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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5167991996369587092017-05-16T06:55:33.061-07:00Syphon DaysDamp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-66036654140321284312017-05-15T14:01:00.001-07:002017-05-15T14:01:02.536-07:00Alternative Type 3 That Could Have Happened
A favourite past-time of many a basher and enthusiast is to discuss the locos which could have been, or the improvements which should have been made, or if only one transmission had dominated and kept the variety of locos going another ten to fifteen years after the great deaths of 'non standards' and diesel hydraulics in particular.

We have the various incarnations of deltics, from a super syphon with a turbo deltic T 18 for rattling up the west coast main line in the mid 60s to the super deltic working in pairs  on god knows what ever train would need 8,800 hp. We have then the sulver variants, the LD8 with intercooling and the LV8 which was used in some French locos. Then we have Mayachs

Yes indeedy it would have been fun to have a type three with a maybach in it. We had of course the Hymeks and tantalisingly we could have had a real beast if they had dropped the boilers from Westerns and fitted with twin MB870s as used in Hymeks instead of the v 12s. A single engined diesel electric version of the hymek would have been interesting indeed.

As we can judge from the BoBo diesel hydraiulic, which was given a route availability eq to RA6, a traditional build requiring boiler space would entail a diesel electric having six axles, most likely being a CoCo but since this would have been made somewhere quirkly with either Crompton or Brush or maybe GE electrical systems in the early 60s, it could well have been an AIA configuration.

How hell fire would it have been? Well oddly the Hymeks were arbitrarily depowered just for the purpose of being a type 3, incidentally the same fate falling on the Brush type 2 when they went v12 svt and lost about 45 hp to come under the type 3 threshold. type three was  not up to 2000 hp in the BRB rating system, it was medium power from 1500 to 1750, wiith type 4 being from 2000. The little gap meant that the standard rating for the EE CSVT v12 and the Maybach v16 was dropped. EE had exported two to three versions recognisable as Class 37 cousins by 1960 with 1850hp and the standard traction rating in the v160 series German locos was 1940  horsepower for the maybach unit. Ah the oddities of pipe smoking beaurocrats with public school accents, sticklers for rules in black and white.

In case you didnt know the germans had a crack at a twin v16 engined beast , the v320 which nearly became a class., In their wisdom and over zelousness to be marvellously good at service engineering, the loco survives today, earning revenue on the DB to 2009 from its launch in 1962. It is a monster, sounding like a pair of thirty sevens on crystal meth, you can here it best here https://youtu.be/vFqI27GQbzY .     Even a single of these MB839s as they were then (maybe a twin turbo predecessor of the 870?) would have made a formidable loco at the foot of type 4 rating, 320 001 being rated at 2 x 2,000hp.

Even at 1750 hp the Hymeks found themselves being selected for fast medium weight expresses on GWR and by many accounts performed well and were more reliable than their twin engined oil sloshing cousins. Of them all they really semed the most sensible to keep on operating with, and there could even have been an attempt to convert them to diesel electric since they have such standard body and bogie construction. Alas the pukker little type 3s met the same fate as all else fitted with a big torque convertor.

Hymeks could have lived out another two decades in the far west country or wales, given boilered stock survived into the late 80s and they would have been converted to air brakes. ETH would have been a hard ask because there is no drive take off on the other end of the crank. A full DE coinversion or a sister class with CoCo set up would perhaps not enjoy such utility from the 'high' speed power unit. It is hard for the lay man to tell, but of course so many DEs now are running at 1200rpm or more now! Perhaps there would be some electric field benefits of the engine being able to run at either a longer first field until diversion kicks in, or more importantly a longer second field than 37s did, them dieing on trains which had to run at 40-50 mph banging in and out of weak field. Or like the v12 early 70s HST power cars, perhaps there are far smoother transitions with a higher speed engine matched to its direct drive gernator or alternator (??)

There is  a great irony in thinking of a DE TYpe 3 or 4 with a marvellous Maybach v16 nestling in its boxy interior, and the demise of diesel hydraulic locomotives en masse, Today's British Railways depend largely on hydraulic transmission for most all classes of DMU, while of course HST power cars have been in part re-engined with you got it, v16 Maybachs! And more reliable than their VP185 multi turbo compeition they are allegedly.
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-13389212578025130042017-01-16T14:14:00.003-08:002017-01-28T04:31:33.383-08:00Hybrid Trains, Electro Diesels and Dual or Triple Mode Multiple UnitsThrough the days of 'blue n' yellow' BR railways, electro diesels and dual mode multiple units were a bit of a side show, but luckily Southern Region persevered and even raised the ugly duckiling class 73 to a swan like status on the Gatwick express services.

With the go ahead for the Thames link it was obvious that there would need to be dual 'voltage',  really dual mode trains with third rail shoes and pantographs. The same was true when the "Chunnel" (as it was first dubbed),  service had to meander into Waterloo on old 3rd rail lines at fraction of its 25kv overhead potential.

Technology Works But Is There Not the Pressure to Move Over?

There really has been no other pressure for dual mode and certainly not more complex systems since then, until the replacement for IC125 was chosen as a Japanese dual /triple mode with german technology which may offer later a battery hybrid mode varian. It has been tessted to proof of concept in the outgoing IC 125 ironically enough, with Hitachi's V/Train 2 Hyabusa tests.

There is quite a bias to the south of England regarding these trains so far. This is a rather insidious bias to the capital with nearly all other Metropoles having the potential application of multi mode tractive power.  You can also argue that London is the most electrified of cities and connurbations already, with only Glasgow and Liverpool being near the relative number of trains run on sparky stuff. What though is the future for more complicated trains away from the south east or on minor routes around there? What pull is there towards the technological shift? What are the economics?  Why bother?

Why bother indeed? Because there is currently no real punishment for diesel combustion under the rails other than fuel costs, which are far cheaper than running a fleet of upto 150 lorries to haul the same tonnage as a single 1000-2000 tonne train. As far as the author knows, this concept has only ever been aired in transport department and select comittee in the UK and regional parliaments.

However there is a wind of change. The mass change to diesel cars has lead to more low level, local emissions of nitrous oxide and the more dangerous 'particulates', which we used to call diesel-soot. With filters and diesel cats, these pollutants have become less oderously apparent, but due to the volume of diesel vehicles on urban roads, it has become an insidious source of pollution which threatens public health perhaps as much as lead in petrol. Trains have a part to play in this, because they transit slowly often through cities, accelerate blowing out those pollutants at high levels, and then sit on idle or the worst point for even the most 'green diesels', they have to switch off and be restarted at terminii.

Currently oil is at a pretty reasonable rate and most of the cost of fuels are in taxes and distribution. Trains are so much very more efficient than road vehicles because they roll at far lower friction over only slight gradients and usually incur far fewer stop-starts caused by conjestion, by the nature of signalling sections and operating them safely and efficiently. Where roads are really anarchic and unpredictable over time, some railway diagrams probably can be found to have originated in the 1950s. Trains in commuter areas really have not become that much faster, and frieght services have only become marginally faster on the slower, more arduous diesel routes.

There is then off the main lines and premium passenger services, not any current incentive to experiment with dual mode electro diesels. These will in 25kv format cost significantly more to build than standard from either single type. However there is a flexibility in routes of course, and actual range the train can cope with before refuelling at a depot. Things will change a lot if and when a new 'clean air' act for Cities comes into force.

Brexit has a small upside for the UK train fanatic and capital investor, because it may mean that UK trains no longer have to follow the consensus on every more quiet, efficient and expensive diesel power unit solutions. This means that if the UK decides to run dual mode or hybrid trains into cities to reduce particulates and noise pollution, then they can perhaps get the best system and compromise on emissions when running on diesel and get trains which are perhaps a little more economic than those of the continent.

The Japanese Test On UK Steels

Hitachi certainly knew where they were  going, but in fact of course we owe the concept of battery hybrid to a far earlier form of covert travel-- the diesel electric submarine. This week even marks the 100th anniversary of the k13 sinking which was steam - battery powered.  Boats are a more extreme example of efficient load bearing when compared to rubber tyes on tarmac. Here  it has been efficient for a centtury to carry lead acid batteries and charge, while most submarines can use the diesels on full power to both charge and drive the 'ship'on the surface. Lead acid batteries are reasonably safe, a bit of hydrogen is released, but they are immensely heavy and it has taken years to get to the Litium ion batteries which are so much better a power to wieght that they render hybrid trains a real proposition within standard rolling stock.

The HST converted carried approximately 2 tonnes of batteries in the first trailer mark III of the set, with a VP185 2250hp new standard power  car infront. Hitachi swapped out the traction motors ( to be AC I beleive), with recurculative breaking capacity, which charges those Li Ion batteries of course. The engine can also charge the battery and can be kept at a higher power output than needed to provide tractive power such that batteries are charges, and the engine is kept in its most efficient range of rpm - power output, while also avoiding thermal cycling up and down between shorter stops.

THe unit also was built to run out of station on a dead engine, start engine underway and the take over power. The battery power available was an impressive 1MW,  about 1300hp, storage at 481  kwh.  This sped the train from a standing halt on battery only to about 50 mph when the engine could then be engaged.

As you see in this image though, the impressive acceleration in the video may be due as much to the fact that this is less than half a working IC 125 train 'set', and the GCR preserved line is hardly known for its gradients. Two tonnes of batteries is a negligible amount to carry slung under a single coach, so you could obviously imagine an 8 car set with two power cars and two battery trailers, pushing out 2MW or in excess of 2600 hp! Also as you can see, this is a prototype system which uses the entire mrk III trailer for electrical control systems and what looks like a large radiator to cool the batteries and high amp machinery. However, this is just at prototype level, and coaches already carry lead acid batteries so the whole system could probably be shrunken to fit under a specially designed coach with more being included in the locomotive power car specially designed for the purpose on outset.

A Realistic Technology for Today Already?

Practical battery hybrids are upon us in multiple units and light railways today, and probably very near to us if there is a green incentive,   would be locomotives which offer clean quiet hybrid mode,  or are operated with a battery trailer-driver for example. There is an obvious immediate advantage for commuter multiple units when they enter urban areas that they can switch off their power units and rely on their batteries to move without pollution. With some form of recharging pick up like a third rail shoe, an ETS supply connection or even a pantograph, then when at rest in a termini or siding, such trains could further avoid burning diesel. (In fact you could have a battery only train which recharges at planned points on a diagram (timetabled service) with either a dedicated special automated power connection, manual connection upon longer stops at the terminii or depot, or picking up power from over head or third rail to charge at rest or underway)

On that point about burning diesel, and after the biodiesel fiasco of a few years back, why would we want to consider such a disgustingly ungreen thing in a new sparkling enviro-friendly type of train? Well currently battery power seems to be limited to operations of under 60 miles in that mode alone, and that is from the lighter dual mode which do not need to carry diesel power units and fuel tanks. Given a cold British winter affecting battery chemistry, and sliding doors on such services emptying the train of warm air every few minutes, it seems like a bit of a hiding to nothing.

There is though that nice benefit of making our cities safer, cleaner and quieter while using 20 miles worth of that battery capacity. Also when you combine recirculative (electric motor-dynamo mediated) braking then we start to see that we could have quite an efficient system for short, non electrified routes, or we could reach out our range beyond overhead or third rail routes to include nice little extra towns, airports or other places of interest where it is otherwise expensive to electrify.

Diesel hybrids though have a little hidden surprise up their sleave in efficiency and also in performance from a hybrid train. The motor can be run at a far more constant high output in order to charge the batteries when actually on. A feature of mid sized (over 400 hp and 6L ) to large turbo diesels is that they are most efficeint when running around and above 80% of maximum power output. Also engineers can design even more efficiency into a diesel which has a constant rpm output or limited range of actual torque-rpm application.   Things like diesel "cats" and particulate filters work better too at higher rpms than being clogged up or not heated properly when idling a lot.

Yet another benefit is a little more technical, but very important. As any train driver will tell you, all trains actually have "gears" and electric or diesel electric are no exception. Electric traction motors eventually start to revolve so fast at the current amps-volts field being applied that they produce an electro magnetic feedback or resistance to further useful power and especially torque to be applied. Rather than grinding away in first gear, a locomotive lets the engine back down to lower revs or idle and resets the circuit to higher voltage such that the new rotational speed of the motors can be matched and more power applied. Most locos have three, or three and a half if you take the initial amp loads into account. Now some routes are terrible for this gear shift happening, both upwards and downwards, especially around the 40-50mph for older locos and some multiple units. For we syphon fans, this was kind of an achilles heel, which meant that while they excelled at both the grunting of the highland routes and the welsh valleys, also on 60 -80 mph services, on routes like the 'Fife circuit' or Inverness-Aberdeen, there are significant sections with just that nasty speed range, 40-50 , so performance was lack lustre unless a driver chose to break the speed limit. With batteries on board you can push through with a more rapid voltage transition (field diversion) maintaining speed and maybe accelerating until the engine streams back on to power the train through. WIth GPS and power management, this also means that stretches at this speed can be handled on battery power providing an optimum voltage output, while they are charged by an engine at higher RPM, or the engine is not used given a duration of battery use which is calculated.

 In addition this peak performance output only means quite a small volume engine, based on a truck engine for example, can output the required power and be programmed for an optimal run up and down of RPM, which really helps reliability and extends service interval over an engine which is expected to deliver tractive power (torque strain) through a wide range of rpm. The diesel for a battery hybrid need only ever charge the batteries and thus be managed at a constant output over the duration of the amps replenishment to the batteries.  The other option is to use a larger, rail industry unit from the likes of MTU, tuned for 80% charging rpm and the using more than this up to 100% as boosting amps on the circuit under hard acceleration or on demanding gradients,

We come back to that inherent benefit of rail over road when it comes to hauling larger weights. A hybrid battery vehicle as a coach or say a driving trailer attached in a 'pair' to a diesel or electric locomotive, need only weight 10% of the overall train weight to achieve this short but very desirable range. Taking up on that point of having a diesel or electric locomotive with a battery car attached (trialled by Hitachi in a converted IC 125 power car and leading coach btw) we get a very siginificant benefit in being able to traverse towns and cities with diesel off, or for an electric loco, outside electrified routes. That point applies too to non electrified rail heads and marshalling yards where shunting requires seperate locomotives currently. So there is a capital cost and train crew cost which can be reduced by allowing a single, main locomotive to conduct its own shunting. Also new rail heads near to AC or third rail routes would be far more economic and safe to connect to the network.

We really don't need to be going that far or that fast to get several benefits from hybrid trains, but they are going to add a cost which is difficult to meet if there is not enough demand or pull from legilslation. The replacement of IC125 itself is a case in hand about the economics of actually having progress in this direction, with the class 800 series due to be largely electro diesel so far. In order to achieve standardisation on this large capital outlay, the government had to step in of course and help the industry achieve a critical mass or if you like economy of scale.

On that point, what we need in future is the ability for investment to be optimised via economies of scale and standardisation, which is something that had become once again quite fragmented under privatisation and against intention. In the 1970s and 80s we saw a largely standard bodied 300+-400-500 series of electric multiple units in two forms (aluminium narrow bodied and steel Mrk III derived) , and then the successful (and aweful) class 150-158 series were based on this standard deriviative of the Mrk III BR Coach body and bogies. Over time an owner or the state can expect TOCs to come and go, and to vary what they want to lease or are required to lease to meet greening legislation, so a modular approach to any new leap forward into all that whacky but feasable dual mode, electro-diesel, hybrid and AC / DC charged battery units would be best suited by this same approach most likely. Here we enjoy economies of scale and common saftey compliance and commissioning at time of purchase, and then the ability to mix and match, repurposing train sets for different routes or requirements.

Those self-same standardised multiple units built in the late 70s and 80s are now reaching the end of their life span, and for the diesels this may be accelerated by legislation or a decline in subsidies for the TOCs. So there is an opportunity, as we see with Class 800 IC125 replacement, for a collective consensus and common purchasing of cleaner trains which are potentially cheaper to operate in fact and open up new through routes which avoid the conjested terminal stations in our cities. In Scandinavia,  electric cars are all the rage, and the only hybrid to buy is a plug in one so that you can do the school run in blissful greenness while saving a good bob or six on all that warming engines up and standing in commuter traffic for those very many short journeys most people actually do most often.

Personally I have never liked diesel multiple units because of their noise when compared to the gentle whine and clickety clack, plus the old shoogle as we called it of trains like the venerable class 303 electric multiple unit. DMUs also increased many journey times susbstantially over the previous type 3 and type 4 locomotive hauled services and offered often less capacity. I remember my first tour on a 150 series unit on a Crewe- Nottingham service at 6 am, trying to get some kip after an overnight stop over, and finding that torque convertor, moany engine set up most annoying, along with the strip lighting. The romance of compartment stock with subtle little dimpled lamp lights and sliding top windows may be consigned to the preserved branch line, but I would like to use quieter trains, the greener the better.

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-31637990041190631222016-12-29T17:01:00.001-08:002016-12-29T17:01:03.287-08:00Trains For the Future? Diesel Lines Will Exist, what shall we do?
For the first time in forty years, the UK sees a new mixed traffic Locomotive type enter service. They will run a lot of services which previously classes 47 and 37 worked, and find new types of operations which perhaps are higher tonnage or  faster or intermodal.

Good luck to the 68s, they seem to be the usual air conditioner noise type things, with a kind of continental super speed train front end coupled to the UK's rather messy array of cables and pipes.

What though could we expect to be working other diesel lines in future? Speed is the new black with even the conservative party supporting a lift of average speeds and the introductin of the *wasteful* HS2 london super commuter route. For years many services had been slower thatn they were in the early 1980s because of the removal of locomotive hauled services, and the introduction of more stops in the hunt of passengers and subsidies along the way. Finally on many routes the capacity became saturated by either physical means -no more diagrams possible, as in many London commuter services- or because passenger demand for those type of slow, and often expensive services had waned/

Loco  hauled is by no means a solution for all services, especially not lower speed, frequent stoppers. Much as though syphon bashers would like to sit in load five and hear a grumbling tractor grind its way to Rimmey, Shap, Mallaig or Kyle, many of these routes are better served by 156s which are arguably more reliable, and cheaper to operate, and in fact when you take motive power and rolling stock into account, have had a remarkably long career now and it is not coming to an end any time.

However there are many routes where multiple units just do not have the power and of note, tractive effort to make for a service which is anywhere near as fast as loco or power car hauled trains. 156s are 20 minutes to half an hour slower on the Oban to Glasgow route than 37s , and that is comparing the unit being worked really hard to the 37 having a little jaunt with notch 8 rarely achieved over most of the 74 miles or so on the actual WHL..  Units are great and economic when there is a slow stopping service with either a single two or three car or as is the norm for many 156, 158 and laterly 182s and so on, a brace of the single MUs. Beyond that and loco hauled is more reliable and flexible because rolling stock can be added one at a time, and specialist stock like break vans with significant bike and parcel cages, or restaurtant cars and so on can be added. Indeed over the course of two decades, demands change so this flexiubility to dial in or out services versius just bums on seats gives TOCs or national operators a broad opportunity to match customer needs, capacity and routes to different stock set variuants. Stock can of course also be converted to electric multiple units too, when the wires or third rail stretch themselves along routes, or if older multiple units become unservicable. Rail economists from Loughborough and the formerly public Scotrail, are in agreement that a rake of six mark ones or twos, and  five  mark 3s, are more fuel economic than running multiple units.  Also there is then a trade off between tieing up your tractive power and the related miles per causalty and miles per service to your stock, so the trade off above 200 passengers or so is  usually in the point at which it is more sense to have loco hauled.

The issue with multipile units is that they carry less horse  power per passenger and this is as true of the latest generation of higher speed and titling 200 series units, the voyagers and so on, as with I suspect the new intercity high speed express class 800, which I very much doubt from the spec will actually achieve current IC 125 diagram speeds on their diesel routes. Both the 200 main types and the 158s and 170s had major issues during introduction and require a proactive maintenance schedule to keep their availability high. Higher speed engines slung down in the dusty, wet and snowy under carriage areas of rolling stock are subject to a lot of thermal cycling, dust, humidity and so on, so they come with unforseen teething issues in the real world or conjested rail routes and demands for frequent stops. Moreover this goes out over their life cycle, with some of the  earliest third generation stock already being phased out (not in fact that it did not last as long as what it replaced, it is probably just more delapedated than the loco hauled roilling stock when it was phased out)

Class 68s will undoubtedly be working on DRS operated passenger services where an express element is required, but only if enough of them can be released from the more profitable frieght diagrams, for which there is allegedly a current shortage of motive power. The question we have raised before, is just how much horse power do you really need to run some of these semi fast and 70mph route expresses, and how much do you need to work an average engineering permanent way train? The answer to that is already very well proven, type three is ample, and even the type two and a half class 31 was good enough for much of it, as long as ETH wasnt needed. With the demands for higher powered ETS as it is now, and the ability to work faster when needed, we could say that around 2200 hp would be the new area for a type 4 mixed traffic loco, which could be a jack of all trades up to 90mph at least. If the EU would only allow a relaxation, and Brexit may well do so, for locomotive emmissions, then there is now a plethora of compact power units of mid speed to higher speed which could fit very nicely in this power band, while also allowing for space for a secondary generator for ETS or alternatively, a hybrid battery power pack system.

What would then be my ideal train set for working semi fasts of the future? Likely to be things like the welsh routes, the cross country routes in england, the SW, the NE and just about anywhere north of the soon to be 25Kv Edin/Glas Corridor.  Firstly the 68 will fill a near future need for non class 800 services to places like Lincoln, hull and Scarborogh in the East, West Wales and N Wales, the West Country and in Scotland Aberdeen and Inverness. This is on THROUGH services where an EMU is likely to be dragged north, the demise of class 90 within sight now regrettably as a passenger loco on the main trunk routes. I can see that if competition for diagrams on routes actually made more a market of the whole monopolistic qausi private TOC situatioin we have now, then some bright sparks like Virgin would want to offer very much faster intercity regional services which could out compete car and bus for journey time. In Scotland and on much of the transpennine XC routes, you could do this today by cutting out stops and running 50 year old locos and stock.

What we need apart from just more brute horse power per passenger, is actually trains that tilt and that is what virgin forsaw with the original concept of the 220. If they had only dared make the sets have an IC 125 style pwer car with a tilting mechanism then they could have had a real runner, or if they had dual moded them, or even triple moded them with third rail shoes, then this would have been a route beater which could compete on different XC express services.  Instead they opted for a somewhat underpowered set up, which had a lot of teething problems and the whole titling thing is at last note, switched off. The trains seem to be operating with more stops when they do get to diesel sections, while otherwise they whizz along at top speed under the wires. Class 800 will do gosh 140 mph, so it's back to the future, from 1989 when we had 140nph, non tilting services on the ECML and not even as fast as the  APT went on the WCML. I suspect that they will languish in terms of acceleration under diesel power, and always be making up for time once under the wires of the GWR or ECML. " Zings" as we called them, 125s, are being given a last lease of life while the 800s are introduced, the wires go up on Bristol and Cardiff, and also therer after on diesel only services in deep GWR cider country. This tends to suggest that 800 is known to be slower on diesel already, while it will of course be 12% faster where 25kv, long straights and track ATP allow. To improve other journey times outside those long ECML and GWR straights which allow for safe 140mph running, we will as BR knew back in the 1960s and virgin followed suit in the late 1990s, need to tilt.

