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I was a very lucky kid.As my two previous posts have indicated, I went from about 14, everywhere with my P-Way Senior Engineer Dad.He had one ambition, to be the Engineer responsible for the section of the WCML over Shap. This he achieved,+ the Settle- Carlisle.
We both shared a wonder that two strips of steel, could be kept correctly apart, and no noticable lateral or horizontal distortion, to go for hundreds, or thousands of miles at then 90 to 100 mph, with trains of 00's or 000's tonnes,
held only by a wheel flange of just over an inch deep ( typically 1 and 1/8th inch )
The only time I remeber being a little anxious was when staying in Prague about 1996, I took the Warsaw express for an afternoon trip.Modern almost new Air Con stock, but at about 80/90mph curves were taken with massive sieways kicks and lurches, the adjoining track, looking like and maybe was an unmaintained siding! Cant difficiency was not in it, I'm sure it had none at all!
Andrew
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