Great Western Coffee Shop

I thought the UK system was a bit complex until I came to a polish booking site:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/polishdcounts.jpg)

Anyone care to provide a UK equivalent?   We have 100%, Railcard and Groupsave (66%), Children (50%), Priv (well hidden that)! and babe (100%) - have I missed any?

Blind (or visually impaired) without a Railcard and travelling with a companion. Both get the discount. 34% off Anytime Day Singles/Returns and Anytime Returns. 50% off Anytime Day Returns. First and Standard Class.

HM Forces Railcard

Serving Police Officers and PCSO's have travel concessions, both on and off duty depending on where they are in the country, they must be available (and capable) of providing assistance to rail staff

Rail staff "priv" is an open secret ................ just Google "Rail Staff travel card"

Plus a further 60% off child fares with the Network Railcard or Family & Friends Railcard (and the season ticket Gold Card, I think?).

I’ve a Devon and Cornwall railcard and a Family railcard.

I don’t know the discounts but both have paid for themselves several time over  in savings.

Here's a simple fare chart from Poland - it would appear that fares are mileage based.

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/polishfares.jpg)

Mind - it is slightly more complex; I am on a pedelino at the moment and have had to pay a supplement.

Are you sure that's not the age of passengers on the left?

A tilting paddle boat seen at Italian beach resorts, IIRC…  ;D

Not unless they age their passengers in kilometres

Should that not be kilometrage based? :P

…or even ‘distance’!

It’s odd how we sometimes use the name of a unit instead of the dimension it measures. It’s pretty inconsistent; you wouldn’t ask someone their ‘footage’ if you wanted to know how tall they were, but you would probably refer to the ‘acreage’ of a farm rather than its area. These quirks aren’t limited to US Customary units either; you’ll hear people refer to current as ‘amperage’ for example.

A more striking case is voltage - which has largely displaced EMF and PD except where the slightly different definitions matter. Simmons, in his 1912 book "Electrical Engineering", doesn't start with a section on units, so it's hard to spot where he introduces them. But he still uses EMF and PD when talking theory, and a few cases of the older pressure, but voltage especially for voltage drop. However, so much of the machinery he is talking about operates at a nominally fixed supply voltage that most of the time he just uses 400 V, and doesn't need to say the voltage is 400 V (which is awkardly repetitious anyway).

This usage as a rating is where the -age forms are commonest, I think. So the voltage and amperage of a machine are on its rating plate, but the current varies with the load so needs a separate term. I imagine the acreage, yardage, square footage, tonnage, and similar are also used for rating or ranking.  And chainage, of course, on railways.

To my mind, we'll all be better off when these archaic units are sent back to the stoneage.

Electromotive Force (EMF) (and its sibling Back EMF), and Potential Difference (PD) and different entities all are electrical pressure the SI unit for the is Voltage.   The Amperage stated on electrical apparatus is usually stated as the max rated current, the current draw measured in Amperes (Coulombs per second), and is dependant on the Voltage supplied to the apparatus, load on the apparatus and temperature.

Frequency is one of those things used to be stated as cycles per second but to day is Hertz (Hz)

I do find it amusing how the USA still use BTU for their heating and cooling and use Inches, pints, quarts in every day life.   I think the USA today is where the UK was 50 to 40 years ago in the transition to metric and SI units, USA industry is certainly moving quite quickly to metric and  SI units  due to international market demands

When I worked therein the noughties, most were very surprised when told that that their precious inch and foot are defined as precise fractions of a metre.