.

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  Like an MP and a and a and a large kind of.

• 1:17:28November Kelly?

  Doing old timey fisticuffs, you know?

• 1:17:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah. So, um, yeah, this was bad. This was really bad. What? Next slide, please. Oh, sorry. I should have said next slide, please twice. Because the the first next slide, please, was the diagram showing what was going on. So you can see that the trains come around. It's come from the south here. In fact, Roz, you can jump madness. So that it's come from the south. It's you can see it's gone round and there's a dark shape that's at the other end of the curve, which is the brake van being dragged around. And then in front of that is is is our class 55 Deltic, happy as Larry sat on the rails like, hey, hey, it wasn't, I'm okay. What are you all fussing about?

• 1:18:05November Kelly?

  This is their problem, you know?

• 1:18:06Justin Roczniak?

  Is a brake van at this point still crucial for braking? Or is there like full train line air?

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  No, it's still mostly, it's still important for brake. Like not quite in the same way, but it certainly apply. It's heavier and applies a lot of the braking force of the, of the total thing. Yeah.

• 1:18:21Justin Roczniak?

  I guess that makes sense why it would be, uh, it would not have derailed as much.

• 1:18:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, that's a, that's a good point. And, uh, yeah, uh, cause it, yeah. So it's, it's being dangled around, but yeah, it, it, it sort of didn't just fly off immediately and, and break the couple. Yeah. Cause the rotation is what snapped the couplers behind, because the vehicle's then all overturned, snapping the couplers. So, um, next slide, please. You, you, you may be wondering what happened? Why, why did this happen? Why was the driver going too fast?

• 1:18:46November Kelly?

  The driving crooner to explain it to us.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  So, yeah.

• 1:18:49November Kelly?

  I hate you driving crooner.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  This is actually Leslie Byers. This is the driver and he's like using a hat to hide himself from the, from the, from the press here.

• 1:18:57Justin Roczniak?

  It didn't work very well because the camera was in front of him.

• 1:18:59November Kelly?

  Yeah, he just stepped once to the right. Um, being publicly shamed like got way easier when they invented respectively sunglasses, face masks and hoodies.

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. And also the super injunction.

• 1:19:11November Kelly?

  Yeah, well, true, but like you're, you're kind of like leaving Crown Court paparazzi experience, you know?

• 1:19:17Speaker 02

  Yes, much improved by the, the fake moustache, the, the sunglasses, et cetera, et cetera. Things of this nature.

• 1:19:23November Kelly?

  Coming out of court wearing the Mr. Bits, it's our.

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  So, um, so what had happened? So Byers alleged that, um, immediately following him making that first brake application. So, you know, so far so good, he makes that first brake application. Oh, rather, sorry, not the first, but he, when he basically put the vehicle into, into kind of neutral. Um, his mind started to wander to a notice he'd been given, um, when he was booking on that night, which had questioned why he had lost four minutes on a previous service. And it was the second notice that he'd received that month. Um, and it clearly like had stressed him out. Uh, and his, in his words, he took them very seriously. Um, and so he had, his mind had wandered and he ditched the train. For better or worse, I don't think it's fair to, you know, this is there, we have a kink in a railway and everything falls on the driver to not screw it up.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  But unfortunately, the driver had the book thrown at him, you know, he, he, he was, he was fully blamed for this.

• 1:20:19Justin Roczniak?

  This is also a lot of parallels to a certain derailment that occurred very close to home about a decade ago.

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. They always find the littlest guy who they care least about. And in this case, yeah, it's the driver. And you might say, well, he was the one who caused the fuck up. But no, Hudson in, well, you know, this is WTIP, you know, you know, the deal, folks, social murder.

• 1:20:42Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:20:43November Kelly?

  Yeah, drivers crash trains, but not as they choose to.

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  Precisely. What, what did we learn from this? Well, we did actually learn some stuff from this. Next slide, please. Because we had already been installing this thing called automatic warning system around the rail network after a previous absolutely horrifying crash at Harrow Wilmston.

• 1:21:04November Kelly?

  Yeah, it wasn't actually related to safety. It was just part of a general engineering quest to like, have as many people exposed to as many annoying noises as at work as possible. And that just happened to coincide with safety.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  Yes. So the, the, the thing that makes the happen in your cab was it being installed, but it was mostly just for like, stop signals and, you know, for like signals and for sometimes for ends of track and then things of this nature.

• 1:21:30November Kelly?

  The, um, the first generation AWS, uh, green light sound is a rather pleasing bell, though, kind of trails.

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

  It is nice. Ding. It's nice. Actually, I have a, do I have a bell? I don't have a bell. There we go.

• 1:21:43November Kelly?

  Yeah. It's a kind of like equivalent of like a nice thumbs up, you know, a nice pass on the back.

• 1:21:48Speaker 02

  It is nice. And you know what's funny is there is this, so having done cab rides, particularly at speed, under 25, there is this nice rhythm of the AWS doing its, its thing. You know, we've largely superseded.

• 1:21:57Liam McAnderson?

  Amazon Web Services and getting really confused.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  Yes. Do you know what's funny is I was listening to a podcast the other day and they, they didn't say Amazon Web Services. They were just saying AWS the whole time. And yes, all I could think of is the funny yellow magnet in the forefoot that I'm about to show you a picture of. So these things that are on, on the screen right now are what are called Morpeth boards. And the, The the yellow text on the black is what they first looked like. And then then we got rid of that. And we decided that the Scottish people decided, hey, why don't we use a different shape, man? Why didn't you make it a triangle? That's a Scottish person putting on a Scottish accent there for some reason. And yeah, so they went from they decided to make it a triangle. And so kind of by the early 80s, we'd moved into this like the realm of the triangle. And so you have these things. So if you see these things out on the network, this Morpeth board, what it does is it goes,

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  okay, if you're stepping down from like 30 mile or sort of like for like 100 miles an hour to 30 miles an hour, maybe it's a good idea to pre-warn you that that's a thing and even to tie into the AWS system. So if you go through that that Morpeth board too fast, the AWS will apply the brakes. This is a good idea. This is actually a good idea. So you get a sign, you get a warning VAWS that the driver has to respond to. And if there's no action taken, then the brakes will be applied. So this is a good idea. We have Morpeth boards. And next slide, please. I can show you a picture of here is an AWS magnet, kind of quite a new one. But they kind of look mostly like this back in the day as well. So if you see this thing out on track, if you're in that Britain that they have, firstly, apologies.

• 1:23:24Speaker 02

  Secondly, you might see lots of these around because often they've got funny iron filings on one bit because they're basically just a big magnet. That is what they are. That is a big electromagnet that is activated and deactivated. And the next next slide, please. They activate. So here, Roz, can you circle the sunflower thing that's kind of sort of in the middle of the screen?

