Yellow Stripes

Yes Ian, 46233 now has yellow cabside stripes and also late BR crest to see out it's last few months in green livery.

 

Probably least known is 44767 which carried a stripe on the Jacobite trains for a few days in 1996, I have no idea why - it must have been tape because it disappeared a few days after this shot on 12th August.
Does this make it the only Black 5 to have carried a yellow stripe ?

Scott

 

Steam Dreams will be very disappointed if she can't! In September and October, she is due to visit Kidderminster, Gloucester and Salisbury - all a fair distance south of Crewe..

 

Not sure where I scanned this from, so apologies to the photographer/publisher.

49407 at Pleck Junction, 21/8/1964.

 

Are those wagons in the background not allowed south of Crewe too??

 

Deep in my memory bank I recollect that Crewe - Manchester & Liverpool were electrified at 25KV and nothing else. Going south a system was developed whereby some sections were at 6.25KV to allow reduced clearances under bridges and save rebuilding them. The reduced clearances also applied to between wire and train. Can anyone confirm this? Wiki seems to do with this statement:
"Early 50 Hz AC railway electrification in the United Kingdom used sections at 6.25 kV AC where there was limited clearance under bridges and in tunnels. Rolling stock was dual-voltage with automatic switching between 25 kV and 6.25 kV. The 6.25 kV sections were converted to 25 kV AC as a result of research work that demonstrated that the distance between live and earthed equipment could be reduced from that originally thought to be necessary."

It also goes on to make the following statement which I've never heard before:
"The research was done using a steam engine beneath a bridge at Crewe. A section of 25 kV overhead line was gradually brought closer to the earthed metalwork of the bridge whilst being subjected to steam from the locomotive's chimney. The distance at which a flashover occurred was measured and this was used as a basis from which new clearances between overhead equipment and structures were derived."

 

Steve, I thought that the 6.25kV sections were on the GE/LTSR and some were found round Glasgow. Both areas were for EMUs only at the time, of course. I don't recall hearing about any 6.25kV sections on the WCML south of Crewe.

 

You are probably right. It is just something I vaguely remember from when the yellow stripes came into being. I know sections of the GER were at 6.25kV.

 

When the Glasgow Low Level electrification was brought into service, it rapidly became apparent that the auto-changeover equipment on the Class 303 units (as they were remembered later) was not as reliable as it needed to be, leading to transformer fires. Because of that the mixed voltage system was phased out, and the acceptable clearances for 25kV were reduced somewhat.

 

If you visit the SVR at the moment you will see Erlestoke Manor is currently running with a Western Region warning device to help make the electrocution of firemen less likely: a rectangular red frame fitted to the tender as a kind of doorway, to indicate maximum safe height.

 

The chances of being electrocuted on the SVR are probably slim. The chances of a bang on the head, on the other hand...

 

That wasn't the auto-changeover equipment, it was the mercury-arc rectifiers backfiring (see Brigadier Langley's report). The changeover equipment problems were on the Shenfield line.

 

Mornin' all.

Does anyone here know when the first yellow stripes were actually applied? I see above that a Duchess was shot with stripes on 01.08.64 (hardly worth applying them, was it, as the magnificent machines only had a few more weeks to serve), but that's not necessarily the day when the first stripes were applied...

 

The only time I saw Duchesses in service (7 of them at Kingmoor and Upperby -46225/226/228/237/244/250 & 257) was my first visit to Carlisle in the summer (July) of 1964. All the Jubilees, Patriots and Scots we saw on that same visit were similarly adorned. From memory they all had the stripe and it was considered normal (but new and modern) at the time and the magazines had contemporary photos of the cabsides wearing yellow stripes iirc. My schoolfriend was lucky enough to photograph 60027 Merlin with the cabside stripe on Kingmoor turntable some weeks before that.

I never did see Merlin.

 

I cabbed it a couple of times . Sorry !...…………………...

 

I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but this is a Youtube clip of a 25kV flashover onto a B1 at Liverpool Street.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQTinmPjS_o

 

That wasn't the best day for the B1. Events later in the day meant we had lunch and dinner on the train in Norwich station followed by service train home.

 

I remember being uncomfortably close to oa similar flashover in Crewe station - I'd guess it was late in 1963. A Duchess arrived with a train from Glasgow on which I had travelled, and I detrained to talk to the engine driver. The loco had stopped with its chimney right underneath one of the insulators and as it was early in the morning and the air was damp, conditions for the flashover were ideal. The bang didn't half make me jump and the sparks flew extremely close!

 

The yellow stripe has become quite the fascination of mine, with my N Gauge LMR collection including 46239, 46122, 45654 and 43999 having the stripe as of this date, with no doubt more to come. To add to the list of loco classes that received the the stripe, there's a shot on Rail Online of LNER A2 No.60527 'Sun Chariot' at Carlisle Citadel with the stripe on the 25th September 1964. I've also got her in N Gauge, so she'll be treated to a bit of yellow in the near future. Was she the only A2 so treated, unless anyone knows any different? http://www.rail-online.co.uk/p1024079548/h64aab8a0#h64aab8a0

 

Polmadie's 60512, 60522, 60524 and 60535 all received yellow stripes, as well as 60527.