British Railway Operations

[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...

[Anonymous]

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

[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.

[daveklepper]

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

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

[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.

[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!

[Simon Reed]

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

[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.

[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.

[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. 

     

[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?

[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

[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!)

 

[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." 

 

[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.

[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]

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

[John Bakeer]

Dave,
Not to my knowledge.
John B.

[daveklepper]

Wasn't the Kingsway Subway built originally for single deck cars and then enlarged for double-deck?

[Simon Reed]

Marton was primarily - but not exclusively - operated with single deck saloons built and equipped specifically for the route.

Only one survives - Number 11, at the Carlton Colville Museum in East Anglia.

[John Bakeer]

HAPPY J4 TO OUR TRANSATLANTIC BUDDIES.
John B.

[daveklepper]

Was the Marton routes used exclusively by single-deck cars?

[Simon Reed]

I'll check, but I'm fairly sure that Blackpool never had bow collectors.

When the system was inaugurated in 1895 they used a conduit system but this was quickly abandoned because sand kept getting into the conduit.

I think at the time of your first visit to Blackpool the Marton route would still have been operational. This was an inland loop, roughly forming a U shape, which set off from North Pier at 90 degrees to the Coastal tramway and ran via suburbs to South Station.

It's cars had poles but were fitted with different trucks and control equipment to those on the coastal route, so the two systems were operated independently.

[daveklepper]

Didn't Blackpool at one time have two systems, and didn't one of the two use bow collectors? I am pretty sure I saw at least one car, possibly on the carbarn, with a bow collector.

The use of bow collectors on the London cars in Leeds did confuse me. I had forgotton that they used poles in London.

[Simon Reed]

The primary reason that Blackpool's "Preserved" fleet runs with poles is that pantographs scrape the grease off the overheads.

On a closed top tram the grease falls onto the roof. On an open top tram it falls onto the passengers.

The London subway (actually Kingsway and, unusually in UK parlance, referred to as a subway throughout it's working life) was conduit/plow out of necessity.

It was built as a "cut and cover" operation - ie a trench was dug and then bridged over - but to save money and also to allow for clearances around Holborn Underground station the trench was'nt dug deeply enough to allow for catenary.

The Northern entrance to Kingsway can still be seen, complete with conduit slot, about two blocks north of Holborn station on (I think) Greys Inn Road.

[daveklepper]

Some answers. There were interurbans with both poles and pantographs, and at one time some older South Shore cars had both. Possibly they interlined with other interurbans in Indiana, such as Gary Railways. This feature was not around by WWII. Possibly some older Key System.

All North American PCC's had trolley poles. Now some have pantographs or are in the process of getting them. PCC's in Newark and Pittsburgh bowed out with pantographs, a refit. There were some Washington, DC lines that were all conduit and were all PCC, but even those PCC's had poles so they could be diverted to other lines when necessary. Some much older cars, some that ran through WWII, some center-door Washington 2-man cars, did not have poles, or possibly lost them during WWII to conserve material and apply them for cars that needed them. These cars all dissapeared after WWII, and then even the remaining older cars that ran until Benning was abandoned about 1952, had both conduit and pole equipment.

New York was a different story. New York Railways (actually New York and Harlem, but run as part of "Green Lines" even when independent) had only three trolley-pole equipped cars, just for their Madison Avenue - New York Central 138th Street Station shuttle. All their other equipment, including work equipment, only had conduit equipment. Third Avenue had all three types. All-conduit equipment for most Manhattan lines, including the famous Broadway-42nd Street "Huffliners", some trolley-pole only cars for Bronx and Westchester lines, and about 150 or so convertables, the 01-100 series and some in 900 - 1000 group tjhat had both trolley poles and conduit. During and after WWII, the 149th Street Crosstown and the Broadway - 145th Street line (down to one car every 45 minutes at the end, no bus replacement) needed them in regular service. Previously the 125th Street - Wilis Avenue line was a reasonably heavy line that had plow pit at First Avenue and about 126th Street. The third plow-pit was in Brooklyn on Flatbush Avenue many years earlier, possibly out about 1930-1931- for use when Third Avenue had its own streetcar line over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn. There may have been a fourth plow-pit at 225th Street and Broadway for use by cars coming from Yonkers to go all the way to Manhattan to reach the subway opened at 147th and Broadway or to reach the n9th Avenue elevated at 145th Street and 8th Avenue, before the subway was extended north to Van Courtland Park, 242nd Street which was the south end of the Yonkers car lines for all the years I remember them (Age four, 1936 until abandonment in 1952.) Queens and Broolyn and Staten Island were all trolley lines, without conduit, except for the Third Avenue extension into Brooklyn noted above and a short extension of a branch of the 42nd Street Crosstown off the 59th Street Queensboro Bridge, but without a plow pit in Queens.

I find it interesting the both the London tram subway and the Park Avenue one were conduit!

[Anonymous]

London's trams used standard trolley poles - you may have seen some ex-London cars in Leeds with bow collectors though, a number migrated north after the London system closed (Felthams, HR2s, and the lone "Bluebird"). The Blackpool fleet has pantographs on the day to day fleet and poles on the preserved cars - they've also operated trams from other systems in the past to allow them to run in an urban setting again. Interestingly they don't seem to be able to handle bow collectors - the preserved Glasgow "Cunarder" car that ran there a while ago had a spare pole fitted in place of the original bow collector.

[Hugh Jampton]

well,, all those ex-BR people who decided at privatisation that they'd be better off becoming consultants didn't help.

[Tulyar15]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cogload

T15 - before Richard Bowker became Chief Exec of NEG he ran a series of articles in Rail about the financing of the notwork and one of the articles was about rolling stock and ROSCOS. If memory serves it was along the lines that the were incentivised to buy new and that due to a long life, residual value and so forth they required a large capital element to cover costs of refurbishment. Ergo high lease charges.

I shall have to dig the copy out.

Yes, I read Bowker's articles in RAIL and I thought by and large they were a load of arrogant waffle. He kept going on about why it was too expensive to re-open lines etc but he said nothing about why he'd not done anything to try and keep costs under control nor look at the big picture, which is what he was supposed to do. All he ever did was poor cold water on anyone's attempt to tackle these issues - which need tackling! Meanwhile, in the latest 'Modern Railways' there's a lovely song about electfiication and Bowker's very short sighted opposition to it, to the tune of "Jerusalem":-

Did wiring train in ancient times

work to make England's railways clean?

And was the wondrous sparks effect

upon the West Coast Main Line seen?

Then did the mis-named SRA

declare that diesel was preferred!

And has the soaring cost of oil

exposed how gravely Bowker erred?



Bring me my portal frames of steel

Bring me my copper contact wire

Bring me my 3 phase traction drive

Bring me my pantograph of fire

Our wiring teams shall not relent

nor shall the Treasury be mean

Until electric trains can run

from Penzance upto Aberdeen!

[John Bakeer]

Dave,
I've seen articals in Trains showing trolley poles on both interurban and mixed frieght/passenger lines (South Shore?), I'm afraid I never get close enough to see the detail. Did PCC trams all have trolleys? I can't recollect seeing any photo's of them otherwise equiped
However your description of the various systems is highly enlightening, thank you.
John B.