Tilting locomotives are not actually that new, it is just that these rather heavier elements have been burried in the middle of experimental and pre production train sets, like the APT  E and P. The Aussies have a train which allegedly tilts, but it seems like this is just a minor comfort title achhieved on the air suspension, because it is barely noticeable in any of the footage of the trains which operate the long and twisting route up to Darwin. An HST power car of its day, in rather traditional build with an advanced power unit for the time (more HP per tonne than a deltic non turbo unit) so today we could expect to do it all a lot lighter. For example we can think that we achieve the same type of horse power in 8 cylinders from a VP based fantasy power unit, and many other offerings are out there in mid speed marine (often called high speed when in traction, above 1000 rpm,) An HST power car is amazingly light in fact at an RA5 rated 79 tonnes fuelled. You can imagine fitting a good deal of tilting equipment, a smaller engine and an emergency lithium battery bank for reservce power for tilting and air reseroir in the same weight. Also we have major advances in applying tractive effort and avoiding wheel slip. At horse power per tonne per passenger then we quite quickly come up in an economy for having a single power car per four passenger coaches when speeds well in excess of 100mph with good pick up times are required. A six car 170 formation for example has only around 1800 hp available for tractive effort. and carries more weight and probablky uses more fuel per passenger than a 125 working a slower service for its capaibility.

So my set is as follows. DMV,. TSO, TSO, TR and DBFST. The power car has a small V8 installed instead of the v 12 or v16s currently used , but with less emissions nonsence on its exhaust. This driver motor vehicl then also contains space for parcels and bicycles and a small extra gaurds cubicle for operation from there or in need of security. There are then a first coach with a formation of two more which share bogies, and then a double bogied dirver brake, battery first and second class trailer. This houses recirculative braking to charge its batteries which are in turn used to provide most of the ETS for journeys, being charged from ETS head power at terminii and depots prior to journeys.  I fancy usiung APT style hydrokinetic drum turbine brakes on the three middle cars, and having a battery pack in the first TSO to provide emergency tilt power and shunt / recovery power to the locomotive power car in event of power unit failure. The TR would be a Voyager style buffet car. The whole thing is a five car set but in effect when operated as pairs the sets would be shorter than a 10 car HST, more like a rake of 8 mrk threes witha single Cl 47 loco such that they fit most all platforms across the main line network. There would also be provision to dump the "DVTs" ie trailer driver push pull cars, and merge two setts with two common TSOs thus increasing seating capacity and areodynamics.

I envisage this being a dual mode set by design, such that one of the TSO is actually a MSO when using either 25kv or in a third rail variant. I can also imagine that every car could carry a battery pack allowing for fully hybrid operations such that short stretches like the run to Lincoln from the ECML, or around non overhead sections in London and other cities, could be achieved  without switching the Power unit on, or swithcin it off indeed to reduce emissions in cities which is becoming a big issue in terms of particulates and low level ntirous oxide in particular. With a power car and an electric motor vehicle in formation, hybrid power could also provide additional tractive effort on stopping serrvices or on notorious gradients like the Lickey bank, the Manchester Vic exit or the Glasgow QS tunnel.

As with the 220s the aim is not always to be running at top speed to reduce journey times, but to be decreasign the need to brake and pick uip by a given percent factor on curve sections such as the transpennine or Scottish routes. a 20% average improvement in speed through curves equates on some routes to a significantly better route time because of the electro mechanical qualities of motive power and also this uses less fuel due tp the large reduction in acceleration required coming out of curved sections, and avoiding field diversion cutting in when slowing down for a curved section.

Making trains which tilt rather than straightening lines is really the only practical solution to the demand for faster services, that and diverting freight services to slower  routes to greatly improve high speed capacity. However the conservatives like many very left wing governments have bought into HS2 and its vast expense, in order to feed the city of london with a new breed of super commuter and render Manchester, Brimingham and Derby suburbs to the great big smoke. It is not hoardes of investors and SMEs fighting for tommorrows new super App or mobile device they are really trying to achieve, but rather to facilitate access to credit for minor banks and supply the stock market and other finanical institutions with more bright people who would otherwise be priced out of living in London at what they want to pay them. HS2 is not a great opportunity to revitalise the North, it is an admission and surrender to the power of the financial industry node that London has become, and the need to have a bigger populace to feed it beyond its current leafy confines in the home counties. In terms of facilitating more branch offices and sub suppliers in the North, this is probably basing tommorrow's strategy on yesterday's business culture. Very shortly it will not matter about where you work, or being able to press the flesh more than once a month if at all, it will be what you can super duper do from broad band anywhere, Business will not be done over Claret and Stilton lunches in the Strand, or by miliatary style departments regimented by sergeant majors, it will be conducted on merit and in Cyberspace more and more.,  Also HS2 may be so expensive to travel on that the benefit of Brimingham becoming a suburb with cheaper house prices than Surbiton is eradicated with the sky high price of a season ticket.

Politically zand economically what we need is more regional intra connectivity, and inter non SE region connectivity,  Leeds Manchester, Liverpool Newcastle, Aberdeen Glasgow, Inverness Edinburgh, Plymouth Bristol. We need shorter journey times and to compete on getting people from their suburbian homes to other city centres and round about festooned industrial estates far quicker than the car will achieve in todays conjestion. People need to be able to give up their rubbish local job and be able to hop on a train and within 40 mins arrive at a new, better paid job in a city centre. Cars in cities like Leeds and Manchester are becoming increasinly obsolete for travel to the centres during rush hours from the commuter belts or between each city. We have the opportunity in the NW and Scotland to dump many of the stupid stopping services and run intercity non stop services which make it really easy to go centre to centre, while even beating car journey times when the destination is outside the city centre. For all the transpennine routes and the Scottish routes this is achievable with class 67 and 68 today, but could be made even faster with tilting services

 The entire fleet of protoype APTs cost a piddling 74 million pounds, and despite all the bad press, thousands of travellers enjoyed faster services on intercity 225 and therafter, pendolinos from direct application of the technologies proven in the prototype fleet of trains. Little known to may outside the rail industry, is that the 225s could be converted to tilting, and the Pendelinos were built by Fiat traction originally, who bought out many patents from BRE in the 1980s in order to speed up travel on the twisting routes in Italy. Class 800 is a good solution for replacing 225s and may be a passable 'reach' solution for Cardiff, Swansea and Hull, but the real sweet spot is to have tilting express diesel trains  in terms of benefit for money invested. We also need to be considering where emissions happen rather than how much per average mile travelled, and incentivise dual mode and battery hybrid technologies such rolling stock remains flexible and helps meet the demands for cleaner air in our urban areas, while also reducing our over all CO2 footprint if the climatologists not paid for by the oil and coal industry prove of course to be right,.

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-84622349663188912222016-05-23T10:52:00.001-07:002016-05-23T13:30:32.528-07:00Tantalising Tractors ....More What If? Locos
A couple of thought occurred to me when the smooth metals and third rail of the SR came to mind. Not a stranger to the RK derived 10 inch by 12 power units by any means, with the two Bulleid prototypes being commissioned for the long flat lines of kent, sussex and surrey. Not least also the some near sixty years of class 73 operations and over 20 of the thumpers. The Bulleid-EE prototypes would for better or worse influence phase one of dieselisation with their 1Co-Co1 configuration. Also that type 3 power levels could be entrusted with even 110mph services !

The final stub ended prototype was delivered as a type 4, setting the mould for the order of 200 of their lumbering, whislting off spring at 133 tonnes. At this point in time then we see the SVT power unit with 125hp per cylinder, which in a v12 is the magical 1500hp type 3. Later it was a purely artificial and arbitary derating to push the bruwh type ii into that category btw. So what about a series 1 fleet of v12 SVTs with co-co and noses ?

It would have taken extraordinary foresight to envisage that the traffic for type 1s and 2s would dwindle in the coming decade, and die in the 1970s.  However the signs were there with the post war road revolution being more the csuse of the demise of economic viability of many branch lines and tiddley services, with Beechings being the messenger of ill wind, all be him partisan with a brother in law at the helm of none other than Tarmac Ltd. Four of the  five v16 prototypes were all type threes, which were entrusted with a range of express and  heavy services and paired  for prestigious trains like the Royal Scot - given the teething problems and short service interval of deltics maybe both EE and BR-ER would have been bettr served by this "American" practice anyway.

  The SR themselves would have both the need and foresight to order the sulzer based type 3 in order to meet their needs for ETH and offer superior speed and power to their underpowered straight six cousins. Type 3 would become a more suitable power for the types of freight business which became prevalent by the late 60s, and if you include the numbers from the 'almost a three' class 31, then the type three was more proliferate than type 4s rated under 2500hp. Type 3 is ideal for 250 - 400 tonne trains, which themselves today are no longer deemed economic as fayre paying traffic. 500- 1000 tonnes? , just double them up. Bar the sad decision on oil sloshing 'diesel hydraulics' and resulting drmise of the Hymeks, the other three classes outlived their inferior little sisters and nearly all of the type 4s, bar the ubiquitous down rated 'duff', and continue inuse as departmental and hire locos over the entire network.

If the usefulness of type 3 had been recognised in the early 1950 and the chance to run lighter weight locos with 4 less cylinders than their type 4 cousins seized, then surely this would have meant the following- a 1500 hp SVT LMR , ER and maybe ScR nosed, disc indicating, standard buffer beam co-co and larger orders of the sulzer-crompton across the same regions in addition to the SR. One would hope then that the same decision that belay the 40 and gave us a 1954 loco still being produced in 1965 would not befall the CSVT order , and rather coinversely that a c.1670hp intercooled sulzer would also happen!

Spectacular as D6700s could be in the hands of a driver keen for extra tea time on the WHL or up a welsh coal valley, they probably spent far more time singing away on notch 6 and 7 not 8 , thus putting out around 1400-1550 hp. SVT power through a 1956 deltic style commonwealth co co bogie although less spectacular, would be fully capable. At a light of fancy we could say that EE may keep up with the 8LDA of the 'shreddie' and rate the loco at 1550hp with an SR option for ETH.  An order of 100 in 1955 ?

A 1956-60 operational 'sub syphon' could have found use on the steam vacs of SR's then numerous boat trains and the Mule route to Exeter. But its home land would no doubt have become that of the re-engines brush type ii, which may never have been built in numbers due to this competitor, and its big sister D200 fleet. Perhaps they would have been despatched also to work the Highland line out of Haymarket aloing side their contingent of the v16 sisters. I  think that the v12 would have precipitated larger orders for the 1750 hp CSVT with perhaps a 2000hp variant as early as 1960. Also with the advent of 25kv towards  the north and Scotland, perhaps the body would have had a 16 SVT plonked in it, no boiler needed for freights or ETH power on the un wired WCML?

Early EE drawings of their actual type 3, the D6700s, show a smallish presumably four cylinder ETH generator along the side of the boiler area, thus being dual heat, although it doesnt look like anything bigger than a small lorry engine of that time , maybe 180 hp.

That brings us to the other fantasy type 3 of say a 1958 delivery to BR. What if they decided to plonk a single deltic 18 into this type of Co-Co body shell ? With a smaller generator for ETH?  Maybe even a non turbo t9 which could supply train boost amps power as well as enough for the 33 and 66 ETH ratings. Why not ? Apart from the CoBo, the baby Deltics were the most ludicrous of all the initial phase 1 diesels, with a tuebo power unit yet untried in rail application and a heavy body work defying the purpose of such a light motor. Napier and EE never actually promised more than 2000 hrs between overhauls, which means a strip down of the whole engine, so really the power units should never have seen the light of day in a humble work horse type 1 whose life would be spent in perpetual short thermal cycles best suited to lower speed marine derived units. More likely then, given the madness of the days, that there be offered a single T-18 deltic at 2200hp as a light weight alternative to the peak classes and the pedestrian D200s.

Thew concept of a 'multi use' body shell and bogie layout should not have been lost at this time. The LMS's prototype diesels were very heavy but had a lot of uneccessary weight in them like over engineered bulkeheads, buffer beams and bogie frames taken in design pretty directly from steam engine proportions. Hence the extra jockey wheels of thew bulleid design being specified. By the early fifties EE were producing lighter weight designs for export, culminating with the super light for so much power in Deltic. A standard design of body could have been used as a co-co of RA5 to Ra7 for different end purposes with different power units, most other equipment being standard onto , as became more or less, standard bogie design.

 Common sense at BRB-BTC as well as production capacity at EE, Brush  and BRCW were lacking in the 1950s unfortunetly however. Ironially enough, the phase II type 4s would prove to be in many ways to be inferior to their simpler and usually more reliable 1Co-Co1 predecessors. In fact though, bar the Hynek, the 33, 37 and re-engined 31 were all actually phase 1 orders, being placed before the review which would render everything twin window, slab end for the next  quarter century until the advent of "skips". The diesel electric type 3s of course out lasted all the other phase I locos. Hindsight is a fine thing, but surely double as many 3s would have been only a positive develoment.
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-51017021381508580982016-02-01T14:02:00.001-08:002016-02-01T14:02:02.571-08:00Railway Economics and the Failure of the UK Privatisation
There is a campaign group in the UK called 'Bring Back British Rail' - does what it says on the box, so to speak.... Of course many deride this as nostalgia and even a bunch of old communists, but the group is far from being cranks. The UK rail industry has basically failed to improve passenger value via privatisation, due in many observer's opinion to the slighly cowardly decisions made by the John Major government. There was no real element of competition on the majority of routes, while the rail regulator became a toothless paper tiger. Companies exert massively above inflation fair increases, especially for season tickets which are the milk cow for the TOCs in the South East.

Many old timers and Tory true blue believers hark back to the time of the Big Four railway companies in the pre war era, when the glory of private investment, management and market pricing ruled with a whisp of steam and the smell of grease and burning coals. GWR, SE, LNER and LMS. To a small extent some of these routes and passenger lines were reborn into private monopolies of course. Only now they are not monopolies. Back then in the late nineteenth to mid twentieth century, the railway was a virtual monopoly in several different markets for getting from A to B efficiently. Private cars were expensive relative to average incomes, and not very reliable per hundred mile travelled, with short distances for services relative to today. Roads suffered from being based often on the old radial routes which connected towns and villages to the metropolises with many junctions at each node. Pre motorway commuting must have been a nightmare, despite there being relatively few cars on the road. What the big four had was a monopoly on fast, affordable transport for both passenger and freight in their respective regions or corridors ( freight being not really considered here in particular as the market to some extent is more competitive)

Looking back at the big four is using both rose tinted spectacles and also a good deal of naive, wishful thinking on how such a set up could exist today. The Uk in particular is littered not only with relics of the Beechings related cuts, but also old private lines which went bankrupt. By the late 19th century, Railways in the UK had become the internet of their day. This is a more literal relation than you may at first think, because railways facilitated much of the transport in the economy and rapid movement of mail and money. Like the internet, the sector became a bubble which burst and dozens of small railways went bust and either succumbed to being part of the big 4 under the 1921 railways act,  or simply dissoleved into being mere farm tracks.

One other legacy of the huge confidence of investors in the late 19th century followed by a more look warm scenario into the 20th century was that a huge deal of the track bed and even track itself, the very infrastructure, was Victorian and remained so during WWII. Longevity or durability is not unique to the railway, but a rather spartan attitude was taken to rail replacement. As late as the 1960s when the 3300 hp deltic fleet were introduced to operate at 100mph, there were still several sections of the East Coast Main Line which were basically victorian and demanded a 30 mph speed limit.

Post war on the one side the railway was of course bombed and so on, but also much of it was neglected and in a dire state. Given the repair bill and the debts acrued during the requistion of the railways in the 1940s, nationalisation was the only real means of progress to avoid a total financial and service collapse.

Nationalisation involved changing things....not very dramatically at first. The Great Western Region and Southern Region carried on under much the same management structures as before. Scotland became a natural region as did the old LNER mainstay of the east coast, while the west midlands and north west followed after a mix of London Midland and Scottish and LNER, with Midland region taking the north home counties and middle bits towards derby, Nottigham and Brum.

  Regionality removed large amounts of competition but at the same time there were some routes of course which were still rivals. Some Southern Region routes competed with GWR routes into London for commuters, and indeed the SR  Exeter route at one point was quite competitive in journey times to the Bristol route. The main competition was of course between the three main north - south arteries of ECML, WCML and Midland Line, with the later being somewhat sidelined with the restrictive size of St Pancreas compared to the new Euston and Kings Cross stations.

Through the sixties and seventies, the two main routes to Scotland competed for the cash income of those travelling to and from terra caledonia. The aforementioned Deltic services to Scotland and the NE, were actually a planned stop gap before the envisaged electrification of the line, while of course the WCML was electrified with overhead 25 kv lines progressively through to completion to Glasgow Central in 1974.

The post war infrastructural renewal aside, these routes in particular were expected to pay their way forward and contribute profitably in both freight and passenger income to the Railway. It could be said that both routes had their hayday in the late 1970s when intercity 125 sets on the ECML were operational and the fastest expresses on WCMl made london in under fiver hours from Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively. The Railway was most concerned about competition not from at that time flights but from of course motorways.  To extend the utility of the major WCML route, with its larger coverage or interconnectivity of major connurbations when compared to the ECML, the corporation for want of a better term, decided to adapt trains to the curves and came up with the revolutionary APT which has influenced and been largely copied by tilting train designers the world over, and influenced much of the advanced speed of 140mph run for some years on the ECML.

 The class 370 prototype fleet, a kind of beta test of its day, were only reallly let down by three factors, two of them to do with private suppliers letting them down 1) The dynamic braking fluid was not available in time for the winter launch , so there were problems with viscosity and freezing  2) the very basic design of final friction brakes, dating to Rocket type designs, was built with components out of tolerance and just badly made by a private work shop  3) the rate of tilt was shown to induce motion sickness in passengers, somethign which could have been designed out and of course has been for the "pendolinos".

The six train sets were a proof of concept which had one foot a bit too firmly in prototype land. In any case, Thatcher was keen on selling off British Airways, righly so, and saw that a three hour London to Glasgow rail route would likely outcompete the shuttle with the then hour or so out on the tube or cab ride to Heathrow.APT was shelved, but continued to be an experimental train through to at least 1984. Just over a decade later and Richard Branson was running trains based very much on the design and on the ground breaking operational and safety work the sets provided to the international industry.

The APT aside, British Rail managed several huge achievements. Firstly there was the rebuilding post war and the planning in the 1950s for a modern railway network, the beechings inspired rationalisation in the motor car age, the removal of all steam power by the late 1960s, the achievement of sustainable 100mph operation on WCML and ECML, the rationalisation of the ill concieved purchase of over 40 diesel locomotive types down to less than half tha, the electrifiication of the WCML and the Glasgow metropolitan area, the introduction of the intercity 125 to ECML, WR and later MR, the electrification of  the ECML, sectorisation and increased tractive power for freight, the introduction of efficient third generation diesel and electric multiple units..... The private railway has one main achievement and that is ironically, the introduction of tilting trains to regular passenger services.

Back to economics. We have a history of the British Railways in about four main chunks to date...... which begins with fanfare and a rush to invest in this new means of communication in the Victorian era, followed by the economic realities of what we call today "income model" and actual returns on that investment via capital gains and dividends....then the shake up with WWI when the railway was comandeered for troop and supply chain to armaments and the subsequent 1921 railway "Big Four" act....then WWII and 1947 when the Big Railway was born.....then the ill fated privatisation by the John  Major government.

Ill fated? Oh most definetly on just about every measure of utility to the paying passenger. Also on the frieght side, the private companies received several hundred new locomotives just bought by the public purse, at a knock down rate by accepting also to buy the older locos....which were already by in large rationalised and refurbished from their 1960s over engineered , sturdy design.

The main measures you can look up are grouped as follows, the figures are disputed a bit in terms of what inflation means in the railways and so on, and what constitutes operational subsidy, but this is the score>

1) Passenger Fair Increases Above RPI
2) Seating Capacity over the late 90s to 2008 in particular
3) Punctuality is decreasing now across many TOCs
4) Rolling stock has been replaced at a slow pace as the life cycle of the third generation multiple units, carriages and freight locos comes to an end
5) Public subsidy to the operational railway has increased above inflation
6) Railtrack had to be renationalised and is also a subsidised hole for tax payers money

The unfortunate fact has been clear since before 1900. Railways are very capitally intensive, and it is incredibly difficuylt to get ROI if you dont have a monopoly over not just rail route, but time effective transport in a corridor. This is just not the case for the vast majority of rail routes. How would the 'glorious big 4' have faired with the competition from motorways and later cheap flights ? Train operating companies have had to fall back on three streams of income - the poor commuter, the routes which are faster than flying and driving, and those who cant or wont fly. Beyond this in terms of making a profit, the TOCs need to hunt subsidy, The former of these three
passenger group is a literally captive audience around the Capital. Much of Londons middle class suburbia grew up around the new SE electric railway routes, and people lived within walking distance of a station. Now with conjestion into the capital, these poor blighters are the cash cow of the TOCs. They have them by the short and curlies because if they leave their season ticket year, they risk more conjestion by their own numbers.

There could have been alternative competition based privatisation models, which John Major dared not take up, but we come back to the fact that railways are capitally intensive in terms of rolling stock and track renewal, which are two demands the safety authority must lay down, while there is a finite and often limited capacity at rush hour when most money is to be made in getting people from both near and wide into the metropolii. Competition on routes like deregulating busses, has a market pain barrier which it must go through when less efficient operators fall to the side. There is also a huge degree of either redundancy or just using the same common sub supplier in terms of stabling rolling stock outside peak demand, maintaining rolling stock, and operating staff transport etc, Eventually on a route there would probably be one dominant operator, a single source of all repairs and stabling and a smaller second operator. There would be then a virtual monopoly on many routes where capacity in terms of the lines, terminus platforms and stabling & maintenance does not favour anything near the conditions for a free market.

The concept should not be completely dead, though, even when infrastructure is largely public owned. It is just very hard to make both competition work and to allow for return on investment and dividends without rail route monopolies.

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-92210706372982832322015-12-17T16:38:00.001-08:002015-12-17T16:38:54.549-08:00Real Trains for Tommorrow. The Hitachi Super Express - Is this HST-2 ?
Hitachi seem to be rather the Doyen of private rail operators and Network Rail after the success of the Chunnel route 140mph dual electric mode high speed trains. Now they are the builders for the replacement to HST, the venerable intercity 125 and its two re-enigned encarnations. But how will the new train measure up to the legacy of the iconic HST which not only saved the image of BR, but made it a force to be reckoned with into the 1980s before the ideologistic and rather bad privatisation?

Firstly it is a dual mode, or electro diesel with a version which will be ECML electric only and retro de-fitting to that status. This says quite a lot about the betting the government are doing now through the renationalised Network Rail scheme for electrification to Bristol and beyond. Dual mode train sets will be ideal as the wires stretch their way westward, we presume., with the Severn Tunnel being the main question mark for further development into Wales. A dual mode train like this will be able to cover the gap as it declines without the need for time consuming diesel locomotive hook ups, or as would be more likely on today's fragmented and under-resourced railway, passengers being kicked off nice new electric trains and hearded onto what ever was available to bridge the gap. So in comparing it to HST IC 125, then it is so much a different beast and offers such an environmental benefit that it should be a worthy successor, But wil it fulfill either of these two goals in taking over the mantle of high speed, west country and east coast trunk and major branch routes from the IC 125, and is it so Carbon friendly?

