9F Locomotives - Restrictions on Network Rail

Mods, this is a fascinating subject, but a chance remark of mine about the Hosking fleet has resulted in thread drift - from 45231 to the flangeless driving wheels on a 9F. How about splitting this off into a new thread?

 

With regard to 9F's on express passenger I can confirm that it definitely happened more than once , I can remember quite well standing on Hornsey station and seeing an express come under Ferme park flyover heading north with a 9F going at a fair rate of knots , I have since read that their use was stopped due to the high piston speed and subsequent wear on the piston rings .

 

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ISTR, there was a story in Motor or something of that ilk many years ago, which was picked up by one of the railway mags at that time. A journo had been testing a car and was surprised to be overtaken by a big black steam loco. A grab shot out of the car window revealed it to have been a 9F. It may have been a Crosti and it may have been on the Nith Valley route, but my memory is a bit hazy on these details. It was probably in the second half of the 50s.

 

Also Evening Star on the Red Dragon.

 

9fs are also banned where axle counters are used for train detection

 

I thought that they were banned everywhere on the Network. Doesn't that automatically include where axle counters are?

 

I might as well make a radical suggestion to celebrate my 1,000th post. Put flanges on the centre axle and connect the front one with a Krauss-Helmholtz truck. Perhaps we had better see how no. 134 behaves on the WHR first!

 

The 9Fs and point work issue goes a long way back as earlier posted by others.

Can't give you the date but regarding speed know somewhere I have a copy edition of Railway Magazine reporting a ban by the WR of 9Fs on express passenger trains. IIRC the incident/quoted figure triggering the ban was one recorded doing 93mph through Southall. (Contemporary report in the traffic news part)

I also recall reading that in addition to the piston speed others have mentioned another worry was also that with such high speeds unbalanced reciprocal forces could cause one to jump off the track. That of course isn't a new theory either, it is often quoted as a factor by doubters of City of Truro's recorded speed; it couldn't do 100mph without derailing. Well we know 9s can probably hit 90 (several reported instances) and none did come off. Was that just luck/drivers feeling from the loco's running that it was ok or flawed theory?


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Hasn't Evening Star been to Whitby at least once in the past or is my memory flawed? Very tight curves though on that line.


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Equates to 521 rpm. Mallard at 126mph would have been 529 rpm! Quite similar.

Dave

 

And neither, I submit, a wise strategy for day to day running and normal service trains...

 

For reference I rode behind it on a Scarborough Spa Express in August 1985. No 50 mph restriction on that day in my experience. Evening Star ran the York - Scarborough - York section with Sir Lamiel on the York - Leeds - York circular.

http://www.brsince78.co.uk/2037.htm
http://www.brsince78.co.uk/2091.htm
http://www.brsince78.co.uk/2055.htm

 

October 1987

 

Whitby has tight curves, but no raised checkrails!

 

Is that a fact? Knowing how axle counters work, I feel fairly sure a flangeless driving wheel would count ok. Has it simply not been tested? It would be a relatively simple matter to put an axle counter at, say, the GCR, and run 92214 through it numerous times and monitor the count.

Doesn't solve the check rail issue of course.

Incidentally, a 9F was once recorded at (IIRC) 89mph just south of Ruddington on the GCR.

 

I know a driver a local preserved railway wrote about an instance when he drove a 9f in the high 80's on a fitted van train. Apparently he had make an emergency brake application to stop at a signal!

That sounds likely as an old friend of my said he once drove a 9f near there in the high 80's, I think he wrote about it in his book 'Saltley firing days'.

 

Woulden't you lose the grandfather rights steam has to many regulations on NR with such a radical modification ?

 

All sold to America.