35018 British India Line

It is possible for any steam loco to fail at any time regardless of its mileage.

 

Tell you what, why don't you list all the failures that have been down to the loco - electrical gubbins excluded - and then correlate that with how much running in the loco had done before going into service and also after how many runs the failure occurred. Then we can draw a picture of who has got it right regarding how much running is needed. Early days but at the moment 35028 is suggesting it didn't need hundreds of miles of heritage railway testing to prove her reliability and IIRC she has never had test runs anywhere other than the main line.

 

The nature of the beast as anyone who owns a loco will tell you.

 

Correction... It is possible for ANY loco to fail at any time. Steam does not have the exclusive rights to failure.

 

I would have thought any sane loco owner or those in charge of working on it would not sanction a test run unless they were 99% sure of the locos reliability. If the main line was your test track, then I would propose that figure might be far closer to 99.9%. Why waste money and time trundling up and down a preservation line when that money and time could be better spent giving the new loco a proper workout that better reflects what the engine will be required to do in it's revenue earning day job?

 

The cost of any failure on the Mainline are quite considerable these days and I'm sure WC and other operators ensure to the best of their considerable engineering ability a loco is fit for duty before it's allowed out. I don't think they are going to take any notice of the armchair experts on here who are so forthcoming with their advice.

 

To misquote Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, You see, in this world there's two kinds of people my friend - those who own and operate locos and those who think they know it all.

 

Worth recapping the origin of the running in debate. I simply said the ONLY thing 10A lacks is a decent length running line to test engines rather than within the confines of a busy and crowded operational depot. That is not condemnatory of how things are done in practice.
Yes they have access to the little north western route but a loco has to have reached a certain stage of completeness before it will be permitted out of the depot. Ideally you might want to do some lengthier runs at an earlier stage, especially for something that has barely turned a wheel for 50 years? Is that really such a contentious proposition?

 

Not necessarily advice. Just observations. Running in a new loco on a heritage lines does have the attraction of pulling punters to the railway and creates awareness that could fill paid mainline tours.

 

How would the 99% confidence of reliability be gained prior to sanctioning a test run?

 

I think you are trying to over-analyse it. You restore things to known standards and tolerances, which give a high degree of confidence in reliability, but you can never be 100% sure that a loco will be reliable - either during running-in or in revenue traffic.

I don't have the figures to back it up, but I suspect mainline steam now is more reliable (measured in failures per revenue mile) than it was in, say, the 1960s, primarily because the inspections before a loco goes off shed are far more thorough. A very minor niggle would be enough now to fail a loco that in days past would have run with possibly quite significant faults. On the other hand, the consequences of a failure now are more significant, because the network is less flexible to deal with a failure (fewer sidings, fewer crossovers, help further away etc).

Tom

 

Why don't you list all the ex Barry locos that have become mainline registered and have had little heritage line time?
It is honestly quite funny to read some folk trying to argue a point they do not believe simply to take issue. Devils advocate?
There is not a single person who, given a choice would, not do as much gentle comissioning of an ex scrapyard engine as they could, afforded by a heritage line. Fair enough if you do not have that option.

 

Doesn't only happen to locomotives, the Jaguar 'had a moment' a couple of weeks ago, the dreaded 'restricted performance' message showed up. A jubilee clip on a turbo boost pipe had failed. A silly little thing, not possible to foresee, but ..........that's the way things go. Any bit of machinery can throw a fault up at any time.
FS ran hot on the way to York, unforeseen, this was after just about a total nut and bolt strip down and some running in a ELR

 

To ask that question you are underestimating the people involved. It would be hard to imagine a workforce with anything less than hundreds of years of collective experience that have been involved in the process.

 

Where??
Are you saying the Hellifield circular is not adequate?

 

Every Engine that has is intended to go mainline has to meet certain standards, and have documentation that is has met those requirements, So it should not matter where an engine is overhauled, the idea is that the standard of the work should be to a minimum standard, that will ensure as far as possible its been overhauled to an high standard. running in on a heritage line has its advantages, and its Disadvantages, you can trial an engine without effecting the network, but your restricted to heritage line speeds for much of it, and you can get some mileage in and run bearings etc in, before a light test, but there is a world of difference between running at 25, and on NR,engines have ran in on a heritage line, yet still ran hot on a NR light test, that Clan line only did a very limited amount of tests before hauling a very heavy Pullman train was taking a risk, but it was one the owning group knew the engine should pass OK , BIL , had a number of test runs on the Helifield line , before she was thought OK to attempt a loaded test. Clan Line entered the overhaul a working engine, one that everything was known on, so post overhaul confidence would be high, BIL on the other hand has never steamed in preservation, and was unknown, it had stood for years in the open, so no dought has to be treated differently, and will need a period of attention because niggling faults are only to be expected but the important thing is, we have 3 active Merchant navies, with two more , possibly 3 to return to steam, with hopefully 35027 to one day join her two sisters eating up the miles on the national network.

 

Not at all but, as you would gather from a full reading of the post, in order to get to a stage where setting out on the mainline is possible the loco has to be far more complete than it would to be tested at length on a private line. As an example, 45212 did its running in then went back in the works for fitting of the ancillary equipment that is necessary for a loco to use network metals.
That seems to be the ideal chronology as you are proving the core functionality first but I accept that ideal circumstances are not always possible.

 

I was interested in your view of how reliability could be a theoretical thing determined in advance of being tested.
I fully agree that skilled people assembling something in the proper manner have grounds to be confident the machine will function correctly but testing it is the only way to become confident the machine will function reliably in practice.

 

Yes, that's pretty much what it boils down to and now they are at the testing stage.

 

Doesn't that come back to a question of risk assessment? In this case trading off confidence in the workmanship, quality of parts and materials, against the various options for running in and testing, to work out a view of the likely results of a test; all influenced by the costs of the various options.