Despite the bullshit and misleading comparisons made by some PR companies for the motor & road lobby, carbon emissions and in particular particulate emissions per passener mile are much better for modern diesel trains than car journeys. When you take lack of conjestion and predictable journey times into account, diesel trains are more efficient than buses on similar routes like say London Bristol. Electric trains are way and above that until you get into very high speed trains over over 225 kmh / 140 mph when their use of energy gets heftier. Also of course it can be argued that the source of that power has to be carbon neutral and the building of the train should be low environmental impact. Does a dual mode achieve this in a 125 mph package and the answer is not really but ok, yes a bit.

The reason is that for this train there has been made the choice of using a series of up to 5 underslung power units to be suppied by MTU, now in a quirk of English Industrial Revenge for Ruston Paxmans, are owned by Rolls Royce. These ' power packs' are an inefficient means of deliverying enough power to run at 125 mph as we have already seen with the 220s and the 222s. In HST you have two prime mover, power units in locomotives at each end which weigh only about 74 tonnes. You then have two diesel main tanks, two alternators and power comntrol-supply chains, and two cooling systems per train. Now 5 smaller units equate to more than this because each still has to have fueling, electrical systems and cooling, plus traction motors. The engines to be used are v12 just under a thousand horsepower each, which means that the five will be approximately the same total power as the HST twin power car, head and tail arrangement but with more weight and more points of servicing. You start to understand why the option to de-fit these in light of on going electrification is.

Secondly to this is the performance - even if 25kv wires go out to Cardiff, you will still have significant west country routes to Exeter and Plymouth eventually Penzance, which have many sections of 125mph running. If the option for less than 3600 hp per train set is taken, then on these routes the timetables will be slower than IC125. The full five power pack array along the train will probably get up to around that speed, but there are disadvantages in diluting out power at the kind of output in the 500 to 2700 kw range because you lose amps quicker with less powerful indivdual power units than with larger, torqueyer if that is a word, power units.

On the ECML though with the routes to Hull via Lincoln and perhaps Scarborough and Sunderland/ Middelsborough and other excursions east and west of the main line, this type of train may come into its own because the running on sections off the main line are not all that fast and generally it is judged good business to have quite a few stoppingn stations to widen the catchment per train. The same can also be said of the routes north to Aberdeen and Inverness.

However I think the only border these trains will be crossing is that on the severn river, and not even the proud Cornish border at the Tamar. I think that these trains in their electro-diesel guise will stretch with the wires to Bristol and provide short end services to certainly Cardiff and likely Gloucster and maybe Worcster or Hereford. Unless there is a punative 'diesel under the wires' Eco-levvy then zings will probably continue to run the longer distance services all the way to Paddington. The new trains and their private owners are far too good for Northerners and Socialist Scots, so the Tories will be pleased to see them running privately into London terminii, while the North of the UK get well, Glasgow Edinburgh via Falkirk G , maybe even not now, and "Northshire" gets rid of its pacers, presumabkly with old sprinters from somewhere. Finally privatisation will look shiny and good, just turn a blind eye to the subsidies being way over what was paid to BR in the 1980s.

The new . sleek train in my honest opinion has missed two main opportunities. One is that it could have been a tilting train and thus shaved time off twistier routes, or used its horse power and carbon footprint less wastefully by not slowing down and accelerating so much. Secondly it could have had locomotive power cars which would have secured 125 mph and higher speed running while also being even easier to render redundant or move onto other services. Or even repurpose to freight or mixed traffic with twin end cabs if high speed head and tail is no longer needed.

Personally diesel multiple units have always underwhelmed me. Firstly modern design meant that they crammed more passengers into fewer coaches, and then in the 170-182 types, they shoved bikes and wheel chair users into a nasty medley mid train while also providing far too much space to doorways. Secondly of course, they are often irritatingly noisy due to the relatively powerful underfloor engines and their need to be 'trashed' to simply get the train rolling. Compared to the quaint mrk 1 compartment favourites of ours of days gone by (even though we secretly preferred the newer, comfier and often cleaner mark II a and c stock) are just a museum side show now. The gentle click clacking, the subtle tungsten bulb lighting and the partial privacy of the 'compo' were replaced abruptly by the stark strip light open coach of the sprinter on the west highland line and many other routes, together with the irritating burr of those cummin engines making a right meal out of going slower than the loco hauled trains they replaced. DMUs are purely an accountants wet dream, and purely with the bad hindsight of BR having about 20 different diesel locos in passenger service, while the rose tinted foresight of both reliability and passengers liking them. Occupancy is up, but total seating is down. Nearly all timetables I have been on are slower under DMU and seem to be less reliable than under loco hauled. The flexibility of being able to extend services by one coach at a time, or take cheap mothballed stock out  for footexs or super long trains for peak times, are gone, as the private railway has tried to keep its availability low in relation to potential demand, and stick with actual demand. In fact it has been ten years  since I took a diesel train in the UK, having mostly been on electric routes. The last one was either a 182 into london from Slough, or a 170 to and from Aberdeen to Glasgow, the latter being a cramped journey with little comfort in the new seating. My last trip on the WHL was in 2000 when I decided that the bus to Oban and Ft william was more comfortable and pretty much well as scenic than those god awful 156s. I was on a 222 I think up to Leicster and it was suprisingly niosy and cramped too, although it did have rather good ambient lighting. The romance of rail is long since gone for most all travellers, excluding preserved museum type lines, while the very appeal of rail travel in these metro-tram/bus hybrid crosses wanes on me, especially when four of us travelling costs the same as hire car for the week. The lack of main line intergration to Airports is woeful and just pandered to the vested interests for far too long, and exacerbated the move away from rail on the longer routes, at a time when the ECML in particular should have enjoyed unprecedented growth and lower running costs being over head 25kv. The railway , the big railway, has a major part to play in environmentally friendly travel for us all, and it remains to be seen if HST will have a worthy successor
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-61494213058569030202015-11-15T15:13:00.001-08:002015-11-15T15:13:27.202-08:00More Tantalus Type Trius.....type 3 fantasy concoctions.
The BTC and BRB got it wholly wrong in ordering so many under-powered type 2 locomotives. You can tell me it is easy to say with hindsight, while at the time there were still many branch lines being operated by tank 'kettles' which required no more than type 2 or even just type 1 power to trundle along with their modestr services. However even at the time in the pilot programme it should have been clear from early experience that main line ambitions for the use of single locomotives really required type 3 and up over. They should have also been able to see the growth in the use of the lorry for light, rural mixed freight as a threat to the smaller tonnages that type 2 were invisaged to operate.

Perrcievere they did though, with huge orders being placed for the sulzer based units which became classes 24 through 27, and you can of course really include the EE type 1 class 20 in their ranks. The farce ran so high as to the re-engining of the brush type 2 "class 30" with a derated SVT engine which would have been between 1500 and 1550 hp standard traction rating for EE. Another arbitary de-rating incidentally was the v16 Maybach fitted in the Hymeks which actually had a standard and proven hydaulic traction rating of 1940 hp, but that was outside the actual type three desirable rating oddly enough. A poorly performing class 40 takes a while before it falls into being a type 3 apparently.

On the one end of events in a fantasy diesel scenario, english electric  would have offered a type 3 during the initial phase of dieselisation in the mid to late 1950s. Thus presenting a rival to the southern regions natty new sulzers, the later to become class 33s. This would have used in a 1956 scenario, the SVT variant of the engine in a body very similar to the eventual class 37, but with disk train indicator system. It would be light enough in design of course to be a CoCo, or potentially an AIA configuration. This loco would have undoubtedly proven its worth, as did the reliable EE engined class 31s, and BRB may have ordered a job lot of them, not being tempted away by the charge air cooled variant which was available from about 1958, essentially when D200 was delivered. However in fact we may then have been stuck with a smaller class of less impressive locos than the class 37, with the 37 maybe never happening until slab front ends came along, if at all.

Already by 1960 EE offered BR an uprated CVST class 40 (probably on CoCo with a medium body length) or the full 2000hp rating of the 12CSVT in the 37 format perhaps as a higher value, shorter maintenance interval loco for the types of express and semi fasts forties were allocated. In fact which ever way you look at it, 40s were a bit quicker on express services of upto 400 tonnes because they have higher gearing, more momentum, ra6 axle loadings and 250 more horse power while actually only hauling an additional quarter of a carriage difference in weight over a 'syphon'. Conversely their high gearing, greater inertia and slower pick up on the power unit via stepped control meant that they were a lot more pedestrian on stopping services where acceleration counts more than performance in the third field diversion.

An early first series dieselisation EE type 3 at 1500/1550 hp would have performed probably very similarly to a class 31 and rather like a sick class 37 ( eg 37108 and 37025 in 1982/84). An alternative to this option at the time of the baby deltic order, would have been a single 18 cylinder deltic lump rated at 1650 hp as it was in 'deltic' at the time, or a fully possible T12 version of the arrangement with turbo. While considering the same body and CoCo configuration of the EE type 3, you could fit a 24 cylinder deltic engine in there, and run as a type 4 with a rating of around 2200hp @1500rpm non turbo. In fact EE could have offered the Syphon G body and bogies as standard with a choice of power units as follows (by 1960):

1) Low maintainance 1500 hp SVT
2) 1500 hp T12
3) 1650 hp deltic 18
4) 1750 hp /1850* hp 12CSVT
5) 2000 hp high maintenance 12CSV
6) 2000hp 16 SVT forty compatible equipment , no boiler
7) 2200 hp T18 deltic
8) 2350 hp / 2700 hp 16 CSVT non bolier, but with ETH

* 1850 hp had been the standard rating for several export versions of the new CVST engine and 1750 was an arbitary down rating from 'full' marine rating of the CSVT in 1959 when the engines were ordered.

I have had a couple of folk state that the v16 would never have been fitted or could never have been fitted into a 'syphon G'. Firstly the size would most likely indeed proclude a boiler, but in fact of course the majority of 37s were delivered "NB" with the stonehouse boilers ordered for them mainly going into Brush type 4s at the time.
As anyone who has been through the engine room of a non boilered (never boilered) syphon will tell you, there is a large plinth of concrete which had to be installed to balance the locomotives in lieu of the boiler. Drivers referred to this as the 'band stand'. People further argue about the weight of a v16 espeically a CSVT version even without a boiler. However just a couple of years later, EE of course produced the Portugues class 1800 which are 108 tonnes, and in fact a 12CSVT was fitted in a 79 tonne meter gauge loco in the late 50s for export. The bogies' would probably need upgrading to class 50 / 55 standard but that is not a great difference in cost given the benefit of having a standard body over several power ratings and units. EE offered basically a stretched class 37 with the CSVT engine  @2350 hp, instead of further orders of the type 4 with 16 wheels. BRB in their folly declined this offer, stating that they wanted to continue with standard locomotives, which with hindsight seems rather short sighted when already the deltics had supplaced the D200s on the key ECML expresses and the ubiquitous 12LDA would push them almost into irrelevance had it not been for the D200s reliability and RA 6 rating. 2350 hp at under 120 tonnes all up weight with EE's higher voltage system favouring total acceleration speed, would have made for an impressive passenger and even heavy frieght (of the day )locomotive, pretty much well as capable as the rather lumbering 'peaks' with their massive tonnage. It has to be noted that Dp2 in fact produced significantly more horse power upto 25 miles an hour or so than a deltic which hauls on one engine up to approximately this speed, and when fitted with the KV10 load regulator, the light weight locomotive ( under 110 tonnes) prove exceedingly competent under taxing gradients and on express services.

Deltic power units would have been prohibitive for a mixed traffic class however due to their disliking for thermal cycling on start-stop services. Any of the above mentioned though would have been a hell of a lot of fun in a 37 body shell, with perhaps the most likely being a T18 being fitted into a sub class for operating lighter services on the WCML ahead of the advancing electrification in the 70s.

Sulzers  Wonderful 8 LDA engine should Get a Word in Edge Ways!!

Yet another rather tantalising option for type 3 fans in the initial period of short batch trials in the late 50s would have been an RA5 dual heat version of the southern region Sulzer type 3. This would have had to have three axeled bogies to accomodate the length and weight the boiler necessitated but it would have probably come in at around the same as the Brush type 2 and the 37. You could envisage this being a very useful bit of kit for depots already home to many 6LDA and 12 LDA locos who required some more grunt for semi fasts, light expresses and medium weight freights. Indeed so useful that an allocation to ScR would probably have negated the need for the reintroduction of the class 37 in the early eighties for the W. highland and Far North routes.

A little known fact I have  mentioned before is that the class 33 is in fact fitted with an engine with the same per cylinder rating as the class 24 and class 26 ie 1160 hp in their case, 1550 for the 33. This means that the loco could have been fitted with the intercooled 8LDA as a variant or from BREL as indeed the 25s and 27s were in effect. At 1700 hp in either a BoBo or on six axles, the loco would have been impressive, and in terms of the former of those two, it would probably have outrun just about anything on the rail network to 20 mph at least.

While on the topic of sulzer and their better power units (the 12LDA and 6 LDA suffering in build quality by them sub contracting out work and getting the whole 2750 hp rating build wrong on the 'duffs') the LVA units prove successful with in particular SNCF. They rated the 12 down to 2200 and even as low as 2000 hp, but there was also a v8 variant which picked up some type three ratings in its somewhat limited application. Given the 12 LVA was rated at 2650 and maybe a max 2750 in SNCF days, the 8 LVA would have come in at around 1800 hp if it was to be used in line with the much debated class '48' duffs which were not so duff. The LVA series was significantly lighter and more modern than the 1930s style twin bank 12 LDA lumps. The wee v8 is not bigger or heavier than in fact the 8 CSVT fitted to the portugeuse and the Irish bobo locos, so it could have been shoe horned into a class 33 shell, or of course just plonked into a class 31 body at least, or  a class 47 body shell to produce an RA 5 type 3 loco.
The 12 LVA sounded like a mad cross between a forty and an HST, whistling at idle and run up before shreiking as the revs came on. The 8 probably was much the same, just a third less so!

Just had a thought, suppose all the duffs were converted to 12 LVAs after the LDA   @2750 failure, and then say type two body shells are used with the v8, which would stll allow for room for the boiler?  The 8 LVA could then in theory be rated at upto 2000 hp being half a kestrel in practice. Presumably also a straight eight version could have been available with a rating above 1700hp. Essentially it is a very different engine, more so than say the RK 6 shunter EE unit is to the eventual 'slug' 6RKT.

While on air charge cooling, BRB could have thrown out their silly ideas of using the SVT further down rated and demanded that brush present a new loco to take the now proven 12 CSVT / probably a CoCo version of the 31. Ludicrous:? Well the class 47 very nearly had a cousin or contender which would have had the 16 CSVT engine in it as stipulated by BRB.

Beyond 1000 rpm......

The one higher speed engine tantalus I think many would like to have seen on BR, would be the diesel electric version of the Hymek. I rather think this may have been kept bobo but run without a boiler to keep weight down, but a CoCo would have been RA5. The germans ran at least one class as a variant to their populace v16 maybach single unit locos and they prove as reliable.

On to another new option is that by the mid 1960s Paxman were able to offer their v16 at over 2000 hp and their v12 was probably rateable at a type three level by then, soon to be included in the prototype HST at a higher again rating in the ventura v12 format. They had been run at this time in high thermal cycling environments being fitted to the ScR class 29, which achieved a reliability akin to other sulzer type 2s allegedly with these new power units replacing the NB built MAN designs. I rather like the idea that WR never had to get rid of their oil sloshers and that they ordered a fully british ventura v12 based type 3 AIA loco with dual brakes and an auxially diesel generator to take hydraulics into the 1980s and beyond. While ER would take a bobo type three to work end to end on sleeper services on the ECML and potentially on the freightliner container services during the daytime. A fully rated version then being used as a recovery loco for failed HSTs and other express trains on the ECML.

Finally while on the WR, it seemed odd that no one came up with a twin engined type 3 with two 800/900 hp units in it working two torque convertor transmissions, thus allowing for 1. redundancy / limping home or working light services on on PU. 2) piggy backing at gear changes as the westerns did, one bogie continuing in drive as the other declutches and changes gear.

Crazy, or the Brush of a Pen Stroke Away?

Of all these crazy notions what do I think the most likely to have ever seen the light of day been?

Top runners for production classes would actually have to be none of my favourites per se but>

short production runs and prototypes

1500hp early disk display syphon 12 SVT
1650 hp deltic syphon trial Deltic 18
2200 hp deltic syphon trial T18
1600-2000hp twin engined DH or DE on bobo

production

1500hp AIA class 31s / a silly 30 hp short

1700 hp Class '34' 8 LDA SR / WR ETH loco

1600/1800 hp v 12 Ventura single unit Bo Bo Diesel Hydraulic

1600 / 1800 hp ""    ""    ""    ""     ""

Why these into production?  Well the first one is a no brainer, it was either an arbitary derating to conform to type 2 banding or Brush could have been asked to tweak 14 kw more out of their electric transmission without having bust a gut.

Also the second one seems to be the most likely of any sulzer option because 1( the 33s were successful early on 2) BR liked the straight LDA format a lot in its air charged cooled variant, they had hundreds and hundreds of the darn things and parts are largely standard to the 12 LDA. It could have ended up in an extention to the 33 order or in say a BREL AIA streched class 25. IMHO there should have been wide scale cancellation of all these vermin and upgrading to either the 8LDA or moving over to ruther orders for 12 CSVT.

I think also that an early to mid sixties vision of the folly of type 2 while the success of the paxman in the warship showed the way, an alternative to the v16 maybach may have arisen in a v12 1500 hp / 1800 hp ventura, thus allowing for the class 52 to be a true type 5 and 100mph operator by using twin venturas and thus making a standard set up for the higher horse power locos in these two brackets, with the Maybach and MAN warships scheduled for retirement or reeingining with the venturas over time.  A V12 ventura is probably also ligher than the Hymeks v16 so that they could be weighted down as an RA 5 loco.

 DE ventura based versions may have come later either via the class 29 experience or by the HST programme and proposed tail/end freightliner high speed container services.

If you think any of this is really so very crazy, super deltic single unit syphon included at the fringe end, then think again about what the BTC / BRB actually did. It ordered the CoBos and the Baby Deltics. It allowed western region to have completely non standard locos to the rest of the system and little standardisation within those! It stipulated that locomotives which could have been built to 119 tonnes (class 40) and 128 tonnes (peaks) should be instead fitted with vastly heavy plate sided 1Co-Co1 bogies to 'spread the weight'. Superdeltics were on the drawing board. Deltic HST power cars were also penned with this  2200hp T18 in them.  A class 30 was uprated to 2000 hp experimentally with air charged cooling. EE built the C1800s for Portugal at 108 tonnes......

Why Was Truth Stranger than (my) Fiction?

The real problem was two fold. Firstly BTC/BRB rushed over the evaluation phase of the initial prototypes and first series of orders. Technology had also moved forward, basically all the first phase locos were about 1953 technology, while the big advances in air charge cooling came into effect in 1956-1958. Other major advances such as the KV10 load generator and more reliable high speed engines filtered through just a few years later in the early to mid sixties. The left had of the BTC knew fine well that the motorways and four axle truck were going to take light freight off the branch line connections, while the railway side seemed to bury their head in historic figures of light trains needing tiddly little 1000hp to 1250 hp to tinker around with them. They should have seen that the US style of multiple heading was wasteful for the UK system in light of this with type 2s being redundant in their youth,  and opted for more type 3s and 4s. They should have waited longer before ordering classes and stipulating power bands, in order to evaluate types and horse power ratings, while also considering the market for rail transport, in particular the type of frieght which would remain competitive and the emergence of containerisation.

In a sensible world, we would have had CoCo forties and peaks and a lot more syphon Gs and 'bean can' 33s. The uprated 2750 hp 12 LDA should have been rejected upon extended trials of a dozen or so units in favour of the 12 LVA or the 16 CSVT. We would have seen continuing work to uprate the deltic engine in the early 60s to allow for 3800 hp operation with ETH generation in the fleet and for the superdeltic to tackle the WCML and presumably follow the route to displace westerns on the WR. We should have seen uprating trials with the 2000hp v12 CSVT and the 2350 hp v16 for the orders of class 40s post 1960. A full prototyping should have been undergone for the D400 before they were ordered, and the class be standardised to the less out landish equipment with normal oil wetted air intake filters. And we should have seen a fleet of kestrels too on the v16 LVA running express trains in the forefront of expanding electrification and standard 120mph running on most major routes.

Business wise they should have indeed focused on two or three power unit types ( variants with common cylinder and piston units and other common items) from two or three manufacturers, and in terms of worrying about  competition in british industry, directed that primary contractors like BRCW and EE sub contract some components and building of structures to smaller firms like Bayer Peacock and the likes. They could have focused on a big three manufacturer route, those mentioned above, plius BREL when the offering or capacity could not be found. The BTC/ BRB could alternatively have stipulated supply of power units from two or three sources ( sulzer, EE/ruston-paxmans, Maybach Licencee in the UK) with different work shops assembling units, but really that is just not as desirable as a prime design house who create fuilly integrated machines. A counter agrument would be the Class30 to Class 31 upgrade, or the fact that the 6LDA locos could be built to very similar quality over many different workshops, or that EE used RSH for a very large proportion of their capacity outside the Vulcan productiuon.

Today we have not really any less of a crazy situation because rail operators and rolling stock owners invest so sporadically and in self interest that they loose much of the opportunity and will to standardise. New and rather ludicrous emissions standards exclude many from the market for power units which can fit into a loco while being clean enough. The future is uncertain, but without government legislation or a return to more public control and ownership it is unlikely that the nirvanna of standardisation will ever be reached.
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-60395262622256681432015-08-13T06:07:00.000-07:002015-08-13T06:07:15.867-07:00Why was 2000 bhp a bridge too far for the EE type 3?The class 37 was often proposed under powered by type 4 fans, but in fact of course it prove to be a very good horse power rating in keeping the fleets reliability up, and rendering their longevity only as finite as the HGR avoiding private owners would allow. At various points in the 1960s and 70s they hauled the heaviest and longest frieghts in the UK, in multiple admittedly, while also turning out for fairly racey diagrams on the non stop summer Skegnes services amongst others, even working the famous 1S45. However an uprated version of the locomotive was of course not just proposed, but also tried out.

The irony is not lost on us that the original EE general arrangement drawings of the Type 3 (evt Class 37) included a position for a secondary diesel generator, thus rendering the class with dual heat potential on outset. By the mid sixties though, EE were confident enough to offer the loco as a 2000hp performer in a new, flat end cab version similar to the 2050bhp export models which went to the then East Africa. BRB at the time were wise enough to know they were onto a good thing, with type 2s proving underpowered and various lesser types already earmarked for the scrap heap as "non standard".  So the final order for 37s remained standard and some of the best examples of their class to my experience, rolled off the assembly lines in 1964 and 65. Amongst them was one example which would go on to be fairly infamous. 37 292.

I have the pleasure of being hauled by the beast, all be that it was somewhat underperforming, running unevenly on idle and not opening up completely. It did whizz along the Kilmarnock to Ayr route, and further to Stranrær, which in any other year than 1984 would have been a rarity for a 37 in itself!

