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What if Woodhead hadn't closed?


Jim76
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23 hours ago, Graham1960 said:

At the end of they day even now you could remove all the cars and lorries from the roads and you wouldn't need to revert back to to horses etc.

If people like to drive in cars then you can build specific and safe places for them do so, such as motor racing circuits.  But most people do not need to drive or travel in any form of road transport.

We have the technology to eliminate the car and truck. We just have to have the guts to do it.

 

I, and my wife, have the benefit of staff free passes for National Rail, and now we are over 60 and live in Scotland bus passes too. But would we give up our car ? No, not ever; The convenience is just too great. So, sorry but the chance of persuading, or forcing, people to stop using cars is zero.

 

 

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It's not actually 'accidents' but the deaths caused by spreading poison gas along the streets, which some sources say kills up to 80,000 a year (lowest estimate I've seen is 50,000).

 

That's why the Nazis started mass killings by packing people into lorries then running the engine with the exhaust directed to the inside.

 

I live in a quiet side street but if I walk along a main road I can often smell the pollution.  We certainly need to come up with solutions but successive governments have not tackled the issue.

 

[IPW]

 

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22 minutes ago, Graham1960 said:

All goods can be easily moved around without using road transport. If you look at the Way To Live it explains in depth all things needed to get rid of the car and it's counterparts. And nothing is far-fetched. You have seen a shopping mall? That's not far fetched. All the shops in a small place. You walk around it. You don't drive inside one. Well just build the houses into one. I reckon even a City the size of Sheffield would only need 3 of these complexes. Which you could walk from end to end in 15 minutes. Linked by fast monorails moving people and the goods needed to the complex.  You're model railway kit would come to the complex on a monorail and then be carted to your door by a DPD/Hermes man with either an electric trolley or one he pulls along on wheels. No petrol, no accidents, no pollution. Depending on what your salary is now. Your house would be three times bigger than your current home is too.

 

Sounds like hell. You might like the idea of living in a sanitised world where you're every movement is planned out for you but I certainly don't.

I doubt the planet has the resources to move everyone on it into this 'Shangri las'  remember that we're 60 million people here and China, India and the USA are nearly 3 Billion people. Where are these infinite resources to come from to create this ? 

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On 11/07/2020 at 12:38, charliepetty said:

The LNER ordered 27 EM2 95mph Express locomotives & 80 EM1 Bo+Bo Electrics from Metro Vic, these were for the proposed Kings X-Leeds/York 1500V dc & the Great Eastern Shenfield-Norwich.

I have plans here for the extension of Reddish depot car sheds and the transfer from the Great Eastern of the DC  version of the 3 Car EMUs (506) for the proposed Guide Bridge-Manchester Central (Fallowfield Loop) suburban and Manchester to Liverpool Central.

 

It dos'nt take a genius to work out why 27 Co-Co & 80 Bo+Bo locos were ordered, the connection of the Rotherwood - Retford OR Wath to Doncaster could & should have happened.

 

If the Great Central had remained we would have had a HS2 Route, with Woodhead being the Link to Manchester.  Even today they are talking of HS3 (Birmingham - Leeds/Manchester) with the Leeds section possibly having a loop to Sheffield Victoria.  The route from there to Manchester is 'Shovel Ready' NOW.

 

Sadly the UK due to WW2 and goverment incompetence (Labour & Conservative) we could have High Speed trainf running today, not is 20 years time.

i'm sure I've heard as well that the Penistone Control Centre, opened in BR days with the electrification, had panels in place for carrying on along the former GC to Nottingham.

 

Even after the decision was taken in the mid '50's to standardise on A.C. in the context of Woodhead as part of a National Plan the conversion costs would not presumably have been that significant. As Mike Edge said earlier, the Overhead infrastructure west of Hadfield remains in use to this day despite being labelled "life expired" 39 years ago - something that makes me cringe every time I drive along the M67 (which goes nowhere!).

