British Railway Operations

[Murphy Siding]

I thought the slack in a freight train was to help in getting it moving-one car at a time. Are typical British freights lighter, so that is not as much of an issue?

Thanks

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Having read recently that the heaviest train pulled by steam in the UK weighed out at about 2500 tons, I would think that slack action is less of a problem in the UK than in the USA because the trains are much lighter.

I may be a little bit off the mark here but link-and-screw couplers seem to be only slightly less dangerous to brakemen and switchmen than link-and-pin couplers.

[Anonymous]

I'd say they were about the same level of danger as knuckle couplers - yes, there was and is far more potential for injury, but rail workers learned how to handle them safely and had a very strong "by the book" approach to their jobs that reduced the level of risk. Even with knuckle couplers someone still needs to go between cars to hook up a brake hose and/or HEP lines, so the danger would be about the same.

[Murphy Siding]

2500 tons would be 30-40 cars,more or less? I can see where that would be less of a concern in needing slack to start a train.

Unrelated: I've read mention of the "Flying Scotchman". Is that the name of a particular engine,or train, or a route? Is it still around?

Thanks

[Tulyar15]

The "Flying Scotsman" is both the name of a train service and a locomotives. Since the 1860's there has traditionally been an express train from London King's Cross to Edinburgh departing at 10am. At first it was called "The Special Scots Express" but the title "Flying Scotsman" was adopted in the 1920's.

It was in 1922 that Nigel Gresley's 4-6-2 "Pacific" A1 class locos entered service. The name "Flying Scotsman" was given to one of these and this particular one is the only survivor of the class. She was bought for preservation in 1963. For a time after British Rail got rid of steam she the only steam loco they would allow to run on their lines. She toured the USA in 1969-1970 but the cost of this bankrupted her owner. Fortunately another guy stepped in and paid of the creditors and returned her to the UK. More recently in 1988 she visited Australia. After her last owner went bakrupt last year she was bought by the National Railway Museum at York who are continuing to maintain her in main line running condition.

Nigel Gresley went on to design the streamlined A4 Pacifics of which "Mallard" holds the all time speed record for a steam loco of 126mph. (The London and North Eastern Railway used letters to classify steam locos by wheel arrangement eg A - 4-6-2, B 4-6-0, C 4-4-2, D 4-4-0 and so on; when "Flying Scotsman" was rebuilt with a higher pressure boiler in the 1930's she was re-classifed A3).

On the East Coast Main line the Gresley A3 and A4's remained in service till the 1960's when they were replaced by the Deltic diesels. These 3,300hp beasts rules the rails until the advent of the Diesel High Speed Trains in the 1970's (which have a streamlined 2,300 hp loco at each end, ie 4,600 hp on tap). Then in 1984 the decision was taken to electrify the East Coast Main Line so now the "Flying Scotsman" service is worked by a 140mph class 91 electric loco operating in push pull mode.

[mhurley87f]

QUOTE: Originally posted by 440cuin

The screw coupler seems kind of dangerous and labour intensive, especialy when switching freight cars in marshaling yards. There is at least one interesting advantage of the screw coupler to the knuckle coupler and that is the loose slack can be manualy adjusted. The screw can be tightened so that there is no loose slack. On some routes in the mountains the screw is backed off a couple of turns on heavier trains or on lines with sharper curves to give the train some slack. The French TGV use the screw coupler between the loco and the passenger cars at each end. A TGV train could consievably be coupled to the Stevensens ROCKET !

US railfans might be very surprised at how little shunting (switching) is actually performed in the UK, e.g. due to massive shifts in our energy needs, domestic coal traffic is virtually non-existent, and the number of potential end-customers, and destinations accordingly dramatically reduced. So we have no hump yards, and the yards that remain are needed basically to prepare / recess / combine / split trains as opposed splitting up for dozens of customers.

My favourite place to watch the world go by is at Margam Yard, at the exit of Corus's Port Talbot Steel Works in South Wales, where EWS traffic is 90 - 95% trainload. Most of the sorting for customers is done within the works sidings, and much of EWS's shunting is picking out "Red Carded" wagons and those scheduled for mileage / time dictated inspections at the nearby wagon maintenance / repair facility.