Scottish depots were pretty bad at under maintaining locos given the demands of damp, occasionally salt water laced conditions, icy and greasy rails and more than a fair share of gradients, curves and variable speeds. It seems 37292 was in a state of "returning soon to works, don't spend any money on it" at ML in 1984 unfortunately. It worked a few times that summer out of Glasgow central, with perhaps only a handful of other passenger workings in the period 1981-83 as a break down recovery loco. Perhaps due to this latter day unreliability, it remained probably the "largest" syphon on ML shed through 1984 and prior to its long booked return to works for HGR and "four-ing" in 1985. (37 137 and a 200 series being pretty rare out on seated rolling stock too it has to be said)

As I blogged before, the evolution of the CSVT to to the RK traction took a little back water via Australia and also 47 601/901. The maximum rating of a "csvt" badged v12 is 2350 b.h.p. in Aus, and despite a single turbo being employed, they still sound decidely CSVT and not V16 jumbojet like. The aussie engine was probably a metric one, but possibly did not get gear driven cams- so together with the thoarty, pulse type turbo exhaust roar then we can presume that this is as far as the CSVT got.  2000 hp was enough out of a v12 from EE/ GEC until 47901 reared its ugly head!

Reports on the electric internet show us to 1981 as the year that a very nicely prepared EX works 292 exited Doncaster on a test train. Given that ETH'ing was carried out toute suite in 1985, then a two year test and evaluation period plus then a two year planning and material procurement period seems about right for 1980s Britain.

It has been said that the alternator alone contributes about another 100 hp efficiency to the system, and with the lower CP4 gearing chosen, the need for 2000hp and possibly a shorter service interval was considered avoidable.  A single 37/4 could be used to pick up the aluminium ingots train at Corpach as against a pair of "zeros" and acceleration on passenger services was by in large not much different, even when producing ETH. Top speed on the other hand.....

 In standard rating the welsh depots and Stratford could keep well on top of valve and timing chain issues with preventative servicing. Miles-Per-Casualty would be interesting to compate with 31s and of course much better than 47s which broke down a lot, having never been able to handle their class wide uprating. So probably a very wise choice to stick to the lovely 1750bhp.

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-83304736888841290812014-12-15T04:20:00.001-08:002014-12-15T13:27:10.080-08:00Twin Engines Drone and Whine Again? The Shape of Diesels to Come
The latest round of locomotive developments seem to be in part at least, back to the future. This is in terms of locomotives returning to higher speed engines , once shunned in favour of 'mid' speed , marine derived power units. Also we have seen a fragmentation of new types of locomotives, post the mass public purchase of the Class or Type C 66 as it is known across Europe. Quite a few of these have been diesel hydraulic too, especially from Vossloh and indeed Voith of course with their monster.

It seems that there is a new king and queen in the power unit world and they are both v16s with the choice of either Caterpillar from the USA or MTU from the father land. In rail application they run about the same rpm with the former being quoted as having a higher output. It is presumed by the Author that in fact mid speed engines from MAN group, EMD, and GE are no longer in favour due to emissions profile, higher rpm seems to then suit  better combustion in smaller cylinderr volumes. Taking this to its extreme the interesting rival from Seimens, the Traxx loco, takes a completely different approach by utilising not just two but up to five power units of presumably automotive origin or smaller industrial marine type diesels, or perhaps based on static generators.

The concept here being that of each power unit is working most of the time at above 80% output when engines are allegedly at their most efficient. You then dial in extra power units as the demand increases. This is no crazy idea because once a load ie train, is started and taken up to a speed of between 40-80kmh it requires far less kilowatt power to maintain rolling, given light gradients of less than 1/110 say. Also a bug bear for low carbon emissions is running empty trains, many of whose rolling stock is restricted to a top speed unloaded of under 120kmh. Some rostered container diagrams vary greatly in actual tonnage to be transported, yet the driver has the same diagrammed time to hold to despite being able to go faster with a better power to weight ratio. Power units of the mid type are as I say allegedly not very efficient below 80% max rpm, but that was probably not the case for the ruston SVT and CSVT whose smallish , multiple turbos provided good fuel economy when only 50% power was demanded.

Given that a major global player in the market, Siemens, is now pushing multi power units as a solution and no doubt presenting lots of figures in endless powerpoint slides to support their teutonic assertions, then it seems inevitable that other loco manufacturers and PU producers will offer the same, most likely in a two or three unit solution.

Post war, the Deutsche Bahn took almost exclusively a ' high speed' motor option with hydro/mechanical transmission. Faced with a very similar practical limit for single drive in the 1950s as with generators,  they twinned up with the famous v200 series of locomotives, which influenced of course the BR Western Region most, but is of course a daily fact of life on the remaining high speed diesel lines in the UK, where Intercity 125 HSTs operate with two power cars, effectively a twin engined system. Deltic and Falcon were in the bidding too, but limitied to only 24 locomotives out of many thousands of diesel electric, single power unit locos (ignoring the ill fated 'Claytons' )

In the 1950s then the transmissions only handled about 1.3 kw / 1800 hp of output, with perhaps the best generators from Brush taking towards 1.8. So BR twinned up for their premier high speed passenger routes where 2000 hp was just for starters, they needed really '3000hp under the bonnet' . DB went a little further than BR of course by using twin v16s in the infamous DH4000, v320 which is a mighty bit of oil sloshing kit, being uprated to 3800 hp and still running today in contrast to the single venture prototypes of BR days. The v320 is fitted with twin v16s as against the v 12s of the BR DH and DE 125s . The D1000 'Western' class should have surpassed the performance of several type 4 DEs of the time, but the Voith gearing in the triple convertor was a little high at the top end for the v12s, presumably this hydraulic gearbox was the same as fitted to the v320. It is also revealed now for posterity that Falcon, with the same power units but DE drive was superior in the lickey bank trials. It wouold be interesting  to have seen westerns fitted with either 1) Hymek transmissions, with gearing tailored to the engine output  2) the v16 Maybach/ MTU as choice.

DB moved away from twin units quite quickly into the 1960s with the v160 type, fitted with a single v16, and only odd and shorter lived flirtations with a secondary power unit.  DB found out of course my own contention that type three power , 1.3kw, was adequate for the typical 300 - 600 tonne trains of the day, and of course today passengers are no heavier, while freight can be handled by multiple locomotives. Later of course there was the demand for ETS (ETH as it used to be called) and trains which were yet faster than steam, so fortuitously MTU could offer far more power from the same footprint v16 over time and the v160 type evolved and dominated much of western german loco hauled transport through the 1960s and 70s.

DB later favoured single power unit locomotives with the v16 in DH going up to 2700hp while then more powerful DE locos were introduced in the late 60s and onward. The same is actually not true in Britain, where firstly IC 125 units are essentially dependent on two power cars, and then of course there was all and sundry rubbish of multiple units with several power units per train. Also DH transmission is by in large restricted to sub 100 mph operations for some reason, but is very useful for lifting heavy loads on gradients and can produce a lighter power car / loco for any given horse power.

In the 1950s the attraction of twin engines was not only overcoming the limitations of transmissions, but also provided a means of redundancy ie back up in break down of one PU or drive system. Back then it was also conceived that single power unit operation on lighter trains or slower sections was perhaps desirable. Indeed Deltics allegedly ran North of Edinburgh on one power unit to Aberdeen as a matter of routine to save on engine hours and probably fuel too. The NBL warships had early reliability issues with their power units, so redundancy helped GWR a bit at least. Wwith subsequent twin engine locos all the way to the hst and its notorious mid eighties reliability issues caused mostly by cracked alloy turbo casings, there is a means of limping home or at least running off the main section before the need for another loco and multiple knock on details on the blocked line.

An internesting historical bit of politics about twin engined trains was that the hst protoype was launched to the public at large, the promotional film was edited carefully to only show a single, leading power car. This was because it was the beginning of the early 1970s oil crisis, and two thirsty power units may have not gone down well during petrol rationing and power cuts. Back to the future once more, fuel costs and taxation rising and te desire for a lower CO2 profile for rail travel, just as with all others. It is a little infair in both respects here. Firstly to do 125mph with a 300 tonne train gross weight, you need 4000hp and then you need another 500 for 'head supply' ie heating, lights, aircon', kettles,  and auxilliary loco supply like compressors. Secondly how many car joiurneys saved in the last 40 years since ic 125 came into service?  ....with congestion at Sheffield, N. london or Birmingham rendering them much longer and less environmentally freindly.

Now uk rail on diesel lines is 99% mutliple  power units. They are being used in the wrong way though. One per carraige often. There is the inevitable loss of efficiency in each transmission, heat inefficiency, and also weight inefficiency due to many duplications of auxilliary equipment. In the three car single unitary train, this is actually arguably less notable while when you reach Six or nine cars you are more efficient again with one or two powerunits in a loco or hst style  power cars according to some work done by Virgin trains.

The future  looks to the past then but also to the mistakes. Take for example HSTs- ruston paxman delivered high powered yet light V12 valentas. They took on a missive for long distance super expresses, non stop  with crew changes under way via the communication doors at the back of each power car. By time of operation, BR had some clowns in their planning dept who decided trains should stop far more often in order to serve a bigger overall potential market per sevice. In one fail swoop they blighted the reliability of the design, and also dammed BR to semi stoppers and journey times often comparable only to normal  car journeys door to door.  Also while on this specific train-set, they are quite heavy all up and the driving style from a standing start seems to use a lot of energy up getting off their marks, reaching the first electrical gear change with both locos having been run up to near full power. It would seem that v200/western system would be preferable, where only one changing at a time maintains tractive power and hence momentum

There in lies what the usa with conrail and private operators have done with the longest trans rocky mountain freights and dial on power units in 'robots' along the arrangement. Computers have been assisting this since the 1980s. Route mapped performance and power demand is still in its infancy in the uk, where shorter sections between signals and congestion may seem to negate their use. However trains still need to accelerate, cruise and deccelerate. Now they have to keep the Kyoto men happy with co2 output though.

So the body of work is all their in the annals of dieselisation, now we have the technology to move forward, twin engines or not......just one step ahead of the 25kv overhead lines.....
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-59210653891695353162014-12-11T01:01:00.000-08:002014-12-11T01:01:29.478-08:00HS2 Sums Not Adding Up for the PassengerHigh Speed 2 is upside down in development and fundamentally bad for the midlands and north of UK. Phase one which is realistically all that is politically committed to so far, is basically about delivering more skilled workers to London,. and admitting defeat as to the Midlands being an area for development of financial services and corporate head offices. It is a big ADSL link - asymetric in passenger traffic, assymetric in brain drain.

London centricity on public spending is then maintained by the leverage all the up-for-grabs and marginal seats in the South East which is unfortunetly all that UK politics has been about until the last 18 months with the rise of the SNP and UKIP as major powers, and the inevitability of coalition governance and possible proportional representation. Labour have given up canvassing in many of their traditional areas in favour of geotargeting and social media, which they will pay for in the next election just as much as the backlash against on the one side Austerity and meagre pay rises, while on the other the island monkey drift to UKIP at all levels of society, notably top and bottom.

Why is this an assymetric link? Quite simply the laws of natural competition and the labour market. The South East has never had the mass unemployment and uncomfortable de-industrialisation the midlands and especially the North of Britain endured in the late 70s through to the mid 90s. There is low unemployment amongst British ethnic adults. Wages for skilled labour are significantly higher, with a natural London Weighting in order to attract and retain staff in the region with some of the highest house and rental prices in the EU. The midlands / north have lower pay, lower prospects for promotion, less job security and higher unemployment. You just are not going to get skilled workers from London to travel daily north in any large numbers, and given there is then a further drain on resources south, what would business advisers and potential investors travel north to?

HS2 is an admission of defeat - that government cannot stimulate the economy north of Watford Gap and is powerless on this apart from giving a massive injection to of public money to what will be a privately run railway monopoly. You could say that it is petrol on the flames of London overheating too, a sub prime investment as a sticking plaster for the north, upturning the perception of the SE being the only place worth locating service, financial companies  and national or EU Head Quarters to, or investing in.

There may be a slow 'trickle up' north where by investment skills and networks move north with people's inevitable desire to live nearer their workplace and have less time commuting. But if you live within 20 minutes of the new stations then you are quicker to a job in the city or west end even that if you had to use the m6 through 'Brum' at rush hour. Like the rail routes of the late 19th and third rail radial routes built between the wars, London gets a new commuter belt.

Also you have to then ask, what good is this for the economy? What will all these new investment experts be investing in?  Well the jobs down south will not be in value adding manufacturing, more likely riding the next wave of consumer credit, house price -mortgage fuelled lending and hedge fund speculation. At the end of the day, Britain needs to create fundamental value and use oil revenues to rebuild the UK on small to medium , high growth, high qaulity, unglamerous companies and the skills and local infrastructure they need.Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-77325736262920713462014-11-15T15:02:00.001-08:002014-11-15T15:02:00.441-08:00Electro Diesel Tantalus
Maybe it is just a crossed wire shortcircuiting my memory, but I have a lasting image of an electro-diesel deltic in my old railway memories from a general arrangement drawing, an outline sketch and no more, of an EE half an half.

Even by 1958 it was clear that the deltic with a turbo T18 engine could deliver traction rated power of 2200hp in a very light weight package per power unit, and so using the other engine bay completely for electrical AC equipment and replacing the radiator group at that end with a pantograph.

From EE this would have been in AC form a 3300 bhp continuous output loco with the aforementioned DE mode being ample for dragging 700 tonne trains from the freight rail head, or running 400 tonne passenger expresses beyond the wires of the West Coast Mainline.

Of all power units, the deltic at that time was the only one capable of providing such an enourmous power output per tonne of loco, and basically in being part of the only viable dual mode main line, express speed locomtoive at the time and for the following ten years with the advnet of the high powered valenta.

Why then did this never come to fruition or beyond a sketch?

There are several reasons for this, but basically the need was probably not that well defined at the BTC /BRB. Branch lines were  by  in large not envisaged for electrification and certainly not many railheads to freight customers. Electrified mainlines though were very much in the plan for a new british railway. Back then we had a different outset than we have today, where trains were still largely marshalled and apart from some coal pit to smelter/power station loads, this meant that several locomotives would be involved with type 1,2 and lower powered shunters haulinbg to the big marshall yards which still stand idle today in a few places like north of Carlisle.

Deltic itself was a ten year 'stop-gap' measure prior to the planned electrification in the late 1960s of the ECML, which ahem meant that the drone of twin napiers went on for another whole decade and was replaced for almost another whole generation by the shrill whine of the IC 125. In another slight irony, deltics in the days of steam heat fairly often ran to Aberdeen on one engine norht of Edinburgh with the slack sections of Fife hardly warranting 3300 hp while perhaps engine hours could be kept down in this way a little. Thus for the reach north as electrification stretched ever more towards Carlisle and Glasgow Central, a dual mode deltic could have provided a reasonable performer even at the non turnbo 1650 bhp rating of a single PU in a dual mode loco.

Another reason there were not more dual mode locos in the first two phases of removing steam locomotion, was that there was rationing of many materials to industry in post war 1950s Britain and for some military materials like aluminium, this went onto the 1960s.  Also back then the 25kv AC locos were still not fully proven and perhaps the electrical systems would have had trouble in rectifying and transforming down to the amp /volt ratings of the same traction motors as run by the DE output, I would have to have a check on the types used.

Economics played the part in the expense of proving such a loco, although the successful class 73 demostrates the usefulness of dual mode locos,. in fulfilling different roles even when one of the modes becomes periodically obsolete due to lack of demand or other traction being available or multiple units replacing loco hauled. They find new routes, new types of trains and so on.

Economics foresight should though have played a far bigger part in railway planning, and in fact the nearest we came to an economically self sustainable railway was the full might of Dr. Beeching's dreaded proposals. Wage rises, fuel prices and the accession of freight to long haul road, and personal transport to small affordable commuter cars,  on the motorway network could have all been predicted and acted upon  by 1960 even.

In harder nosed BTC/BRB relationship, the dual  mode deltic could have had a place, as haiuling direct trains to an dfrom railhead to the AC trunk routes and making trains more economic in terms of tractive power allocation, train crews and size of minimum and maximum load tacklable economically. BR missed out on this trick, while the French and Germans did not, and modernised towards larger customers and larger road/to/rail transfer depots, reducing the amount of martialling. In the UK it just died a death with the advent of the tent sided 20 tonne lorry, and later of course, container and tanker traffic to 38 then 40 tonnes.

There have been two big game changers since then in the railway and freight in particular. Firstly, it has remained and expanded its economic superiority to road in large point to point volume freight, and secondly there is now the Channel Tunnel. Now we have super/marhsalling and private railheads acting on behalf of other end users in transfer to road or even in co-location of factories or warehouses to the railhead.

The next game changer is the cost of fuel and price then per mile of in particular, container and small container traffic, and soft sided domestic market containers. Also UK companies will be looking to continue to use scale to competitive advantage and also to supply more to europe as the main market. Added into this is the potential move to several more 'deep' water container terminals, in the SW of England, Hunterston and Aberford in Wales, where monster ships bigger than the 120,000 t "panamaxes" will be able to connect with europe, save a day's sailing and even maybe  these will be too big to pass through the shallow english channel at all but spring high tides of a SW swell!

With that type of traffic then a type 3 or just 4 dual locomotive seems a bit underpowered, but dont forget that shunters used to handle trains at low speed from railhead to main line siding. Much of that operation is over with class 66s doing shunts on whole trains and there just being gaps when there was not enough cargo to fill a train rather than the expense of martialling. However then the expectations today are to be able to lift a 2000 tonne train and tommorrows railway will probably be looking at 3000 tonne trains from large scale plants or to distribution centres in order to be most economic. Then you need specialist traction, the heavy diesel type 5 and type 6. This is still why there is so much diesel under the wires, because there is a shortage of electric locos and no real incentibve for using two train crews.

Trains though of 500 tonnes, not forgetting that is upto 20 or 30 lorry loads may become more economic if they are point to point or transconintental, or in plkaces where rail is as fast as road or faster, but much more reliable. Take the tesco use of the highland line, these are only a few hundred tonnes of net freight in the kighter services.

Now it becomes clear that the real use of a dual locomotive for tommorrows railway would not be in frieght necessarily. More likely to be in passenger, where trains of upto 600 tonnes can be managed admirably with less than 2500 bhp and on semi fast routes, 1650 hp would be enough. Deltic through is for now too smokey, so we woul d be looking at the now MAN owned VP series which replaced Valenta , with v6,8 or 12 configuratiion most appropriate.

There are some engine techmoligists researching opposed piston engines for some odd reason, they have mayve kidded themselves on that they are so much simpler that there must be a way of getting them to work within modern emissions demands, and they are allegedly looking into car engine sized opposing four and six piston units in diesel.  How they will overcome the inherent smokey issues is yet to be seen. IT could all be like the last great experiment in the 1990s into two stroke, supercharged engines by ford which lead to zero point zero products and profits.

Dual mode in both locos and passenger multiple units is very attractive too either if privatisation is opened to real competition between companies for diagrams on the same routes, whereby those willing to invest in dual mode will gain most on winning cross power source routes or be able to employ their rolling stock on alternative contracts if they do not win their first choice from the list.  There  is also talk of an under/the(wires levvy for diesel trains in order to encourage use of electric locos or dual mode stock.

On "BR" today even the latest electric locomotives in network use, the class 92 are arguably coming to the end of their economic and safe lifespans. Class 66s are in need of heavy general repair , and the class 60s have already been rationalised. The remaining second generation locos , 47s , 56s and 57s are passed their use by date well and truly. If all pre 1995 ie now two decade old stock and older, was removed then the railwya would run to a hault in terms of passenger services.

There will be some dual and even multimode trains, multiple units and dragged electric loco set ups in the near future, but will we ever see a mainline dual mode Diesel Electric/AC Electro or DC thrid rail?

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-77620766167122476542014-08-24T13:37:00.001-07:002014-08-28T13:14:55.776-07:00Play The Dark Isle, Ring 8 Bells For the Past Which is Gone.

This will be the last post for a while at least in my blog of memoires and musings of all things with yellow ends and blue body sides. Both requiem and ulogy.

I first started doing haulage as we called it, behind class 37s as a hobby in 1980, having had a short period as a spotter. Gone immediately was my ambition to clear-everything, that is to strike off all locos in the listings book as being spotted. Instead in was the great game which I fell upon like going through the wardrobe into Narnia or finding a secular meeting going on in the snug of the pub to which you were ushered in, and welcomed as a new believer.

That was it in a nutshell, we were all 'believers' and more over of course 'followers' usually of one faith over the other. By in large that had meant following one of the big five locomotives in the 1970s but by 1981 the smart money  had moved onto the swansong of only one of those , the class 40, and over to the class 37 as it entered a new unexpected era of widespread passenger workings. There were also of course the MacRat crowd, lamenting the spluttering epitaph of the dieing class 27 in particular, which met a more ignomonious end of life scurrying around on the fife circuit and Dumfries route and being subject to frequent failures. One thing most of us could agree on and that was we hated duffs and duff bashers!

Back then on my first visit to a works, St Rollox, there was an immediate feeling of nostalgia, of the railway and rolling stock belonging to an era which was old fashioned yet vibrant. A testimony to british engineering that 1950s technology was reliable and economic 30 years later. Having said that in 1980 the youngest duffs were less than 7 years old, while the syphons over D6950 were still fledgling teenagers. Rolling stock off the main ECML&WCML\&GWML was mostly still mark I steam vacs.

Of course back then there was actually the start of a completely opposite situation of what is now DMU/EMU domination. First generation DMUs were so knackered that something had to be done, and this affected all regiosn where  in particular locos like the 30 something classes found new use hauling semi fast and stopping passenger services. The locos were freed up from the decline in light and mixed shunted freight, the coaches were cascaded down from ECML/WCML where air cons and HST sets ruled the roost even by the mid to late 1970s.  So then the scene was set for possibly the most riotous fun a haulage fan could have in the years forward  to the eventual withdrawal of class 40 in 85.

It was a great game. New loco hauled diagrams. Alterred availability of locomotives. The unreliability of the sulzer LDA engines. Not only on the standard diagrams which were loco hauled or became such in this great era of yellow-blue bashing. The public en masse still took the traditional working class holidays to Blackpool, Scarborough Yarmouth, Newquay and Skegness. This meant addex trains from July to the Aiugust Bank Holiday weekend with whatever old stock they had, and no need for a loco with ETS. Also sets were freed up as replacement rakes in case of failures on DMU and Class 45 /47 routes. By the summer of 1983 the 47/7 fleet and 27 fleet were so unreliable that your were almost certain to get a few 'big' NBs working those routes if you spent a week bashing.  Each new timetable threw up a multitude of tantalising 'bails' which involved running over foot bridges or galloping down underpasses when there was no crew change, just a chance crossing or a pause due to single line operation.

On top of basing yourself with a local transport area day pass from one metropolitan area, there was of course the main event for most back then, and that was going on an 'all line' fortnight for the serious bashers, or a regional rover for a week for us 'neds'. For me that meant one thing and that was the Freedom of Scotland. The aim of either end of the spectrum of expense, was to do routes by loco hauled trains and cover them with a rare loco if possible, while also mooching about the city terminals waiting for 'gen' or 'viewing' particular trains, in our case most often the carstairs portions, the 0715 Ayr/Glasgow and the 1715 Glasgow-Edin.  Many big loco bashers slummed it in terms of loco haul and went for the scenic extremities of the network. Penzance with a 37 or rat. The far north with hopefully a pair of 26s. The infamous 1S81 and its forwarding overrnight to Elgin with a type 2 or boilered 37.

