"a discussion of practical issues with open-source in libraries, including the common perceptions that using open-source requires in-house expertise, and that commercial support is not available. Neither is necessarily true, as there are hosted services and a small but growing list of companies specializing in support of open-source library operations. Lots of those present were interested in the actual process of acquiring and migrating to an open-source ILS. The consensus was that open-source migrations are about the same as commercial migrations, but that there are some significant differences in the initial review and selection process. Specifically, assessing the health of a company and an open-source project are different things. Also, the usual RFP approach is to list features and see which service matches them–which doesn’t include the option to build the feature or have it built, as is possible with an open-source project. It is additionally entirely possible that the selection process will include dealing with the project, the support vendor, and possibly a developer of additional features. This creates a “gap of information” between the usual commercial process and what’s possible with open-source. Filling that gap is an additional part of the selection process, as is addressing the tendency to be skeptical of open-source and to have blind faith in products one pays for. Many of the concerns about open-source also apply to commercial vendors."

"By comparison, 4 Amfleet cars weigh in at about 55 tons each or 220 tons, but there is another 120 tons of P42 plus 120 tons of ballasted F40 cabbage car for a total train weight of 460 tons. So a Turboliner is about 2/3's the weight of a Diesel corridor train, largely be virtue of the heavy weight of a Diesel locomotive and the ballasted weight of what they use for non-revenue cab cars, and a TurboTrain 2 would have been less than half the weight of the Diesel train. So the Turboliner is only lighweight because the use of turbine power cars with half revenue seats dispenses with heavy locomotives or cab cars, while the TurboTrain 2 had additional weight reduction owing to its guided axles and aluminum construction. July 1967 issue of Railway Cars and Locomotives (we have back issues at our college engineering library) gives the original New Haven 3-unit Turbo train as weighing 70 tons (empty) with 54 tons "on drivers" (the 4 axles under the Power Dome Cars), leaving 8 tons each for the two guided axle trucks. At 70 tons for 150 seats, you are getting into the light weight range of intercity motor coaches and short range jet aircraft - this is about half the weight of the Turboliner or one third the weight of the Amtrak Diesel corridor trains. But maybe TurboTrain 2 grew in weight to meet concerns of the TurboTrain design."

" dik (Structural) 5 replies 18 Sep 07 (23 Jul 07) Information Required Helpful Member! kevcaneng (Civil/Environme) 1 replies 20 Aug 07 (18 Aug 07) Mountain Railway Design Guidelines jgmotto (Structural) 3 replies 22 Jun 07 (21 Jun 07) Concrete Paving for Ind"

"they discuss Mr Threader's business investing the money of wealthy Whigs; Mr Threader recommends the South Sea Bubble scheme highly {g}, and recommends the satisfactions of investing in the slave trade over the risk factors of the steam engine."