[Murphy Siding]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Tulyar15

The "Flying Scotsman" is both the name of a train service and a locomotives. Since the 1860's there has traditionally been an express train from London King's Cross to Edinburgh departing at 10am. At first it was called "The Special Scots Express" but the title "Flying Scotsman" was adopted in the 1920's.

It was in 1922 that Nigel Gresley's 4-6-2 "Pacific" A1 class locos entered service. The name "Flying Scotsman" was given to one of these and this particular one is the only survivor of the class. She was bought for preservation in 1963. For a time after British Rail got rid of steam she the only steam loco they would allow to run on their lines. She toured the USA in 1969-1970 but the cost of this bankrupted her owner. Fortunately another guy stepped in and paid of the creditors and returned her to the UK. More recently in 1988 she visited Australia. After her last owner went bakrupt last year she was bought by the National Railway Museum at York who are continuing to maintain her in main line running condition.

Nigel Gresley went on to design the streamlined A4 Pacifics of which "Mallard" holds the all time speed record for a steam loco of 126mph. (The London and North Eastern Railway used letters to classify steam locos by wheel arrangement eg A - 4-6-2, B 4-6-0, C 4-4-2, D 4-4-0 and so on; when "Flying Scotsman" was rebuilt with a higher pressure boiler in the 1930's she was re-classifed A3).

On the East Coast Main line the Gresley A3 and A4's remained in service till the 1960's when they were replaced by the Deltic diesels. These 3,300hp beasts rules the rails until the advent of the Diesel High Speed Trains in the 1970's (which have a streamlined 2,300 hp loco at each end, ie 4,600 hp on tap). Then in 1984 the decision was taken to electrify the East Coast Main Line so now the "Flying Scotsman" service is worked by a 140mph class 91 electric loco operating in push pull mode.

If I'm reading this correctly, the Flying Scotsman *route* was run by Deltics at one time?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Murphy..yes you are and yes it was.

Average speeds for some of those trains are in excess of 120MPH. Which will be square root of nothing compared to 2007.......

[TH&B]

What trains?Not the Delticsc nor any steam train?

[Anonymous]

not the deltics, nor the kettles. I think the "Northern Lights" which runs from London Kings Cross - Aberdeen (Peterborough, York, Newcastle and Edinburgh being the first four stops) is booked to run at that speed for at least the southern half of the journey....On a hugely intensive mixed traffic railway like we have over here it can be very difficult to timetable those speeds, however with part II of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link opening in 2007 (max speed 186MPH) - Paris will be less than 2hrs away from London.....superb for a quick day out.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cogload
Paris will be less than 2hrs away from London.....superb for a quick day out.

2 hours? That's almost a typical US commute.

So which would be preferable: Live in London and *work* in Paris, or live in Paris and work in London?

[Murphy Siding]

QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal

QUOTE: Originally posted by cogload
Paris will be less than 2hrs away from London.....superb for a quick day out.

2 hours? That's almost a typical US commute.

So which would be preferable: Live in London and *work* in Paris, or live in Paris and work in London?

[(-D]

[Simon Reed]

To put things in perspective it takes 30 minutes to get from the centre of London to Heathrow or Gatwick airport, and even longer to Stanstead. It's probably a similar distance from Charles De Gaulle Airport to the centre of Paris. Why fly?

If you take the Eurostar to Brussels, which is the same distance and time roughly, you can make a cross-platform change onto a Thalys High Speed Express towards Amsterdam or Cologne - another hour each.

Many of the Amtrak threads on this forum have contained teeth gnashing and chest beating over the future of passenger rail in America. If you'd suggested in Europe 20 years ago that you could get from London to, say, Zurich in five hours by rail you'd not have been taken seriously.

The passenger train has, sadly, fallen out of idealogical currency in the US and the High Speed, dedicated track networks we see in mainland Europe are unlikely to usurp the Airlines as your favourite waste of taxpayers money.