 

The other thing that the route could have been adopted for is an East - West lorries on rail route as employed in Austria and Switzerland to get under the Alps. It's pretty well a straight line from Immingham - Doncaster (A1) - Wentworth (M1) - Woodhead - Stockport (M60) - Warrington (M6) - Liverpool, with the correct financial structures in place how much congestion could that have taken off the M62? Not to mention making HS3 at a cost of gazillions possibly redundant.

 

John.

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Without dragging this too far off topic, I am currently living in a town of 13,000 people and am in the process of moving 200+ miles to a village with 137 people.  What you propose as an idyllic lifetstyle where everything is communal would be mental torture for me.

 

I would add that the former USSR tried this type of living in various guises for several decades, and none of it worked.

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On 11/07/2020 at 10:36, Suzie said:

 

With long term stability (no threat of government interfering to spoil the long term prospects) there would have been the possibility of investing for the long term to reap the eventual benefits. Doing nothing was not going to reap any short term benefits!

"The government" has, almost from their beginnings, interfered with the railways; in 1844, the then President of the Board of Trade, one W.E. Gladstone, had Railways Act passed through Parliament, which had clauses in it which allowed for nationalisation of railway companies under certain conditions. There was the 1889 act which made interlocking of signals, block working and continuous brakes on passenger trains compulsory. I believe there was an act in the 1890s which fixed minimum freight rates. The grouping of the railways was due to an act of Parliament; nationalisation was talked about then.

 

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4 hours ago, Graham1960 said:

All goods can be easily moved around without using road transport.

 

Utter nonsense; Not in the world we live in today.

 

3 hours ago, Graham1960 said:

What we are living in now is hell.

 

Utter nonsense. For by far the majority of people in the UK, and probably the world, living conditions now are better than they have ever been, Coronavirus notwithstanding.

 

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On 11/07/2020 at 13:55, PenrithBeacon said:

I think CJ Allen was a bit of a fantasist, his articles in RM are just crackers.

I have often thought that the LNER would have been much better off if it had modernisedits massive, and very expensive, agricultural network, replacing the Victorian 0-6-0s with modern d/e types or, better yet, with a fleet of lorries. Picking up produce from the farmers and taking it to concentration depots for onward distribution. Sometimes reduced costs are a better way of increasing profit.

Not convinced about the cost/benefits of electrifying the ECML in the forties/ fifties. It's mostly flat, unlike the Woodhead route and the modern steam engine's direct costs are much the same as electric power at an average speed of 60ish which is what the LNE locomotives were intended to do. The electric loco only really scores on schedules of 80 plus average (the steam engine starts to struggle here, needing two firemen) or low speed slogging with mineral trains on inclines.

Regards

I thought the Woodhead electrification was partly a tunnel scheme, i.e., to eliminate the horrific working conditions in working steam through the summit tunnels. Weren't they on a gradient, which meant you had to keep steam on in one direction at least.

 

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7 hours ago, John Tomlinson said:

i'm sure I've heard as well that the Penistone Control Centre, opened in BR days with the electrification, had panels in place for carrying on along the former GC to Nottingham.

 

Even after the decision was taken in the mid '50's to standardise on A.C. in the context of Woodhead as part of a National Plan the conversion costs would not presumably have been that significant. As Mike Edge said earlier, the Overhead infrastructure west of Hadfield remains in use to this day despite being labelled "life expired" 39 years ago - something that makes me cringe every time I drive along the M67 (which goes nowhere!).

 

The other thing that the route could have been adopted for is an East - West lorries on rail route as employed in Austria and Switzerland to get under the Alps. It's pretty well a straight line from Immingham - Doncaster (A1) - Wentworth (M1) - Woodhead - Stockport (M60) - Warrington (M6) - Liverpool, with the correct financial structures in place how much congestion could that have taken off the M62? Not to mention making HS3 at a cost of gazillions possibly redundant.

 

John.

I have access to the Penistone Control Centre Panel, there is not enough room on there for that, but it was designed for 5Ft bolt on sections, and the centre had the space for that.

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3 hours ago, 62613 said:

I thought the Woodhead electrification was partly a tunnel scheme, i.e., to eliminate the horrific working conditions in working steam through the summit tunnels. Weren't they on a gradient, which meant you had to keep steam on in one direction at least.