• 1:23:46November Kelly?

  Ah, it's cool, isn't it? What a what a design. What a little visual language to establish, just for, you know.

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  So this is this is the cab of an NCT 125 freshly, which is why it says in very sexy sort of dyno print stuff, max speed 125 miles an hour.

• 1:24:03November Kelly?

  I like the 125 in a different size in case optimistically they ever needed to change it upwards.

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  I do like that.

• 1:24:11Justin Roczniak?

  We don't know how fast this goes, actually.

• 1:24:15November Kelly?

  I also really, really like the like iPad in a sort of dangly case. That really, it's hortology. Yeah. I often wondered when I was looking at the kind of like Soviet retrofuturism stuff, what it felt like to live in the kind of ruins of a failed state with a capitalist superstructure built over it and be like, you can see the past and the present and the future all at once. And now I know. So, you know.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  Here is that picture. Yeah, exactly. On the one that you've got, the one hand, you've got the piece of paper in the plastic slip. On the other hand, you have the iPad that's drive, that's doing the driver advisory system advising them when to kind of like break later and such or coast and stuff to save fuel. So, yeah, you get the little ding.

• 1:24:56Justin Roczniak?

  One of the funny things about the Pennsylvania Railroad, G G one is at least apocrypha, apocryphally, they never figured out how fast they could go.

• 1:25:06Justin Roczniak?

  There's one story that they brought out that there, there was one test run with 10 heavyweight coaches and they got to 160 miles an hour.

• 1:25:17Justin Roczniak?

  And the engineer shut off the throttle and said, that's the top speed. I'm, I'm not going faster.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  There is a car approaching somewhere.

• 1:25:26November Kelly?

  Top speed established by nerves. I also like if you, if you look forward of the, like the cab lights and the radio, working as a train driver, you get Harrogate Water in this country, luxury, unparalleled luxury, smash the unions now. They've had it too good for too long. They get the fancy sparkling water.

• 1:25:46Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:25:47November Kelly?

  You can look at that little faceted bottle, you know?

• 1:25:50Speaker 02

  I know, right? It's got, it's all like crystal thing, but it's plastic and it's very, very fancy. For ages, that was like, that was like the bottled water of choice that was like dumped in the like, the, the kind of the guard spot on the back of the H S T as well. If you, if you took your bike up there, you could steal some. It was always very useful. So, so, yeah, that little sunflower dial would illuminate and, and de illuminate based on whether the A W S had activated. And if you didn't, you basically get the bell and if you don't respond to it, the brakes will apply. This is quite a good system and it genuinely made our railways much, much safer. A very, very good thing.

• 1:26:23Speaker 02

  Weirdly though, if we could jump to the next slide, the Morpeth boards were not applied at Morpeth.

• 1:26:30Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, naturally.

• 1:26:31November Kelly?

  I love this fucking country so much.

• 1:26:35Speaker 02

  The reason why they weren't applied at Morpeth is because the engineers, well, basically there was a stepping down of speed. So rather than it being like, you're at 100, now you're at 40. It was, well, it dropped from 110 to 105 to 70 to 50 as the speeds ended up becoming because we did some upgrade work on here for the HSTs. So the speed's gone up from, we've increased the cannon from like 110 to 150 millimeters. We can now go around the curve at 50 miles an hour safely. But that stepping down of speed meant that the standard said you don't need to put the thing that's called a Morpeth board at Morpeth, which is fine, right? Sure. Great. Excellent. You didn't, you know, it didn't fall under the standard case for doing what is that Morpeth board's officially called advanced warning indicators. We don't need them here. That's definitely fine.

• 1:27:16November Kelly?

  I'm still, I'm still distracted by like village names. We've got a Glororum.

• 1:27:21Speaker 02

  Glororum is...

• 1:27:23November Kelly?

  Choppington.

• 1:27:26Justin Roczniak?

  West Sleekburn.

• 1:27:28November Kelly?

  Uh huh. Hebron, which is interesting stealing, stealing like Palestinian valor there.

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Just very, what a bizarre country we live in. What a strange place. Just, oh, just odd. Just fucked vibes. So yeah, so here's how it looks today. By the way, this is, this is.

• 1:27:47November Kelly?

  Tranwell, I sure hope I do.

• 1:27:49Justin Roczniak?

  Yep. I was about to mention that one, yeah.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  So this is the, so you can see that the trains either side of Morpeth, your trains are going at 110 miles an hour. This is a fast bit of railway and then it isn't for a bit because of the curve. So.

• 1:28:04November Kelly?

  You're getting the kind of like seeing a speed camera equivalent, you know?

• 1:28:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Justin Roczniak?

  It's a speed trap. It's a speed trap.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. This is how it looks today and also how it looked in the 1980s because we've done nothing since BR did everything.

• 1:28:17November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

  So, so let's not look at it. Next slide, please. Here is a diagram of Edinburgh Waverley Station. Roz, if you read the first line here and will understand what data is and why.

• 1:28:28Justin Roczniak?

  24th of June, 1984.

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  So it's 1980. We're at Edinburgh Waverley Station. Well, actually, we're not quite at Edinburgh Waverley Station. We're approaching Edinburgh Waverley Station in presumably a local train as a passenger at this point, but driver Peter Allen was booked to take the Aberdeen to London sleeper south from Edinburgh late that evening. At first, though, he snuck in a cheeky one at a pub in Musselburgh near his home in Drem. So next slide, please.

• 1:28:54November Kelly?

  Is it a crime to get drunk at work?

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  He had one whiskey.

• 1:29:00Justin Roczniak?

  Well, he's not, he's not there yet.

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  Next slide, please. He also had a pint. So, you know.

• 1:29:04November Kelly?

  This is a boiler maker, perfectly legitimate.

• 1:29:06Speaker 02

  Shot and chaser. Fine.

• 1:29:08Justin Roczniak?

  I had a citywide special.

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  So he arrived, actually, he didn't get a local train. Sorry, he drove. He arrived in his car.

• 1:29:18Speaker 02

  At 2135, he phoned his duty manager from this wee little boffy thing that was near the good step.

• 1:29:23November Kelly?

  This drive will get me so fed up is like one of the kind of, yeah.

• 1:29:28Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, don't do that.

• 1:29:29November Kelly?

  1900s.

• 1:29:31Justin Roczniak?

  I actually drive, I drive a little better when I'm buzzed.

• 1:29:35Speaker 02

  So he phones, he phones his duty manager to say that he's arrived at 2143. And the time between him arriving at 2135 and him phoning his boss at 2143 gave him time to sneak in a cheeky nip. So, next slide, please.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  He got in a can of lager and next slide, please.

• 1:30:00Justin Roczniak?

  Do we know it's the specific lager?