For me the highlights of my short five year career as a syphon basher were mostly on freedoms or on excursions to the west country and midlands.  The best day ever was probably doing the overnight to Inverness, followed by the wick service with a pair of 26s to Dingwall, followed by a 26 to Kyle, then the ferry over to Skye, the bus over said island and then a good thrash down from mallaig again to complete the Scottish grand tour. Then you could say the craziest day was the first day of syphons on the Cambrians, pairs and single big NBs and as many bashers if not more than Ada's and Berts ! Hundreds. They drank the pub at Caersws dry on the fester for the purposefully impossible bail at Mach'. I include a little appendix below which I will maybe update for the sake of accuracy, just being a bit of a disjointed list of best thrashes.

The Skye route was a must do for myself. An itinerant 14 year old lieing to my mum about it being with a gang of pals, I set out to do it alone really after I stepped onto the platform at Dingwall, solo. Other Must-Dos of the time were the riotous 1S81, all the way from Carlisle if you were a 'top man' for the day with most often a roarer on the top. The bail at Blair Atholl, blair aweful to make for a piss poor doss as an overnight, which often ended up being Pitlochry . Down again to cover the 0650 Ft Bill bedz and if that was rancid out towards Ayr for the 0715.

If you took the 0650 Ft Bill then the de rigeurr foot move was from Tyndrum Upper over the Glen to the halt at Tyndrum lower. The cobbled road out the upper station which was original to  the 1880s and the walk through the mist drenched glen before most of the country had got to worrk was the sign of a devoted syphon basher.

Other must dos by 1984 were to get 40s on some of their traditional routes on service trains, this meant Settle-Carlisle, Dundee, Blackpool and so on.  We managed to do 40 118 over Settle , steaming on 5th of january. Booked a dual heat duff we went anyway and it was on. There were a lot of people who would become prominent in the CFPS on that train or its return that day. 40047 on the other hand boasted only me and a man who would go on to be the director of Virgin rail, then a 40, western and v220 nut.

In 1985 various things happend, 40s came to an end and not nearly enough of them have been preserved unfortunetly. Locos like 40155, 170 and so on were in very good nick and it was criminal to cut them up. Also boilered stock took a bow from time tabled diagrams with the advent of the 'combine harversters' aka 37/4s and the cascading of other ETH class types into secondary duties. Sprinters were establishing themselves too and the end was nigh on invisible plakats we hung round our own necks.

I got older,  into outdoor sports more, more sheepishly interested in girls, and lost interest in continuing with ETH stock and no 40s to add variety to endless v12 miles of growling EE type 3s. I lost a whole gang of freinds and all those weird adult aquaintances who on reflection now were at best eccentric and a little school boyish while at worst just a bit sad.

Regrets? No, not one minute would I miss and not one minute more would I spend. I would be very happy if there was a heritage train on the WHL and far north with type 2 and 3 haulage, and a 40 running in Scotland somewhere, but for me there is no going back and it was a more of less clean break in autumn 1985. It seems like then it was more a nostalgia trip than now when I look at youtube where every so often someome has digitised their 8mm or VHS footage of all things blue and yellow at the ends.

Today I took time to look at some footage from MC Metals, Crewe and Donnie works from the time when the second generation locos were being decimated and the peaks and forties were decaying hulks. Also a look at 37s having their open heart surgery to become the new HGRed sub classes. It was kind of like looking at videos of your grandparents being in hospital and it felt like you were seeing a funeral you couldnt face to go to. It was kind of a catarthis today looking at lumps of blue and yellow steel , just disected boxes now with their lungs, muscles, nerves and hearts strewn around in piles like offal at an abetoir. It kind of gave me some closure in a way. Now 37s will of course continue to rumble over UK metals a while longer, and for the rest of my life at least on preserved routes. However it is more that the era we lived through often felt stolen from us I think. We lived five years of withdrawals of locos we loved. The deltics, the forties, the boilered diagrams.

Like much in life, good eras and good times are fleeting. We think they are constant, they will go on, we can keep on reliving them. In fact they always fade away or die abruplty. Change is the only cliche in life..Our interests change or become impractical to follow. Boats, planes and trains get cut up en masse and a couple go into an endless retirement from their former glory. Freinds move on, lovers come and go. Children consume our middle lives ..the only constants are that there will be decline, decay, death and then renewal, novelty and enterprise again.

So if that was the era for you or an era before, and you like me now find the internet rekindles interest, then just look back and let a tear come to your eye. Maybe take a wander down to East Lancs or NYMR or Boness with the kids and have a wry smile at the enthusiasts and the 25mph workings but dont start ranting on about where and when and all. Those days are passed now, and in the past they must remain.

Good bye.

_________________________________________________

Appendix

Memorabilia. The trips and the trashes which stood out in my mind

Class 27 of all things to Oban, with John E Auguston, drain pipes, white socks and massive pentax wide format an' all. Gave me a taste for trundelling along in mark I steam vacs. Later preferred their more reliable cousins, the 26s.

Bailing at Helensburgh upper off a 37 at night, the thrash a foot away from the walkway through the iron lattice work. The thrash was deafening. I was hooked.

Seeing a pair of 37/0s haul the big aluminium ingot train up Arrochar bank while over the other side in the Argyll wilderness with a scout leader 'cheify' on a nature watch pack tour.

Kind of lowlights in a way> turning down 40047 on the ft bill euston bedz from of all places DUMBARTON, it was a dodgey move home for a nipper. Also turning down 40165 i think, or one of the last boilered centre coded 40s on the 22>40 glas -edin mail. on a freedom at the time i think too, much embarressed now. Not taking 40150 further than cumbernauld from mossend. "what a bunch of neds, bailing here, bashing 40s on a transcard" . while on 40s, 40155 replacing a failed peak at chester, we did it to warrington, great forty thrash with a late train and a stick weilding expert up front. 40188 of course, 1040 carlisle leeds 5th january 1985. riot, with a better thrash in the dark on the way home unfortunetly, would have been nice if the driver on the up service had thrashed her as much. Of course 40170 too dropping on the Inverness Bedz as far as perth, and working the return NB. It actually had a bricked second mans window, so allegations that the 40 bashers including the 'bradford bender' had smashed the windscreen on the duff which was booked and on pole position at eastfield are unfounded. They managed to brick the forty's side window, suggesting they were kids not able to chuck track ballast any higher!!! 40047 with a well known railway director, edin/dundee/edin the fife circuit in 1985. Not a great thrash, but I think it was the last steam heat 40 run I ever had if it was after 40118.

37014 made a good few monster runs on the whl and other places. One with load eight on the 1650 ft bill on a hot august evening, the loco was absolutely singing up the crianlarich banks. Also it ran like the wind with the infamous peter walker at the helm, with an hour late ex ft bill eth bedz, ethel in tow, which said PW made up entirely between crianlarich and dumbarton. He knew the route intimately and with this being the only airbraked rake on the WHL, he could really put the anchors on after getting max speed. I have never been so fast on the whl, and it felt like he was doing over 90 through cardross.

37028 on a self imposed eva and brother's  'baglet' tour. voh it was. Quite big, we expected it to be dualled or there were already rumours then in 82/83 about what became sprinters, and locos being mothballed. did it all the way to fort bill, then i think a rancidish 025 or the like mallaig return, and then all the way back.

37188 qrrived as a gleaming blue steed to eastfield in stark contrast to the wrecks which had come to ED from stratford depot, who seemed keen to get rid of dross first, 014 being an exception. I only remember one run on 188 actually out of many dozen runs behind her, with fred the skin head.  it was a very clean running and powerful loco compared to the likes of 025, 027 and the long standing wreck 108.

37264 ex works. This was many a syphon bashers beast, having been one of the only high number 37s to be stratford based with a boiler. It was a good runner at IS and later ED, but the latter gave it the full treatment , ground in all the valves and probably put a new timing chain on her, and she ran like hell fire but with hardly any dark exhaust. Clag was bad then, a sure sign of a loco needing a trip for a D exam.

On clag, 37175 was the worst offender at ED for many years: smoke, flames, and a tendency to over rev. It allegedly hit the 1000 rpm rev limiter and shut down up queen street tunnel one day. It also had messed up field diversion system, and would cut out at full power and try to divert. Had  175 omnce with the returning fake boilered class 20 , a syphon oddity if ever there was one. It was put on on mindays on the ft bill bedz because the line was always slippy due to there not being any sunday services. It allegedly alleviated wheelslip and prevented the train from coming to a hault, but the odd monday I had it on the up service, up being the bigger smoke, not the wee Ft Bill, it was just a nice noise behind a thrashing syphon , kind of a little sister saying " I can run and play with you too, me too !! "

One loco which did get better for a while was 025. I think I had her on the rather slack dumfried route to get the line for a syphon. When it came to the WCML after Annan., the driver went ballistic and the thing thrashed through second and into third field and just pumped away until eithe he got a yellow signal or he reckoned it might be a bit uncool to over run the platform at carlisle.  Also had heating the infamous 1s81, just to have a syphon on it, and it thrashed like hell through stirlingshire. hell fire for a loco which was before and after 1984 a bit of a heap, but was preserved with a functioning boiler at least then.

Also on dumfries , we had 37119, D6700 for posterity all the way to carlisle on a rupert special family rail card extra run having been to bristol to bash what ever was there.

37 296. Little did we know it would become a humdrum ED class 37/4, it just appeared on Scr during the miners strike and dropped on the infamous 1715 glas edin. excess ticket ensued. great thrash. all the macrat 27 neds including the worst, sellers and blakey, were on it to get a line in the book. Perth man said they had to jack the tunnel up / it was so big you see. it struggled to get over 75mph or maybe the driver didnt botherr too much.

I did also a 37 12x to stranraer for the route. nothing of note on the way down, but after telling the driver it was a good loco, he decided to give it welly up the galloway banks and it was a thrash to remember from the itinerant big nb. Also not much to write home about as the power unit was sick, we did 37292 at 2000bhp on a euston-stranraer, getting the maybole /kilmarnock route for syphon at the same time. In that guise it worked only a handful of passenger trains during the miners strike of 84.

I think also my first run to Brora or Helmsdale with 37262 and another on return  must be up there, because thundering through the night up there in december with sleet and rain was cool. also that month in 1983 decmeber i took 37183 with the empty flat bed wich had a through steam pipe for the stock, on the only mixed goods passenger train then running in the UK. have photo to prove it.

Riots then, well doing the far north bashes and when 37s  as above, dropped onto the stranraers, the dumfries route, the carstairs portions and the odd glas edin service, plus them doing the skegnesses and scarbororuhghs from either newcaslte or edinburgh on return to glasgow. 37174 showed the fife tip top a clean pair of heals out of haymarket with load 9 vs load 4 pah, 27 junk.

we had hoped Ethel would mean that any old ed or ML syphon could drop on the sleeper, but alas the loco was booked onto the mrk 1 steam vacs still used to mallaig at the time. The only riot was when 133 was sent up in a dual header on the 1650 or the 1820 oban in the winter to releive a failed loco, probably 025! Unfortunetly the drivers took the pair up easy, but at least they bothered to connect the blue start up.

The biggest ever riot was of course the completely barmy first day of syphons on the cambrians. there were undoubtedl more bashers than punters. riot. total utter riot. we drank the pub dry at caersws.

other things of note, first family rail card run to bristol with rupert. 50008 , the shreddies and that mad 4511x on the glasgow bedzx to brum. up[ lickey like it wasnt there. much better than a duff . I thhink we went just out of NB season and there were no 37s to be had, with only one or two dual heat workings possible out of cardiff then. We also saw part of a very eventful or rather fateful test train for british locomotive production: we saw a stone train being hauled under test by a pair of 56s and it was those tests which lead to the class 59 being considered a better loco, whcih they are, and then the yingy shed 66s being ordered with public money.
My first ever shreddie was part of another type of tour , a mystex, which was going to chester or shrewsbury from glasgow. We kidded ourselves on we didnt know where the mystex was going. we bailed at crewe to take a shreddie down and very impressed were we too. lovely movers, so much betterr than their vermin relatives.

I'll finish where I started now that I have mentioned vermin type 2s. Syphon bashers had a soft spot for 26s partly because if one turned up on the far north route, you were as well to take it, but more over that it annoyed 25 and 27 bashers, because the crompton equipped machines with their early 6LDAs were better made and more reliable than their after comers from BRCW. I had a rare run on a pair of them on the first wick & thurso one cold october morning frrom snechie, and in a pair they could inflict dammage on that route as far as tain at least. But back on the WHL, and one wet but icey cold satruday we all turned out as usual to put more mileage on the usual ED suspects, especially 188 my beast, when lo and behold the whole line had gone back ten years and it was teacuppping heaven for macrat fans. Only the sleeper and one other service got a 37 that day, there was some blah blah gen about the boilers all needing inspected after a failure of one. It almost doesnt need to be said, but every train that day ran bloody late and the whole affaire was pedestrian until finally we piled on the 1650 Ft Bill which had a decent bit of v12 kit on the front. Vindicated. Sypohon Bashing, I LOVED YOU

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-43722807893598906932014-08-16T16:07:00.001-07:002014-08-16T16:07:21.863-07:00Locomotives In a Spin> High RPM and Multiple Power Units versus Mid Speed
It is interesting that some things return full circle to the way engineers thought in the late 1940s and into the 1950s when presented with a problem to solve> Back Then it was replacing steam with quite literally,. a turn key solution, while now it is replacing the second generation of 1970s&80s Diesel locomotive with locomotives which can comply to the outrageously strict emissions and noise legislation laid down by the EU commission and also lead by California who have pointed their judicial compliance bow to zero emission locos. This in itself is a farce becuase even diesel loco hauled trains are many hundred times more efficient over any long haul route than the equvalent 20-50 lorry loads or 200 - 300 personal car journeys. Rather than painting power units in locos with the same black brush as mass anarchy transport, they should be setting a sensible level of progress on these fronts, all be that very much quieter locos than we enthusiasts may like to hear pounding the metals..

Today Seimens present a modular power unit loco with possibility for dual power (over head or maybe third rail units top be popped in) and / or battery packs. One key benefit they quote for today's operations is that the locomotive can dial in and out power as it needs it, with the power units then working at their most efficeint peak range more of the time when they are on, thus reducing fuel consuimption and emissions,. In their Marketing PR launch discussion they talk with no reference to the long history of multiple power working doing just this, dialing in more power when needed, while then saving fuel by cutting back on parts of the route which do not need so much horse power. Rail actually requires a large tractive effort to start a train and to take a train up a steep or continous gradient, but since the days of Rocket it has been known that there is a lot of coasting and low tractive effort haulage going on due to the inherent efficiency of running on rails, particularily with roller bearings and optimally loaded axles. Thus you are actually dialing in power a lot more in a train than you are in a lorry which has a lot more relative wind and rolling resistance than a train, and you can times that by as many as 60 in europe for the biggest 2000 tonne trains

I can't remember if the PR release mentioned engine redundancy in case of power unit failure, but this has to some extent been quoted as the reason for multiple engined locos. This may have been at some point someones 'also ran' selling point, be that point made by a supplierr on internally to British Rail western regiona and the Deutsche Banen in particular. In fact the notion is largely a red herring : in the case of the German multi engined V200s/220s and the British Deltics, the attraction was more horsepower per se from a single locomotive within some technical limitations. Interestingly those limitations were quite similar and both technical. In the 1950s there was a desire for light locomotives with 2000kw output approximately to sustain speeds of over 90mph/150 kmh and run ideally cruising at 100mph//161kmh.  The limitation were on both diesel electric and the hydrualic mechanical transmissions at the time.

Both systems were limited to about 2000hp per power unit by technical limitations. Firstly in the electrical generators, where English Electric had a size limitation and a knowledge of flash over (which would later plague the class 50 and competitor's class 47 locomotives ) in the dirty railway environment for the then DC generators. The biggest EE could offer was about 1.75 Mw , brush and AEI offered slightly higher while the American locomotive manufacturers could offer their home market around 2.2 by the early 60s with the larger loading gauge. The DB in Germany had opted for Diesel Hydraulic for their higher speed services and much of their other locomotive provision in the 1950s. The limitation to them was that at that time for the footprint required at least, neither Voith nor Mekhydro could offer power transmissions of over about the same 1.7 mw, or actualy at rail about 1500 hp.

One efficiency advantage of diesel electric in this respect is that a single engine can be employed to deliver the maximum applicable kw to the traction motors at start and low speed in a light weight express locomotive. In the Deltic this means that the power control handle does not activate the second engine until approximately 18 - 22mph is achieved. With the secondengine revving up to deliver power to the same level as the first and then both going onto rev further to deliver 50mph
, the system as a whole is very efficient for passenger workings because they require exactly this type of acceleration avoiding a field diversion(electrical gear change). A typical 350 tonne passenger express of the late 50s'1960s requires light starting effort and offers actually not very much momentum to push through field diversion  . This explains why the class 50 out accelerates a deltic to over 30 mph, while a class 37 will out accelerate a deltic to 18pmh hands down because it can lay down far higher amps as its single engine is delivering maximum mechanical effort in the first field which dies at around that speed. Both these classes however could be plagued at speeds of under 50mph by trains not having enough momentum to push through the diversion, then meeting a gradient, or by a speed limit or signalling which meant the engine hunted between two gears as a manner of speaking about the automatic detection and switching equipment. The twin engined deltic and presumably Brush "Falcon" overcame this issue by dialling in the power and avoidimg low speed diverts, while the former offered quite low starting effort and maximum continuous effort due to having a lower amps/ higher voltage system (amps are a measure of torque where as higher voltage relates to spinning if you like, groossly over simplified)

Diesel hydraulics however have a different advantage in having their torque convertor 'half gears' ie slippage in the fluid coupling followed by the married phase, as well as having a range of 'hard ' gears to change up to.  Correctly engineered this makes for a very smooth acceleration with virtually no wheel slip and quite a high starting effort. Both engines can power their respective bogies from a standing start without the typical electric overload of 1950s first generation DE locos, they are designed to be geared correclty for this tractive effort and the limiting factor is how long you can cool the hyrdaulic  transmission oil when it runs in fluid unconnected phase (slipping stator relative to rotor). For all types of trains in fact, a twin engined diesel hyrdaulic has another slight advantage over DE designs of the late 50s at least, and that is that one complete transmission bogie system can be left on maximum power while the other system reves down and changes gear for its next bit of the cherry so to speak, thus the train can be kept at a constant speed if not on a steep gradient. Field weakening on DE is a just a natural physical barrier for the entire system if it is to run smoothly, although a complex out of phase double system coudl be concievable, where the two bogie/traction motor sets are tuned to different field weakenings. Instead as in the deltic, the number of gear changes to 100mph is just three versus effectively six for diesel hydraulics even when they are more powerful as in the german V classes.

As touched on in the pre amble above, the redundancy of twin engined locos was a secondary selling point in effect then. However it did mean that the most important express services on the GWR and the ECML could limp home at about three quarters speed in the mid 1960s when the whole genre of diesel was still to be proven as a mass produced item. Further into the 1970s, the HST IC 125 sets had two power cars in order to deliver the magic extra thousand over deltic services to go 125 mph., but the betting on effectively two power units per train proved prudent in terms of limping home as both the Ruston Paxman valenta and the Mirrlees power units prove to be less reliable than anticiapted for their service intervals in the reality of the dusty conditions and high thermal cycling loads placed upon them by the nature of having more stop starts than originally discussed with the manufacturers. The 125 was actually designed with train crew changes en route and fewer stations than the deltic and class 52 services they replaced.

In terms of fuel efficiency then I have not heard of westerns warships havbing one PU shut down, but it happened regularily on Deltics which would have their second engine shut down on the slower Ediinburgh-aberdeen section of the expresses from KX. Presumably after ETH was introduced this required that the second PU be on a heat only selection, revvving not far boave idle I do not know. Deltics did limp home and run light loco on a single PU, and especially with the teething problems with pistons they encouuntered, this became a very fortuitous feature.

 In post war Europe and the UK there was still materials rationing and oil was imported from the US and Middle East, so the use of multiple workings, dual or more locomotives is for those historical reasons far less wide spread than it is in the USA/Canada, coupled to a steady decline in freight from the 1960s to the 2000s as the road network improved. The states on the other hand and canada had a heavier loading gauge and bigger, more economic commodity and produce loads to haul by rail and thus it was economic for them to run multiples and 'robot'  locomotive arrangements were widespread by the early 1960s with multiples of up to 4 at the head and more down the train. I do not know of any european robot multiple locomotives apart from shunters like the class 13 and some on the continent, robots being a unit which lacks a proper cab and are only used in multiple with cabbed locomotives leading. By 1960 the BTC/BRB had abandonned through connection doors for locomotive design, although many were in still in production then, and were stipulating that type 4 motive power be above 2700bph and not fitted with multiple working ( a decision reveresed in the class 50 due to the gradients of the WCML and the ambitious timetables laid out in the run up to electrification in order to keep the route competitive in respect of the new M6 /M74 and the advent of the Glasgow Airport-London shuttle. Class 50s were not fitted with these as a response to theirr reliability issues, which were in fact somewhat better than their rival mass priduced brush type 4, which required a massive rectification at a cost of over three million pounds back then. That class 50s were delivered without multiple working cables t first has been cited as being because of availability of the materials at the time, safety testing not being complete, the price of the class 50 running into problems and then this being taken as part of the hire-purchase scheme they were bought on, subject to absolute rquirement for the faster timetables north of Crewe and later Preston)

So at the end of the day you have to examine what your actual missive for tractive effort and maximum speed is, and in fact this is where DE wins over DH:  For the same horse power and power unit arrangement, " Faclon" was a better performer than the class 52 Western hydraulics with their voith systems. The limitation here was that the v12 MD655 engines were not powerful enough for the  third gear on the Voith transmissions which were presumably very similar to those fitted in the more powerrful German V2xx locos. It may have been possible to have fitted tiwn v16 MD870s or alternatively a Mekhydro gear case could have provided a better matched power deliver for running at over 75mph. The Voith transmission is in theory smoother than the Mekhydro due to it working on a priciple of triple, sequential torque convertors and hydraulic actuation of these three main gears. Although Westerns and of course Hymeks saw a lot of working on relatively heavy freight services, the similarily powered Falcon and the Class 37 EE type 3 both out performed their respective DE cousins in standing lift and progress, all be that with some degree of wheel slip on the EE type 3. Deltics did work a very few freights in their lifetime and heavier night mail/sleepers of over 650 tonnes, famously last year D9000 working some heavy lifts to the rail head due to lack  of class 66s.  Falcon, the class 53 one off from Brush, excelled at both freight and passenger working, and indeed ended its productive life on ore and coal traffic, slugging them around south Wales. Class 50s were designed on out set to be a stop gap passenger loco for the WCML but also then to have the possibility to work higher speed freights of upto 1000 tonnes, being in fact prepared with mounting points for buck eye coupling as if it was going to happen in the 1970s.

