British Railway Operations

[John Bakeer]

Dave,
Not to my knowledge.
John B.

[John Bakeer]

Just dropped on to an interesting site.
<TheTrams.co.uk>
Answers a lot of questions for me at least.
John B.

[Anonymous]

Wikipedia has an excellent article on the Kingsway subway here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsway_tramway_subway

A book that might be of interest - titled "The wheels used to talk to us", it's an account of the working life of a London tram driver. The man in question started work just after WW1 and drove some of the last trams in the 1950s, so as you might expect there's lots of useful information. It's out of print but Amazon seem to be able to get hold of used copies easily enough - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0950545805/026-0623018-7662023?v=glance&n=266239 is their reference.

[John Bakeer]

Thanks Matt, the Wikipedia article fills in most of the blanks for me.
I have a tape recording of the Goon Show mentioned there.
I knew the man that drove the first and last tams to run in the Yorkshire Heavy Woollen District which shut down in the mid 1930's. He was known by us as 'Tramway Bill' (or 'Trammus' in the local dialect), he was awarded the Military Medal in WW 1, he died during the 60's. Bill was a character, he used to pinch my milk if I was late getting up.
Sorry fort his digression.
John B.

[Simon Reed]

Blimey - the new complicated forum?

London liked everything to be double - deck, even going back to the old horse - drawn tram days.

Going back to a previous topic Railfan and Railroad this months gives a list of all operable steam locomotives in North America - ie including Canada.

It's an alarmingly short list, not least because, from what I've seen of US Railroad museums, there's no shortage of preserved steam locos.

I guess that factors like relative size must have an impact - a "big" engine in the UK, such as a Gresley A4, only weighed 160 tons including tender - but it does seem a shame that so many superb locomotives are simply "stuffed and mounted." 

 

[BR60103]

Simon: I was shocked to see that there are only 4 operating steam locos in Ontario. We have been hampered by not grabbing the locos when they were feshly retired.  As well, there weren't places to run them.  We have one branchline that was bought by preservationists (after they missed out on a number of other ones -- they finally decided to do it entirely by themselves rather than trying to get goernment support), and a group in an engine house with yard.

I can't speak for the Americans, but remember that Canada is a country with the population of London spread out in the second largest country by area in the world (Russia is still bigger!)

 

[John Bakeer]

You'r telling me, complicated isn't in it.
It took me most of the last two days to get here.
On first taste it appears ok, but I find it difficult to keep an eye on the ball when only the one message can be seen at a time when replying.
A long learning curve methinks.
Better stuffed and mounted than dead and buried.
John B

[Murphy Siding]

     I recently found an interesting book.  (I'm a book *nut*).  It's about walking around historical sites in Great Britain.  One walking tour is about an abandonded rail line.  ( I haven't had time to read it yet).  Is there a common use for abandonded rail line in Britain, like "rails to trails", as is popular in the U.S.  Or, do the abandonded lines do like they do in my area, and just melt back into the countryside?

[Simon Reed]

Murphy - most of our abandonments have - hopefully - already happened so we can speak with some experience.

Firstly a gentle reminder. Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas are twice as big as France but their combined population is roughly that of South London. There are 68 people per square mile in the US and 600 in the UK. What I'm saying is that we don't have the luxury of abandoning land.

Not far from here was a short suburban route between Laisterdyke and Shipley which has, I'd say, met a fairly typical fate. Since abandonment in 1964 the Laisterdyke end has been used as a landfill site, various new properties and businesses have been constructed on other bits and in the Idle area the old alignment is now used by a highway.

Some parts remain recognisable - at the Shipley end even the former station survives - but for the most part you'd need to know the history of the route to spot any evidence.

In more rural areas former alignments are used as long distance footpaths and an organisation called Sustrans has converted some abandonments into cycle paths. More often than not, though, where an abandoned formation passes through agricultural country the farmers "reclaim" the land for their own use. 

     

[CrazyDiamond]

Hi all, FYI....

UK signaling fans from all over the world are invited to join:

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Train-Signaling/

I find British signaling espescially fascinating and would certainly enjoy have contribution from those with UK expereince.

[John Bakeer]

Blackpool experimented with a system in the 50's called 'VAMBAC' it was intended to give ultra smooth control over accelleration and braking (stepless), I believe these special cars were used throughout the then quite extensive system to compete with buses but high maintence and changing passenger usage saw their demise.
Open top cars with pantographs have a piece of sheet aluminium or steel in place to catch drippings.
I have the Blackpool system on Train Sim, It is an interesting test of skill with many different speed restrictions and 58 stops in 11 miles also a number of colour light signals some of which are set in favour of the "infernal confusion engine".

I think one of the longest stretches of rail track converted to pathway is 'The Trans Pennine Cycleway' that runs from Bootle near Liverpool on the west coast to Immingham near Grimsby on the east coast (about 140 miles). It passes along much of the Woodhead route, but runs up and over the famous tunnel.
When Central Trains are up and running, the path(s) will be diverted as necessary.