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  It's in Scotland. It's going to be Tennant's, man. So it's, so you got an account and then he got in, you know what? Step up a can of strong lager, which at the time would only have been Tennant's Super. So my boy is getting stuck in. So Alan was seen in the car park.

• 1:30:17Justin Roczniak?

  Interested in this beer. This, this looks delicious.

• 1:30:20Liam McAnderson?

  We'll find it for you.

• 1:30:22November Kelly?

  Come to Britain, come to Scotland.

• 1:30:24Liam McAnderson?

  Working on it, working on it.

• 1:30:26November Kelly?

  We will do a live show. We will get you on some, some Buckfast and some Tennant's Super.

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  Tennant Super is, I, wow, I drank quite a bit of it, not enough of it to be honest. In fact, no, too much of it while I was a student and I probably only had about four cans in total. And that was enough. It's not a nice thing to consume. I'm going to be honest with you. But the factory is nice where it's made, right?

• 1:30:48November Kelly?

  It's a thing. It's a thing that, you know, you establish a preference, you establish your priorities, what you want to receive from the alcohol, right?

• 1:30:58November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:58Justin Roczniak?

  Malt liquor brackets, British.

• 1:31:00November Kelly?

  You drink a Tennant and you're like, okay, I don't want to have a good beer, but I want to have a beer. And I want to like relax and it's going to be a chill time. You, you drink a sort of a strong lager like your Tennant Super. And you're like, not only do I not want to drink a good beer, but I want to get wasted and you will, ah.

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  It's a beer with purpose. So having, having snuck these in before phoning the boss, you know, in that like the seven preceding minutes where he's presumably just sat in the car tit again, getting the tins in.

• 1:31:29November Kelly?

  Oh, virulently shit vibes, being in a parked car in Waverley Station car park, drinking a can of like, sort of like cold, but like cooled by it being cold outside. Tennant Super.

• 1:31:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, by the fact you're in a car with no air con and yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:49Justin Roczniak?

  Wait, Waverley, I've looked at Waverley before on Google Maps. You drive your car inside like the station?

• 1:31:56November Kelly?

  You can do it. It's all cabs there.

• 1:31:59Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, I see. Okay.

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  This was, this was, so back in 1984, it was really, really different. So you have to look at the old pictures and, and you could drive everywhere in the station.

• 1:32:08November Kelly?

  Jesus, really? I mean, it's weirdly laid out now, but like.

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like that scene where Michael Caine drives into St Pancras and like hops out the car and jumps into a DM, into a kind of a train heading northwards on the, on the middle main line. It's, it's kind of like that. Messed up. Again.

• 1:32:24Justin Roczniak?

  Okay, open the doors to the break van. Let me drive my car in there.

• 1:32:29November Kelly?

  Yeah, we didn't innovate that much with the channel tunnel, you know?

• 1:32:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  So presumably wibbling a little bit, Alan was seen in the car park by a colleague at about 2155. And they also saw him climbing the steps to the footbridge that spans the station around that time as well. So.

• 1:32:43Justin Roczniak?

  I figure he would have pulled the car up right next to the locomotive that parked it at a jaunty angle, you know?

• 1:32:51Speaker 02

  So actually.

• 1:32:51Justin Roczniak?

  Having run down several passengers on the way up there. Get out of my way. I have to drive the train.

• 1:32:57November Kelly?

  Different marks on this map for places he's stopped to piss on things.

• 1:33:03Liam McAnderson?

  War mongers.

• 1:33:05Speaker 02

  So we can kind of track his journey here because on this diagram, you can see Roz kind of like on the right hand side, you can see the bothy and the staff car park and you sort of see the telephone and there's like an arrow saying telephoned from here 2143.

• 1:33:20November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's weird that he's seen in two places at once because someone's been inexact about the time, either that or one drunk man has phase transported down the length of platform.

• 1:33:31Justin Roczniak?

  Strong chance the person who called it in was also drunk.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  All true, this is Scotland in the early 80s, of course they were drunk. So hey, I can say this as someone who was born in Edinburgh, I know what's going on there.

• 1:33:45November Kelly?

  I think having lived here for 10 years allows me to like cosign that.

• 1:33:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So you can trace his little journey. So there's a little dotted line that you can John Madden over the top of Roz.

• 1:33:55November Kelly?

  Not as wiggly as it should be, you know, this shit was moving around like the Indiana Jones plane.

• 1:34:00Speaker 02

  And so he kind of makes his way along and eventually finds his way to the footbridge. Anyone knows the footbridge, okay, it's mostly the same as it is now. It comes out, if he goes south from the footbridge, this is a fun thing. So this is the diagram from the report, right? From the report of something that's about to happen. And on the screen, you'll see that in the bottom left hand corner of the diagram, they've picked out a load of little blocks and they've written the letters PH in them.

• 1:34:26November Kelly?

  Pissed here.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  PH on the map stands for public house.

• 1:34:31November Kelly?

  No.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  So there are one, two, three, four, five public houses.

• 1:34:38November Kelly?

  Going on a pub crawl before driving my train. That's. Or a fortification. Never change Scotland.

• 1:34:48Speaker 02

  So this guy, he went missing for about 45 or 50 minutes when no one in the station saw him.

• 1:34:55Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, Jesus, mate.

• 1:34:56Speaker 02

  He was seen climbing up to the footbridge that if you go south, you come out in the entrance that's directly opposite Flesh Market. Anyone who's run from like Sheems or wherever in Edinburgh that is a student in Newington or whatever, and you're running to get a train late, because that's what you do, you will run down Flesh Market Close to get straight out across into the step, footstep to run down desperately to your train.

• 1:35:16November Kelly?

  I am picking up what you're putting down. I understand this very deeply. Also, Flesh Market Close, again, all of Edinburgh's like this. It is just Dunwall, sorry.

• 1:35:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really is. Yeah. So, so there are a lot of pubs within very easy access of that entrance to the station.

• 1:35:32Liam McAnderson?

  Why can't we have that in Philly?

• 1:35:33Justin Roczniak?

  I have, I have issues with substances, right?

• 1:35:38Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you and I both.

• 1:35:39Justin Roczniak?

  And after driving to the station and consuming two beers in my car, I think I would at most be able to do one more beer at one pub before getting in my train.

• 1:35:51November Kelly?

  Well, this guy was built different. I mean, this was basically the entrance interview for like the Scottish division of British Rail.

• 1:35:58Speaker 02

  So how many units are we in at this point? So the whisky, right? Two units for a whisky, right?

• 1:36:02November Kelly?

  Yeah, give or take. If it's a, if it's a strong pour, three, like.

• 1:36:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And this was in Musselburgh, so I'm gonna go for strong pour. So, three units from the whisky, two units from the tenants, two units from the other tenants, and then four units from the tenants? Super?

