British Railway Operations

[Murphy Siding]

While I'm fairly certain there are no horseshoe curves or loops in Britain, (?) I'm guessing that the grades are pretty flat. Trains with one freight engine don't strike me as hill climbers. What are some of the steeper grades still in use?


Thanks

[owlsroost]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Isambard

I'm surprised that sleeper trains are still run in the UK. What is the schedule for London Penzance? Great Western presumably? How about other overnights out of London?
[:)]

http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/atyourservice/sleeper.php
http://www.firstgroup.com/scotrail/content/caledoniansleeper/index.php

Tony

[Isambard]

I'm surprised that sleeper trains are still run in the UK. What is the schedule for London Penzance? Great Western presumably? How about other overnights out of London?
[:)]

[owlsroost]

Yes, ties (US) = sleepers (UK). You just have to work it out from the context if it's a support for rails or a vehicle with beds that's being refered to [:)]

There's a comment on the origin of 'sleeper' as the term for a horizontal wooden beam here - http://59.1911encyclopedia.org/S/SL/SLEEPER.htm - and this is also an interesting read - http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/trains.htm

My best guess is that Cogload meant he wasn't the signalman who had the problem of the London-Penzance sleeping car train being held at one of the stations in Cornwall for a couple of hours while the death of a passenger was dealt with.

Tony

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cogload

Railroading Brit - you dont reside in the "county town" of Radnorshire -i.e. New Radnor do you? I may actually know who you are..............(not stalking.....honest)!!! ;-).

I'm over to the West a bit in Wales - not far east of Aberystwyth. I went to school in Kington though so I know New Radnor!

[Murphy Siding]

YO! I'm down with that,Homey[;)]

[james saunders]

whats a tie? arent they called sleepers?

[daveklepper]

Aren't you confused (sometimes) by using the same word for what we Yanks call "ties"?

[owlsroost]

A few clues:

Trains from London are 'down' trains.
Trains to London are 'up' trains.

(The 'up' and 'down' designations are arbitary on lines that don't radiate from London - a bit like the SP definition of 'west' [:)] )

In UK railway slang, sleeping car = 'sleeper', a train conveying sleeping cars is a 'sleeper' train or just the 'sleepers'.

Tony

[Murphy Siding]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Isambard

QUOTE: Originally posted by cogload

Railroading Brit - you dont reside in the "county town" of Radnorshire -i.e. New Radnor do you? I may actually know who you are..............(not stalking.....honest)!!! ;-).

Murphy - mate you could fit the UK into one of the American states and think Texas is about 5 times the size of this island so we are a bit more condensed to say the least! Still, its nice to see our friends across the water take an interest in what goes on here - dont be scared to take a trip over......

Entertaining day at work - one train failure; one barrier failure; the pway ranting on...at least I didn't have the down sleepers in the station for a couple after a passenger died......oh..............

Varied preservation - the West Somerset Rules!

"at least I didn't have the down sleepers in the station for a couple after a passenger died......" Translation please?
[:)]

[:0]Isambard: You were reading my mind!

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by cogload

Railroading Brit - you dont reside in the "county town" of Radnorshire -i.e. New Radnor do you? I may actually know who you are..............(not stalking.....honest)!!! ;-).

Murphy - mate you could fit the UK into one of the American states and think Texas is about 5 times the size of this island so we are a bit more condensed to say the least! Still, its nice to see our friends across the water take an interest in what goes on here - dont be scared to take a trip over......

Entertaining day at work - one train failure; one barrier failure; the pway ranting on...at least I didn't have the down sleepers in the station for a couple after a passenger died......oh..............

Varied preservation - the West Somerset Rules!

"at least I didn't have the down sleepers in the station for a couple after a passenger died......" Translation please?
[:)]

[daveklepper]

But still< Stephenson and Brunnel were great railway engineers and Britain was the first to build commercially successful steam railroads.

IN my own field of acoustics, Parken designed the sound system for St. Paul's Cathedral, London, that made use of signal delay and column-mounted column loudspeakers to produce intelligible and natural speech in an very reverberant enfvironment, a design concept now widely copied.

[Anonymous]

Railroading Brit - you dont reside in the "county town" of Radnorshire -i.e. New Radnor do you? I may actually know who you are..............(not stalking.....honest)!!! ;-).

Murphy - mate you could fit the UK into one of the American states and think Texas is about 5 times the size of this island so we are a bit more condensed to say the least! Still, its nice to see our friends across the water take an interest in what goes on here - dont be scared to take a trip over......

Entertaining day at work - one train failure; one barrier failure; the pway ranting on...at least I didn't have the down sleepers in the station for a couple after a passenger died......oh..............

Varied preservation - the West Somerset Rules!

[Tulyar15]

Yes, even now there are new preserved lines spring up! If they want steam locos they'll have to hunt down the few remaining WW2 US Army 2-8-0's and 0-6-0T's that can still be found in Eastern Europe. Both Yugoslavia and Poland developed locos from the 0-6-0T design and some of these have been imported into Britain as they just about fit the British loading gauge. (Couplings conform to British and European standards so that's not an issue). With vacuum braked stock now mostly a thing of the past the newer lines are re-importing the English Electric "Switchers" supplied to the Dutch railway as these have air brakes and are almost identical to the BR Class 08's.

