Electric Loco, Diesel Loco, both DVTs....

[tbtc]

[Digs out Platform 5 book]

One Class 90 weighs 84.5t
One Mark IIIa TSO weighs 34.3t
One Class 90 = 2.5 Mark IIIa's

So, two or three coaches in weight, but only one coach in length. Length is probably more important than weight in this country. We cut back to shorter lengths partly for weight at speed and partly to fit into platforms. SDO can help that, but the length of a dead loco does cause problems.

Cheers.

I think on most "Inter City" routes (to/ from London), the services are already at maximum length, so there'd be little scope to go to ten/ twelve coaches

 

[Pumbaa]

There is a Current Limit index on all 3rd rail routes, I think most have been upgraded but when I was on the Southern you could not have any more 4 power (EMU) cars CLI of 16 in one TP hut section at one time, the slammers had a CLI of 4 so did the 455's, a 456 had a CLI of 2 and an ED a cli of 12. I think that has been upgraded due to the 375/7's and the Eurostars on the network but if it has it was after my time

Practically everything has now been upgraded. Beyond Southampton on SWT there is still strict CLI, but I think 92s are passed down there anyway to Bomo. South Central is virtually scot-free and can chuck as much in as you like, other than the coastways. Same for SE.

 

[Moog_1984]

There has to be some time-cost benefit in dragging a 25kv loco or the opposite around: but there is also the flexibility and extra income of the sets for Sunday diversions and Addexs over diverted routes.

DEMU/EMU and even a triple mode with 3rd rail : why not-? they can always be split down to consituent units once a route is electrified or it proves uneconomic.

I would be well up for seeing an AIA dual mode loco of about 2000bhp DE, 5000 peak 25kv. The spanish and the americans have some dual mode locos, and the french used to have a 3rd rail / DE loco calls.

( to clarify on why 67s are a bad place to start in thinking about dual mode locos: 67s are built in a fairly long, heavy prima standard body which is for example fitted CoCo with an RK215 for syrian and sri lankan railways. Heavy on the axels with the GM 645 unit onto BoBo. THe latest incarnations were deliverd BoBo in france with a more powerful fancy valved GM v12 and some with the MTU 16 (think that operator had some units like 170s with 8 cylinder MTUS))

 

[TDK]

Cheers.

I think on most "Inter City" routes (to/ from London), the services are already at maximum length, so there'd be little scope to go to ten/ twelve coaches

The length of the train is just the coaches when stopping as long as there isn't a signal involved you can stop at a 4 car plaform with 2 loco's and 4 coaches with ease, just have the leading loco and the training off the platform
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The 67s use the GM 645 derived lump which is heavy and they are a Prima design which could (should?) be fitted with Co-Co . So heavy in fact that this is the only loco listed with an incorrect weight: if you fuel one completely up it goes over the axel load limit!

The 67 weighs 90 tons with a full tank as specified the RA8 is due to the bo-bo bogie vice a co-co, on production no company could provide a co-co for 125 running that is why it has a bo-bo and that is why the yanks used the Spanish for that purpose as they had no experience in high speed bogies!

 

[LE Greys]

The length of the train is just the coaches when stopping as long as there isn't a signal involved you can stop at a 4 car plaform with 2 loco's and 4 coaches with ease, just have the leading loco and the training off the platform

I know I'm veering off topic here, but I've always wondered how they coped with the massive lengths of train they had in steam days. The Mid-Day Scot and the Cornish Riviera Limited used to regularly load to fifteen coaches, while a V2 once shifted twenty-four from King's Cross on an evacuation train in 1939 (which must have been volcanic in Gas Works Tunnel ). I know the Swanage holiday trains used to go against the starter, because they were so far beyond it. Still, how is it that they could cope with such massive lengths then, but not now?

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Yes, but carriage lengths in those days were somewhat less weren't they? Generally 20m compared to the 23m we have now on the IC routes; so the difference in overall length ( apart from that evacuation train! ) wouldn't be so great - about equal to two carriages more than at present.

Many stations also had longer platforms that now - indeed, there are quite a lot of platforms around the country which still exhibit fenced off and ruined, overgrown lengths - although that would be a subject for another thread, I think?