• 1:36:19November Kelly?

  Yeah, he's nearing like sort of, you get this from like necking like half a big bottle of vodka, for instance. Like, this, this would be your like sort of coat pocket sized bottle of like strong spirits.

• 1:36:32Speaker 02

  Get, get your bottle of Glensour, that's the stuff, yeah. So.

• 1:36:35Justin Roczniak?

  This is, this is Louisville and Nashville Railroad in the 80s drinking. I mean, this is.

• 1:36:42Speaker 02

  The handshake between like British Rail, Scotland Region.

• 1:36:45November Kelly?

  Well, what do you think all the Scottish people fucking emigrated out there, you know?

• 1:36:49Speaker 02

  Well, this is it, yeah.

• 1:36:50November Kelly?

  The cultural traditions they brought with them.

• 1:36:52Speaker 02

  So, Aaron Peter Allen was, was next seen walking along what was then Platform 11, about 45 or 50 minutes after he prepped.

• 1:37:00November Kelly?

  We're also discounting the possibility that he had a hip flask as well.

• 1:37:02Justin Roczniak?

  It could be, you know, several other things. He's got like a, it's got like a attache case with like a franzion.

• 1:37:11November Kelly?

  He was wearing one of those hard hats with a beer can on each side.

• 1:37:18Speaker 02

  He's got the, he's got the little tartan thermos flask.

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  Like that's, it's all, it's all happening.

• 1:37:24Justin Roczniak?

  You got a camel back full of Everclear.

• 1:37:30November Kelly?

  Okay, the phrase camel back full of Everclear is gonna sit with me.

• 1:37:34Liam McAnderson?

  No, it's just mine. It's just mine.

• 1:37:36November Kelly?

  At least you don't have to worry about ever cleaning that, you know, you're not getting any fucking mould in there.

• 1:37:40Liam McAnderson?

  I'm not, thank you.

• 1:37:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:43Liam McAnderson?

  Remember the super soaker full of Canadian mist? Never had to clean that shit, good way.

• 1:37:51Speaker 02

  So, so despite his claim that he'd been wandering around the station, this was, he was next seen at 2250, basically getting into the loco. And, and yeah, he hadn't been seen at all in the kind of inceding hour or so. My boy was getting stuck in. Oh, he was. Let's, um, next slide, please. Let's, let's leave Waverley Station and, and Peter Allen and, and his, his adventures. And, uh, and talk about the train. So this is, this is, here's a Mark one coach. It's, it's not, it's a model, folks. It's a model.

• 1:38:18November Kelly?

  Very pretty model, though.

• 1:38:19Justin Roczniak?

  It's not even a model. It's a picture of a model.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  It's a picture model. It's true.

• 1:38:23November Kelly?

  Well, actually, it's a digital representation of a picture.

• 1:38:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. This is not a pipe.

• 1:38:31Liam McAnderson?

  I don't dare you be me to it. God damn it.

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  These had been replaced, next slide, please. These have been replaced by, um, Mark three coaches. So the Mark three sleeper coaches. And these, um, you know, I'm often down on the Mark threes these days because they're just hopelessly outclassed by modern rolling stock. But in the 1980s, these were still really very, very good. They were very, very good coaches. They rode well. They were very strong. They're very safe. Good stuff.

• 1:38:54November Kelly?

  It's kind of, you know, if you wanted to do a centrist shit lib thing, you could be like, you know, nationalized railway systems. In a kind of like, in a microcosm is your state of the art train being driven by a guy who has had like, six cans of lager and a couple of whiskeys.

• 1:39:13Justin Roczniak?

  Again, I, I mean, do you want that? Or do you want people drinking a fifth of, uh, of bourbon in the, uh, in the, in the cab of, uh, Louisville and Asheville train with 75 cars of chemicals.

• 1:39:26Speaker 02

  Oh geez, oh my god, good grief. So, so this train is formed of seven Mark 3s. It still had two Mark 1s, but they were the brake vans either end. So we still, for some reason, we've got these state, at the time reasonably state of the art coaches. For some reason, that's just such Brit vibes, such BR vibes. You have the Mark 1 coaches either side. So next slide, please, because this was being hauled by, it's a Class 47.

• 1:39:51November Kelly?

  It's the train that there is.

• 1:39:54Speaker 02

  Oh, I, I love this thing. This is, it's, it's, it's the, honestly, the best fleet of locomotives Britain has ever built. I love these things. This is 47452. That means nothing to anyone and it shouldn't because if, for those who, it does mean stuff too, shout out, hi, my people. Yeah, this is a, this is a beautifully simple, elegant, powerful and gruff locomotive. You know, this thing is like from the 50s, basically. It's a, it's a, it's a tank and it's beautiful and they're brilliant.

• 1:40:24Justin Roczniak?

  It's a big rectangle with the motor in it.

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  And we built a thousand of them.

• 1:40:28Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 1:40:28Speaker 02

  And they did everything.

• 1:40:29November Kelly?

  We, we used to do things in this country.

• 1:40:32Speaker 02

  We really did. We really bloody did. Like honestly, I think, I think it's about 850 actually, but like, that's a shit ton of, just imagine all those lined up. That's, that's a, that's a lot of locos. So in the small hours of the following day, so this thing set off, set off from Edinburgh, heading southwards on its way to London. The train was approaching Morpeth from the north at, at nearly 90 miles an hour. Morpeth Curve had been recanted. Its permissible speed, speed had been lifted to 50 miles an hour.

• 1:40:58November Kelly?

  I'm just gonna let the sort of like rocking motion of this train sort of lull me into a sense of like extreme awareness and professionalism, along with all of this alcohol.

• 1:41:08Speaker 02

  Yes. So you're, so you're, you're in a brand new Mark 3 sleeper coach. The, the, having slept in those, they're quite nice. You're, you're getting comfy. You're kind of feeling that nice, you're like, like the driver, but for different reasons, you're feeling a nice rocking sensation that's lulling you gently and pleasantly to sleep. The trouble is the train is still at 90 and Morpeth Curve is getting closer and closer and closer. Next slide, please.

• 1:41:32Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 1:41:33November Kelly?

  Whoa, train on the ground, train put on the ground.

• 1:41:37Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, that is not the way that train is supposed to be.

• 1:41:40November Kelly?

  No.

• 1:41:42Speaker 02

  So anyway, it's a very nice picture of Morpeth Curve here. As the train entered Curve, the locomotive over this time, it's not like the Deltic got away with it. The 47 did not. The locomotive overturned and pulled its carriages with it. The train mostly stayed intact, as in like the couplings kept the thing kind of in line, which again is good.

• 1:42:00November Kelly?

  Ones that's in the forefront that's not crushed.