We have then come full circle in which transmission system suits which traction missive: For light passenger trains of 40 mph to 80 mph the vast majority of diesel services in the UK are now sloshing oil over convertors with mechanical hydraulic tranmission. This was a decision taken a very long time ago by some engineers, probably ironically enough, about two or three years after Western Region lost their last main line DH locos. For heavy freight you want to slug it out with 25 tonnes per axle at least and over 3000hp in DE, while also the hands down winner for mixed traffic is the DE too because of the controllability and range of electrical traction systems. This is reflected in the delivery of the latest class of locomotive to the UK, the mixed traffic class 68 which is pretty much the type of locomotive the GWR would have ordered if they had been forced to run with a larger proportion of DE locos. The main point lacking here is that we do not see many multiple power unit locomotives with their specific advantages and redundancy, but that in main part is due to the amount of power available in reasonably sized single power units in mid or higher speed * GM versus Caterpillar, MTU and the most powerful per weight, the VP185 from Rustons /MAN, and also that there has been no specific missive for this type of locomotive. Even in DH we have seen several Vossloh locomotive classes and the Anglo Belgian powered freight class emerge with only single power units. It seems the reliability and modern engine management have by in large rendered twin engines obsolete, where as the Seimens loco can carry up to four power units.
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-58004295365640738352014-07-04T16:25:00.001-07:002014-07-29T15:35:19.270-07:00Deltic Rebirth? The Opposed Piston Engine Strikes Back?
I "stumbled upon" in my own way, the "new" breed of opposed piston engines which are allegedly being funded by the Bill Gates Foundation. They are two stroke turbo diesels which use a double cylinder per bank, with long conrods connecting the outer piston effort to a common single axis crank shaft.
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Although this approach solves the "problem" of reconciling forces* at both ends of each cylinder into a single power stream, it does still have the main inherent emissions issues of a swept port,  two stroke design  ( * in the Napier Deltic this  necessitated an expensive gear box which reverses the one gear lower sump shaft with the other two while then marrying all three axis to a single power output shaft)

The main issue is that lubrication oil from the piston side walls and the sumps or injection sprayed "dry sumps" ends up exiting with the exhaust and burns partially, or worse, builds up (especially after time on idle )around both the exhaust and the air intake vents/ports and then leads to incomplete combustion when injection and final compression to ignition happens. Incomplete ignition is one thing usually completely avoided in four stroke diesels and modern 2 stroke traditional cylinder head motors like the EMD 645 derived engines.

Deltic pistons are more complex than traditional pistons because they require oil routing in order to effect cooling of the piston. In the absence of a heat dissapating cylinder head with water cooling or oil cooling channels in such heavy casting, then much of the heat from ignitions builds up on the piston heads and in napier's development process they identified that this needed oil cooling for the piston heads:  which means even more lub' oil than  the spray injected crank ends and bearings area can gather in the legnth of the cylinder where it meets the pistons. Inevitably some of this lub oil migrates along the piston head and is swept into the combustion area of the cylinder and exhaust chambers. The air intake side is under positive pressure by super charging (roots blower in a deltic) and turbo charging, and this stops build up to some extent at the lip of the intake but that may exacerbate migration of oil into the cylinder due to this positive pressure.

This oil migration to the combsution area of the cylinder is limited by the piston rings around the top third of the piston head however they do not provide a complete scraping or sealing when they sweep over the "gas"  ports.

One way of further reducing oil ingress to combustion areas is to then add more piston rings along the head and /or an oil scavenging scraper collar which is a consumable part fitted to the piston's base and scraping a swept path at a desirable D400s /BR Class 50, one reason they were too effective in preventing oil getting to the piston walls were it is needed.  In a swept port dry sump two stroke engine with oil cooled piston heads such a collar may well work quite well, and may be something which can be fitted from the crank case inspection points in a larger engine or by at least avoiding taking the pistons out as a outward end extra ring would otherwise.

Deltic "clagg" ie smokey exhaust  was always a feature of the power units when they were first revved from idle. All the excess lub' oil suddenly gets heated and blown out, some burning and there is also a lot of water vapour formed if the exhaust collective is cold , leading to plumes of white to grey smoke steam with a rancid smell. Add a little incomplete combustion of diesel from the air- in-port side issue and you get nasty deltic clagg, not good if you ever want to hear that Napier drone in new locomotives, gun boats etc.

Under way however, as you will see in the opening credits of the 1960s classic 'Get Carter', the deltic power units produced quite little smoke in service life.  So at 1500rpm lub oil was not able to build up due to the scraping of the piston and higher positive pressure on the intake side.

General motors EMD have overcome much of the issue with swept air ports while also steadily increasing the volume and pressure of air which is aspirated by/into the cylnder. So it is not a wild goose chase to clean up a deltic.

One approach is to use a different porting and exhaust rooting design, where you may have a positive pressure at the crucial timing points when the piston sweeps. Another is altering porting design , perhaps with multiple ports, which resist ingress of lub oil.

Alternatively the most complex which is not soild state, ie it requires new moving parts, is to utilise a rotating valve mechanism on the exhaust port which allows for the port to be shut when the piston is sweeping it (or if exposed to the crank case side on an imaginery longer stroke design). This could be a fairly simple cam lobe type arrangement on a single shaft per bank of cylinders, where the valve is wheel like and has an open side cut which is designed to be timed in with necessary exhausting. Alternatively a camshaft lobe  valve actuation could be used, if then introducing a degree of complexity into otherwise an elegant design with a high degree of "solid state" solutions.

Another alternative is to reduce the amount of lub oil needed to lubricate the walls of the piston and to dissapate the heat of combustion from the piston head. Here in Napier's day there was nothing available apart from metal with the best qualities to work with oil cooling, but now ceramic piston heads, rings and cylinder liners are realisable. The deltic has modest piston sizes, modest compression and kw/cylinder and a design which lends itself to cooling circuit improvements in the cylinder linings and design of the triangular engine "block".  All these point to use of low lubrication ceramics as a possibility.

I prefer the idea of the following set of " solid state" technolgies over cam shaft valve systems:

1) ceramic piston heads and rings
2) oil blocking and scraping system on the crank side of the piston which prevents most crank case oil from entering the swept area and reaching the gas ports or combustion area of the cylinder.
3) a high tech solution for the small amount of piston wall and conrod pin which need lubrication: perhaps using low pressure diesel injection, or a complete burning lubricant or a non burning synthetic lubricant.
4) Twin scrolled air intakes which are thus always providing a positive pressure at the in-port side, even at idle from super and turbo charging
5) a design for exhaust manifold which enables a slight positive back pressure on the exhaust port when it is being swept such that it presses lub' oil away.
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-41211167301142610562014-04-09T14:51:00.000-07:002014-04-09T14:51:01.582-07:00Goyles past Loch Goil? 31s vs 37s on the WHLThe West Highland Line in all its glory is actually a god aweful way of grinding locomotives into the granite hillsides. It is a fairly infamous annal of the more inglorious moments of the Brush Type 2, aka Gargoyles in the 1950s and 'Peds' latterly, that the locomotive was the only diesel electric to be failed for the route on ground of poor traction and it has to be said high overall weight.

Hang on a minute there. The loco ventured up yon-bonnie-banks with the v12 JSV  Mirrlees engine which was deemed a failure in all its original guises, and was kicked out for the reliable 12SVT already proven in use in Australia and in the 16 cylinder variant prototypes of the UK in the 40s and 50s.  So the Class '30' that never was stenciled on a loco, was the failure not the class 31.

How suitable then would the class 31 have been for the west highland line and if they had been technically suited, why were they then never utilised ?

It is probably pretty arguable that the loco was failed due to poor traction when compared to the class 20, 24 and 26 contemporaries of the late 50s and the 27 and 29 after comers. Also the locomotive at 104 tonnes as a 31 and presumably less as the JSV Vac (vb) predecessor,  weighs less than a Black 5 kettle but the arguement about wheel diameter and contact area and tractive effort perhaps persisted until the BRCW and BR type 2s showed their worth or were shoe horned into service.

If you want to call a 31 a pedestrian loco, then  you should get hauled by any other type two on the WHL. 27s were occaisionally out in force even in the 37/0's halcyon days when there was some issue which 'grounded' the fleet, if I was informed rightly at the time this was either issues with boilers or issues with tyre wear - HSE siding on ban them all, especially before the rather better maintained welsh and higher number 37/1s came to supplement the good bad and dross split boxes sent from stratford in 1979/1982.  You could note straight away that the progress was rather lacsidasical with a 27. It was like being hauled by a 37 which was on its last legs and just on the point of failure. Standing start acceleration was all that beating drum tip topping and not a lot of progress.

 True on stretches with speeds of 45/50 mph you could maybe see an advantage as the 27 burls along, as do other 6LDA teacup/rattlers . A speed range much as on the favourite monotomous bash of the jockular vermin's fan base , the dreadfully dull 40/55 mph fife circuit where a 40 or a 37s superior power is capped by bumping in and out of field diversion all the time once out of the frequent stations and out in the bland pastoral landscape with its curiously serpentine route.

Rat and Mac-rat bashers always say that if you had load eight then you could shove a pair of the vermin on the front and hey presto, bye bye syphon and ponderous class 40. But hey, a pair of 37s will once again piss all over them, and managed most of the Aberystwyth diagrams as singles, on arguably better timings than the paired 25s judgin by the festers at the crossing stations with the then newbies in 1985, outperforming the timetable handsomely.

27s and other Mac Rats do have a certain charm in plodding through the spectacular countryside along the precarious shelf/cuttings and through the tunnels and over the viaducts of the West Highland Line, however the road improvements were in place by the late 70s and further work planned threatened to make the route pretty much unviable as a competitive form of transport vs the bus (which is now actually my preffered mode of public trans' to Oban at least since sprintershitation, faster, just as scenic and often a better view in fact and most of all, quieter!!) With private car ownership on the rise too, the WHL needed a boost and that meant more bhp within the RA5 confines

The 37 diagrams were simply a lot faster than the 27s and other type 2s and not only that but all forms of 37s regularily kept well ahead of most of the diagrams with only a few being a bit of a squeeze to the crew change point most often being Arrochar. Usually there was a 'dreadful fester' at Arrochar as the crew had gassed on the faster sections to Glen Douglas to have extra time for tea at arrochar. The same was even true of the 'up' sleeper with its 400 tonnes odd some nights with the lady ETHEL enterage, which if driven a bit gingerly while using the advantage of more powerful air brakes could run well ahead of time and lead to festers in the up tae Glesga direction too.

In fact in my honest opinion of app. 9,000 miles behind class 37/0s and /1s on the route I would say that the 37s were by in large overkill for any loads under 6 mark 1s or ETHEL on five. Drivers in charge of load three to five, took full advantage of the storming acceleration and then let the locos often poodle around in second field opening up to get momentum up to third field in order to get 50/60 mph up on sections which were 40/50 speed limits. The fact that the stalwart 37014 made up almost an hour from Crianlarich to Dumbarton on the ETHEL warmed sleeper with load 6 one night is testimony to both the loco and of course the devil himself, Peter Walker at the stick.

So the class 31 should have maybe had a chance? Similar gearing and some very similar diagramming on terra-flatta in the south and west country seem to point to the 31 being pretty much a type 3. In fact you could easily say that the venerable 31 with its high reliability and simplicity probably delivered 1470 bhp a good deal more often than some of Stratfords poorer heaps which ED depot was landed with, such as 37025, 37081 and 37108 which often seemed to be doing as bad a job as  Rottus Caledonia.  Boilered, Ra5, with good visibility and a history of snow plough mounting , standard blue star on general examples of the class...so on.

Many have speculated why indeed 31/4s were not simply diverted away to work ETH services on the whl. The firts, the sleeper, went down to load 5 which a ex loco heating unit like a 31/4 coould plod around with at less than 40 mph.

An issue may have been with the gearing, which I do not have a source for the figure of,  but the loco was only 15% or so less powerful, so notch 6 of 8 was your comparison in the 'class 30 failure' on the WHL. Certainly you have to understand that a 37 is in its element thrashing up a gradient with a couple of hundred tonnes and then maintaining 30-40mph which is the speed limit on a very large proportion of the line. A 31 pootles up slower and then has an awkward field diversion at 28 mph or so, just when drivers would want to be picking up power to get back up to the speed limit after a tortuous curve or on a minor summit.

The issue here is not actually a straight hypothetical technical comparison. Despite there being both other SVT and RK classes allocated to Eastfield from the 1950s, there was experience with the superior power of the 37s from allocations in the 1960s forward. It must not be overlooked that at the time in the late 1970s the planned aluminium trains from Ft Bill were probably going to be the most torturous of any freight diagram... . comparing to the infamous Llanwern iron ore trains and the 'Gunnie' Cement....both of which of course were under the command of 37s during the 1970s.

The matter is more of allocation and planning of classes>  because of course during the 1970s, 31s spread their sphere of allocation as they prove to be more useful on faster or heavier services than 6LDA rodentiae, and were replacing diesel hydraulic services too as locos like Hymeks were phased out.

The success of the 31/4  ( the first ETH ex locomotives as some wags put it) re-purposing lead to the class being an obvious choice for replacing XC DMUs which were frankly completely and utterly knackered by 1980.  With the early examples being withdrawn, there was actually no land-grab available whereas stratford were pretty keen to get on with ETHing and standardising on the ubiquitous duff /4 and eventually /5 and /6 as they churned them out with the wee extra orang boxes on each end.

 Their 37s had been there almost two decades for some examples, and it meant they could rid themselves of the least reliable locos to general repair and reallocation to ScR and ED in particular. We inherited some right old timers from other depots too, like the vb 37 017 originally ED in its first caledonian guise and the eventually rare to bag 37 028 in its 'vo' guise although I think it was actually 'vi' when I had her to Ft bill on a staking hot summer's day in 1983.

Although 37s for passenger work were new to Eastfield and Inverness, there had been freight allocation to first Grangemouth then eastfield from the 1960s to the 1970s , plus motherwell getting them at some point, so there was some experience and driver knowledge on them. Plus in the late 70s the class 40 came to run most every express out of Queen street, the cab and controls being similar enough to a 37, while the maintainence is not miles apart when it gets down to using bloody big spanners on cylinder heads to big-ends.  At one point it was rumoured that ED would become a 10 inch bore shed for all SVT /CSVT / RK engines of SCr, even gaining class 50s to work the Aberdeen expresses, while Haymarket would get all oily over the 12 LDAs and keep the pestolent 6ldas going a few more years after 1982. This rumour must have been based on something because Chris Greene denied it to Jail Enthusiast Rag in his first year in the Throne of ScR.

Anyway we in terra scotia, got intercooled Ruston engines in a nice looking, punchy package the EE type 3, syphon gee.  Not all was all that well though. It is a bit strange that by in large the western region 37s reallocated to Scotland inn 1982 onward were in much better condition than the eastern /GN locos from stratford, gateshead and so on barring the latter boilered flock around 37260/262/264. The welshies had had a hard life Boyo, up in the valleys on all from loose fitted to big nasty airbraked lumbering runs of the black burny stone stuff. However them being a squeeze newer and perhaps drivers being trained to respect them , plus seemngly much better maintanence at CD etc, meant that they were on average far superior to the split boxers.   East field and St Rollox too soon rolled their sleeves up though and got to work on their engines and boilers, and paint work too. Some went into Doncaster or other BRE main works, others had very good work achieved under the victorian rooves of Inverness's sheds. However this was usually in vain as particular notorious drivers chose to 'notch 8' them at any given chance from a standing start or whenever they were a bit bored and the resulting wheel slip and tyre wear kept the tyring shop at St Rollox and the top o' the bank in business. This coupled to flange and bearing  wear, probably caused by drivers abusing speed limits on the Crianlarich/Craigendorran sections, lead to the trials with 'bendy bogies' in fact swingy axles  would be a better description. 37/4s were never fitted with them, the lower gearing perhaps curbing some excesses or better driver discipline giving them actually a longer, healthier life than their older bretherin originally transfered north of the border five to six years before their emergence.

I digress into a bit of nostalgia and speculative ranting, so back to the topic>

It would be interesting to shove a 31  /0 up the WHL on similar loads and let a pair work a simulated freight like the aluminium services. Then of course you could put a 31/4 on a load four sleeper no issue, maybe turn off the heat for the bigger banks if the story of them being segregated out of that power is not true that is. 31/4s would no doubt keep to the slower sprinter timetable on a bigger capacity train. Did  you actually know, dear syphon basher insect of post 1988 start, that they fudged the outgoing 37/4 timetable with an extra forty minutes or so put on most trains between the penultimate stations and their destinations, mainly noticebly at Dunbarton and upon arriving gleefully early at GSQ, evern with the low level diversion in place????

Anyway, given a different twist in fortunes the Goyle creatures could well have purred and burbled their way over Whistlefield bank and glanced down upon Loch Goil below as the spectacular vista of the Argyll hills and Lochs is suddenly unvelied coming out of the cutting as you pass the Green Kettle. Had they chosen to keep Hymeks, had they scrapped more 6LDAs in the 70s, had they ordered more Goyles, had they never been ETH fitted  .....you can go on and on. Technically the 1470 hp goil with a boiler would have been superior to the tinny rodent classes which pagiued the WHL and struggled to better the steam diagrams they were introduced to surpass.

A glorious waste of 1750hp deliverd with gusto then entailed on all trains for just over half a decade and then remarkably outlived any class of locomotive used on the line before them in charge of the 'Ftr Bill ETH Bedz' , and still finding use on PW and schedule tour trains today. How the Glens and Lochs reverberrated to one of English Electrics finest creations, and how we enjoyed sticking our heads oot the windaes to breath a mix of pure highland air and class 37 exaust fumes as we revelled in the experience of the thrash, the beauty of nature and the banter of the railway men and boys back then in the early 1980s.

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-61964887241164644092014-03-27T15:22:00.001-07:002014-03-27T15:22:15.788-07:00Diesels We Nearly Had: Western Region....I stood better informed about the warship and western class after an internet expedition into Hymek Land.

The interesting points to me are that

1) we could have had hymeks rated at 1940 hp with the engines as fitted, or even higher with upgrades as Maybach (MTU ) improved the design or modified things like cylinder heads.

2) The Western had a weakness in third gear : it did not have enough grunt in the v12s. Had it been fitted with twin 870 v16s from the Hymek, this would have been solved. Even further derated to 1500 hp or thereabouts, the power and torque would have made the westerns better suited to their envisaged tasks, especially 100mph trains. The V16s would have run cooler than the v12s which were pretty pushed at that rating in 1960. Voith and Mekydro units were in a "footprint" which followed the DB wish to have interchangeability, with V200s sometimes running with BOTH types of transmission, one on each PU. The extra weight would have been a matter of four to six tonnes.

3) Do we have an answer to oil sloshing diesel-hydraulic-mechanical locos vs diesel electric in Brush's Falcon? It seems falcon could start a heavier train on a steeper gradient and achieve 100mph more adequately on 400-500 tonne trains than its' torque convertor cousins. There was a straight head to head trial actually, but no doubt BR did not want to show Brush up or be shown to be lagging in their own Swindon built design. Had the western region been a bit more objective, they should have purchased a fleet of falcons to cover the inter-regional ScR- SW, NW-SW services which were earmarked ETH even by the early 60s.

4) the real trick western region missed was probably to take the best of German transmission design and couple it to the lightest, most powerful English configuration in a twin deltic engined monster of 3300 hp.

The Deltic engine lends itself eminently to the whole design ethos of DH: 1500 rpm in rail application, very light weight, compact, smooth torque curve and rate of acceleration.

Furthermore the advantages over the Maybach powerunits dont stop there. The deltics weigh about 5 tonnes for the PU and the collective gear box, the modern v 12 MTU is about 6 tonnes. The deltic is actually a good deal less complex than the v12 MB650/655 because it has no turbos ( in the preferred rail version 18 Cylinder, 36 piston) , no intercooling and no valves or cam shafts.

The "stack height" is not an issue. Maybach and the now MTU (owned by Rolls Royce Ironically enough now!) have stuck to a design with twin turbos mounted mid engine, which keeps the legnth of the unit minimal compared to the convention on almost all UK and US locomotive prime-mover/power-units with the turbos at the ends of the cylinder banks. This means though that stack height is rather high, and there is little room for free space for the engine radiator cooling groups.

The deltic overcomes this issue, with the Cooling Units being shaft driven directly above the power units,  on the classic twin engined class 55 locomotive in the UK. The "GWR Deltic" would have possibly had three fans per power train, the additional one for the hydraulic cooling groups. They may have also suited themselves to ETH by the rebuilding of the collective gear case to include a running circuit to a dynamo.

One thing which would have suited the deltic power units well, especially with the Voith transmission, would be that both engines are engaged from start and their is less lag in "gear changes" compared to the weak field diversion volt-amp resets on the deltic. The DE locomotive collected power from both PUs to supply both bogies, with the first unit running the train to about 18 mph before the second one comes on line, actuated by a cam on the power controller under the drivers control board. This and the field diversion set up meant that the engines had time to gather lubrication oil while at low rpm which made them very smokey.

=====

Alas all this was  not to be, neither the DE versions of the Hymek and a productin version of Falcon. It is with some irony that the majority of passenger traffic on western region now is handled by DH DMUS mostly with voith transmission and many with MTU (Maybach ) power units.

If the BTC and BRB had in the outset studied the German locos more and had GWR been more cautious with the DH introduction then perhaps certain niches in terms of start-lift, route, speed and tonnage could have been identified and DH locos developed on a national basis. Crazy? Non Standard? Well what do we have today in terms of diesel passenger trains on a national basis?

For me that would mean a few classes of shunter (switcher) locos upto 1300hp the higher ones having mainline potential, while the betting being on the v16 in a type 3 / type 4 development as the Hymek , with engines being swapped out as hp increased over time,  and a twin engined version of this or the v12 by the same merits, with this or the twin DH Deltic being the master of long express traffic in the GWR or further a field.Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-27318627650426747002014-03-25T15:46:00.000-07:002014-03-25T15:46:12.289-07:00Mekydro and Personal Enlightenment on the "Oil Sloshers"Type three locos are a bit of a dark eve's obsession for me now, as much as chasing 37s about in the 1980s was then.

The one I regret not being in service when I was a nipper, was the BR Class 35 Hymek. With its' tractory, thrashy v16 single engine and petite and pretty looks the loco design seemed to punch over its weight, and many a Hymek nut who worked on them in service life, will tell you they were the best Diesel-Hyrdaulic Locos in the UK.

I was delving deeper into the Hymek story when i actually fell into a great disappointment or rather a hole in my knowledge due to being a presumptious of understanding, runs in the family, son #1, 5.6 y.o. bullshits away to me about how things work or are too. I happened upon a set of GA drawings (general arrangement) for the whole loco, and the bogies. It struck me that for a large part of the last four years I have been going over GA drawings being a technical outsourcing purchaser , and that I had actually bought some diesel hydraulic off the shelf equipment: a rotary table with turbine motor run from the "main circuit" in turn probably run directly from a diesel unit like a v16 cat or a rustons v12.

So I decided to cast my eye more critically upon the drawings and saw a "whole bunch" of cardan shafts. The Hymek type 3 has of course only one power unit so must distribute the drive to both bogies unlike most other DH locos of the time.

