How do they regulate mains water pressure?

[Roger]

The message from Mike Barnes contains these words:

Oh ye of little faith.

FYI I used Fugawi 1:50000, took the grid reference of Queensbury as SE09962 30999, Bradford City centre as SE16462 32939 and computed the difference by trig. The respective heights were 1139 feet and 330 feet. It so happens that I recorded the Queensbury grid reference incorrectly, must have nudged the cursor between reading the height and reading the reference, but it doesn't make much difference, 4 and 1/3 miles rather than 4.2 miles. The Queensbury reference should have been SE10067 30169.

As to height difference the figures above give 809 feet but moving off the main road in Queensbury it is easy enough to find higher ground.

1200 feet at the upper edge of Queensbury housing and 1227 feet a few hundred yards further on at the top of the hill in the hamlet of Mountain. In Bradford City centre within a few hundred yards of City Hall the ground drops to 312 feet so I could have with almost equal justification claimed a height difference of 900 feet at under 4.5 miles distance.

[Brian Sharrock]

Five hundred feet sloping roads ...? Luxury! We used to dream of roads that were so flat 'as only 'aving a five 'undred foot slope! We used to have six 'undred feet to climb, both ways going to and fro' ter skule! Folks darn sarf don't know they're born!

• I know; it's a street in Shaftesbury!

[Mike Barnes]

That's me! :-)

Isn't the length of the road(s) the important thing here?

Isn't the height difference between the ends of the road(s) the important thing here?

[James Salisbury]

Try this item

[Roger]

The message from Mike Barnes contains these words:

Why on earth should it be? The distance was given to illustrate the closeness of Queensbury to the city centre.

That would be near enough 900 feet from a house in Mountain to one in the city centre or 800 feet if you stick to the A road. But the water main network would feed both the house in Mountain and the lowest one in the city centre.

428 feet AMSL (711 feet down from Queensbury) would put you part way up Little Horton Lane, outside the city centre.

[Mike Barnes]

Because what started me off was you writing "Here in Yorkshire 500 feet is not an uncommon difference in height between the top and bottom of an urban road". Unless you've unilaterally changed the subject, it's still that urban road we're talking about.

I think I'll stop now.

[Roger]

The message from Mike Barnes contains these words:

I have just had a look at google earth. Fugawis height grid is not perfect but it is a good deal better than GEs.

The crossroads GE identifies as Queensbury has a GE height of 1130 feet, Fugawi has it at 1134 feet and interpolation between contour lines puts it at 1139 feet. Some of Bradford City centre including City Hall is below the 100m contour (328 feet) which agrees quite well with Fugawis

330 feet but GE has the heights consistantly higher. Perhaps it is working off the tops of the buildings.

None of this of course explains where Mike got his 711 foot height difference from. The point GE identifies as Bradford has a GE height of

352 feet and even with GE 419 feet AMSL is well outside the city centre.

[Roger]

The message from Mike Barnes contains these words:

Which you immediately translated into 'individual roads with a height difference of 500 feet are common' which is not the same thing at all. 'Not uncommon' is not the direct equivalent of 'common'.

It doesn't matter what route you take from A to B the actual distance between the 2 points remains the same both in horizontal distance and vertical elevation.

I made it clear some time ago that I never intended to mean a single named road but a stretch of tarmac between the upper and lower boundaries of an urban area.

[Mike Barnes]

It's not my 711 feet, it's Google Earth's, as I pointed out.

Bradford: In one of my replies in this thread I listed Chester St as the first of the roads on the road to Queensbury. GE marks the start of this route (junction of Chester St and Little Horton Lane) as 123 metres.

Queensbury: GE marks it with a red dot at elevation 340 metres.

340 metres - 123 metres = 217 metres = 711.9 of your Yorkshire "feet".

Are you sure? The point that *my* GE identifies with a red dot as "Bradford" (-1.7574,53.7972) is shown with an elevation of 127 metres (416.7 feet).