• 1:42:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And yeah, you're right. It hasn't been obliterated, although you can see some damage at the vehicle end. But yeah, mostly still intact. The other good thing about the brake van is it's just got people's shit in it. It certainly matter. And a guard probably.

• 1:42:15November Kelly?

  Your luggage has been crushed into a cube.

• 1:42:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, but.

• 1:42:18Justin Roczniak?

  Apparently it hasn't. It looks fine.

• 1:42:20Speaker 02

  Well, no, it's doing okay. Yeah.

• 1:42:22Justin Roczniak?

  You've been crashed into a cube.

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  Yes, or you're just goo. So the train stayed mostly intact.

• 1:42:28Justin Roczniak?

  Property is what matters.

• 1:42:29Speaker 02

  It helped avoid too much mess and combined with the strength of the Mark 3, it's meant that nobody was killed. Which, when you see the next pictures, you might be surprised by. There were 35 injuries of passenger and staff, it must be said. But so if we go to the next slide, here's kind of what's going on and you'll see that.

• 1:42:46November Kelly?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:42:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:48November Kelly?

  This house in particular and also this house in particular.

• 1:42:52Speaker 02

  The train has quite literally fucked that house.

• 1:42:57Speaker 02

  It's it's it saw the bungalow and much like me, who whenever I see a bungalow, I become irrationally enraged and want to demolish it. The Mark 3 coach had the same sensation and decided, fuck you in particular. And in it went and smashed up a bedroom and the half of this bungalow. And also smashed up the front of it. It's friend behind smashed into a slightly stronger two-story building behind. But yeah, this is quite a good picture because it shows a couple of things. It shows freshly the locomotive is hidden behind a tree, but you can kind of see it. Kind of two thirds into the into the shot. You can kind of see it's it's it's front and it's back. You can see that Mark 1 coach Nova that you you pointed out rightly and the Mark 3 behind it. The train's broken behind that, but you can also see that those coaches have stayed.

• 1:43:42Speaker 02

  Mostly in a line, which has helped with energy dissipation because all of them are kind of breaking together as they dig into the ballast and stuff or the bungalow. Which.

• 1:43:51November Kelly?

  What is a bungalow if not more ballast?

• 1:43:56November Kelly?

  Anything past track side is ballast. Engrave that in 50 foot high letters.

• 1:44:01Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:02Justin Roczniak?

  I was about to say, you need an equivalent to the spaceship guys who would call this lithobraking.

• 1:44:08November Kelly?

  Yeah, bungalow breaking.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  That's exactly what's happening.

• 1:44:11Justin Roczniak?

  Well, no, you need like a Latin term for bungalow.

• 1:44:15Speaker 02

  The fact that, yeah, the fact the train has stayed largely in line has is a very good thing for the safety as well as the fact that, okay, the one that hit the two story house has bent a bit, but most of them are staying pretty intact.

• 1:44:26November Kelly?

  If it's gone through part of that two story house, that does technically make the two story house a drogue.

• 1:44:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is. It is a drogue house. Yeah.

• 1:44:34November Kelly?

  Kind of a sea anchor.

• 1:44:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it. And then the back of the train is still most intact. So that's fine. So no one killed, which is really good. Next slide, please. Cause we have to look at more pictures of our house being smashed a bit because it's extremely funny.

• 1:44:47November Kelly?

  Whoa.

• 1:44:48Speaker 02

  So here is, so here's another picture that the first one there, you can see that the train smearing through the garden, smashing into the the front bedroom of the two story house and obliterating the bungalow, rip the bungalow. And then the next picture, you can see the the mark three that's had the most bashing and it stayed pretty well intact, except that it's like been bent by by in the metaphorical knee of the big house. The next picture is a rather unhappy house owner whose bungalow has been demolished by a mark three.

• 1:45:16November Kelly?

  I don't know why you're unhappy. You're gonna get a shitload of money out of B R for this.

• 1:45:19Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:45:20Justin Roczniak?

  I presume. This is, this, this looks like a very long suffering man.

• 1:45:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. I feel like he's been through some stuff.

• 1:45:27November Kelly?

  Guy who has just put the last lick of paint on his perfect bungalow to retire.

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  I have a feeling he will have moved somewhere without a railway after this.

• 1:45:38November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:40Speaker 02

  That's my suspicion. So next slide, please. Here is, here's a diagram of what happened. Well, so this time the train's come from another direction. So it's coming from the, the right hand side of the slide, heading southwards, although not, it didn't manage to get facing south at this point because curve. You can see the train has gone everywhere and made a mess of my track, which is very rude.

• 1:46:01November Kelly?

  Yeah, many, many permanent way engineers would consider this to be an inconvenience.

• 1:46:06Speaker 02

  Precisely. Or a convenience because we get to, we get some high speed, we get some brand new track installed, which is always a nice thing. Although one of the things that really annoys me is whenever we have like, like climate change based smashing of our railways.

• 1:46:20November Kelly?

  Written in bungalow.

• 1:46:27Speaker 02

  A thing that always annoys me with like track washouts and stuff these days with climate change, because they're happening more and more, is they always seem to happen just after we've done a track renewal. So you've got this beautiful track with like no ballast under it because a river's washed it out. I'm like, why can't they happen to neck a track and then we get a free renewal off the back of it? Anyway, very annoyed by that. Always happening. So next slide, please. Because there's a diagram in the crash report that you remember the picture that I put up earlier of one rail kind of raised above the other. Well, here you can see that the can't 150 millimeters. But you'll see there is a, they've added an extra bit to the diagram here, which is the, the wheel and axle. And you'll notice something about that, which is that it's doing something that if you, if you just pay close attention here, you'll see it shouldn't be doing that, which is tipping way off the track.

• 1:47:10Speaker 02

  No, it shouldn't. That's bad. That's a bad thing that has happened there, which is why, yeah, the fact that the report includes this diagram, I quite enjoy this. You'll, you'll surmise that the wheel is not supposed to be doing that.

• 1:47:22Justin Roczniak?

  This is, uh, this is when there is a lot of can deficiency.

• 1:47:26Speaker 02

  Yes, this is a significant amount of can deficiency to the point of train leave track. Yes. So, um, anyway, next slide, please.

• 1:47:35Justin Roczniak?

  You've heard of, uh, uh, dual track drifting. Uh, this is one rail drifting.

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is, this is, yeah, this is, this is, this is doing the James Bond, the good James Bond film that isn't a James Bond film where they got, they two wheel a truck and stinger miss dodge stinger missiles in the process. Um, doing that, but in a class forty seven. Yeah. Next slide, please. Because, um, anyway, yeah, after this, Morpeth boards were installed at Morpeth. Um, you'll be glad to know.

• 1:48:01November Kelly?

  It only took them, what, 20 years?

