Why do Network Rail still use some imperial measurements?

[cjmillsnun]

MPG is rubbish anyway, never had a car which made anything like the manufacturer's quoted figure. And i drive like a vicar.

I have managed it. But you need long journeys to do so.

 

[Ken H]

UK shoe sizes are imperial. The difference in length between sizes is a barleycorn, or 1/3 of an inch.

A classic receipe for Victoria sponge is 4, 4, 4, 2. 4oz each of flour, sugar, butter and 2 eggs. I don't bake in metric as I use my mum's old receive books.

But I have an old house. Metric stuff doesn't work quite neatly. Measuring in imperial works better. The railway must have problems working with old structures built to imperial.

 

[AM9]

Which just shows how stupid using mpg is. Many drivers today probably don't know how many litres to a gallon...

And nor does any motorist need to, oil, fuel and water volumes are entirely metricated in the road vehicle domain.

 

[Ken H]

And nor does any motorist need to, oil, fuel and water volumes are entirely metricated in the road vehicle domain.

I don't worry about mpg. I just put diesel in and drive. I put an amount in money in. Not litres. I think this is usual behaviour.

 

[ABB125]

I have managed it. But you need long journeys to do so.

And to drive a bit slower...

 

[cjmillsnun]

And nor does any motorist need to, oil, fuel and water volumes are entirely metricated in the road vehicle domain.

and yet fuel economy is in imperial.

 

[miklcct]

It doesn't matter though, it's only really ever used for comparison, not strictly for measurement. The vast majority of drivers know that 50 mpg is good and 10 is bad. I would bet anyone who wants to work out costs in fuel knows how to convert gallons to litres (they will need to after all). It's not much different to pints of beer, it's not being used for anything very scientific so it doesn't have much bearing on anything.

Sorry, but fuel economy is an important factor to decide if I drive my own vehicle compared to using public transport when I own a vehicle. The deciding factor will be if the fuel cost is less than the fare, along with the time taken.

Therefore direct calculation is important here.

 

[45669]

When, many years ago, I lived in Switzerland, the yardstick (if you'll excuse the expression) wasn't kms to the litre, but how many litres it took to cover 100 kms. Whether this is still the case I don't know, and I don't know whether this is universal across the Continent or unique to Switzerland.

 

[ABB125]

When, many years ago, I lived in Switzerland, the yardstick (if you'll excuse the expression) wasn't kms to the litre, but how many litres it took to cover 100 kms. Whether this is still the case I don't know, and I don't know whether this is universal across the Continent or unique to Switzerland.

I think that's the standard European measurement (litres per 100km)

 

[The Planner]

All this is clearly nonsense, we need to move to the universally understood measurements of Olympic swimming pools and football pitches...

 

[DavidGrain]

I was at school 1949-1960 and I learned both imperial and metric at both junior school and grammar school. We even learned all the units in the metric system like decimetres but I have forgotten most of them particularly those with Greek names (except kilo obviously). Of course the metric system we learned is not what is used today. I still think in cc rather than ml.
I used to work in a glass processing company where we used to buy glass in 3.2m x 6m sheets. We used to order these from our continental surpliers as 3200mm x 6000mm but they used to send us 320cm x 600cm.

Does anyone still use continuous computer listing paper? I used to buy it in sheets 11in x 370mm!

 

[Ken H]

All this is clearly nonsense, we need to move to the universally understood measurements of Olympic swimming pools and football pitches...

Heights in double decker buses.

 

[vic-rijrode]

All this is clearly nonsense, we need to move to the universally understood measurements of Olympic swimming pools and football pitches...

... and for large areas, Wales.

 

[45669]

All this is clearly nonsense, we need to move to the universally understood measurements of Olympic swimming pools and football pitches...

Don't forget the double decker buses!!

 

[ABB125]

Don't forget the double decker buses!!

And Big Ben

 

[DavidGrain]

All this is clearly nonsense, we need to move to the universally understood measurements of Olympic swimming pools and football pitches...

It still seems odd to me that the Rugby field has a 22m line. When I used to play we had on the field a 25 yard line. I am sure that the founders of the RFU would never have dreamed of a line at 22 of anything. At least a cricket pitch remains at a length of 1 chain (and we actually used a chain at school).

 

[swt_passenger]

It still seems odd to me that the Rugby field has a 22m line. When I used to play we had on the field a 25 yard line. I am sure that the founders of the RFU would never have dreamed of a line at 22 of anything. At least a cricket pitch remains at a length of 1 chain (and we actually used a chain at school).

The logical conversion would have been 25 yd to 23 metre, I would have thought.

 

[Ediswan]

Does anyone still use continuous computer listing paper? I used to buy it in sheets 11in x 370mm!

You can still buy it, and the dot matrix printers to go with it, so presumably yes. Mutipart forms are also still available. Pink to customer, yellow to accounts etc.