[Murphy Siding]

Great, now I have to go research what William Schockley and Gordon Moore did for the world.[;)] That's a good thing. Being on this forum causes me to learn things that I wouldn't otherwise have given much thought to.

In following through the links provided on this thread, I've made two observations: The British Rail system is a lot smaller, and more condensed than in North America, and there seems to be a lot of varied rail preservation going on in Britain. Cool!

[:)]


Thanks

[owlsroost]

QUOTE: Not meant to pick on German engineering

I didn't think you were either [:)]

From the other side of the Atlantic, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, William Shockley and Gordon Moore have all had huge influence on the way we live today (including railoading).

Tony (getting a bit off-topic [:)])

[Murphy Siding]

QUOTE: Originally posted by owlsroost

QUOTE: Lucky thing for the British "establishment" that they were able to shun American technology vs. having to *embrace* the technology of the Third Reich

Just for a bit of history, the contributions that German engineers have made to modern transportation are huge.

Nicolaus Otto invented the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine in 1876.

Gottlieb Daimler took Otto's engine, developed it further, and put it into a carriage to create the world's first 4-wheeled automobile in 1885.

Rudolf Diesel developed the compression ignition engine which bears his name during the 1890's.

Opposed-piston two-stroke diesel engines were developed by Junkers in the late 1920's for airship/aircraft use (Napier were a pre-war licensee of this technology, which was later used in the 'Deltic' engines).

The Britain and Germany both developed aircraft/missile jet engines during WWII (the German V1 was the world's first cruise missile, powered by a 'pulse jet' engine). The V2 missile was the grandfather of modern rockets, and Wernher von Braun and his team who developed it moved to the US after the war - and he effectively became the 'father' of the US space program.

Modern AC drive technology for railway use was developed in Germany (the DB class 120 locomotives in 1979 were the world's first 'modern' AC drive electric locomotives). The AC drive technology used by EMD comes from Siemens in Germany.

Tony

Not meant to pick on German engineering-meant to pick on politics in general.[:)] German science and engineering has influenced much in the world, including our space program.

[owlsroost]

QUOTE: Lucky thing for the British "establishment" that they were able to shun American technology vs. having to *embrace* the technology of the Third Reich

Just for a bit of history, the contributions that German engineers have made to modern transportation are huge.

Nicolaus Otto invented the first practical four-stroke internal combustion engine in 1876.

Gottlieb Daimler took Otto's engine, developed it further, and put it into a carriage to create the world's first 4-wheeled automobile in 1885.

Rudolf Diesel developed the compression ignition engine which bears his name during the 1890's.

Opposed-piston two-stroke diesel engines were developed by Junkers in the late 1920's for airship/aircraft use (Napier were a pre-war licensee of this technology, which was later used in the 'Deltic' engines).

The Britain and Germany both developed aircraft/missile jet engines during WWII (the German V1 was the world's first cruise missile, powered by a 'pulse jet' engine). The V2 missile was the grandfather of modern rockets, and Wernher von Braun and his team who developed it moved to the US after the war - and he effectively became the 'father' of the US space program.

Modern AC drive technology for railway use was developed in Germany (the DB class 120 locomotives in 1979 were the world's first 'modern' AC drive electric locomotives). The AC drive technology used by EMD comes from Siemens in Germany.

Tony

[Isambard]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Tulyar15

Yes, I know about the VP185. I've also seen the two HST Power cars that have been re-engined with MTU engines several times recently. They really are quiet. If GNER re-engine their HST's with this engine they really will be stealth trains!

I'm surprised about the export restrictions concerning EMD engines. Back in the 1960's a lot of EMD powered locos were built in Sweden and exported to quite a few countries including Communist Hungary. I believe the former Yugoslavia bought a lot of GM locos directly from the US.

I photographed new looking GM/EMD locomotives at the Belgrade railway station in the mid '80's, without being challenged. Not the case several days later, when an impressively uniformed security guard stopped me as I tried to take a photo of a beautifully restored steamer from the early 1900's standing on a display track at a small local station.
[:)]

[Tulyar15]

Yes, I know about the VP185. I've also seen the two HST Power cars that have been re-engined with MTU engines several times recently. They really are quiet. If GNER re-engine their HST's with this engine they really will be stealth trains!

I'm surprised about the export restrictions concerning EMD engines. Back in the 1960's a lot of EMD powered locos were built in Sweden and exported to quite a few countries including Communist Hungary. I believe the former Yugoslavia bought a lot of GM locos directly from the US.

[M636C]

Tulyar,

The recent Alstom locomotives for Syria and Iran use the Ruston RK215, which is a scaled down version of the old English Electric RK and V series, and while similar in size and power, is heavier than the Valenta. These were used because the US Government would not allow the export of EMD engines to these countries. Similar locomotives in Israel and the UK (class 67) use EMD 12-710 engines.