• 1:48:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it only took them like 20 years and another big mess and several people's houses getting walloped. Yeah. Um, so job done, right? Problem solved.

• 1:48:16November Kelly?

  Oh.

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  Next slide, please, because that's right. This is a four disaster episode.

• 1:48:20November Kelly?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:48:21Speaker 02

  10 years later, on, uh, Roz, please.

• 1:48:25Justin Roczniak?

  27th of June, 1994.

• 1:48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, an express parcels train hauled by another class forty seven, which, um, really didn't come well out of this.

• 1:48:33November Kelly?

  Yeah, we did named after a sort of random North London suburb and hauling one of those beautiful Royal Mail post fans.

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it was hauling, presumably hauling a load of these post fans. I like this one for a variety of reasons. This, this picture, so Finsbury Park, this is named after the depot, um, at Finsbury Park and, um, this, so the train crash, so the class forty seven goes around the curve at 80 miles an hour and obviously it crashed horribly. Thankfully nobody was, nobody was killed, but, um, as his cab hit the dirt, the driver quite literally ate ballast and was pretty severely injured. Um, so I would not like to be eating ballast. I actually have some ballast down in a bag next to me because I'm a weirdo. But that stuff's the size of your fist and I would not want one of those to hit me in the head at one mile an hour, let alone lots of them hitting me in the head at 80 miles an hour.

• 1:49:16November Kelly?

  Sort of a dentally complex injuring.

• 1:49:19Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, you gotta, gotta have a lot of, lot of novocaine, lot of novocaine.

• 1:49:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, um, I, I want to, so it's sort of like weird. Is it ontology? Or is it just fun livery stuff? This train hit the dirt so hard that it was delivery.

• 1:49:34November Kelly?

  Yeah, they, they took the intercity livery off it and it went back to blue.

• 1:49:39Speaker 02

  Oh jeez.

• 1:49:40November Kelly?

  It's got the British Rail blue underneath it.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:43November Kelly?

  Because this should be black, but it's just taken that off.

• 1:49:46Speaker 02

  It stripped it right back. Yeah, quite something. So, um, uh, yeah, like the depot people being like, oh shit, we're supposed to take that down to the, to the, ah, they're gonna see that we're, we just painted over the previous one. You're supposed to take it down to, ah, damn it.

• 1:50:00November Kelly?

  I mean, the paint guy realising he's in trouble, but not the most trouble of anyone that day is probably like, organisationally interesting.

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

  So, you know, the Morpeth boards have been fitted. So how did this happen? Next slide, please. Well, okay. So the previous three incidents all had published official reports, which means that we, yes, it's the WTYP yellow with some reports over it. People laughed at me in the privatisation episode because I did loads of these and people were like, God, he really likes putting reports onto the yellow. And I was like, it's the WTYP yellow. I'm trying to be thematic.

• 1:50:28Liam McAnderson?

  It's a good colour.

• 1:50:29Speaker 02

  Three, three reports. Lots. It is nice. Um, three nice reports telling us lots of things about what happened, really nice in detail. Even the 1877 ones actually a pretty good rapport, actually in its detail. So you think there's going to be another one, right? Uh, next slide, please.

• 1:50:43Speaker 02

  It's 1994.

• 1:50:44November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:45Speaker 02

  No, wrong. Early privatisation days, everything's a free for all. Who needs to learn stuff? We don't, we don't need to do a railway. We just need to, you know, do nothing at all.

• 1:50:54November Kelly?

  It's not called move fast and learn things.

• 1:50:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So, uh, next slide, please, because at the time, um, these chucklefucks had taken over the rail inspector and were in charge of writing crash reports.

• 1:51:05November Kelly?

  What is this logo even meant to convey?

• 1:51:07Speaker 02

  This is the Health and Safety Executive.

• 1:51:09Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, it's Nick Bolos from, uh, Imagine the Gathering.

• 1:51:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Well, the Health and Safety Executive, um, are, if you want to understand regulatory capture, they are, what an organisation to, to, to realise, to, to, to kind of understand as a case study in that. So they were supposedly at this point with privatisation, early privatisation, they were in charge of writing crash reports, which they either just didn't do, or they did do them and they didn't publish them. Um, at some point, we'll do the Tesco Tunnel collapse. I'm convincing everyone on here to, to do the Tesco Tunnel collapse. So lobby your local WTYP co-host to make that happen.

• 1:51:44Liam McAnderson?

  Do not lobby me.

• 1:51:45Speaker 02

  And I will talk more about this, but suffice to say, they have this responsibility stripped from them after a series of horrible incidents and big failures in industry learning. So we have no idea why that post train crashed.

• 1:51:57November Kelly?

  Just vibes, just feel, feel, just felt like it.

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  So we learned nothing from that. So, um, so yeah, that's, and that is a weird end to the story of the Morpeth curve, which by the way, is still there. And I've got a couple of friends who, when they go through it, they send me a picture saying, yeah, I got through. Okay. So, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's kind of a running gag. Um, that's, uh,

• 1:52:18November Kelly?

  And again, to be clear, this, this exists because of Earl Grey and his fail sons.

• 1:52:23Speaker 02

  Correct. Yes. Literally Earl Grey and his, and his wealthy.

• 1:52:26November Kelly?

  Killing people today.

• 1:52:28Speaker 02

  Still murdering people.

• 1:52:29November Kelly?

  What a mixed legacy, a shitload of train crashes, but tea.

• 1:52:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, quite nice tea. Yeah, exactly. Tea that Picard likes. So, um, did we, did, so did, I, I know I've talked a lot here. Did, did we learn anything from any of this?

• 1:52:42November Kelly?

  Well, it seems like British Rail didn't. And, you know, certainly seems like.

• 1:52:46Speaker 02

  BR did, cause BR did Morpeth boards eventually. They did Morpeth boards, but then, then they eventually decided to install them at Morpeth, you know? So we got there eventually. But, um, have we actually fixed the problem? No, no, the curve is still there. Still, still there. 50 miles an hour. It's a really obvious slowdown between 100 and, you know, 100 mile an hour plus bits of railway. It's very strange. Um, it's, yeah, but there we go. That's Morpeth, Morpeth curve.

• 1:53:10Justin Roczniak?

  It's just this, this universal, like, there are lots of railroads in the world that have these, like, really, like, tight curves in between high speed segments. And they go wrong all the time. And I mean, I say all the time. I mean, they have a crash every couple of decades, but that's still too much.

• 1:53:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, you know what? Just, just don't have the, get rid of the king. I know I'm getting cancelled for being king. Yeah, no, I'm sorry.

• 1:53:35Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, no, no king.

• 1:53:36Speaker 02

  Get rid of, get rid of the tight bend. Let's put it that way. Get rid of the tight bend. Yeah, no, that's

• 1:53:42November Kelly?

