Pannier Sizes

Roos Eisma said:

Unless you enjoy doing wheelies in which case heavy rear
panniers *do* give suberb handling :-)

As do very low gears on steep hill climbs 🙂

- Richard

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Quoted message said:

If the train in question has a guard's van to put the
bikes in, then a trailer wouldn't be a problem. If the
bicycle arrangements consist of a space at one end of the
passenger car with a pair of bike hooks, then a trailer is
definintely not going to work. When I took the Caledonian

Sleeper

Quoted message said:

last April the bicycle rode in a guard's van, with the
front wheel

suspended

Quoted message said:

from a hook on the wall. Very nice, except I had to remove
the front panniers and deflate the (rather fat, 26 x 1.6"😉
front tire to get hoist

the

Quoted message said:

bike onto the hook. A trailer would have been a wonderful
thing to have then. By contrast, when I took Virgin trains
from Holyhead to London, the bicycle area was at one end
of the passenger car, with room for two

bicycles

Quoted message said:

suspended by their top tubes from a pair of hooks at waist
level. My bike and 4 panniers was easy to get in with
barely room for a second bike, but

a

Quoted message said:

trailer absolutely would not have fit.

Thanks for this.

OK... I'll expand a little. I'm going LE -> JOG in
September. The train down will be 1st Great Western. Coming
back: still not sure how it's going to exactly work yet, but
no doubt ScotRail will be involved at least some of the way
(i.e. from Thurso).

Can anybody comment on the cycle storage facilities in
trains for these 2 companies, and whether taking a trailer
would be feasible on either?

Thanks

Mark

Mark said:

OK... I'll expand a little. I'm going LE -> JOG in
September. The train down will be 1st Great Western. Coming
back: still not sure how it's going to exactly work yet,
but no doubt ScotRail will be involved at least some of the
way (i.e. from Thurso).

Can anybody comment on the cycle storage facilities in
trains for these 2 companies, and whether taking a trailer
would be feasible on either?

I've taken a tandem on First Great Western, no problem.
Both journeys used rolling stock with a guards' van of
sorts, kitted out with bike racks and plenty of room for a
Bob trailer.

This was two years ago, Paddington-St Austell.

Tim

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On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 00:16:14 +0100, Tim Hall
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
<[email hidden]>:

Quoted message said:

I've taken a tandem on First Great Western, no problem.
Both journeys used rolling stock with a guards' van of
sorts, kitted out with bike racks and plenty of room for a
Bob trailer.

But the HSTs are nearing their end of life, and the new
Adelantes have much more limited space - according to the
Tandem Club you need to remove the front wheel and hang our
tandem upside down by the rear wheel!

Guy
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Gonzalez said:

I felt perfectly safe rolling round hairpin bends on
Pyreneean passes at 35mph+. The extra weight makes the
bike grip the road surface, low weight at the front
give you a real feel for the bike, and you don't have
to lean into the turn as much as you would have to on
an unladen bike.

Well, whatever floats your boat, but if you can find any
regular road cyclist here aside from yourself who'd sooner
do hairpins at 35 with lowrider panniers than without a load
at all I'd be fairly surprised: I've never come across the
folk that get a lift up big passes to zoom down adding extra
weights to their forks to make life easier...

The only bike I've ridden where lowriders don't detract from
the handling at all is the Streetmachine, but that "cheats"
with the load underneath the rider between the wheels,
rather than directly loading the steering mechanism.

Pete.
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Peter Clinch said:

Gonzalez said:

I felt perfectly safe rolling round hairpin bends on
Pyreneean passes at 35mph+. The extra weight makes the
bike grip the road surface, low weight at the front
give you a real feel for the bike, and you don't have
to lean into the turn as much as you would have to on
an unladen bike.

Well, whatever floats your boat, but if you can find any
regular road cyclist here aside from yourself who'd sooner
do hairpins at 35 with lowrider panniers than without a
load at all I'd be fairly surprised: I've never come across
the folk that get a lift up big passes to zoom down adding
extra weights to their forks to make life easier...

It used to be common in the TdF for riders to be passed
water bottles at the cols. Now they have set feeding
stations after some wag loaded his bike with lead water
bottles before descending. Of course this was to help with
speed, not handling - nevertheless, I feel very stable
descending with laden panniers.

Quoted message said:

The only bike I've ridden where lowriders don't detract
from the handling at all is the Streetmachine, but that
"cheats" with the load underneath the rider between the
wheels, rather than directly loading the steering
mechanism.

Gonzalez said:

It used to be common in the TdF for riders to be passed
water bottles at the cols. Now they have set feeding
stations after some wag loaded his bike with lead water
bottles before descending.

I thought it was more to do with being passed dubious
substances, although I suppose lead could be
classified as such.

John B

Gonzalez said:

It used to be common in the TdF for riders to be passed
water bottles at the cols. Now they have set feeding
stations after some wag loaded his bike with lead water
bottles before descending. Of course this was to help with
speed, not handling - nevertheless, I feel very stable
descending with laden panniers.

Would carrying extra weight in a bottle really help with the
descent speed? But in any case, weight mounted under the
rider's centre of mass in the main frame will cause rather
different behaviour to loading the steering forks as
lowriders do.

