Great Western Coffee Shop

Sadly I couldn't get to Reading today to help out at Community Rail in the City event as my delayed house move is finally coming together. Today is carpet fitting day.

To get out from under the feet of the fitters, Finn and I took a local trip. Ended up finding this piece of railway architecture. Where?

(http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt68/bignosemac/IMG_20190515_112636_zpsmlmojofe.jpg)

Pitcombe, near Bruton. The viaduct carried the S&D over Mill Lane. Cole Station was just to the north.

What was the arch doing; just for support?

I suspected it would be you bradshaw that got it right. ;D

The arch on the right of span two gives access to a culvert.

Now, if this is mileage, where's it measured from?
(http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt68/bignosemac/IMG_20190515_113321_zpsvp2snnn6_edit_1557940782176_zpsrrnk3cvg.jpg)

The S&D mileages were redone by the Midland, so I would guess Derby.

It was quite tricky, but the sun indicated a N-S alignment. The viaduct is constructed from Blue Lias and so a quick look at a geology map helped as the outcrops are not too common.

That arch abutting on the central pillar intrigued me.

Finally, I remembered that Marion and I visited the same place while setting up a series of walks from the GWR’s Weymouth line for BR and local councils. The aim was a walk from each station, with some linked to produce a longer walk.

Hope the move goes well, have you a date yet?

I'll be all settled in the new flat in Templecombe by next week. I'm in the fortunate position that all costs are being met by my housing association as they're selling my old flat block. And with no incoming tenants, I can be quite leisurely. Some dates are fixed though, such as today being carpet fitting, tomorrow being new furniture delivery.

Another wide angle view (love the camera features on new phone - Huawei P30 Pro), this one from t'other side.
(http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt68/bignosemac/IMG_20190515_112526_zpssrm3whsg.jpg)

I suspect the number 122 relates to 'Bridge number 122' rather than mileage - but no idea where number 1 might be.

Yes, I thought perhaps 122 wasn't a high enough mileage from Derby to Pitcombe, whatever route was being measured.

EDIT: I've found the following:
https://datacac.uk/csvTable/united-kingdom/Property-Data-28-02-2014-80.html (a csv data table of structures - doesn't render perfectly in html though)

For the Pitcombe viaduct it lists the following:

PITCOMBE ROADBA10 0PTSAD/1221 SOMERSET AND DORSET (BATH - TEMPLECOMBE)

SAD/122# Structure 1382 - 28 miles 79 chains PITCOMBE 3-ARCH BRIDGEBA10 0PQ

That mileage would appear to be from Bath Green Park. It's 27 miles from Bath to Pitcombe by road.

Off topic, I have to say I love the footer on your posts @Bignosemac

Thanks Phantom. My thanks goes to Phil Wakely who forwarded the image to me. A little editing on my part to remove the white background and resize.

BNM.  I'm finding your new photographs are taking a long time to download each time I read the topic.  Is the file size bigger than it needs to be for the forum use?

Thanks for posing the question, SandTEngineer, and I'm sure BNM will have details. However, if it helps, my own laptop, which is somewhat sluggish these days in downloading almost anything, seemed to have no problem at all with BNM's images.  ::)

I was going to post that the graphic only has three carriages - however one of the Castle sets is currently running around as a 2+3 and limited to 75mph!

I noticed a post elsewhere about the Scottish short HSTs being limited to 100mph and it was suggested that it was to allow a slightly more relaxed maintenance scheme - however, don't I recall comment about power cars alone / in pairs being very restricted due to braking at high speed and the brakes of the carriages being vital.  So the shorter the set, the slower maximum speed.  Can anyone confirm?

I appreciate that in Scotland they probably wouldn't have any routes they could do at over 100mph until HS4 opens from Edinburgh to Glasgow ...

I used to resize my images off forum and then upload. The problem with that is that nearly all resizing software available as Android apps also compresses the files which reduces image quality. Once I'm set up in my new flat and back to using a PC/Laptop regularly I may revert to more capable image editing software and return to resizing images before upload.

Currently I'm uploading my images to the forum as they were originally taken and changing the size by adjusting the img tags - {img width=xxx}pic url{/img}. I'm told that doing this means the forum loads the full size image in the background as it resizes it.

I've only noticed a slight delay when images first load. I guess any delay is compounded by the end user's Internet speed, and possibly the capabilities of the device being used to view the forum. Browser type may also be a factor.

Paging grahame for a more technical explanation.

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Regarding my forum signature. I do plan to make the set a 2+4 'Castle'. Again, that's a job for more capable image editing software than is available on my Android phone.

Looking at the image info (in Firefox) shows that it is downloaded full size:

Location:      http:// ... _112636_zpsmlmojofe.jpg
Type:           WEBP Image
Size:            5,810.95 KB (5,950,416 bytes)
Dimensions:   5,120px × 2,368px (scaled to 1,024px × 474px)

6 MB in a concentrated lump in a web page is going to be noticeable on a VSDL line that's now only "fast", though from memory it was slower than that when first seen. As to why it's a .jpg file but identified as a WEBP image ... that needs an even more technical explanation!