  Is it just too overbuilt and too established a rise away that now you're just like you'd have to do some insane sort of purchasing to like change the shape of it at all?

• 1:53:52Speaker 02

  You'd need a new viaduct over the river, which would be quite expensive. Other than that, it would be cheap because the land is fairly cheap and it's Morpeth. It's Northumberland. It's fine. You'd have some very unhappy landowners, but you know.

• 1:54:04November Kelly?

  Do it now, strike while the iron's hot, you know? While the iron's turned on treasury and away from DFT.

• 1:54:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, we can just get stuck in. Yeah. Except that we need the money from treasury to build the bridge to go over the river. So yeah, we're screwed on that front.

• 1:54:19November Kelly?

  Just get Louis Hay to like go to Rachel Reeves, like I have a way to take the heat off you. And all it's going to require is the cost of one viaduct. I literally have a bridge to sell you.

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, of course, my, my approach to getting rid of this kink is actually not to get rid of it at all. It's actually build HS2 on the other side of the country, even though it's the bendier side. Build the HS2 base tunnels that get you from where it ought to finish in Manchester, under the current plans to where it really ought to finish, which is Glasgow. So do that. And then you will, then you don't need to worry about this curve because every train will stop at Morpeth. So they'll all be slowing down anyway to do that. And things will be much safer as a result. But there we go.

• 1:54:56November Kelly?

  Really put Morpeth on the map as well for more than just this?

• 1:54:59Speaker 02

  Hooray, Morpeth. Yeah. Cause you know what's ironic is that they, they shouted and screamed to get the railway. And actually what it did was wreck Morpeth as a market town because the railway took, just meant everyone left Morpeth. So, uh, so maybe, maybe they should have had the really good for you.

• 1:55:17Speaker 02

  Exactly. Thank you, Lynn. So Roz, I'll, I'll give it back to you. Thanks for, thanks all of you for listening to Morpeth chat.

• 1:55:25Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I, I hope we can really put Morpeth on the map. You know, I think this is going to be a global center for commerce pretty soon.

• 1:55:32November Kelly?

  Check this shit out. Morpeth, more problems.

• 1:55:38November Kelly?

  See, after, after a couple of hours of derangement, that hits differently.

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  It does. It does. Yeah. Exactly.

• 1:55:46Justin Roczniak?

  Well, we have a segment on this podcast called Safety Third.

• 1:55:53November Kelly?

  Shake hands with danger. Shake hands with danger.

• 1:55:56Speaker 02

  Shake hands with danger.

• 1:55:57November Kelly?

  Danger.

• 1:55:59Speaker 02

  Roz, what are we looking at here? What's going on?

• 1:56:01Justin Roczniak?

  Hello Roz, November, Liam and Gareth.

• 1:56:05November Kelly?

  I actually nailed it.

• 1:56:07Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Now, Milkshake's here.

• 1:56:09November Kelly?

  Nah, fuck.

• 1:56:09Speaker 02

  Ah, F.

• 1:56:11Justin Roczniak?

  Until very recently, I was one of the sorry few tasked with reducing entire mice to various soup-like homogenates in under thirty seconds.

• 1:56:22November Kelly?

  Let's go.

• 1:56:23Speaker 02

  All the homogenates with atmospheric railways, soup-like homogenates. Ah, it's all the hits today.

• 1:56:28Justin Roczniak?

  While in vivo research is a whole disaster on its own, this story comes from the benchwork side of the lab. The reason that we need from time to time to make soup from rodents is that it grants us easier access to the smallest parts of the rodents, the molecules.

• 1:56:50Justin Roczniak?

  It is much easier to extract redacted target molecule from membraneless homogenous soup than it is to take it from complex and fiddly organs.

• 1:57:03November Kelly?

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:04Justin Roczniak?

  Though the tissue homogenizer does most of the work perfectly well, it leaves some microscopic pieces of organs floating around, which can greeble your data in ways that bother corporate.

• 1:57:17Speaker 02

  Not the use of greeble. I hate that sentence, though.

• 1:57:20Justin Roczniak?

  There is, however, a second machine, which can be deployed to remove these contaminants and convert a batch of soup-like homogenous into crystal clear lysate in just about thirty minutes.

• 1:57:34November Kelly?

  Cocktail strainer.

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:36Justin Roczniak?

  That machine is called the Ultra Centrifuge.

• 1:57:41November Kelly?

  I take it back. That's the coolest thing I've ever fucking heard in my life. Searching that on Google immediately.

• 1:57:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:51Justin Roczniak?

  Your bog standard off-the-shelf Ultra Centrifuge can run you nearly one hundred thousand dollars.

• 1:57:57November Kelly?

  It looks like an old. Looks like an old-timey washing machine, costs, as you say, infinity dollars. I, I, I just want to throw stuff in here, see what happens.

• 1:58:07Speaker 02

  I, I Googled it and the first result is an introduction to Ultra Centrifugation.

• 1:58:15Speaker 02

  From Beckham.

• 1:58:16November Kelly?

  Generates, it generates acceleration as high as 1 million G or 9,800 kilometers a second.

• 1:58:26Speaker 02

  What?

• 1:58:29Justin Roczniak?

  Your box standard off the shelf ultra centrifuge can run you nearly $100,000 and is capable of accelerating samples to angular velocities on that same order of magnitude.

• 1:58:43November Kelly?

  I, I, I note here a thing in the hazards section, which I'm going to keep to myself, assuming that the thing is about this.

• 1:58:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. Okay. Okay. Yep. Ditto.

• 1:58:55Justin Roczniak?

  The force applied to these samples maxes out at 150,000 times the force of gravity on earth and readily compresses any particulates in your homogenate into an easy to discard pellet. The subject of today's story is a shorter benchtop model, the rotor of which is about head height for anyone sitting at a bench in the same room.

• 1:59:20November Kelly?

  Okay. I'm regressing having read the first sentence of the hazard section now.

• 1:59:27Justin Roczniak?

  On an unspecified day at an unremarked upon time, a coworker of mine loaded a rotor, image B, filled with samples into the machine and started to run. Now, one quirk about the ultra centrifuge is that it screams when it's working normally.

• 1:59:47November Kelly?

  Same.

• 1:59:48Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:50Justin Roczniak?

  Since the instantaneous linear velocity of the rotor passes through the full range of human hearing on its way to 100,000 revolutions per minute.

• 2:00:02Justin Roczniak?

  At no point since my coworker started the run and promptly left the lab, did it make any of the correct noises.

• 2:00:09November Kelly?

  Oh, I leave the room.

• 2:00:12Justin Roczniak?