Still, the European model shows what can be achieved with a willingness to transform the moribund into the dynamic.

[Murphy Siding]

On the Great Northern Thread, there is mention of Britain's dieselization. The poster said that Britain did studies of American dieselization, and felt that we moved to quickly to get rid of steam. That makes sense to me, as I've read much about U.S. railroads that were scrapping fairly new steam locomotives. The inference is that Britain eased into dieselization slower to avoid some of the same pitfalls. I guess that I had always assumed that it was simply because Great Britain's economy wasn't moving along so great, having just finished 6 years of war, followed by Indian independance. Can someone enlighten me plead?

Thanks

[M636C]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

On the Great Northern Thread, there is mention of Britain's dieselization. The poster said that Britain did studies of American dieselization, and felt that we moved to quickly to get rid of steam. That makes sense to me, as I've read much about U.S. railroads that were scrapping fairly new steam locomotives. The inference is that Britain eased into dieselization slower to avoid some of the same pitfalls. I guess that I had always assumed that it was simply because Great Britain's economy wasn't moving along so great, having just finished 6 years of war, followed by Indian independance. Can someone enlighten me plead?

Thanks

There are a number of factors that resulted in slow conversion to diesel, but at the time, Britain had no domestic oil production, and this, combined with the debts from WWII and the generally poor economic situation contributed. Many items were still rationed, even after the war, and some British made items were reserved for export to improve the economic situation, including automobiles.

The Labour Party came to power in 1945, and nationalised the railways (in 1948) the railways being previously formed (in 1923) into four large merged systems with varying degrees of government support, but nominally privately operated. These private railways were interested in diesel (and gas turbine) power, and five diesel units of 1600 to 2000 were built by English Electric. These were effectively demonstrators, heavily supported by the builders, and more might have followed but for nationalisation.

The 1948 British Railways imposed a national numbering system and centralised locomotive design and procurement policy. For whatever reason, a set of standard steam locomotives was designed and built (a total of 999 locomotives being built). No serious consideration was given to diesel locomotives, apart from shunting units, which had been built to a standard English Electric design during and after WWII until about 1955 when a "Modernisation Plan" was instituted. Electrification of main lines was the long term plan, but operating costs were so high that the purchase of diesel locomotives for the short term was adopted. The locomotives had be built in England, and EMD was excluded because they would not allow licence construction of the 567 engine in England. Given the problems that occurred with Swiss and German engines built in England, this might have been a good move on EMD's part. They still don't allow licence building, but in the USA there is a considerable market in EMD engines and parts many made by outside companies now. But in the short term they lost the big UK market.

A so-called "Pilot Scheme" was adopted, where ten or so locomotives of a range of powers were ordered from each of a number of builders, including BR's own workshops. These arrived around 1958, by which time the operating losses were so bad that many of these "Pilot" types were just ordered in production quantities (except for a couple of types that didn't look good before they entered service - the Type1 "Baby Deltic" with its turbocharged 9 cylinder Napier "Deltic" never made the cut)

So BR went into full scale conversion to diesel with very little experience of the locomotives concerned (except for the English Electric Type 4 D200 series, later class 40, which was based on the 1948 prototypes which had stayed in service for ten years art that stage). Later, the Type 3, class 37 was introduced, a cut down 12 cylinder version of the 16 cylinder class 40 which also proved to be very reliable.

The class 47 was introduced in 1962 based on the Sulzer engined classes 44,45 and 46, and it was more reliable than earlier types.

The EMD types started with the JT26CW, Class 59, purchased by Foster Yeoman for their own trains running on BR. More class 59 were purchased by other operators, paving the way for the JT42CWR class 66, introduced by EW&S after privatisation of the freight operation.

I hope that explains it!

M636C.

[TH&B]

If New York and LA were just 300 miles apart there probably would also be a big interest in Hi Speed Rail in the USA.

[Murphy Siding]

M636C: What kind of problems occured with the licence built Swiss and German engines? *Baby Deltic*? Was that developed at the same time as the Deltic that I'm familiar with?

