West Somerset Railway General Discussion

That’s Helen of Troy by comparison with a class 68.

A class 68 looks like the client sponsored a drawing competition at a local infant school as part of their community engagement programme, but then accidentally sent the drawings to the train builder and said “we’d like some like this please...”

Tom

 

Lovely machine. In the very early 50s, when staying with my Grandparents who lived in a railway cottage in Campbell Road, Eastleigh, I used to spend hours looking through the fence by the coaling stage and disposal pits and was always very excited at the sight of a Q1, not that I knew it was a Q1, it was just different!

 

Would love to have seen a Q1, only ever seen one in NRM

 

Someone please tell me details about vintage buses in May 13th. Think was something minehead to porlock. But can not find info. Thxs

 

Agreed. We get the 68s on the Chiltern mk3 sets which reverse at Kidderminster so you get three goes for the price of one ECS to reversing siding or down loop, siding to station and station away to Marylebone

 

Enter Taunton Bus Running Day into your search engine and lo, it will be revealed.

 

No one seems to have mentioned these.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_70_(diesel)

 

I think you’re unfair there. To me, the 68s have a purposeful look that indicates both speed and power, with a degree of elegance. The 67s and 70s show the depths modern design can plummet to.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

From yesterday.......

 

Do I detect a hint of relevant content.....?

 

Shhhhhhh don't tell everyone.....

 

I have seen this too and it has always intrigued me. You would think that with four beats the exhausts from both ends would be coinciding
to give a higher pressure out of which they would naturally be forced. So a Garratt settling down to pull steadily on a consistent bit of track
would lock step at eight beats.
There are apparently only two possible connections between the separate ends to make this happen: something vibratory via the boiler frame through the pivots or through the back pressure from the cylinders to the blast pipe. Beats out of the funnel means the effect must come involve back pressure on the pistons.
There must be something changing what one would expect from the back pressure effect but what?
It would presumably need to overcome the least pressure at the blast pipe cap effect and then cause the ends to microslip into step.

 

I've heard it said the same effect occurs on Double Fairlies, which have two separate exhausts, so I don't think that blast pipe pressure is likely as a cause. The simplest explanation to my mind is that if at any instant one power unit is exerting significantly more force than the other, microslip will occur, in different amounts between the two power units, and hence their phase relationship will slowly change until they are in phase.

 

Garratt ( or Fairlie or Mallet) front and power units do not syncronise due to the reasons given earlier - differences in wheel size or one and not the other unit slipping.
The reason for the idea of the two Garratt power units syncronising was the earlier designs with poorly designed valves and having contorted exhaust passages and the exhaust beat of the rear unit being dampened down by the length of exhaust pipe.

For a complete explanation please see this extract from "Garratt Locomotives of the World" by A.E (Dusty) Durrant.

Cheers, Neil

 

I think they look a bit like the back of a Nissan Juke- does that then make them a Jukebox?

Jon

 

Hardly fair to the locomotive. The Juke is the ultimate in yuk!

PH

 

right you lot who cant read this thread is about west somerset railway operations please clear off and play somewhere else

 

The WSR seem to love diesels, I believe they are having some sort of do that is specific to diesels later this year so maybe it is of interest to some WSR folk.

 

I saw one of those on a heritage railway, can't remember which one, a few years back and I thought what an ugly locomotive. Looks like something a 5 year old would build out of lego bricks,

 

Would that be the diesel gala?