 

Down hill to Manchester on all three tunnels, the LNER started putting overhead equipment in the old tunnels but gave up due to water and their condition.

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4 hours ago, Graham1960 said:

I don't think one person has actual been and read my blog site that shows how it is all possible. It's not communal living and no the USSR never did anything like this before. You are simply going on gut reactions or have have a false sense of history that was taught to you at school. Which is still being shown in futuristic movies like Star Trek. That's caused by people think wheel, horse, trian, car, spacecraft as the development of the human race and it's technology.

But history doesn't work like that.

 

What I'm doing is suggesting how people can move about on two feet, not drive down the shops to get a paper! Especially when you are really subsidising people to do that. How much more gravel and stuff can we dig up to build a bypass that avoids that village with 137 people in it. And the village itself. That's not self sufficient. It has gas, electric, water, sewage. And who pays for the roads they get to and fro on? The people all need to eat. They are not producing their own food. Some farmer produces it. But it's expensive to farm. And nobody wants to the pay the proper cost of a pint of milk. Yet even the farmer is supported to do what they do. From either central government or the former EU. Paying the full cost of a pint of milk could make that Milk anything up to £10 a bottle, perhaps more. Instead it's 50p or £1.    

And what are the people eating? Probably something like chicken nuggets and chips. Chances are many of us will be eating the same thing at the same time of day. Nonsense you say. Well tell that to the people who advertise on TV. A recent TV advert pointed this out. 

Greenhouse gas, global warming, plastic pollution, billions spent on moving people often at speeds that you can walk at. The electric car that bursts into flames if you hit something, yes that's what people think of cutting down the oil problem. As a solution. Unless you are rich b***** then everyone knows that the planet Earth can't take much of the stuff we throw at it. Had fish for dinner recently. Well you just took in some man made chemicals that are universally banned. And the fat you cooked your chips in. Well that clogs up your local sewer and some poor sod has to dig it out. And what's in that stuff would make Covid look like a bad cold. 

And what's flowing down you local river is all the drugs people take that they get from the doctor or chemist. All of it coming out of your body when you go to the loo. 

Mind you it's good for some animals on the planet. The largest population of birds on the planet is chickens. But then again we know what happens to them! 

I started this thread to ask what would've happened if Woodhead hadn't closed when it did as I am interested in real railways and their histories together with the imaginary world of model railways.

 

I've had a look at your website and you make some interesting points. I like your monorails models.

 

It seems to have gone massively off topic! As you said above can we get back to Woodhead please?!  

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16 hours ago, Graham1960 said:

What we are living in now is hell.

Homeless, food shortages.

Nothing is planned out in the Way To Live. I have looked into the way it could be done, but it wouldn't be my vision. It would be much more democratic than that. The complexes are not utopian. There are some rules. If you work in one you live in it. But the resources save money. There's no gas to them. Food is cooked in what I called food courts. There are no kitchens in peoples homes, apart from a very simple thing. Most people can work from home. But you can go out at any time to eat, drink and entertain all within walking distance. As all education can be done in one area in each complex. All the money and staff that goes into education is much more concentrated. It's the same with medical. All the doctors, dentists nurses that are currently scattered for miles around a major city as in Sheffield, would now be in three medical units, open 24/7. One in each centre. Each centre would be democratically controlled. No need for a central government. 

The centre would only be three stories high. Inbetween each level a seven foot (approx) gap that allows all maintenance work to be done without anyone above being affected. No holes in the ground!  Some other buildings in the centre, not for living in, would have more levels.  All water and waste would be recycled. And it would be much safer, with police force that is now concentrated into a few mile areas rather than covering the whole area that Sheffield now occupies.     

 

PS: One country even one city could do it. And I reckon the rest would follow. Remember at the end of the day it's just a shopping mall with homes built into it. From the way the building shopping centres these days one of these complexers would be chicken feed.