I'm not saying laden front panniers make the bike badly
unstable, just that they have a negative effect compared to
an unladen bike. I did say higher up the thread that
splitting big loads front and rear made the bike far more
stable than putting it all on the back.

Pete.
--
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ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital Fax 44 1382
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[email hidden] dundee.ac.uk~pjclinchOpen ↗

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 09:03:12 +0100, Peter Clinch
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Gonzalez said:

It used to be common in the TdF for riders to be passed
water bottles at the cols. Now they have set feeding
stations after some wag loaded his bike with lead water
bottles before descending. Of course this was to help
with speed, not handling - nevertheless, I feel very
stable descending with laden panniers.

Would carrying extra weight in a bottle really help with
the descent speed?

They shouldn't, for the same reason that pendulums don't
swing faster if you make the bob heavier.

The extra weight makes for extra 'dropping' force.

But the extra weight needs extra force to move it. In
fact, extra force that's exactly the same as the extra
dropping force.

.....but, a bike going down a hill always has significant
air resistance acting upon it, and it becomes more
significant with the square of the speed attained - so when
high speeds are attained, like on long descents, it can
easily be having more effect than rolling resistance.

If the weights were made so that they did not affect the
shape of the bike + biker, the air resistance would become
smaller relative to the force due to gravity, and therefore
lead weights would help keep speed up (or increase the top
speed possible)

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"Gawnsoft" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 09:03:12 +0100, Peter Clinch
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Gonzalez said:

It used to be common in the TdF for riders to be passed
water bottles at the cols. Now they have set feeding
stations after some wag loaded his bike with lead water
bottles before descending. Of course this was to help
with speed, not handling - nevertheless, I feel very
stable descending with laden panniers.

Would carrying extra weight in a bottle really help with
the descent speed?

They shouldn't, for the same reason that pendulums don't
swing faster if you make the bob heavier.

The extra weight makes for extra 'dropping' force.

But the extra weight needs extra force to move it. In
fact, extra force that's exactly the same as the extra
dropping force.

.....but, a bike going down a hill always has significant
air resistance acting upon it, and it becomes more
significant with the square of the speed attained - so
when high speeds are attained, like on long descents, it
can easily be having more effect than rolling resistance.

If the weights were made so that they did not affect the
shape of the bike + biker, the air resistance would become
smaller relative to the force due to gravity, and
therefore lead weights would help keep speed up (or
increase the top speed possible)

Please reassure us that you don't work in physics or
engineering! :-)
--
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beyond the bare needs of survival and have progressed to the
transcendant."
- Marc Goodman in talk.bizarre

Peter Clinch <[email hidden]> wrote:

: I'm not saying laden front panniers make the bike badly
: unstable, just that they have a negative effect compared
: to an unladen bike. I did say higher up the thread that
: splitting big loads front and rear made the bike far more
: stable than putting it all on the back.

I remember reading an article in the CTC mag where the
author rode with French tourists in the Alps and they used
front panniers only to give better handling that having the
same weight in rear panniers.

Of course, handling was still worse than it would have been
without the luggage.

And this is the complete opposite of what the OP was
originally proposing...

Arthur

--
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- Paulina Borsook

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:40:51 +0200, "Mark South"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Please reassure us that you don't work in physics or
engineering! :-)

Please feel reassured. I'm a social scientist!

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"Gawnsoft" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:40:51 +0200, "Mark South"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Please reassure us that you don't work in physics or
engineering! :-)

Please feel reassured. I'm a social scientist!

Is that pair of sentences a syllogism?

I can't think of anything more frightening than a social
scientist :-)
--
Mark South: World Citizen, Net Denizen

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 19:27:24 +0200, "Mark South"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

"Gawnsoft"
<[email hidden]> wrote
in message
"]news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 13:40:51 +0200, "Mark South"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Please reassure us that you don't work in physics or
engineering! :-)

Please feel reassured. I'm a social scientist!

Is that pair of sentences a syllogism?

I can't think of anything more frightening than a social
scientist :-)

An engineer who's not civil?

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Mark South said:

I can't think of anything more frightening than a social
scientist
:-)

Civil servants who are neither civil nor servile?

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On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 09:22:22 +0100, "Dave Larrington" <[email hidden]>

wrote in message : said:

Civil servants who are neither civil nor servile?

Apropos of nothing much, I came across this gem the other
day: <url:http://www.abd.org.uk/otr/otr15web.pdf>

"RTS want cars banned from city centres, with hardliners
seeing this as a first step towards the goal of outlawing
all motor vehicles and rethinking economic activity based on
zero growth. The group's leader is an Oxfrod graduate, Roger
Geffen, aged 31. His father, Dr Terence Geffen, a former under-
secretary at the Department of Health, is reported to be
"disappointed" when his son gave up work to become a full-
time protester, but who agrees with his ideas about cars.
This is evdence of the supportive link between the very top
of the civil service bureaucracy and the hardline eco
terrorists that the ABD has long suspected."

Amusing that Reclaim The Streets are "hardline eco-
terrorists", doubly amusing that a vague statement from one
retired civil servant should be taken as proof of a link
between Government and these same hardline eco-terrorists!

Still, I suppose it would be too much to expect ABD to
be rational.

Guy
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88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at
Washington University