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Post by AndrewPSSP on Apr 28, 2017 10:49:28 GMT
This may be the wrong place to post this thread, but does anyone knows how the NSE clocks were made, and why they have a click-clack noise?
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rincew1nd
Administrator
Junior Under-wizzard of quiz
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Post by rincew1nd on Apr 28, 2017 10:55:01 GMT
They are flaps which flick into place to display the time, this is the noise you can hear.
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Post by norbitonflyer on Apr 28, 2017 11:08:54 GMT
When you got used to them, you could tell the time without looking by the number of clicks - the transitions from a 5 to 6 and 8 to 9 were very quiet as only one flap moved - conversely the transition from one minute to the next sounded a longer series of clicks, and every ten minutes and every hour was a yet longer clatter.
The noisiest was from 19:59:59 to 20:00;00, when 17 flaps changed from black to yellow or vice versa!
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Post by John Tuthill on Apr 28, 2017 13:49:24 GMT
This may be the wrong place to post this thread, but does anyone knows how the NSE clocks were made, and why they have a click-clack noise? Look on the web for 'International time recorders' there are others companies. From my own working experience years ago,there would be a master pendulam clock in a building, which every minute would operate a solenoid, which would switch a voltage which was then sent to all the clocks in the building, usually with a standard 'Geneva Face' slave clock. When 'progress' arrived and gave you a numerical digital display, the innards were a lot more complicated, going from '09' to '10' etc.,more solenoids gears and cams to keep accuratly adjusted.  When the clocks went back, it was easy to just stop the master, and if you had a few systems in different buildings to do, you'd hope you were back to the first system within the hour. Then just start the master again. We hated it when the clocks went forward. There was a plunger in the master which would send out an impulse every second to add on the hour. Problem was that sometimes the slaves would 'miss' an impulse. All this was usually done at weekends, except in factories which worked shifts. And YES we had to be there at 2:00 a.m. to do the change over to tie up with Greenwich. Happy days. |
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rincew1nd
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Post by rincew1nd on Apr 28, 2017 16:10:59 GMT
Every weekend one of my dad's friends would come over to work on the steam roller, except two weekends every year. He was a tower clock technician so spent one spring weekend putting most public clocks in Yorkshire forward an hour, with an opposing weekend in autumn. It would take him all weekend to do all his patch.
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roythebus
Pleased to say the restoration of BEA coach MLL738 is as complete as it can be, now restoring MLL721
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Post by roythebus on Apr 30, 2017 9:22:26 GMT
<ancient wit warning> Rumour has it when these clocks were invented, pre-1945, they would only tick. then along came the gestapo who said "we haff ways of making you tock"...according to one of the depot comedians at Waterloo.
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Post by John Tuthill on Apr 30, 2017 11:12:55 GMT
<ancient wit warning> Rumour has it when these clocks were invented, pre-1945, they would only tick. then along came the gestapo who said "we haff ways of making you tock"...according to one of the depot comedians at Waterloo. God-you mean there's more of them?!  |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2017 16:17:28 GMT
Seeing a traditional British Rail Clock makes me think of "Oh How Great the Timekeeping was in British Rail days" - perhaps it's a figment of the imagination.
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Post by John Tuthill on Apr 30, 2017 16:39:43 GMT
Seeing a traditional British Rail Clock makes me think of "Oh How Great the Timekeeping was in British Rail days" - perhaps it's a figment of the imagination. Probably  Now they have the atomic clock at Derby.............. |
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Post by AndrewPSSP on May 4, 2017 12:14:03 GMT
Thanks for the replies. I never thought that the numbers could be made of flaps, probably because I only saw them from afar.
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Post by AndrewPSSP on May 11, 2017 12:12:42 GMT
Hello again, sorry for the 'revival' of this thread, but I went to Charing Cross the other day, and realised that the clocks there weren't in sync. I had assumed from @jtuthil that they would all always show the same time.
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Now they have the atomic clock at Derby..............
