Silly season? - The K3 project

Now thats just silly...

 

At what point does the driver yell "Punch it Chewie" when he wishes to go to light speed ?.

 

this is not one of my dreams . Just thought I would clear that up to start.

I suppose the only way they could get that speed out of her is to run her down HS2

 

...or over a cliff!

 

Wrong technique.
It all depends on the colour of the logs used.
Green then Yellow and finally Red before velocity is reached.

Helps if you have a hover board as well.

 

... whilst being banked by a Eurostar presumably.

 

This really is all getting silly. Or is it? One reason the APT failed was because some idiot didnt talk to Girling but designed an over complicated hydro kinetic which didnt work. The real BR engineers did talk to Girling and they produced a disk brake more than capable of stoping a train at 140mph, the HST.

Steam loco brakes are pretty poor, esp on a pacific where only 6 of the 12 wheels are braked. It is the coaches which stop the train not the loco as was demonstrated in LNER brake tests

 

Think this says it all.

 

Err, no - it did work, but the politico's wouldn't splash the cash, and before you know it they sell off the family silver, and then we buy back our own technology!

As for this here fantasy, just where is the Panto situated?..................

 

I'm pretty certain the hydro-kinetic brakes were unreliable, particularly up Shap in winter, as the working fluid was water which had a tendency to freeze.

 

ERR - the hydro kinetic brake failed on at least one press demonstration soon after which the project was cancelled. Agreed the power system worked and the bugs in the tilt system were solvable.but the public image had been shattered. We now as you say buy Italian Pendelinos using our technology but relying on convential disk brakes. Yes they do use regeneration but the brakes need to work from high speed just in case

 

Erm, I was trying to be generalist with regard to what you said - the main point being the politico's pulled the plug in more ways than one ie, they yet again sold us down the river........... and we have to buy back what we had designed at silly money.............

 

agreed

 

The Great Bear had ten of its twelve wheels braked, it was intended to fit brakes to all twelve but the whole contraption was becoming seriously overweight!

 

That rather depended on the loco, but most steam engines had better brakes than their diesel replacements; they never had to drag many tons of brake tender around to help them, anyway!

But with diesels and electrics, it's still the stock which does most of the braking. So tagging a diesel on the trailing end tends to put the whole train into compression on braking, as West Coast found at Ordsall Lane.

 

Serious thread drift .... but does any one know is Lady of Legend getting bogie brakes?

 

If the group proposing this monstrosity reckon they're serious, and have done their homework... Why the Hell did they come up with a 2-6-0 as their solution to achieving 140mph? - And a small-wheeled one at that. These hair-brained schemes used to be fun to read about, but now they're just tedious - It's no wonder that the majority of Joseph Public regard steam enthusiasts as weirdos with clowns like these around.

Next news it'll be a superheated version of the Steam Elephant, capable of taking 14 up Shap at 160mph...

Richard.

 

And before. The GWR removed their bogie brakes because tests demonstrated that they had minimal effect on train stopping. Its not altogether surprising that, given say a 10 coach train there are 40 braked axles on the train, three on the tender and three on the driving wheels. Another two, and the most lightly loaded at that, are not going to make much odds.

If Lady of Legend does get bogie brakes they may as well be cosmetic!

 

Quite a number of Edwardian locos had bogie brakes, and they were generally removed after a short period. The Brighton Atlantics certainly had them for a short while, also the Midland Compounds.

I always thought one reason was that they were hard to adjust properly. With a very large difference in axle load between drivers and carrying wheels, it was difficult to get the brake balance right between them, with the result that the bogie wheels were prone to locking. Given, as @Jimc says, the proportion of the total braking provided by bogie brakes was small anyway, then removing them solved a lot of problems without any serious adverse effect.

Tom

 

There was also a theory that bogie brakes were the cause of some derailments, the action of the brakes being to swing the bogie to one side or other. Can't see it myself, but it was mentioned several times.