Japan is already running the monorail systems made by Hitachi. They run under the track on tires. Which means that the sound is vastly reduced, unlike a tram system. They even use the same supply as the tram in Sheffield. Plus they can't knock anyone down, don't have issues with snow, leaves, or rail replacements.  Very easy to build, you just have to stick the supporting columns in the ground. It's then assembled in sections.

At the end of the day continuing to use road as the means of transport, means we would have to make more roads, more houses and expanding cities. London itself needs 200 billion investing in transport just to keep things moving.   

 

4 hours ago, Jim76 said:

I started this thread to ask what would've happened if Woodhead hadn't closed when it did as I am interested in real railways and their histories together with the imaginary world of model railways.

 

I've had a look at your website and you make some interesting points. I like your monorails models.

 

It seems to have gone massively off topic! As you said above can we get back to Woodhead please?!  

 

You are George Orwell and I claim my £10.

 

Mike.

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On 11/07/2020 at 13:55, PenrithBeacon said:

I think CJ Allen was a bit of a fantasist, his articles in RM are just crackers.

I have often thought that the LNER would have been much better off if it had modernisedits massive, and very expensive, agricultural network, replacing the Victorian 0-6-0s with modern d/e types or, better yet, with a fleet of lorries. Picking up produce from the farmers and taking it to concentration depots for onward distribution. Sometimes reduced costs are a better way of increasing profit.

Not convinced about the cost/benefits of electrifying the ECML in the forties/ fifties. It's mostly flat, unlike the Woodhead route and the modern steam engine's direct costs are much the same as electric power at an average speed of 60ish which is what the LNE locomotives were intended to do. The electric loco only really scores on schedules of 80 plus average (the steam engine starts to struggle here, needing two firemen) or low speed slogging with mineral trains on inclines.

Regards

 

As a matter of practical reality the "cheap money" came from repeal of Passenger Duty (a tax on rail fares) and I believe soft loans. That was where the money for the MSW and Shenfield electrification schemes came from, along with a certain amount of power signalling.

 

While the LNER had aspirations to electrify the ECML to Doncaster/Leeds/York , and had had them since the late 20s it's not clear that they would ever have had the cash to proceed

 

However the claim that the LNER was at any point effectively bankrupt or under threat of nationalisation is ill-founded. The company was making an operating profit until the end - and although BR rapidly went into the red after nationalisation, Gerry Fiennes suggests that the operating ratios on the ER were consistently the best on BR and in the black up to the late 1960s

 

It's also clear, reading between the lines of "I Tried To Run A Railway", that the LNER and its management were consistently the most rigorous cost-cutters and rationalisers in the industry - in one later chapter Fiennes refers to the WR as needing the ex LNER touch in that respect . Not surprising when they were operating under the tightest margins in the industry 

 

I doubt if the LNER would have benefitted from blowing investment capital on new kit for rural railways. The LMS approach resulted in large amounts of capital investment under "scrap and build" for locos which had a 15-25 year life at a modest benefit from the existing loco fleet. By contrast the LNER saved its investment capital for total renewal of the GE and GN suburban coaching fleets in the Twenties, power signalling, MSW and Shenfield electrifications, modern marshalling yards like March and Mottram, and ECML express services with a comprehensive high speed business express service in place in 1939.

 

Throwing money at rural railways in Norfolk and Lincolnshire seems pretty questionable - the ER ran those railways with existing stock until dieselisation in the late 1950s and it's not clear they had worse operating results than the LMR (they may even have had better) . The big savings came with DMUS and dieselisation

 

The LNER may well have had ambitions to link Sheffield with Nottingham under the wires (I suspect more accurately, Tinsley with Colwick yards) and the logical step beyond would have been Colwick/Grantham under the wires - a lot of ECML coal traffic came from Colwick. But once you move away from a country powered by coal, the logic underpinning all this falls away

 

It may be very relevant to recall that the LNER's Chief General Manager , Sir Ralph Wedgewood , came from the NER, which had electrified Tyneside suburban services, Shildon-Newport for export coal and was toying with ECML electrification. He may well have come to the conclusion that the best place to put those ideas into practice were in the LNER Southern Area - London suburban, ECML, and Woodhead electrification at 1500V DC

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Again, electrification of suburban commuter services, from their very beginning around London, Liverpool and Tyneside, were due to efforts by the railway companies to offset losses due to competition from electric tramways and, later, motor buses, no?