It dawned on me that I had gone along in a little myth about DH locos which was a self told fallacy : I had thought that the locos used a gear box and torque convertor to pump oil into what we call a hydraulic motor or turbine motor at ever higher pressures as speed went up, with hosing going to each driven axle and a final drive turbine motor arranged around the axle. Well the name is Diesel Hydraulic ???

In fact though I now discover to my ignorance, that the term Mekydro coined in good old Deutscheland is far more accurate: Diesel hydraulic loco is a misnomer!!! These locos are mechanical with hydraulic torque transmission.

Given a single torque convertor in fact, the amount of oil in the system would be probably no more than in an equivalent big mid speed engine like a 12 CSVT or 8LDA of around the same output. You of course run the fan and you need to have a volume and cooling heat exchangers to suit the thermodynamics of the oil so that adds, but the point is that a single torque convertor transmission for a v16 MTU today would be relatively small, with a matter of tens of litres of circuit volume for fluid in action so to speak.

So anyway, self made mad myth busted ( unless someone tells me the final drives are cardan shaft driven turbines or fluid mechanical gear joints), I started thinking more about how these things work in practice and what the issues are with them and what the advantages over diesel-electric are or other tranmission forms?

Why are DE and DH Favoured over Mechanical Geared Direct Drive in almost All Locos over 1000kw ?

There are several shunters, light self driven rail cars or sets (DMUs) and of course the whacky Fell locomotive of much more horse power,  which use gearing and clutches to achieve transmission. In 1987 a pal of mine who was technically minded asked me why there were not more mechanical direct drive locos and why they resorted to DE or DH drive....

The main issues in using direct mechanical drive in a loco, from the type you would find  in a car with a standard clutch or a motor bike:

1) Wear and tear on gears and clutches, due to high starting loads, variable speeds, and uneven travel
2) heat in the gears and oil
3) requirement for a great many gears for higher speed, higher horse power to reduce and apply the power successfully
3) difficulty in starting heavier trains

The last two matters really hit the head of the nail, whereas the first two are actually problems partly shared in DH locos because they are mechanical-hydraulic drive with basically the clutching of main engine drive being the hydraulic bitty.

In order to start heavier trains , just as in slipping the clutch on your car on a hillstart, you need to be able to exact a stationary starting force on the axles in order for them to have enough torque to start to rotate.

A bit like getting a nut opened with a long bendy spanner, you need to ease in the power without it :

1) on the one hand resulting in instant slip as the right pressure is met and then quickly exceeded by the leverage of gears on the axle,
2) on the other hand  that there is deformation of the gears or excessive wear on the clutch plates.
3) Pull a third hand out from paddling kids at Sellafield: You need to change gear immediately after you start as the gearing is so low to achieve this "bendy torque wrench" effect, thus making progress awkward and potentially stalling the train anyway.

Here is where DE and DH locos excel and why the first series of uk diesel multiple units were erm, a bit crappy. They can both start a much heavier train and retain reliability and sensible construction of the transmissions.

How the MEK is Attenuated Nicely by the Hydro

As I realise to my own chagrin, DH is an overstatement: we are talking an automatic ford granada is technically spot on compared to the turbine breaks of the APT-P.  Now there happened to be a lot of old Granada Automatics in the  UK in the 80s and 90s and of course Americania lasts for ever from the fifties and sixties (before they got too fancy and all gay with their trann'ies pun, pun) so in fact the system would seem to have some longevity benefits.

Usually DH locos have a transmission shaft "stator" array which passes through several turbines , ie the donut shaped torque convertors themselves. The torque convertor looks a bit like a triallabite but it is actually a marvel of simple, wonderful engineering. It allows basically for a slipping clutch without any mechanical wear on its internal exchange surfaces unlike a standard car or oil encased multiplate oil clutch, the motor bike type, which are incidentally common in machinery. This slipping of the clutch is effectively a form of variable gearing allowing for both

a) a standing force to be built up progressively while the drive shaft is loaded up with torque smoothly
b) the engine to carry on to apply more power from its own torque output , the curve of which may be a lot higher than a direct mechanical system could take, thus burning out a clutch slipping.
c) Effectively this is a continuosly variable gearing until the rotor speed matches the stator speed at which the application of torque becomes linear - until one or the other slips -
d) coming back on that point in c- this also means that there is an inbuilt resistance to slipping in the convertor as the blades do not want to pump oil backwards but rather the system will slip  if the speed differential becomes greater than the designed flow.

Now here is a great claim in C and D we must come back to

The best and worst is really to be heard in the sprinter units which have fairly small engines which have to be revved hard to get the starting force going, and then there is either a gear change or the engine backs down to allow for synchroyny in the torque convertor, which it sounds like it does and feels like from the speed being fairly un -sprinty.

We have looked at a single torque convertor which would be fine in itself: this would in effect mean that a locomotive with an engine rpm range effective of 700 rmp engaged to max would run a single mechanical gear much longer than if it was directly connected to the output drive shaft, ie the clutch was let out and stayed on. You would need more gears to cope with the torque differential. Here also as you go from a starting torque and reach maybe synchrony in stator -rotor speed which should in theory be linear, a peaky v12 say can continue to exploit the slip of the clutch in applying its own progression of rpm and torque which the wheels catch up at the end of the day.

Back to sprinters then: horrid things, they rev far too much for the progress the rather light train should be making. The 170s and after comers, are a bit better at applying power though but still irritating compared to a loco up the front. The point being here that if you have a revvy, low torque engine you have to rev a lot to get the starting force out, noisy, vibrat'ey, and then you have to change gears a lot at lower speeds to continue to overcome the inertia of the train until the resistance is then more friction: 170s are pretty quiet when powering along at "high" speed.

The irony of these horrid plastic rail-bus thingies,  ie modern DMUs, is that the majority of non electrified routes are now DH driven! How a few long gone GWR traction engineers must have sniggered in oily-sloshy heaven when that day came in the late 1990s.

On a more powerful loco then you have a lot more torque to play with from a big engine but you have then a lot more torque to control and apply and more potential friction in both mechanical components and in deed on the hydraulic oil.

You need gearing but by in large that is limited to three forward and a reverse ( I wonder if they have a heavier system to change direction of travel so that the gear direction is fully reversed? ) In effect your torque convertor is also giving you an extra low first gear without a gear change to second slow speed acceleration gear, and then onto a third.

However the clever Gerry Clogs at Voith a very long time ago now, came up with the idea of multiple stator-rotor turbines arranged along the same shaft. You then engage these by hydraulic actuation of each circuit with it being essentially on low pressure, lubrication when the circuit does not pump oil in. This means that you can probably then (?) rev the engine down less to change up a gear because

a) you can slip out of gear and into the new without major issues in just engaging the new donut down the line and phasing out the current gear
b) the new gear will be able to catch up by the very principle of torque conversion.

The sequential convertor gearing, three stages of them on a Western Voith transmission, are then based on delivering progressively higher pressures to the rotor drive shaft or would that be higher flow at lower pressure? looks like they go down in size like mechanical gears and that also the power relies on a longer smoother application of torque /rpm from the main mover Power Unit.

Now anyone who has driven a modern lorry over 10 tonnes will know that they have a lot of gears, and you use most at low speed, as above noted for DH drive. Another approach is to have more gears on a single torque convertor.

The benefit here is that you reduce the complexity of the hyrdaulic transmission and control, while also you can have the gears in a smaller volume per gear because torque convertors and their associated hydraulic control and cooling equipment take up more space than gears with multi plate clutches.

I think if I remember right, the warship class had each mechanical gear case on the engine side of a single torque convertor, whereas the Hymek have their single gear case after the convertor. You introduce then the need for mechanical - hydraulic feedback control for speed in order to shift gear automatically and not have the driver doing it (crunch, screeach, kangeroo starts and so on....safer to give them a simple couple of levers to pull on and let t' loco look after hesself)

Also in having three or more gears in a mechanical box, you introduce more points of maintenance and more parts which wear out. Torque convertors of this type cannot run in reverse and in fact the stator is locked in a single rotational direction to ensure this! Otherwise pressure differentials could brake and reverse the stator potentially

Surely a better compromise would have been to have a twin gear hydraulic torque transmission and two more gears in a gear box with also the main direction of travel ? Or maybe an inboard gear box, two gears, then the double convertor system and then a "reverser" ? Essentially then you get a very broad range of operation speed-tractive effort with a combination smooth progress when you most want it, over then efficiency when you switch the big mechanical gears? Also in that arrangement, you reduce the opportunity for heavy mechanical forces being applied to the main gear box, while also making that gear changing box simpler by taking out the reverser? If you do get some kind of damage caused by a nasty sheering force ("negative torque" torquing back to you so to speak LOL ) or when the loco crashes or jolts its bogies, the simpler reverser gear box takes the hit and is designed to break somehow limiting damage "up river".

Advantages DH vs DE

If you could have had greater reliability in the higher speed power units necessary for DH in the 1960s then you could have a big advantage over DE straight away because then your service interval is longer for major out of traffic overhauls, and given there is no damage, the worn parts can be changed out quickly. The parts list is allegedly cheaper than DE of the time of big dieselisation.

The other big advantage which is alleged is that DH designs are very resistant to wheel slip. I guess this is for two reasons- firstly there is a lot of built in inertia and friction up line in the carden shafts and bevel gearing, and secondly because the torque convertor is both locked in forward direction and the rotor will encounter resistance if it tries to go faster than the stator. Unlike in a car, the engine will not be dragged into the wheel slip by suddenly being free to rev a lot faster.

In older DE designs, wheel slip had occured before anything was done about it, and in the lighter designs or those like the 58 with poor bogie design, the rate of damage by wheel slip on steeper routes must have been frightening for the depots accountants.

The jury is a little out on the wheel slip thing. It seems maybe that electric traction motors can apply a far higher starting force and a higher / faster application of torque through the speed range than hydraulic locos, and that a lot less power is lost to heat ie they are more efficient at converting power even though they go through a tortuous mech-electric-mech route rather than the oil sloshers more direct path.

The wheel slip advantage is something the jury is out on with the new Voith loco 3.2 kw jobbie DH, erm , gaining traction in the market. However given you are allowed to run bloody heavy stuff like 66s and 60s and the new electric creep control and wheel slip avoidance / detection control and SEPEX not in the least, then the benefits of DH are diminished.

Disadvantages of DHs as built in the 1950s / 60s in the uk are

1) engines can be thristy relatively on idle
2) both the engine (power unit) , gear box and especially the hydraulic transmission are /were prone to overheating
3) General Heavy Repair can be very costly requiring many new gear parts

If the fleet of DH locomotives for the GWR were for some reason, out to tender today and not in 1958, then we would see of course the use of computers and  a lot more experience in building and operating them in Germany. Then you could optimise the whole system for a given use, tonnage and speed range and keep it within its boundaries, while having very very efficient gear changes due to computer monitoring and control. Also as has been recently obvious, 1500 rpm engines in the 1 - 2.5 kw range are seemingly necessary in order to meet the new emissions standards, and GE / Catipillar boast long service intervals on these units. Finally materials, machining tolerances, lubricants, and of course hydraulic oils have all become far more advanced since 1958.

So today the GWR would get an interesting bunch of locos, probably including Voith's own monster and some Vosloh "dog bone" locos which would no doubt compare favourably to the class 70 in particular for freight work, and be a far nicer way of applying oily mediated progress to passenger trains than those rather horrid 3rd gen DMUs.

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-65390567087046131812014-02-21T15:14:00.001-08:002014-02-21T15:26:03.469-08:00Deltic - Dinosaur or Died too Early?
I remember deltics well of course, even if i had a fleeting relationship to them in their BR service swansong when I was a nipper. Deltics weren't a locomotive you just saw and heard, you felt their power and prescence.

By the last old days of 1980 the deltic reign had ended. All be that ten years after the anticipated life time on  the ECML metals. Just as with the pacific steam locos the deltics replaced, they themselves were superceded . They had become dinosaurs.

Or had they? In reality the fleet got a stay of execution in 1978 and ploughed on with various east coast and the final rather ill suited liverpool - newcastle semi fast diagrams. Rationalised with two of their brethren becoming parts bins,  the rest in reality kept as an exhibition fleet into 1980.

The remarkable thing is that the remaining  locos have survived much longer in preservation: now more than half as long again as their active service wijth BR. The "third age" of the deltics with proffessional management and main line certification.

What then for the alternative history where BR or a private body supported their utility say another decade in service?

Well if privatisation had been happening in the 1970s then gyou can bet that they would have been. A private railway would not have invested in a hundred 56s and the entire class 58. Standardisation versus reliability was a BR mantra , the opposite has been seen across europe and the usa. So the brush type 4 and its under delivered promise and poor reliability would have stopped the later builds. Class 50s would have been sent back to by then GEC leaving deltics, peaks and the more reliable hydraulics to be the main 100mph service providers outside HST diagrams.

Another alterntaive future would have been re-engining.  By 1980 the Ruston Paxman Valenta would have been available in either a v8 at 1650bhp or a v16.  Twin v 12s could maybe fit in a deltic, giving them thus standard units to hst and an RA 6 not to mention 4000 bhp plus!

Maybe other improvements to lub oil and piston / crank systems in the deltic power unit could have made them less smokey and extended service interval to over 3000 hours. Or a turbo version tuned for efficiency.

Whatever the locos when compared to ageing 45s and dodgey engined 47s , deltics were only a tad more smokey and it was burnt oil not spewing diesel and lub. They werent the only relics of the rush to dieselise which were environmentally non PC even by the mid eighties.

Where would they have worked?

If there had been a gap for them to work in an extended lifetime, then it would have been in the west country that they would have thrived. Well into the 1980s there were enough north to south west diagrams with loco change from WCmL or the need for speed from Newcastle or York right through.

However there were also 50 class d400s and seemingly endless ETH peaks in the post oil-sloshing GWR. Not to mention duffs a plenty, one fails send out another until you are down to 47/3s and ice cold trains!

Deltics had higher ETH capacity than 50s and arguably better performance in the 85 to 110 mph range. However it was only the eastern depots, Paxman colchester and donnie works who had the expertise needed in the early 80s in order to keep an ageing fleet going.  Newcastle could then have been a centre for diagrams NE-SW with temporary stabling and driver training only at brum and bristol.

As a small, specialist fleet though there could be a case for remote allocation of servicing.

My own choice would be phasing out 50s over to HGR and including an upgrade to their eth. Thus allocating them to semi fast passengers, over night sleepers and speedlink on the ecml,. Then having 15 deltics allocated to Doncaster with a preserved demo fleet of four to newcstle and haymarket for railtours.

The donne main liners would actually work the west country with extensive drijver training for the wcml to Sw services during the day and the brum and newcastle sleepers at njight. This would be only to 1986 when boilered "bedz" were finally erradicated and enough hsts were released from ecml electrification to free up class 50 to take over any remaining GwR services in their new proven and fully rectified guise.
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-36178531158877589912014-01-13T03:20:00.000-08:002014-01-13T03:20:13.821-08:00Full Circle with the Development of the CSVT engineProving the internet is a fragmented place not particularly suited to amateur qausi academic research with any comprehensive coverage, I finally complete the full cycle of the history of the CSVT power unit prior to it becoming the RK270 as fitted to the class 56 and 58, and with around 35-75% more power per cylinder than the two 1960s locos in the UK fitted with said beasty, growling power units, the 37 and the 50.

The first two links in this evolutionary tale come from in fact the V8: used in the portugeuse Switcher type locos and the NIR class 101 "thumper" class , where I had heard they were rated up at 1500 hp, but Wiki informs us 1350 the same as the iberian ones. At around the same time, the Aussies had successfully rated the v8 at 1760 hp in the KTM Class 22, which prove to be more reliable than both the Class 50 and the 101s of NIR.

The KTM class 22s were built in the early seventies in Aus' by EE / AEI. The clue here is that they used the CSVT mark III engine. It seems that this engine was not developed in Europe, where the major project was the metric RK instead.

Indeed then the Aussies were pretty keen on EE and developing locos as the power unit technology advanced, seen perfectly with the v 12 going from say the QR class 1270, 1300 (1540 and 1800 hp respc.) up to the 2350 a the same nominal bhp, and there is a quote of taking it to 2550hp ( far short however of the 3300 hp in the class 58) . The RK270 was then first installed in 47 601 at the time, in 1974 thus being built at the same time as the aussie MrkIIIs and probably sharing technology.

The Mrk III engine was the last used in Aus,  I believe from EE and its later GEC who by then owned all of EE and subsidiaries including Rustons and those in Aus. It differed from the predecessors in having gear driven cams and a single stack cumulative exhaust route deliverying to a single, very much larger turbo charger. In the 2350 (at their full rating, not the Tasrail down throttelign to 1750) they sound most like the RK215 engines in fact, spluttering a bit and couging rather more than dubbing, but still recognisable as a thrashy v 12 from Rustons, as in fact is the v12 in the class 58 if you listen carefully or see the video from Tinsley depot, which included footage of them running around with their silencers removed.

The mark II is familiar in the class 37 and class 50, being at ratings of  167 bhp / cylinder in the 50 and 37 292 (2000hp experiment) and 145bhp. Meanwhile the aussies did the KTM at 220 bhp per each of her 8 cylinders, and the eventual 2350 at 195 bhp per cyclinder in her v 12.  This compares to "47 601 " and the class 56 at 3250 hp overall, as 203 hp, and the 47 901  v 12 er then at the massive 275hp. Jumps of 30- 40 horse power then per cylinder in the early seventies and finally the sky was the limit for rustons and the smooth running v 12.

However now the missing gap in my mind, within the evolution from 10000/100001 , the humble class 08, the 20/40 rating and the UK ratings of the CSVT for traction use. A jump of 40hp per cylinder to the Mrk III and then a while went by before the class 58 came along. I sigh a little sigh of relief

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-30155061274533272722014-01-13T02:37:00.000-08:002014-01-13T02:37:08.624-08:00The APT: Britains Most Succesful of FailuresBack to another of my chestnuts - the APT - P in particular and a glance at the " E" for experimental predecessor.

The concept of tilting trains dates back some considerable time before even the APT- E (experimental, the single gas turbine version) made the light of day. 1970s technology was adequate for the APT-P , the prototype.

Only we didn't get a prototype, the first of it's type, we got six pre-production types, the class 370.

The crux of the matter lies in this very over ambition. Yes a gas turbine one off had been produced but it was a running laboratory using an already disfavoured power unit supply. Proof of concept was established. However what was needed was a single prototype of the APT-P and not a whole pre-production class.

Why not though, produce a further proof-of-commerciality if you like by having a viable class of APTs running actual passenger specials which reflected the belief in BR management that this was a faite accomplis, as before the HST and the Deltic and electrification had been. In the 1970s though and into the 1980s this arrogance would meet its match in an in patient, road-oriented Magaret Thatcher.

There are major issues with managing a project with six train sets: firstly you have a longer time for delivery and your overall budget is much bigger, despite being lower per unit than a single set. Secondly and most crucially, when you have something go wrong on one set which is serious, then you have to take all the other sets out of service (tests, PR visits and demonstration ADDEXs essentially) . Further to this you then have a very much larger burdon on resources and spare parts when you come to repair the problem or redesign the system.

The tilting system was somewhat problematic however all reports are that eventually this was solved to a level of reliability concordant with operational service. The braking system's design oversights would have been typical "punch list" items for the redesign between and APT- P single electric unit and any pre production run or actual production run (squadron)

Launching the train officially as an operational Faite Accomplis in a January was really just another example of project management not removing elements which could challenge the reliability of the project and its then key PR presentation.

This reflects on poor project management and too much power invested in decision making in BR in my opinion. Today if the railways were still public, or as with HST2 a public-private alliance,  then the project would be subject to tender and also to an expert committee and nost likely the "quantum leap" from the APT-E to the electrified prototype would be managed by a single unit or in fact competing designs.  Subsequently a fleet of pre-scale production models could have been established to introduce the trains such that the flagship services could be accelerated gradually and revenue returns on a 3 hour London-Glasgow, and shorter timings from Manchester, Liverpool and the West Midland towns on the WCML,  services be assessed.

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-32056004691279092492014-01-05T04:31:00.001-08:002014-03-01T15:00:44.289-08:00Type threes that never were ... Tantalising possible fantasy locos
Not a lot of people know that most "syphon bashers" actually rated class 33s and hymeks. Given our mutual disrespect for the classes 31, 25 and 27 in particular it may come as a surprise. Type 3s though have to work for a living and have all proven to be capable of running type 4 diagrams. If in 1955 the folly of all the underpowered type 2s had been recognised then we may have had some interesting alternative type 3s.

A fact i did not know is that the 8LDA in the "shreddie" was actually rated at the same per cylinder as the humble class 26, another favourite of syphon bashers as variety on the far north and to annoy 27 bashers. This would mean a potential power output of just under 1700hp in the same locomotive.

How would then an RA5 version of the shreddie with a boiler as a competitor to the EE type 3? AIA configuration. Maybe he same gearing as a shreddie and also eth. Stretch a shreddie for the first of the class and then later orders into the 1960s are roof mounted head code box and a 25 / lion body style? Up at maybe 1685 hp. Given the loco had different field diversion speeds then it could have been a better alternative to the syphon for those draggy 40-50 mph diagrams so loathed by drivers. I can imagine this machine becoming a passenger dedicated dual heat affaire in the late 1970s and working a pile of regional and cross country semi fasts and standing in for duffs on expresses. Scr would have been delighted with them for whl, highland and far north, fife circuit, perth routes and south of glasgow central.

What though if SR had decided on a dual mode version, on an AIA  format with a boiler for non ETH through trains. I rather fancy then a class 34 and 78.  Dual mode deltic with a single PU and 25kv overhead where the other engine used to be?

Another tantalus a diesel electric hymek in co co ? That could have lead to a nice class with uprating possibility for ETH. Or of they had put a decent ventura or valenta in the "Goil" class 31 at over 1600. No matter, there should have been space for the CSVT in there and that would have been then a greater loco than the rather pedestrian accelerating 31.

If Bayer & Peacock were in there then why not NBL ? An MAN v16 or a smaller twin engine type three? A scottish hymek, mini warship completely capable on the route times of the ScR in DE version for north of the border and as an oil slosher.

Finally back to a light weight bobo single engined deltic type 3 to 4. The trouble of the baby deltic was that it was built on a traditional heavy frame chassis rather than the tubular and space frame deltic
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-46212944170410913222014-01-03T14:56:00.001-08:002014-01-03T14:56:11.285-08:00Euro Locos gone Loco ?
As I predicted some years ago, dual mode locomotives would become more prominent in r and d, and emerge. They are now the next big thing with rail head transport becoming more cost effective as companies produce scale to compete and road haulage becomes more expensive and slower.

Environmental Politics and economics play as large a part now in shaping the locomotive species as they did in 1955. Now with the emissions vogue for mid to high speed diesel power units things have changed. This means smaller space for the PU more space for scrubbing, but also the possibility for a return to the electro diesel and of course multi engine.

In the 1950's twin engines were chosen due to high power output relative to the available hydraulic and DE transmission systems which were then limited to about 2000 kw at a push in Germany,  and for UK budgets and loading gauges, little over 1000 kw.

EE worked this one out in relation to getting "3000hp under the bonnet" for sustained 100mph express running, and the WR dedicated to light weight DH power by the early 1950s following the early adventures into heavier 1500-2000hp single engine units. Brush followed suite with the ugly duckling "Hawk" , which could have proven a swan in terms of performance at up to 3000hp compared to the castrated class 47. Even in the ashes of the deltic rose the phoenix of the uk's most successful passenger train, the HST with its high speed Valentas.