John B.

[Simon Reed]

When Central Railways are up and running the tunnels might be a good place to shelter from flying pigs....

[Murphy Siding]

When Central Railways are up and running the tunnels might be a good place to shelter from flying pigs....

     I'm not even sure what that meant, but I thought it ws funny!

[John Bakeer]

Murphy.
Simons reference to 'flying pigs' was because when something is projected that in all probability may never happen, an English saying has it "that pigs will take flight first".
The Central Railway project will most certainly go ahead eventually, simply because they have the money. It's just a matter of getting parliamentary time for the bill to be debated.
At the moment our legislators are busy squandering bilions of our money on that most pointles of persuits-The Olimpic games in London.
It is already sucking in cash from national infra-structure projects. ie. The extension to our (Manchester) tramway network has been trunkated, along with Liverpools cancelled etc.
John B.

[daveklepper]

In what way did "VAMBAC" differ from PCC technology?

Was "VAMBAC" the result of the PCC "not being invented here?"

[John Bakeer]

Dave,
I have no technical knowledge on either the VAMBAC or PCC control systems although I think they were developed at about the same time. It's quite possible one was copied from the other, as happened in the past with a lot of transatlatic developements, the jet engine comes to mind!
John B.

[Anonymous]

Indeed. I can see a close flying formation of 3 Old Spots outside the window now......oink.

[Hugh Jampton]

Indeed. I can see a close flying formation of 3 Old Spots outside the window now......oink.

A few too many pints of Duchy will do that to you...

[Simon Reed]

Woodhead will always be an emotive topic, and coincidentally today marks the 25th anniversary of it's complete closure.

Murphy's question on the last page regarding what we do with abandoned roadbeds is very pertinent here.

As I understand it, although the tunnels remain intact the roadbed on the Lancashire side is now submerged under the extended Torside reservoir. On the Yorkshire side at least one bridge before Penistone has been demolished and there's very little left of Worsley Bank or Wath.

At present there is'nt a great demand for East - West freight traffic flows across the North of England. If that situation changed I would imagine that the Hope Valley has capacity without requiring extensive investment.

I fail to see, therefore, what market Central Railways hope to tap. Certainly both WCML and ECML are running at close to capacity at the moment but utilising the Woodhead route for North - South flows would'nt help this problem.

Dave - Vambacs and PCC's have essentially the same two design innovations, ie. Stepless Control and Resilient wheels. I've enjoyed several PCC rides in Newark and Philadelphia. The Newark examples were pretty much at the end of their lives when I rode them but were still quite acceptable compared to European products of the same era.         

[Simon Reed]

Incidentally - for those interested in L&Y operations in Yorkshire the Kirklees Light Railway is holding it's first ever enthusiast's event on September 16th and 17th.

KLR runs on the roadbed of the Clayton West branch at 15" gauge, including a run through the standard gauge Skelmanthorpe tunnel.

It's a fine little railway and well worth a visit.    

[Tulyar15]

Woodhead will always be an emotive topic, and coincidentally today marks the 25th anniversary of it's complete closure.

       

Basically the problem with the Woodhead line was it was obsolete almost by the  time it was electrified. Back in the 1930's when the project was conceived freight trains were re-marshalled on either side of the Pennines  - Mottram Yard in Manchester and Wath in Yorkshire (later also Tinsley and the Woodhead electfication was extended there in 1960 when Tinsley Yard opened).

But no sooner had Tinsley Yard opened than BR started to concentrate on train load feight, particularly Merry-Go-Round (MGR) coal trains that were designed to run non-stop from pit to power station. In the case of the Woodhead line this meant two loco changes in a relatively short distance.

As traffic declined during the 1970's it got to the stage where half the trains were light engines! Often a crew would arrive with a westbound freight at Mottram and find no east bound train. They could only wait a certain length of time otherwise they would not be able to return home in time without doing excessive hours.

That said, had more electrification happened, especially if the East Coast Main line been electrified a lot sooner, the case for converting the Woodhead to 25kv AC would have been much stronger. Indeed in the 1955 proposal to electrify the ECML it was assumed this would happen and electrification of the Retford - Sheffield line was included in this proposal. (Just as well this did not happen as it would have finished off the Midland Main Line!).

[owlsroost]

It's interesting to muse on what might have happened if the NER had electrified the York-Newcastle line in the 1920's as it planned. We might have had a fleet of these - http://www.lner.info/locos/Electric/ee1.shtml - and a lot more EM1's and EM2's running around, and no A3's and A4's (or Deltics - ah, maybe not such a good idea then...)

I'm with Simon on the Central Railways proposal - nice idea, but I suspect getting parlimentary time is the least of the hurdles it faces - once the NIMBY contingent wakes up it'll probably get buried in parliment or take so long to get planning approval that the potential investors will lose interest.