Thanks

[martin.knoepfel]

AFAIK, there are not many commuters from Paris to London or back, but more and more British citizens buying weekend houses on the French shore of the Channel. Northern France is an economically depressed area - smokestack and textile industries largely being gone - and real estate is cheaper than in southern England.
If you look for a job, it is easier to find one in Britain, e.g. London, than in France, because British economy is doing very well.

As far as screw couplers are concerned: they are certainly dangerous and labour-intensive to handle, but many European passenger trains practically run in fixed-consists, even if they are not m.u.s. It is cheaper to run an extra coach than to couple on or off during the day. In the seventies, a modern automatic-coupler-design was finally not adopted by the European railroads, largely because of French opposition.

[Murphy Siding]

QUOTE: Originally posted by martin.knoepfel

AFAIK, there are not many commuters from Paris to London or back, but more and more British citizens buying weekend houses on the French shore of the Channel. Northern France is an economically depressed area - smokestack and textile industries largely being gone - and real estate is cheaper than in southern England.
If you look for a job, it is easier to find one in Britain, e.g. London, than in France, because British economy is doing very well.

As far as screw couplers are concerned: they are certainly dangerous and labour-intensive to handle, but many European passenger trains practically run in fixed-consists, even if they are not m.u.s. It is cheaper to run an extra coach than to couple on or off during the day. In the seventies, a modern automatic-coupler-design was finally not adopted by the European railroads, largely because of French opposition.

In my area, people drive 2 or more hours to get to their lake cabins. Taking the train to a seaside cottage on the weekends might be good for what ails you.[:)]

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Simon Reed

To put things in perspective it takes 30 minutes to get from the centre of London to Heathrow or Gatwick airport, and even longer to Stanstead. It's probably a similar distance from Charles De Gaulle Airport to the centre of Paris. Why fly?

If you take the Eurostar to Brussels, which is the same distance and time roughly, you can make a cross-platform change onto a Thalys High Speed Express towards Amsterdam or Cologne - another hour each.

Many of the Amtrak threads on this forum have contained teeth gnashing and chest beating over the future of passenger rail in America. If you'd suggested in Europe 20 years ago that you could get from London to, say, Zurich in five hours by rail you'd not have been taken seriously.

The passenger train has, sadly, fallen out of idealogical currency in the US and the High Speed, dedicated track networks we see in mainland Europe are unlikely to usurp the Airlines as your favourite waste of taxpayers money.

Still, the European model shows what can be achieved with a willingness to transform the moribund into the dynamic.

I have made the point many times that if NA railroads had continued their evolution toward higher speeds out of the 1930's (when 100 mph operation was percieved as becoming "commonplace"), rather than settling for the long slow "load factor maximization" concept, it is likely the railroads could have outpaced the highway/trucking system's speed advantage and thus retained the time sensitive traffic dominance as well as the low value bulk commodity dominance, e.g. the erstwhile 70% railroad market share. This would have by default made rail passenger operations more viable in many of the medium length corridors, rather than the oxymoronic concept of trying to run time valued passenger trains at nominal NA freight train speeds.

The theoretical "natural" speed limit of railroad technology has always been around 125 mph (increased over the years with new technological advances), while the natural highway speed limit seems to have settled at around 60 to 70 mph. One can question what would happen to time sensitive freighting if railroads could double or triple their average velocity from the 25 mph range to 50 or 75 mph range.

In this aspect, the Europeans are light years ahead of NA. Now, if you continental types would just put more freight and less people on the rails, you will have achieved surface transporation Nirvana (the Edenistic ideal, not the grunge rock group!)

[M636C]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

M636C: What kind of problems occured with the licence built Swiss and German engines? *Baby Deltic*? Was that developed at the same time as the Deltic that I'm familiar with?

