Bluebell Railway General Discussion

your forgiven. Do you remember if you enjoyed the day. (been there done that)

 

What you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is your business, please do not bring it here. Just make sure your mum doesn't find out why those pages are missing from the Grattan catalogue...

 

All joking apart there does need to be given a thought to the long term future and preservation of third rail electric. The Bluebell is in the best place for this I doubt there is a long term future for third rail in the uk and future generation should be able to see this.

 

Whilst unlikely that third rail will be extended I think it extremely unlikely that 750V dc will dissapear in the foreseable future. There is simply too much invested in third rail infrastructure to rip it out and replace it by 25kv overhead. Structure clearances in Kent are rather tight and closing the railway to increase clearances just to introduice a slightly technical superior system simply does not make sense. The third rail has been in use for 90 years and I predict another 90 to come

 

The problem with third rail preservation on a preserved line is that lots of people seem keen in theory, but rather less so in practice when it actually come sot parting with money!

The technical problems are formidable. You also have the issue that your carriages and motive power are linked, and a failure of one is effectively a failure of the other - also a problem with, say, one coach in a four coach unit takes the whole unit out of service. So whereas with a four coach set or carriages, you could give an overhaul to, say, one coach every couple of years and leave the others in service in the meantime, on a four coach EMU, it is all or nothing in the workshop - which doesn't help scheduling of overhauls.

I think 3rd rail EMUs are worthy of preservation and an important part of our heritage. But I think that will be for mainline usage, not heritage line, because of the infrastructure complexity of having a short section of 3rd rail in isolation of the main body of the network. Things like the Brighton Belle project are the future.

Tom

 

I see from the Bluebell loco roster that 5643, L150, 847, 1638, 592 263 and Captain Baxter will be all working on the 22nd and 23rd March Captain Baxter is down for Brake Van rides see http://www.bluebell-railway.co.uk/bluebell/loco_roster.html

 

Tom - you can run a 4 car unit as a three so long as you remember which car has the crossover of the comand wires for forward and reverse. On a CEP its in the composite. Remove the composite and you need to swap the comand wires elsewhere. if you need to remove a driving coach or trailer you do need a spare.

Swaping the comand wires was forgotten during refurb of CEP at swindon and first time tried on juice at Strawbery Hill the unit tried to pull itself apart

 

Presumably you can take out a middle coach and run as three, but not either of the end ones - rather similar to the Mets...

Tom

 

The problem with mainline running EMU's is the crashworthyness/barrier coach issue (unsure if it even got fully lifted) with Mk1's and earlier stock, the Hastings Units has a whacking great Diesel engine between the front/rear which conventional EMU's don't.

Unless the rules change, I reckon you'd need at least 2X 4 car units in that case if there's a high chance the front and rear coach would need to be locked out of use.

 

I notice 1520 is getting a rare outing this weekend, hopefully a sign of better things for this particular carriage

 

if it's not a daft question, why doesnt LSWR 1520 coach receive more use? it is a beautiful coach! i remember it from 'fire train days'!
cheers,
julian

 

I suspect it is due to it having only has 38 seats.

 

I suspect the mismatched livery doesn't help either, gorgeous as it is.

For my money, 1520 is the finest ordinary coach on the railway; when it does run, I always seek it out it preference to any of the firsts. But maybe that is my closet South Western tendencies showing themselves!

Tom

 

then there is hope that the LBSCR Directors Saloon might get restored as well !
(also limited capacity)
cheers,
julian

 

All this talk of the apparent inflexibility of EMUs makes me wonder why the main line TOCs love them so much...

The fact is that if the Ardingly branch did become the home of SR 750V d.c. preservation, you would be looking at having a fair few units in the fleet, plus maybe a class 73 or two and maybe even a 71. You would surely use the VEP as the Bluebell already own it, whether you'd want too many other units of that era I have my doubts (I'm sure older units would sit better with the era the Bluebell recreates), but to some extent you are stuck with what's available.

The notion that it's impractical because of maintenance requirements is, I think, a red herring. I doubt the Bluebell's present facilities could cope with the size of fleet you'd need when Ardingly reopens anyway. Clearly if the branch goes down the EMU route there will need to be a separate EMU storage and maintenance facility, probably up the branch somewhere. At this point you may as well set up a subsidiary company to operate the electric services and maintain the units, and you might use privately owned units (so the responsibility for restoration is separate) too.

As for changing the track circuits at HK, presumably the track connections and line side cabling wouldn't change, just the relays and power supplies, so it may not be as difficult as you're making out. Not trivial, but not a full scale resignalling.

 

There's a big difference between a mainline TOC, with say a 90% availability across maybe 100 units; and a heritage railway with the same availability over maybe a single unit. In the former case, you always have 90 available and ten in the works; in the latter case your actual real availability is a binary function - you either have it, or its in the works.

At least in the the early years as well, the SR advertised its electric services on cleanliness and freedom from smuts and soot - whereas on a heritage railway, that is part of the attraction.

Main line TOCs also like the flexibility, especially at termini, of just being able to change engines and depart again; it simplifies point work and signalling, and means you don't need a carriage shed pilot.

All of those are massive advantages on the mainline, but are irrelevant or illusory to a heritage line.

I don't think the maintenance requirements are a red herring. I think you are right that we will be pushed for C&W maintenance resources when we open to Ardingly, but the plain fact is that the volunteers generally want to work on other, mostly older, vehicles: I simply don't see any enthusiasm - at least not to the scale desired - to work on EMUs. The fact that, after many years we still only have three Maunsell vehicles running shows how complicated and expensive those vehicles are: I simply don't see where the resources would come from to restore, say, a 4-COR.

As I say, I'm not an S&T engineer. But the track circuits aren't just to give an indication on a panel; they are also interlocked with the signals such that, for example, you can't clear a main signal into a platform that is occupied. So I think change from 12V DC to 24V DC would be a big deal - even if the equipment was available.

Tom

 

I'm happy to be corrected, but I believe the requirement for barrier vehicles has now been removed.

Chris

 

Might go down. Seems like an unofficial gala weekend (possibly because its 1 year to the weekend that the line opened to East Grinstead. Blimey how thats flown by) with diesels one day and steam the next 2.

 

Also the official launch event for 847, I believe.

Tom