  Immediately, the Ultra Centrifuge started to groan and to rattle before going into emergency shut off. I called this coworker over since the samples are usually time sensitive and she took the rotor to confirm that she had balanced the samples correctly. I did not notice when she came back since I was busy with my own work, but a few minutes later, I heard the Ultra Centrifuge kick back up to 5,000 RPM without issue.

• 2:00:39Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:00:41Justin Roczniak?

  The rattling started slowly. It jittered before it jostled and it bumped before it banged, but the growl was sudden.

• 2:00:50Speaker 02

  Poetic. The growl is always sudden.

• 2:00:54Justin Roczniak?

  Whatever beasts they locked in there to spin the samples was unhappy and after a few thousand more RPM tolerating the mismatched samples, it demanded justice, but not before trying to reach its target speed of 100,000 RPM for some reason.

• 2:01:13Speaker 02

  Brock.

• 2:01:15Speaker 02

  I don't like this. I don't like this.

• 2:01:19Justin Roczniak?

  Like an industry novel, like an industry novice and a general dumbass, I approached the machine to shut it down manually.

• 2:01:27November Kelly?

  Yeah, just pop the lid, see what happens.

• 2:01:30Liam McAnderson?

  Power cycling.

• 2:01:32Justin Roczniak?

  By standing to approach the machine, which should sound poised to fracture at any second, I had moved my abdomen into the danger zone where it would spew debris at any point if the machine fractured from stress. And each step widened the arc I occupied. Earlier, I mentioned the Ultra Centrifuge's strength in terms of relative forces and angular velocity. Velocity. The instantaneous linear velocity at this stage approaches 300 miles an hour. Luckily, this model comes equipped with an easily accessed main power switch and it applies an emergency brake if power is disrupted while the rotor is in motion. When it finally settled down, I paused my work and decided to take lunch early.

• 2:02:17November Kelly?

  Yeah, just almost getting shot with a 300 mile an hour rotor of rat viscera.

• 2:02:27November Kelly?

  The, the sentence both, uh, both Gareth and I were sort of, uh, dancing around was, uh, reads as follows, "The tremendous rotational kinetic energy of the rotor in an operating ultra centrifuge makes the catastrophic failure of a spinning rotor a serious concern as it can explode spectacularly."

• 2:02:50Justin Roczniak?

  Bring your friends over, watch the rotor explode.

• 2:02:54Justin Roczniak?

  It's a spectacle.

• 2:02:57Speaker 02

  Just wild.

• 2:03:00Justin Roczniak?

  I cannot say how close the machine came to thoroughly homogenizing a slice of my torso, but I do know any internal damage was covered by our service contract with the manufacturer.

• 2:03:11November Kelly?

  Thank fuck for that. Just, just like Breaking Bad and trying to do science for crime, but you're like setting up one of these in front of the bulletproof glass at a bank. They're like, "You're not gonna get through this. Are you sure?"

• 2:03:22Speaker 02

  Just give me a minute.

• 2:03:26Justin Roczniak?

  When the technician was servicing the machine, I asked him privately to hide the calibration menu before he left, since I'm pretty sure this is how my coworker bypassed the emergency shutdown instead of balancing the samples correctly.

• 2:03:40November Kelly?

  Uh huh.

• 2:03:40Justin Roczniak?

  There probably would have been a failure in the motor of the bearings before any shit really hit the fan, but suffice to say, this experience left me with a healthy appreciation for microgram precision, uh, microgram precision balancing and the value of my own life.

• 2:03:56November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, tracks.

• 2:03:58November Kelly?

  I, I will know that one of the main guys in the development of the ultra centrifuge is apparently called Dr. Jesse Wakefield-Beams, and I, I, I note down here, physicist named Knocked, named Dr. Beams didn't even work with lasers. Waste my fucking time.

• 2:04:12Speaker 02

  Waste, yeah, absolute waste. Yep.

• 2:04:14Justin Roczniak?

  Sorry this one ran a little long. It didn't run a little long. You should have seen some of the ones that came in recently. Um, hopefully it gets paired with a short, bloodless disaster.

• 2:04:27Justin Roczniak?

  Respectfully or otherwise, another biosciences twink.

• 2:04:32Liam McAnderson?

  Fantastic. Thank you.

• 2:04:34Speaker 02

  That was a great safety third. That was beautifully written as well.

• 2:04:37November Kelly?

  Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bio Science Twink.

• 2:04:41Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, that was lovely. I'm delighted to learn about the Ultra Centrifuge.

• 2:04:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's now I now have several tabs open after the Ultra Centrifuge, which are going to keep me entertained for a couple more hours.

• 2:04:53November Kelly?

  I have several new fears as well.

• 2:04:57Justin Roczniak?

  Like an Ultra Centrifuge exploding in like a nearby county.

• 2:05:01November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:03November Kelly?

  I, one of the things about moving is that I have my back to a window now. I gotta change that. Get behind as solid of a wall as I can.

• 2:05:11Speaker 02

  Understood. You get that ledge plate up.

• 2:05:14Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly. Sort of explosive reactive armor like on Russian tanks.

• 2:05:22Justin Roczniak?

  The test tube of, of, you know, homogenated rodent flies through the window at 5,000 miles an hour.

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 2:05:36Justin Roczniak?

  Our next episode will be on Chernobyl. Does anyone have any commercials before we go?

• 2:05:40Liam McAnderson?

  Listen to Real NASA.

• 2:05:42November Kelly?

  She said from across the room.

• 2:05:43Speaker 02

  Thank you, distant noble. Yeah, listen to Real. Buy my book as well, actually, please. Thanks for what it did. I had a very cool.

• 2:05:50Justin Roczniak?

  Buy the book.

• 2:05:51Speaker 02

  I had a very cool launch event last night in our timeline, which was really fun in Hausmann's in London, which have lots of copies of the book there. If you're not struggling to find it anywhere else, Hausmann's near King's Cross. Great. It was lovely. We talked, we ended up talking about gender in the context of tech bros. It was, it was interesting. It was a, yeah, it was a great chat. So yeah, buy the book and also listen to Kill James Bond, listen to 10,000 Losses, listen to No Gods, No Mares.

• 2:06:16November Kelly?

  All the podcasts.

• 2:06:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. All the podcasts. They're a smorgasbord of ear-based entertainment for your enjoyment.

• 2:06:23Justin Roczniak?

  And buy tickets for the Fillmore in Philadelphia.

• 2:06:28Speaker 02

  You do that.

• 2:06:28Liam McAnderson?

  Or the first New York show or DC. Pretty please.

• 2:06:31November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:31Speaker 02

  Buy toys for the children.

• 2:06:33Liam McAnderson?

  Buy toys.

• 2:06:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, buy toys.

• 2:06:34Liam McAnderson?

  Yes. Bye, everybody.

• 2:06:35Justin Roczniak?

  Bye, everyone.

• 2:06:36Speaker 02

  Bye, bye.