The Valenta has been largely superseded by the VP185, a smaller but faster running engine. All the Valentas in the Australian XPT trains have been replaced by 12VP185 engines, and a few are under test in HSTs.

M636C

[Tulyar15]

QUOTE: Originally posted by 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[;)]

Ironically the Deltic engine was developed from an opposed piston two stroke engine originally developed in Germany. Likewise the now defunct British motorcycle maker BSA copied the design of the two stroke engine used in its highly successful "Bantam" model from the German firm DKW. As has already been mentioned, the Maybach engines used in the Western Region's diesel hydraulics were made under licence by Bristol-Siddeley, part of the Hawker Siddeley group. Brush, who built the Sulzer engined
class 47's also used Maybach engines in a couple of prototype diesel locos they built in the 1960's.

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

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?

Quite a few Naval engines have been used in rail applications. The Deltic engine was also used in Motor Torepdo Boats (MTB's). In the 1960's the Navy shared the development cost of the Paxman "Valenta" with British Rail and the Navy still use the Valenta in a variety of ships. Alsthom also used in some diesel locos they built recently for Syria and Iran - one of the reasons being that its good power to weight ratio meant they could offer a loco with a ligher axle weight than the competition, which was a significant consideration for these countries.

[owlsroost]

QUOTE: You mention that most freight trains are hauled by a single loco. What factors determine this? Weight,length,speed,or general amount of freight to be hauled?

The length of passing loops, yards, terminals etc limits train lengths (and hence weight) so a single 3000 hp loco is normally sufficient. Occasionally trains are double-headed but it's unusual - I can't remember the last time I saw one here....

Tony

[Murphy Siding]

I see what you're saying. It looks like EWS goes to great extremes to make all their diesels look alike too.

You mention that most freight trains are hauled by a single loco. What factors determine this? Weight,length,speed,or general amount of freight to be hauled? Around here, it's always 2 or more locomotives on a train. Even switchers(shunters) that run near my house hauling rocks from a quarry run in pairs. Three to five is much more common. A couple days ago, I saw a train come through with 10 locomotives on the head end of a mile long train of empties! That was,of course, the exception-probably just moving locos back to the main yard.



Thanks

[owlsroost]

The proportion of freght trains hauled by 66's is probably more than 95%.

In US terms, it's like every freight train being hauled by a single (quiet, well-muffled) identical modern EMD loco, with only a very occasional old GE or Alco loco for variety (and then only if you are in the right area).

Tony

[Hugh Jampton]

Common as muck they are.

Here's a list of basically what's what on EWS;
http://www.railfaneurope.net/list/uk/uk_ews.html
There are a couple of other classes operated by some different operators, i.e. DRS have a few Class 20s and some other odballs.

[Murphy Siding]

How common are the Class 66's? Are you meaning 90% of the freight trains? What other diesels are still common on freight trains?


Thanks

[owlsroost]

The Class 66 also have a lower-rated AR8 alternator - basically they are general purpose/fast freight locos rather than heavy-haul (which the original class 59's and the ex-BR class 60's are used for).

The basic idea was to keep the weight down to maximise the route availability and allow the biggest possible fuel tanks to be fitted (a '59' has 4500 litre fuel tanks, a '66' has 6500 litres). They also have design top speed of 85 mph versus 60 for the '59' - but lower tractive effort of course.

EWS have 250 class 66 (plus six class 59's), Freightliner about 100 (some of which are a lower-geared, high tractive effort variant) and other operators about another 30.

Tony

(and I agree with the other UK members about the boredom factor when almost every freight train these days is hauled by a '66'......)

[M636C]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Murphy Siding

In Brian Solomon's excellent book "Locomotive" , there is a short chapter about the EMD Class 66 locomotive. It seems to be somewhat of a British version of an SD-40 with double ended cabs. The book says that Ed Burkhardt (of Wisconsin Central fame) came to control the English, Welsch & Scottish Railway. He purchased 250 Class 66 locomotives for EW&S, starting in 1998. Are these locomotives familiar to any of you Brits? I'm curious how they are performing. What about EW&S? I've not heard that name before, has it been succesful?

Thanks

The original EMD freight locomotives for the UK, the class 59, was indeed an SD40-2 with cabs on each end, and a 16-645E3B engine and conventional trucks.

The class 66 uses the same body as a class 59, but uses a 12-710G3 engine (the same engine as an F59PHI), and radial trucks (similar to, but modified from those of an SD70M) and uses narrow gauge traction motors of type D43, while the older class 59 used D77 motors, like US locomotives.

I've lost track of the EW&S class 66 numbers, but I thought they now have more than 300, and the next big operator, Freightliner, have about 100 units. These numbers alone make these the biggest class of locomotive since the class 47 which numbered 512.

EW&S is the biggest freight operator in Britain, having taken over most of the former BR freight traffic, Freightliner getting most of the remainder.

M636C

[owlsroost]

signaller/signalman/signalwoman(UK) = interlocking tower operator/despatcher(US)

signalbox(UK) = interlocking tower(US)

Tony