I think Stuving has provided the technical stuff there, BigNoseMac and SandTEngineer

Basically, they're held as blooming big images on the web server BigNoseMac uses and the whole blooming big image is sent out to your browser, which then reduces them for screen display.  And as it's a reduction of 5 x in each dimension (X and Y) it means that there's 5 x 5 = 25 times the data actually needed for the display coming down the line.

So it works out (with image resized at browser) something like ...
2G - don't even try it!
3G - typical excellent case - 1 Mbyte / second = 6 seconds per image; 20 seconds for this thread
4G - typical excellent case - 7.5 Mbytes / second = 0.9 seconds per image; 4 seconds for this thread

Image resized on server to 1k x 474 pixels would cut the download time:
2G - don't even try it!
3G - typical excellent case - 1 Mbyte / second ... 1 second for this thread
4G - typical excellent case - 7.5 Mbytes / second ... 0.2 of a second for this thread

Also bear in mind that if you have a data limit / pay per gigabyte, BigNoseMac's posts are going to be more expensive to view  :(  :o

I am ... hopeful ... we can add image hosting and resolution changing at the server when we update the software; I'm very familiar with the technology in PHP but need the proverbial month of Sundays of spare time if I were to do it in that time, and it's not 'worth' doing on the old software.  If we do it, you WILL loose the ability to save BNM's pictures and get high quality prints off them.  At 5k pixels, an A4 print would give you over 400 dpi (dots per inch) whereas the 1k reduced image would only be around 75 dpi - in effect preview rather than final quality mode.   Perhaps an advantage to BMN who could then sell you any pictures you wanted in high quality ;D

Thanks for all the replies and calculations. Must be my Internet connection then, as its the same on all the devices we use here.  Well, I suppose that's what you get for living on the edge of Dartmoor ::)

Oh dear, maybe I should be grateful that BigNoseMac seems to be alone in sharing his days out photos on such a regular basis. (Actually I am anyway, as I'm not sure that the Forum would be enhanced if lots of members were constantly posting what they've been up to on their jollys.  I do appreciate that is a personal opinion and probably not shared by many though before anyone shouts me down.)

I certainly shan't shout you down for voicing a valid opinion, although I enjoy seeing BNM's - and others - pictures of railways infrastructure past and present, and have even joined in the game myself. What jewels we may miss, but for this amusing diversion!

That said, I keep mobile data switched off, just in case.

Hmmm .. I felt I shared a lot of photos from when I'm out and about!   But to give you an idea, pictures such as this one here, from today have been resized and compressed from 2.5 Mbytes to 82 Kbytes before uploading to the server - so they're 30 times less traffic than if I simply uploaded them. And I routinely reduce (and check) the size as I upload.
(http://www.wellho.net/pix/beancounter.jpg)

There's an enormous temptation when posting / putting anything up on the web for the webmaster / page author to design it so it looks superb and loads well on his/her system. At a professional designer level, that has often lead to sites that are great on big screens and with fast connections, but have fallen over when reduced to a smaller device and slower connection.  With the Coffee Shop, which the team has worked on over the years from distinctly poor connection on quite small devices, we have kept page furniture down to a small size, and occasionally asked people to resize images (especially avatars!) which are slowing the site down.     As we move to new software (Lisa and I were looking at various look-and-feels today), we have to keep an eye on this as the modern look and feels tend to be slightly bulkier.   But it will give us much better coverage on mobile devices.

I can sense a thread split coming up here as we're a long way from where BNM was on Wednesday!

Bah, humbug.

For the absence of doubt, "where was I today", "where was this taken" and "my trip log" type posts are very popular in terms of follow up volumes and numbers of likes. 

The segregation of the forum into separate areas and boards helps members be selective in what they read and would allow for an increase in the number of such posts within our data structure and without being overbearing to the more serious or tuned-view members.  The segregation also allows the forum to cover heritage topics, other modes of transport, nearby lines, etc, without people having to spend too much time wading through those associated topics if they're not interested;  bear in mind the for some, such topic are of little interest but for others that are key interests or learning points.  I think the balance isn't far off being right; keeping an eye on that, always, as we move forward.

An especial "thank you" to contributor who instigate this type of thread; I know that I (for one) often read them with interest but leave little comment / make little remark.  But I do learn, I do grab facts from them, and so do many other if you look at the "number of reads" stats that come up.  And if you bear in mind that this statistic is NOT incremented when a post comes up in "recent posts" ... so it's very much an underestimate!

There is a potential serious issue with image count and size (total data volume) - but that is potential and for most of our users is currently a roof a very long way above their heads.    If every poster added images resized at the browser, it would need looking at straight away ... but we all act and do things differently and at present it's just a note / explanation job.