Thanks

The worst problems were with the MAN engines built under licence by North British Locomotive Company (NBL was a long established steam builder formed by a merger of smaller companies in Glasgow, mostly known for quoting low prices but sometimes needing to fix things after delivery). THe MAN engine was OK, not as high tech as the Maybach (who were lucky enough to get aero engine builder Bristol Siddeley as their licence builder) but the reliabilty figures for the NBL built engines were noticeably (not just statistically) worse. At one stage NBL had to import German built engines to keep units on the road. Many NBL engined units were rebuilt with Paxman engines and these were more reliable. Paxman engines before the HST Valenta engine were not highly though of even in England. One Royal Navy technical paper said of the "Ventura", the engine in question in the D6100 rebuilds, "the best feature of this engine is that the Navy didn't have to pay for its development!". After NBL went out of business, the parts came from Germany and the problems eased a bit, but the NBL/MAN engined units all had a short life.

The Sulzer engines were built by Vickers-Armstrongs, a ship and armament builder but they had been building diesel engines since the 1930s. The Sulzer was heavy and expensive to build and was reasonably reliable at the original power ratings. The 12LDA28C in the Class 47 was rated much higher up the scale than the original Pilot Scheme units (2750 HP compared to 2300HP) and the high levels of utilisation in Britain resulted in fatigue cracking in the welded crankcase structure. This could be corrected by welding, stress relieving and line boring the shaft lines again, but this was too expensive, and the Class 47 was dropped in power to 2500HP at which level they held together for a reasonable period. Many of these units were rebuilt with EMD 12-645E3 engines (as in SD-39s),

The prototype Deltic that led to the class 55 (twin 18 cylinder supercharged engines of 1650 HP) was around from 1955, but the production units only arrived in 1962. The Baby Deltic was a Type 1 unit of 1958/59, four axles with an 1100 HP nine cylinder turbocharged Deltic, in a carbody based on the big class 40 reduced so much in length to look like a caricature. The turbocharged Deltic was not fully developed at the time, and the units were stored for some time while the engines were rebuilt. These were the D5900 series, and one had actually been rebuilt to take the English Electric "U" series engine, basically similar to the successful Paxman Valenta or the German engines (but the U engine was cancelled as a cost saving measure. Years later the RK215 engine was developed to fill the same role and has gained a number of export orders.

M636C

[owlsroost]

QUOTE: Many of these units were rebuilt with EMD 12-645E3 engines (as in SD-39s)

Only a small number - less than 30 - have been rebuilt into Class 57, the first (Freightliner) batch with 12-645E3 engines, the later (FGW/Virgin) batch with more powerful 12-645F3 (I think) engines to cope with the HEP load.

This is out of a total of over 500 class 47's originally built between 1962-1965, some of which are still running in their original form but quite a few have been scrapped.

Tony

[Murphy Siding]

M636C: Thanks for the info. Two thoughts- Were any other American diesel engines considered for building under licence in Britain? Alco,Baldwin,F-M,Lima, Hamilton......all had engines at about this time frame. And-where would I find a picture of the *baby* Deltic?

Thanks

[owlsroost]

QUOTE: And-where would I find a picture of the *baby* Deltic?

http://www.therailwaycentre.com/Pages%20Loco/Recognition%20loco/Illus_23.html

Tony

[Murphy Siding]

Thanks Tony! You're fast! I bookmarked that website right away. Looking at that picture though, I can't help but think of something on Thomas the Tank Engine[:)]. The comment by M636C about it looking like a caricature are, I think, true.


Thanks

[M636C]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

M636C: Thanks for the info. Two thoughts- Were any other American diesel engines considered for building under licence in Britain? Alco,Baldwin,F-M,Lima, Hamilton......all had engines at about this time frame. And-where would I find a picture of the *baby* Deltic?

Thanks

I see the picture question was answered successfully. There don't appear to be any references to Alco trying for the British market. Alco did very well in former British colonies, Australia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh coming to mind. Perhaps Alco couldn't get BR to accept a standard locomotive - Alco exports were more standardised than EMD's export units.

Baldwin would have been exiting the market as BR started buying. Baldwin got a big share of locomotives in Belgium and the Netherlands, because they started earlier. Belgium used the big Baldwin engine whille the Netherlands used the smaller "Superior" engine.