[Mike Barnes]

No I didn't. If you're going to put words in quotes and attribute them to me, please be careful to quote what I actually said. I never used the word "individual" and I never used the word "common".

Obviously.

Had you started off by writing "Here in this area of Yorkshire 500 feet is not an uncommon difference in height between the top and bottom of a stretch of road between the upper and lower boundaries of an urban area", you'd have got no disagreement from me (I'm actually not the southerner that some people seem to think I am). But you actually wrote "Here in Yorkshire 500 feet is not an uncommon difference in height between the top and bottom of an urban road", and I suspected that was an exaggeration. Your subsequent trimming, and the lack of good examples, means I still do think it was an exaggeration. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, as long it's recognised for what it is.

[Dave Fawthrop]

|Isn't the height difference between the ends of the road(s) the |important thing here?

Bradford used to be a collection of villages, connected by lanes. in this case Bradford, Shearbridge, Great Horton, Horton Bank Bottom, Horton Bank, Horton Bank Top, Clayton Hieghts, Old Dolphin, Calden Banks, Scarlet Hieghts, I may have missed, or added one or two. The names of the roads between the villages originated in those times, and are very resistant to change, because no one is happy with a change of address.

As it happens last night I drove from Horton Bank Top to Shearbridge and the I use whole of the Bradford -- Queensbury route regularly.

The modern road looks to anyone driving or walking on it, as one continuous road.

[Roger]

The message from Mike Barnes contains these words:

And that allowed you to totally disregard "Queensbury, a suburb of Bradford, and little more than 4 miles from the city centre"?

If you want a reputation as a pedant rather than a querulous old bore you really need to distinguish between ' and ". My understanding of what you meant was influenced by several points you made, two of which are really apposite. "that looks to me like several roads" and "far from commonplace". Commonplace incidentally is a synonym for common.

500 is a nice round number. Given that it was immediately preceded by a reference to a 100 foot hill you should have received at least a hint that that fitted anything between 450 and 549 feet. That you then chose to built an argument on the difference between a named road and a continuous stretch of roadway says much more about your mental processes than it does about my original statement.

Several examples were given by myself and others and more would have been forthcoming (Sheffield for instance) had you not picked another argument over Queensbury in which you chose to rubbish my claim about the height difference between Queensbury and Bradford City centre with dubious data from Google Earth and a deliberate attempt to mislead by picking a point well outside the centre for your start point.

[Roger]

The message from Mike Barnes contains these words:

But GE doesn't give the height difference between Queensbury and Bradford City Centre as 711 feet, it's 778 feet (and wrong).

I spent a few seconds puzzling over what those strange numbers were that appeared to place Bradford South of the Equator before realising that the traditional positions of latitude and longitude had been reversed.

I haven't come across any red dots on GE but at high magnification (and it has to be reasonably high to even identify Chester Street the only bit of Chester Street (if it really is Chester Street) that is 416 feet is on what looks like a flyover over little Horton Lane and not on the A647 route out of Bradford. (Chester Street was one of several roads between Little Horton Lane and Morley Street before the latest roadworks but it might not be a flyover as GE doesn't give a height difference between the surface of Chester Street and Little Horton Lane).

To get the GE position of Queensbury and and Bradford I just typed in Queensbury, England and Bradford, England. (What could be simpler?) In metric mode GE gives the height of Queensbury as 344m, not 340 and of Bradford as 107m. GE Bradford is at lat. 53.793812, long. -1.752471. City Hall is somewhat South of the GE position. Both are in an area of Bradford that according to the OS is below the 100 metre contour.

[Mike Barnes]

So when you earlier wrote "Bradford to Queensbury A647", can I take it that you didn't really mean the A647 all the way? If you followed the A647 (as shown in my road atlas and Google Earth) you'd be turning right at the end of Dirkhill Road onto All Saints Road, then turning left at the traffic lights onto Great Horton Road.

Incidentally, what are/were those white boxes painted on the road at those traffic lights?