Pulaski

And the same in spades for the London Underground - the first by a long way, many decades before most other major cities even started planning for an underground passenger transportation system, and still today the largest "deep" underground system in the world.

mrken30

All the Braun and Phillips toothbrushes in our house say 100-130v on the bottom of the charger. I guess you must have the fancy international version. I remember my toothbrush in the UK was 240v only as I could never bring the charger to the US.

I see there used to be a multi voltage charger. No longer available on Amazon. Maybe the new ones are all dual voltage.
https://www.amazon.com/Braun-4725-62...ews/B000PJA1U0

Stevie P

Thanks, if that's the case I'll keep both boxes and bring them with me. I'm sure there's a US version of builds like the beast etc for the android box. If not I'll find some use for it, or ditch it, it certainly doesn't owe me anything 😉

Stevie P

We are doing our best to sell off many of the kitchen appliances, the TV, printer, drills and sanders etc.
Seems people want these things for nothing though, it's hard to shift them, when you can buy new so cheap these days.

mrken30

I remember those days, I practically gave most of my stuff away. It was nice to get some new tools once in the US, but I wish I had brought more with me.

uk_grenada

Nope sorry that's just not true, ever heard of euro tunnel ? European railways are completely connected we all use the same gauge. In the early days it's true that isembard kingdom Brunel invented a approximately 6 foot wide gauge which was very impressive but nonstandard.

Americans I'm terribly sorry but your system is rubbish, Britain had distributed AC power a long time before the Americans, you had a problem historically in that your main protagonist was into DC, demonstrated for things like killing elephants.

uk_grenada

All UK homes built now have to be fitted with earth leakage circuit breaker's on all circuits which means that actually you can't hurt yourself with power anymore regardless of what you do. When is America going to follow?

steveq

No, not RAIL gauge, Loading gauge - the dimensions of the outside of the trains, the size of tunnels. not the gap between the rails - except the gap between adjacent tracks, the bend radiii, the station platform clearances. Ours is smaller and twistier than practically anyother network

You realise of course, that US distribution uses the same standards as the rest of the world, everywhere except from the power pole to the home ?

Its true though that AC was pioneered in the UK. S z de Ferranti was a very early pioneer with Deptford in 1889 (Designed the whole system, at 21 years old !!!), and the FIRST centrally distributed AC system in the world, it was Westinghouse in Pittsburgh who was the pioneers of AC on the large scale, and very, very soon after Ferranti - so its really not fair to say that the War of the Currents delayed them very much either - Edison lost control of the company he founded as a result of the evident superiority of the AC system

Pulaski

GFCIs are already mandatory for kitchens and bathrooms, and have been for decades (at least 27 years that I know of). There are also breakers (equivalent to fuses) available that offer the same functionality as a GFCI in addition to being a mere breaker, and I think entire breaker boxes also exist with GFCI/ current leakage detection functionality. I don't know when they may become mandatory.

uk_grenada

Breakers are not the same thing as earth leakage circuit breaker's, breaker is just like a reusable fuse, and there's a question of how fast it operates where as an earth leakage circuit breaker protects you against energy issues with the three wires [or 7 if its 3 phase] involved in the system and operates in milliseconds, typically with an ELCB you can pick up the positive and negative bare cables and not feel a thing.

Power distribution is also quite different, i have a friend in the uk who was sort of the 'wichita lineman' in his job, High tension lines in the UK operate at between one third and 2/3 of 1,000,000 V, I believe in America it somewhere different but I have no clue whether the one is superior to the other. I know we tend to use more tunnels for it.

uk_grenada

Re The rail gauge, trains move between all European countries through the channel tunnel so there is no issue they will run the same. The traction i.e. the actual engines - not the wagons - do get changed but that's as much to do with Green and othrr technical considerations as anything else, E.g. automatic signaling.

Pulaski

I know what a breaker is, my wording wasn't clear - it is now possible to buy breakers that have the additional functionality of a current leakage detector.

Pulaski

"Loading guage" is different from "track guage", which is the well known 4' 8½". In other words the maximum permitted size of European trains is "bigger" to the extent that there are European trains that are too big to run on "standard", unmodified British tracks, not because of the rails (the track guage is the same) but because of the curves on British tracks (when the center point between the bogies overhangs the rails more than on a straight track) and the overhang of the wagons and carriages.

uk_grenada

But they do, my mothers house near london is near a line that has french limestone [for cement production i think] and polish coal trains several times a day.

Pulaski

Well obviously not every single wagon in the EU is built to the maximum permitted European loading guage!