I had not previously noticed that it is specifed in mixed units - length in inches x width in mm (including sprocket holes).

Edit: Thinking on this further, dot matrix printers are legacy technology. Their mechanical line and page/form feed distance is based on fractions of an inch (1/216). Hence, the page length of continuous paper has to be an exact multiple of those fractional inches for the horizontal perforations between pages to stay in sync with the software. A popular length is 11 2/3 inches. Once the perforations are removed, that is close enough to A4 for most practical purposes. There is no exact metric equivalent. Better to stay with inches.

 

[Annetts key]

Fan fold paper is a hell of a lot more expensive these days. Or am I just getting old?

There was at least two widths years ago. I wonder if they both started off in inches?

 

[AM9]

and yet fuel economy is in imperial.

Fuel econonmy is officially expressed as l/100 Km, sometimes supplemented with a miles per (imperial) gallon figure calculated from the official figure. Mpg is often used for advertising as has been said above, a 'bigger' number attracts some buyers.

 

[45669]

There's a display on my dashboard that tells me how many mile per gallon I'm getting at any particular moment and how many miles per gallon I've been averaging since I last reset the display.

 

[OzLoon]

All this is clearly nonsense, we need to move to the universally understood measurements of Olympic swimming pools and football pitches...

There's a peculiar and widespread measurement here in Oz applying to water quantity: a 'Sydharb' (pronounced Sid-arb). I laughed when I first heard it and found out what it referred to. It just meant a bloody big size to me. It is a measure of water quantity in Sydney Harbour, and three SydHarbs is three times that much!

Apparently, it's an official measure. One SydHarb is five-hundred gigalitres - 500,000,000,000 litres. I dunno whose job it was to empty out Sydney Harbour into litre milk bottles and then count them, but I'd not have fancied being the bloke doing it.

I much prefer the method of counting widely understood in Australia's Northern Territory, where indeterminate multiple quantity is expressed in only three grades, (in increasing size, respectively): mobs, big mobs, and biggest mobs.

 

[AM9]

There's a display on my dashboard that tells me how many mile per gallon I'm getting at any particular moment and how many miles per gallon I've been averaging since I last reset the display.

As there is on mine, but it can also be set to show l/100km along with degrees C.

 

[45669]

As there is on mine, but it can also be set to show l/100km along with degrees C.

Perhaps mine can as well then. I've never thought to investigate it; the car's so complicated the handbook's about an inch thick!

 

[Irascible]

A nautical mile varies depending on latitude as the earth isn't a perfect sphere. But there is a convention now to use a fixed length. But mariners use the degrees and minutes of latitude scales on charts to get distance in nautical miles. For navigation at sea its near enough!

Was never a merchant seaman, but yes on a yacht you don't really worry that much ( well you use your track speed on the GPS these days anyway & display that in whatever you like - ETA probably ). Aviation uses knots though, and there is a standard nautical mile ( just like there's a reference earth for many things ). It'd get longer the higher up you go too if it was based on actual arc rather than a reference one

 

[Wolfie]

You speak for yourself… I rather hoped Brexit would allow us to move back to imperial measures.

More archaic rubbish from the luddites.

 

[Mordac]

MPG is rubbish anyway, never had a car which made anything like the manufacturer's quoted figure. And i drive like a vicar.

But they all fudge it equally (test it with nothing in the car, not even the floor mats, have a very thin person drive ) so it can still be used for comparisons.

 

[hwl]

But they all fudge it equally (test it with nothing in the car, not even the floor mats, have a very thin person drive ) so it can still be used for comparisons.

and alternator disconnected so battery not being charged

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Fan fold paper is a hell of a lot more expensive these days. Or am I just getting old?
There was at least two widths years ago. I wonder if they both started off in inches?

There's still a divide over paper sizes generally.
The USA is still different with its letter and document sizes, while the rest of the world (including UK) uses "metric" (ISO A4 etc).
At least we dropped foolscap, quarto and all that.

I know nothing about the film industry, but isn't "footage" a globally recognised term for the length of film (and now the digital equivalent)?
Just as "chainage" is for surveying, even on metric mapping as for HS2.
It's one way of maintaining the heritage without impacting the measurement system.

Time is another British exception.
We insist on calling it GMT, when the rest of the world calls it UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
This dates from 1884 when the French agreed to adopt the Greenwich meridian as long at the related time system was not called GMT!
On top of that the international time system is mostly coordinated in Paris.

 

[Irascible]

We insist on calling it GMT, when the rest of the world calls it UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
This dates from 1884 when the French agreed to adopt the Greenwich meridian as long at the related time system was not called GMT!
On top of that the international time system is mostly coordinated in Paris.

UTC is a time standard, GMT is a timezone. There's other timezones along the meridian that will match UTC like Western European Time ( also Zulu time if you really want ) but for general users of clocks that's another "who cares what it's called"