In 1930's LNER days, electrifying the Woodhead route made some sense given the problems of operating steam through long single-bore tunnels and that government employment-creation money was available to subsidise it (and the other three trans-pennine rail routes were LMS controlled). But once BR came into existance I suspect a hard-headed appraisal of trans-pennine rail capacity/routes/connections might have closed it earlier rather than spent money on it.....

(Although watching class 76's - EM1's - trundling through Guide Bridge hauling a few parcels vans in the late 1970's is a nice nostalgic memory!)

Tony

[John Bakeer]

Woodhead was electrified to haul coal from South Yorkshire to the new power stations at Ince (among others). The then government in the 60's (guess who?) allowed the CEGB to import coal from Australia making the line and most of the South Yorkshire coalfield redudant. A job they completed in the early 80's.
The Central Railway is intended to move goods (containers) from the north and midlands directly to continental europe, thus removing tens of thousands of trucks from overcrowded roads. A further benefit is that goods can be transfered from the atlantic seaboard to europe freeing up space in the overstretched ports on the continental mainland.
A direct route for passenger trains between Manchester, Sheffield and the midlands would be much faster than the meandering Hope Valley line which is close to capacity anyway.
John B.

[Anonymous]

The line which they are missing is the southern Manchester CLC ring really. This closed in '85 due to the bridge over the MSC at Glazebrook being cream crackered.

However there are plenty of Transpennine routes available; the Hope requires resignalling and that will be cheaper than rebuilding 35miles over double track at roughly £3m a mile plus extras.

What is interesting is where (or of) they shift Trafford Park Freight Terminal. Apparently some are eyeing that up for housing; also glad to see that the govt have finally given a half hearted and grudging go-ahead for the Metrolink tram system extension. Probabley one eye on a few marginals in the Greater Manchester Area I should think.

[Tulyar15]

On the other hand, one of the arguments in favour of rebuilding the Woodhead is that not only was the infrastructure newer (brand new tunnel built in the 1950's!) but it was also built to a more generous loading gauge. Immediately after WW1 the Great Central considered importing some ex US Army 2-10-2's that had been used in France to work the line - these would have been out of the gauge for most lines in Britain. Also in the 1948 loco exchanges it was one of the few "foreign" lines that GWR locos were able to run on, again due to gauging considerations.

As I understand it the current proposals are based around being able to run lorries (trucks in US parlance ) piggy back style and double stack container trains. This is not possible on most lines here but again it would be possible on the Woodhead line, though they'd have to have the tunnel single track. (I seem to remember reading somewhere the running tunnels of the Chunnel were each built to the same size as the new Woodhead tunnel!).

[John Bakeer]

Not forgetting that the two original bores remain in situ, one carries high voltage power lines, there is also a narrow gauge railway running through this, meaning that Woodhead has never been bereft of rail traffic, Should capacity become an issue? The remaining one could be put to use for passenger and small gauge traffic (I heard an oink outside my bedroom window last night!).
Regarding the extra height added to Torre Side reservoir, this is to contain excess run off in the event of a tropical rain storm on the adjacent moors a once in thirty years happening which should it happen? It would flood the Woodhead road but would be several metres below the alighment.
Going to the KLR tomorrow, weather permitting?
John B.

[John Bakeer]

PS.
There is alot of under used land between Piccadilly and Gorton.
John B.

[daveklepper]

You can still ride PCC's in regular service in the USA:    Boston's Mattapan-Ashmont line after the Ashmont station is rebuilt in about 10 months, Kenosha, San Frfancisco's F Line, and Phily;s Gerrad Avenue, Rt. 15.   More to come!

[Hugh Jampton]

You can still ride PCC's in regular service in the USA:    Boston's Mattapan-Ashmont line after the Ashmont station is rebuilt in about 10 months, Kenosha, San Frfancisco's F Line, and Phily;s Gerrad Avenue, Rt. 15.   More to come!

Toronto had a load of them at one time. I don't suspect there's any left though..

[Simon Reed]

Had'nt heard about Trafford Park.

A lot of investment went into Trafford Park in 1987/8 when Longsight FLT closed. In terms of relocation the area around Ashburys and Gorton, as John suggests, would be good for road links but would be on the wrong side of the city for most industry and would, in railway terms, be logistically difficult to access from the South unless you took a convoluted route around the OA&GB.

I might live to eat my words but in view of the relative modernity of Trafford Park and the lack of a viable alternative (ironically the former Longsight site would be ideal) I'd anticipate Frightener hanging onto it.

On Trans-Pennine capacity it would be relatively easy to re-quadruple the Standege route between Heaton Lodge and Marsden, but I'd agree that the biggest missing link is the old Glazebrook bridge. The impressive embankments on either side are still intact.

There is - of course - a PCC in the UK. Ex New York 3rd Avenue 674 lives at Crich although it is a non-runner and looks likely to remain that way.

Oh, the joys of Friday Nightshift. £35 an hour until 06.00 with nothing to do but accept two trailers at about 02.30. It's nights like this that I wish I'd gone onto the Railways....