First the anglo belgian powered diesel hydraulic to raise eyebrows with its wheel slip free creep lifting enormous coal trains. Then we noticed the reverse, with old locomotives being refurbed sometimes reengined and sent out with new, smaller operators. Suddenly after the predominance of the GM/EMD v 12 two stroke mid speed whiner was under threat by the fragmentation of the industry and the nervousness over buying any loco which may be legislated out of traction wijthin its payback time

Now Bombardier shock us all with not two but four bustly little 750bhp units. This is a modular Traxx loco and they admit to hedging their bets by having a plan for battery replacing one or more power units.

This brings a lot of questions up. Firstly how often do you run on less than all units? Well deltics often ran the aberdeen route north of edinburgh on one unit, pairs of thirty sevens were often switched leading to control only. Another intention from the DB V200, the deltics to the HST was to allow for failure redundancy. This was often the case allowing the service to be completed even on time for the slacker diagrams. DMUs are generally

Secondly then you have all this on and off, which is bad news however. Larger diesel power units are high compression, long stroke and dual air charged, and the higher speed engines before in time did not respond to idle start stop in traffic.

Thirdly how much power do u really need to start a train? This is a major plus point for the next generation electro diesels which may only need to crawl from the rail head to the overhead AC wires. Here you can haul a thousand tonnes with one of those wee units in the new traxx without a gradient to ply. A class 37 first series once hauled a 1600 tonne dead train in south wales, the lower geared RA 7 version would have maybe done 2000 all be it at less than 20mph.

The next thing is back to longevity versus life cycle. I think it is pretty ridiculous to impose stingent and eventually zero emissions to frieght and express passenger given how many car and lorry journeys they replace. However the road lobby and the percieved need to have clear emissions limits on larger power units across the board means that some locos will maybe only have a 20 years life span and may be reengined or dual moded within that.

Historically rail operators have always tried to run powerunits at longer than manufacturers recommended service intervals and with rarer locomotives like the soveriegn class 60, they attempted to reduce intermidiary "examinations" as they call inspections and filter changes. Given low sales of this new traxx four PU or any other high speed engined loco, then they do not acheive a redundancy in servicing ie there are not enough powerunits spare or ready serviced to feed the small fleet. The pluss side is standard servicing at non rail depots though ,and if it comes to it, a cheaper replacement cost than a single v16 mid or high speed unit.

The future is a bit like 1955 if you ask me , a fragmented approach with some locos.trying hard to fix a political problem, orders being small and a some specialised to country or purpose, deisel electric or hydraulic , flirts with electro diesel, battery and alternatjive combustion. Fifth  generation locos start to sound a lot like first generation fifties ones.
Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-80114751951199241552013-10-20T14:32:00.002-07:002013-10-20T14:32:29.751-07:00The 37/4s - Why were they built and the Other Rumours at the Time ?

As a thirty seven fan and former addict to haulage by them, I do get de-tractors from time to time ;-)

That is people who question how good they were and why they bothered refurbishing so many of them.

The 37/4 story is the one most at hand here:

The core here is that BR actually had a twenty year old committment to ridding the network of steam heated stock. By the end of steam in 1968, boilers were a complete anachronism but so much of the new coaching stock had been built such that steam could still work them that the phenomenom would tender white whisps and hissing from two tone blue coaches for another 20 years.

For the west highland line this meant that the turning point would be the introduction of the Mrk III sleeper coaches, which had replaced most of the then extensive sleeper services on the main lines,. In addition it wasonly the scottish overnight services retaining steam heat by the early 1980s on the older Mrk I sleepers (Bedz as we called them)

At one point during trials of the stock, Scotrail were quoted in the media as saying the coaches were not suitable and the service was going to be abandoned, but the coaches were in fact pretty suitable for the duty, in particular the air cushioned ride and sound proofing leant themselves to some decent "doss" on the highland and higher speed metals the services ran over to London.

Why did BR not utilise an existing locomotive class with ETH ?

Well the rumour is that Eastfield had at some point asked if they could get the unofficially RA 5 class 33/2s, the slim Jims. However they produce a lower ampage than needed for the sleeper services. Also Eastleigh wanted them for their own purposes of keeping fitters in a job.

The more obvious candidate was the higher ETH rated class 31/4- there is some confusion on how much power these can apply, but realistically a 250 tonne train would be a piece of cake even if they are only sending 1000hp or so down to the wheels. GIven the decision making time of say 1980-82, then in fact these locomotives were very much in use on the cross pennine roots via derby and in the west country where in both cases they had replaced unreliable 1st generation DMU operations. So they were not up for grabs.

Also there is CHris Greene's comments, as the then general manager of the ScR aka Scotrail by then, who did not entertain the idea of class 50s at ED (the question was posed and the rumour about in the early 8os as the IC 125s displaced 50s from their top spots in the course of less than 6 years. This rumour may have come with the fact that ED was ridding itself of 6LDA sulzers with then three or four types of EE SVT/CSVT locos being manageable) He said a new class in ScR was a bad idea in terms of crew training, spares and repairs.

The 31 Brush type two had been "failed" for services on the west highland line in its rather puny Mirlees day, but the SVT 1470 hp unit may have fitted rather well into ED as a depot. However, it would mean all the above Chris Green mentions,  despite their eminence in the reliability stakes.

Also there was another point of view- 37/4s would have to work both bigger passenger trains, and as an allocation to ED would work freights. The CP7 bogie offered the ideal solution for all round services out of ED where there is little opportunity for 37s to work at 90mph anyway on the allocated RA5 services, while often pairs had to be used to ensure starting and progress on WHL freights which were subsequently handled by a single 37/4.

A really grand allocation they became then! Being able to work until 2010 on the sleeper if I read correctly and I remember hearing them on the service after 2004 when sleeping at a relative's house near the line- with some disbelief having given up bashing 18 years before!

I gave up bashing for all the right reasons- my era was in those whisps of steam and 37s doing over 90mph when they got let loose on the west coast main line or a replacement Glasgow-Edinburgh service and so on. 37/4s marked modernity and shiny stuff and I nodded and smiled and retired from bashing as they began plying their trade of fast acceleration and better wheel slip control on the routes. Later when I saw they had displaced duffs on Highland Line services a little part of me wanted to get a freedom-of-Scotland and clear some numbers and lines but really that was just a tiny part of me by then. A lot of bashers went on to misspend youths and budding romances by carrying on with the several incarnations of liveries and routes the 37s then went on to work, and I am glad for them and glad that I did not follow them!

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-71126434092698199972013-04-26T18:47:00.002-07:002013-04-27T16:24:51.244-07:00Class 37 Self Steering "Bendy Bogies" (CP5)  The desire for more power to move passengers faster and lift heavier freights on the west highland line, and lines north of Inverness, lead to the obvious candidate being the RA5 EE type 3 aka the class 37, 1750hp CoCo loco. In a techincal paper recently made available I find a fascinating insight into what was a class novelty soon brushed under the carpet by 1986, namely the "bendy bogie" experiment.

As a design, the CoCo bogie has many advantages, but one challenge is getting them to go round curves and we have a lot of those in the Highlands of Scotland!

The fact is of course that Class 37s had a much longer history with the ScR than most bashers and cranks knew, although that being largely a non boilered allocation to Eastfield and Grangemouth and thus in fact, their use limited due to demands for steam heating even in May and late August on these routes.

It seems that the WHL was not a route of choice for 1960s controllers allocating out EE type 3 motive power, and I propose they were probably either a) reserved for medium weight coal and petrochemical freights elsewhere ;  or b) banned from the route due to Co Co configuration.

Prior to tests of boilered EE type 3 locomotives at some point around 1977-78, I never saw myself or heard any "tractors" living within earshot of the route, nor did I see then or now any photos of 37s on even freights up there despite a decade of allocation to relevant depots. Someone will no doubt correct me and please, be my guest!

The Background History, Geography, Engineering and Economics!

By the late 70s, the mainstay of WHL traction, the class 27s, were becoming unreliable and there was a desire to have faster timetables on the west-highland line in order to compete with road transport. To put it in perspective, 27s ran a timetable almost 50 minutes longer from ft william and suprisingly 40 minutes from Oban. In a later twist of irony, these timings are similar  to sprinters which required a fudging of class 37 timetables in order to look competitive.

Road improvements at various points on the Mallaig to Glasgow "A82", the  road-to-the-road-to-the-Isles as they call it, were either in planning in the late 70s or actually completed. In order to remain relevant on passenger timings and also to have a synergy with the aluminum and paper industries at fortwilliam and oil/petrol to Oban, then more horse power would be needed and the 37 of course being RA5 with the pulling power (max' tractive effort) as high as many type 4 and even the type 5 deltic, would seem to be ideal (55,000lbs force at 18mph for the EE type 3)

The west highland line however is less than ideal for any locomotive or indeed multiple unit due to its torturous nature in gradients, curves and slippy rails. In steam days the line eventually demanded the somewhat over-spec'ed Black 5 be utilised, but this measure of power and superior tractive effort prove successful in steam as it did in diesel with the essentially more power than needed class 37. Many steam fans in their 40s and 50s would tell us that the black 5s would out perform the little tin-cans in classes 24,25,26,27 and 29 which replaced them from the route.

At one point there was chat and a reference in some rag about the 37s speeding up timetable and improving cornering. Perhaps that was either wishful thinking or outright propaganda then. BR was already planning for some way of working around this and although open to modification, they did not want to invest in new bogies (although at a cost we heard for a new wheel and axle with driving gears- set of over a hundred grand and this being not infrequent for Eastfield cl 37s it may have been wiser!) Perhaps someone could offer a comment on the BoBo bogies of the various type 2 designs and how the axle to axle span differs or other benefits of the double bogie with fewer axles, but that is immaterial: we were going to get more "horse" and not going to get RA6 Bo Bo class 33s up the WHL!!

They Knew All Along About CoCo Issues to be Found midst Lochs and Mountains Then?

British rail technical and the class 37 fleet management in operational engineering must have known about the potential problems of running at maximum line speeds with a Co Co loco from experience with such routes in Wales, and it is reported that some modifciations, or tweaks, to the existing bogies on ED allocated "syphons" were made to allow probably for a more compliant ride at cost of some high speed stability ( with better track bed and in particular modern points, this was probably not such  an issue as it had been in late 40s BR!)

Eastfiled locos turned out with a white stripe at the tumble home bend on the locos body sides to denote this apparently, while I do not recall 37 175 having this actually, and we believed the time that 081 had it for some ceremonial/royal/tour working with an ETHEL. I do seem to remember that the white stripe denoted a speed limit on the specific locos though.

UK DE loco Bogie Design from 1947-1990 : A Fundemental Fudge ?

British locomotives like any other have vertical suspension, with the springs and dampers an obvious part of the construction. Hidden from view, the traction motors are "nose suspended" to the internal main-frame of the bogie with their own suspension such that they can ride with the axle while being cushioned from verticle shocks and horizontal movements.

Now here is the rub, you must also spring and dampen horizontal movements, because you do not want the massive forces created by the usual uneven ride of a loco as it rolls, pitches and yaws ; three aircraft and nautical terms for "shoogeling" as in Glaswegian.

Essentially this then has more to do with building engineering for earthqaukes, in reverse, where the mass which is oscillating is above the earth! There is a requirement to reduce impact forces on corners and dampen any horizontal movement transverse to the direction of travel.

So the bogies allows for this in the "commonwealth" type by having a main frame higher up in the bogie with the main circular bearing the bogie rotates under the loco on, while the axles and traction motors are then suspended on other structures which allow for some independent movement. Conversely, the characteristic 'cantilever" beam of this type of bogie  then holds all three axles vertically compliant and transmits these conjoined elements and forces to the suspension springs.

So in this way the wheel set can move to follow the rail even if the loco above is pitching, rolling or yawing, and dampen the forces. Further to this then the axles and traction motors can move to a given degree of horizontal independence with the vertical forces being resolved by the cantilever beam.

As young spotters then, we thought that the cylinder and rod arrangements on this type of bogie were brake pistons, but in fact these are an ingenious part of the system to control the extent of horizontal, independent movement while actually being laterally mounted to fit in the space available to the BR gauge.

Compromise Makes for A Good All Round Bogie System in the UK:

The independent axles main advantage is of course actually in tackling curves of a radius shorter than cant of the line and wheel bevel angle would not require this (as in fact is part of the practice of very high speed trains now, where unwanted horizontal movements under application of tractive effort or braking resistance may set up oscillations, greatly amplified by the high speed: hence HS1 and HS2, bullet train in Japan and the whole TGV thing running on very shallow curves with enormous radii) The axles of a locomotive or rolling stock for that matter must to some extent follow the radius of the curves which are sharper than allowed for in the tolerances of the higher-speed-track bed solution.

Essentially despite the whole bogie rotating around a sensible designed pivot point on the loco, the wheel set when presented with a prominent curve shall we say, are on one side forming a cord on the arc of the rail and on the inside trying to form a tangent. This has to be further corrected for in order to reduce wear to both the track and the bogies, in particular the wheel flanges and tyres but also other components which we will discuss here.

The system design then for a limited amount of independent axle transverse movement has three purposes which relate in their entirety to safe progress:

1) reduce forces on the track: ie the bogie tries to educate the radius to the "chord" between contact point and indeed between bogies.

2) reduce wear on the locos flanges and other components

3) make the ride smoother and both spring load the sideways forces and dampen them  to further this end.

Articulated Bogie Designs (eg Class 66)

Most north American locomotives do not use this approach of significant, radius-following, independent axle movement, but rather allow for a limited articulation in the  whole bogie frame design: often on CoCo design, the innerst axle pivots or rather has a limited rotation on its own frame rather than the axles itself "floating". There are probably some unwanted effects of this under traction and breaking, or over poor points etc, and with transmission/suspension of vertical forces  but now this is of course very wide spread in the UK being a feature of the class 66. For lower speed routes where it is desirable to reduce wear on the flanges and the tyres  on the wheels and the axles, gears, armatures and bearings, it would seem that this would be a better solution.

However the class 37 and most of its contemporaries were based on proven technology from the 1950s and before even, from successful and reliable designs  in the emerging diesel electric traction field. Ironically though, many steam locomotives feature a trailing wheel under the cab behind the main driving wheel which is articulated !!. The issue did not come up until the 37s were sent to Terra Scotia en masse! By then the articulated frame approach had been proven too at various speeds and track beds were far safer for modern locos to ride at higher speeds over.

Typical British Approach: Boffins with Cotton Reels.... Make Do And Mend with Ingenuity

Confronted with a limited budget for a limited end  benefit in terms of return-on-investment then the engineers were faced with compromise and make-do-and-mend.  Typical for the political atmospehere at the time, the usual public funding issue of getting a budget to repair unsuitable materials every year, but never a larger budget in one year to eliminate or engineer out those issues, no doubt played a part. 37 bogies' would then need to "shoogle" more, yet not cost the earth to do so.

I can imagine the early tweaks were then to allow for softer sideways "preload" so that the axles could react quicker and perhaps small adjustments in the total horizontal movement possible. However, a bit like a plank of wood getting nailed down really hard at one end and the other springing up, eventually you are going to reach a limit of movement in part of the system and that prove to be critical in the "nose suspended" traction motor suspension. This has both an unfortunate simple leverage effect which could amplify small adjustments in axle transversing and also of course this is the absolute key to motive power thus being expensive to get wrong.

To summarise this fascinating article as a layman; and I hope I do justice for the inginuity of the engineers back then:

The nose suspension box for the traction motors was critical and modified to include an "X" shaped rubber suspension element to allow for more movement from more directions

The axles were engineered or allowed to run further in the lateral direction and to do this quicker

New side ways springs and dampers were employed to then work with this longer and faster lateral travel

Success in Engineering and Failure in Economics

The trials with the bogie were evaluated as being very positive, as detailed to a very high technical degree in the paper . The results showed that the new design conformed to tolerances for these type of movements on tracks, thus being safe and the prediction was that there would be significantly less wear on the wheel sets.

However we were in a position by then of 1985 and "sprinterisation" was planned for and the lower geared 37/4s and eventually /5s would be used on heavy frieghts at lower speeds. It seems most likely to me that there was no capital budget for this adaptation to a set of 12 locomotives or so, which seems very short sighted and a result of the whole annual budget bull shit the Uk was in at the time in all departments: on the one hand not being able to spend more on year to save costs in the subsequent years, while on the other using up as much of the budget you had for operations in order that you didnt get it cut back from the actual spend. From water works to the admiralty, this was the Tory fueled "double think" of the 80s and early 90s.

As I heard from railway staff at the time, a new wheel set for a standard 37 was over 100 grand, and maybe that was higher for the new CP7 lower geared bogie. So spending one year to save for the whole life cycle of a sub class would seem sensible. On the other hand, the actual worse cause of wear was wheel spin and some other forms of wheel-spin-prevention and arrest could have been a wiser investment in terms of cost-benefit-saving.

No matter what, 37s are still today in fact working to Mallaig after having had the longest relationship with the line of any diesel loco, spanning 3 decades.

Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-516799199636958709.post-86695330879941623232013-04-02T04:14:00.001-07:002013-04-02T04:14:26.745-07:00Duffs Again... Why We Loved to Hate the Brush Type 4.Duff's aren't duff, as a duff basher once told us when we turned down a 47/3 in favour of a trip back on the roarer which delivered the portion for the duff to Carstairs.

I say it again: duffs were too slab sided, bald headed, monotonous whiney locos that we just didnt like them. Like Ford Cortinas, there were masses of them and any way you dress them up, generally livery , XO or push pull, they are still a ford cortina.

Duffs in fact are only really duff because they should have been an elite 2750hp loco fleet to rival the deltic. They were actually more expensive to make than deltics and Dp2 type type 4s would have been significantly cheaper and at above 2600 hp, more reliable. Also ride quality at 100mph is pretty poor in duffs because they yaw and rock on the short wheel base, large diameter wheels and relatively high centre of gravity that the stress loaded body design entailed as against EE's and other manufacturers' underchasis construction as the load bearing members, achieving a low centre of gravity.

Down to earth with 2500hp, that is how far that engine type could ever go in traction. Old, simple and most of all twin bank. 2750 was a bridge WAY too far in terms of balance, mechanical and thermal stress on engines which were not always even made at Sulzer/winthenthur. Infact 2350 hp with intecooling would have been a more sensible rating and many actually question if duffs and intercooled peaks did on average any more than this. The order for the "second generation higher horse power type 4" should have been split between several manufacturers, possible with a Falcon style loco being a concession to some standardisation of PU for the western region. ( twin high speed engines had become  comparably reliable to the 12LDA and of course both the deltics, the blue pullman and "Falcon" showed that the approach was a very valid way of offering an added degree of redundancy in getting an ailing loco to pull its load home on one PU. Also it must be noted that there is a total voltage / ampage in terms of overcoming the single PU weak field : deltics do not require field diversion until they are at around 50mph, the second engine dialling in the additional ampage while mechanical power delivery is still then comparable to a type 4 (1650hp then pulling in the second engine slowly to eventually a presumed 3300hp give or take how the loco is set up and how quickly it accelerates to a point where the first field weakens due to back EMF) This must not be overlooked because realistically it is the number of cycles an engine makes which determine its service interval. Higher speed engines have proven to have a shorter service interval, but mainly because they were chosen as somewhat exotic high power output to cc and weight in the late 50s early 60s.

The SVT / RK unit was inherently a lighter and in vee form, a more advanced power unit to upgrade over time. Even in the late 90s, replacement 37 pistons were those common stock to class 58 and worn out class 56s had their engine blocks surrogate mothered into some 50s! The V form, multi turbo approach in a light engine which had proven marine and traction application in the early 1950s, should have been ordered in numbers as part of the second (or third) phase of dieselisaiton instead of 1) continuing to 1964 with the D200 type 4 production 2) buying only 50, over advanced EE type 4 D400s.

The ideal situation would have been for Brush and Sulzer, in fully evaluating the 12LVA engine. Although in the fullness of time, it only offered 70 hp over the duff engine, getting this engine right at 2650hp would have been a better use of time and resources than derating all the duffs made by the time the decision had to be made in the 1960s. In the fullness of time though, the LVA is a 1100rpm engine and this may have proven a weakness. Also it is more complex to maintain. For we wailway enfoosiasts, it would have been a welcome variation to the endless boredom of joe strumming and winney whining!

Despite a hugely expensive rectification programme on the runs of duffs made, to put into perspective, more than the purchase price of the deltic fleet, duffs and Peaks were never all that reliable in terms of miles per casualty. When you compare like for like with say the "unreliable" class 50 post HGR in the 80s, duffs and peaks working express services had similar MPC's. The eastfield /haymarket 47/7s only maintained a reasonable MPC on the very hard service twixt the two native cities of the respective depots by a series of proactive maintenance, often on night shift hours.

This is the crux of the matter: Duffs lasted so long and were really such a good investment long term because they were darn easy to fix. A single turbo, with simple crank shafts, basically a mirror copy of working on a 6LDA with a bigger single turbo. Leaks, cracks, valve wear, timing /push rod system etc could all be kept on top of, or fixed rapidly if there wasnt a major fail like valve seat destruction or crank case / cylinder lining decompression.

Further to the MPC rate,  a duff will grind away with her high ampage producing much lower engine HP and do a grand job. Indeed on many services 2500 hp with no ETH is complete overkill. I would also contest that duff's produce much more than 2000hp on no-E-heat services due to the punchy use of amps, the arrangement and rather pedestrian field diversion shifts and the speed limits on many routes or frieght services. When duffs did go bang, they would get hauled in usually by an EE type 4 or 3 and they were quick to fix most often. This was the secret to a relatively high class availability in comparison to the actual MPC's_: they went bang more often than EE type 4s for example, but could be fixed quicker, and depots got used to proactive maintenance as stated, which meant that "B" exams were really a bit more like a more involved bit of engineering.

However, given that a "DP2" earlier 2350hp loco had replaced the last 50% of the d200 fleet for example, it may have been that EE recommended an auxiliary generator as was pencilled in the drawings for class 37s. ( D6700 EE type 3's)

Class 40s and 37s show very much that you can bang away on a 70mph average speed timetable, producing pretty much full power through each field all day long and not have any significant increase in miles per casualty. Brakes etc wear out quicker, and oil needs replacing, timing chains adjusting, but that is simple maintenance.

Where of course duffs and ETH rancid wagons had their strength was in heating ETH stock. there the engine was revving higher in outset and power at rail required pretty much maximum output I'd say. The evil trade of "coffin" stock. Another strong point being freight where they could chunder away with a lot of mechanical pulling power delivered by virtue of Brush choosing high ampage.

 One of the big advantages which BR saw once the class had been de-rated, was safety in numbers, there being economic spare parts, depot maintenance legacy, driver training etc etc to make the class highly available ( although class availability of 90% still means that there were seven or eight times as many duffs unavailable than the "unreliable" 50s in the late 1980s) and with the build quality of bogies, electrical systems couple to the ease of Power Unit maintenance, the class paid themselves back many, many times over in a life time which far exceeded any other of the major LDA derived locomotive class anywhere.Damp Freddiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01335140908458450601noreply@blogger.com0