MasonJar Wrote:Mark -
In Canada, we're bilingual We use both metric and imperial units. I am never quite sure though whether we refer to US gallons or Imperial gallons when speaking of things like miles per gallon.....
I've always used Imperial gallons (they pre-date the U.S. gallon by a few years)
and still calculate my mileage thusly. To me, thirty degrees is still what you get on a Fall day, and it gets
truly cold when it goes below zero. I'm hoping for some three-digit weather this Summer, too, so you can bet I'm not speaking Celsius.
MasonJar Wrote:....I never understood the whole dry volume versus liquid volume measures. Because in that case, 1 US dry gallon is about the same as a UK liquid gallon (~4.5 litres).
Andrew
Yes, that's how our now "small-gallon" of paint gives as much coverage as the old "large gallon"; once it dries, of course.
We also use metric and Imperial bolt sizes, and some lumber measurements are metric, some are metric equivalents of the original Imperial measurements, and some still Imperial.
Metric makes sense mathematically, but in many instances the increments are either too large (temperature) and therefore less accurate, too small (mm cm) - awkward when referring to lumber - a 2"x4" (actually 1.5"x3.5"
) becomes a 38x89, or (km) - bordering on the ridiculous for a country as large as Canada. Measuring gasoline in litres is just another ploy to disguise the price increases - at current local prices, it's $5.85 a gallon (and, of course, that would be a bargain in many parts of the world).
One of the more useful tools in my workshop is a chart of decimal equivalents for drill and tap sizes, and part of the reason that those photos were captioned with thousandths-of-an-inch measurements. It allows me to easily determine if I need a fractional, numbered, or lettered drill bit for whatever job is at hand.
Chuck, you're correct about the real bumpers being bolted to the rail and not sitting on a "sled". My guess is that the Walthers bumpers are meant to be cemented to the ties (I leave mine loose, like most scenic details). That "sled"
does strengthen the whole assembly considerably, though, and that may be a factor in its use.
Wayne