The big F-M engine was a bit tall for BR clearances, and maybe a bit heavy for its power, but they did offer them to New Zealand (unsuccessfully) where clearances are much like those in the UK.

Owlsroost,

I didn't mean to imply that a major part of the class 47 fleet had been converted. I was a little surprised that so many had been rebuilt. I knew that later locomotives had 12-645F3, but had no idea where the break point was. The main difference between "E" and "F" engines is that the later engine runs at 950 rpm. 12-645F3 engines are relatively rare, at least in locomotives. Only the six GP39X units sold to the Southern (now NS) and nine GP49 units sold to Alaska used this engine. The NS units were rated at 2600 HP, about 2750HP in Briti***erms and the Alaska units were 2800 HP, maybe 2950 HP in Briti***erms. The class 57 rating was restricted by the use of an alternator removed from scrapped class 56 locomotives, at least in the early units. Are they still using these, or do they get an EMD alternator with the engine?

M636C

[Murphy Siding]

M636c: Thanks for the info. Yes, the picture was worth a 1000 words. Why is the HP rated different in Britain? Metric system?[;)]


As always- Thanks

[M636C]

The British system considers the maximum power of the engine, while US locomotives are rated as the power input to the alternator after any auxiliary loads, such as the radiator cooling fans and the air compressor have been deducted. A third way would be to measure the power at the traction motors which is sometimes done in Europe. EMD rate the SD39-2 at 2250 HP input to generator, 2475 HP gross engine power. The class 57 is generally described as 2500 HP, which is near enough to the EMD rating. The 47 used hydrostatic fan drive rather than AC electric on the SD39-2, and that might be the difference, assuming the 57 kept the 47 cooling system. My estimates of the paarsitic load were a bit low, (I'd guessed 150HP, while EMD allows 225 HP) but the British rating of the class 57 with an F engine is close to 3000HP, which is an improvement over the de-rated Sulzer at 2500 HP. The 57 gets an improved control system with better wheelslip control, and is regarded as a significant improvement.

M636C

[Simon Reed]

I think that there are two keys to the failure of US Diesel manufacturers to impact on the UK market.

As has been suggested in previous posts the nationalisation of Britain's railways in 1948 was in part necessitated by the huge investment required at that stage following WW2, and in part a highly politicised reinforcement of the economy. Although Britain did not suffer the same degree of collateral damage as mainland Europe during WW2, the war and the increasing industrialisation of the commonwealth countries meant that the immediate postwar years effectively saw the end of the British empire.

This led to a tremendously parochial and insular approach as Britain effectively set out to rebuild itself as an independent trading nation. The nationalised industries (and you must understand that nationalisation encompassed more or less all significant production and services) were very much pressured into using home grown resources to progress and modernise, even though in many situations the technology and expertise was not available domestically. As an example, British Steel plodded along with basic Bessemer technology well into the 1970's, when huge advances had been made elsewhere.

I think the simple answer, therefore, is that established US diesel manufacturers were not approached to assist in implementing the modernisation programme because it was against policy to do so. To measure how costly that instance of "stiff upper lip" was, look at some of the locomotive disasters mentioned by M636, then look at CIE, the nationalised transport operator in Ireland. Their Crossley (UK) engined A and C class diesels were such an abject disaster that they looked to GM. The result - the "B" class - are largely still in traffic today and the original A and C classes were re-engined with GM products.

It's also worth mentioning that the British "establishment" were, in the 1950's, still smarting over the fact that the US Army effectively brought about the end of WW2, and in certain circles there was a marked antipathy toward all things American.

The second key? Try sending a Double Stack down any route in Britain....

[Murphy Siding]

Lucky thing for the British "establishment" that they were able to shun American technology vs. having to *embrace* the technology of the Third Reich[;)] Oh well-water under the bridge. Didn't the Royal Navy have any other diesel experience that could be used for locomotive engines? Why didn't the actual production of engines go to someone with longtime engine building experience-Avro,Rolls Royce, Bristol, etc?