 

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22 hours ago, wasabi said:

It's not actually 'accidents' but the deaths caused by spreading poison gas along the streets, which some sources say kills up to 80,000 a year (lowest estimate I've seen is 50,000).

 

That's why the Nazis started mass killings by packing people into lorries then running the engine with the exhaust directed to the inside.

 

I live in a quiet side street but if I walk along a main road I can often smell the pollution.  We certainly need to come up with solutions but successive governments have not tackled the issue.

 

[IPW]

 


The solutions are already available - but they require the majority of the UK population to be willing to sacrifice their current way of life. The majority don’t want to do this and will punish any Government at the ballot box if they try and push the electorate too far.

 

Similarly cracking down on road transport means being willing to take on business and overcome vested interests who favour the status quo. Again any Government who influenced antagonises business is going to suffer if it results in higher consumer costs, unemployment or lower cooperate tax revenues (meaning cuts or higher taxes on citizens to balance the books)

 

Even with the first past the post electoral system we use its telling that the Green Party only have one MP and influence on a small number of councils where as elsewhere in Europe they have a far greater level of representation politically speaking.

 

Thus the first challenge of those wishing to curtail road transport is NOT to focus on radical Government measures - instead they FIRST need to soften up public opinion so that radical political change will be tolerated when elections take place.

 

 

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1 hour ago, phil-b259 said:


The solutions are already available - but they require the majority of the UK population to be willing to sacrifice their current way of life. The majority don’t want to do this and will punish any Government at the ballot box if they try and push the electorate too far.

 

Similarly cracking down on road transport means being willing to take on business and overcome vested interests who favour the status quo. Again any Government who influenced antagonises business is going to suffer if it results in higher consumer costs, unemployment or lower cooperate tax revenues (meaning cuts or higher taxes on citizens to balance the books)

 

Even with the first past the post electoral system we use its telling that the Green Party only have one MP and influence on a small number of councils where as elsewhere in Europe they have a far greater level of representation politically speaking.

 

Thus the first challenge of those wishing to curtail road transport is NOT to focus on radical Government measures - instead they FIRST need to soften up public opinion so that radical political change will be tolerated when elections take place.

 

 

One only has to see the near obsession in the current crisis by parts of the popular press with allowing folk to go to the pub and resume foreign holidays to see that sadly there is a lot of truth in what you say Phil.

 

There are two other routes to major change that I can think of, one is the ending of democracy, the other is a massive existential crisis way bigger than Covid19 - and I don't think we'd like either of these options, although arguably the climate emergency constitutes the latter.

 

By the way, in response to Wasabi, I'd always thought that it was the Romanian fascists under Antonescu in the '30's who had the idea of gassing by way of exhaust fumes into a truck. The German National Socialists simply developed the idea to a far more effective method capable of application on a much larger, industrial scale.

 

Apologies in advance for thread drift.

 

John.

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On 11/07/2020 at 17:09, Graham1960 said:

Like to see you come up with something! Instead of knocking people who do have ideas.

Perhaps you own a fleet of lorries or work in the motor industry that makes you so negative?

Next time someone you know dies on the roads you can tell the family it was preventable, but I have got either a vested interest in the motor industry so couldn't stop it happening, or worse still I'm too apathetic to do anything or say something to change it.

 

:offtopic:(as regards Woodhead)

 

The problem which you consistently seem to ignore is we live in a democracy and any measure / laws / changes the Government may make will require approval within 5 years via the ballot box. If the electorate doesn't like what the Government is doing it WILL kick them out in favour of someone else who promises to reverse the measures.

 

Thus the usual trick is for new Governments to get things the electorate don't like done in the fist couple of years, but then introduce more populist measures towards the end of the term in the hope that voters will overlook 'bad things' (e.g. tax rises) and reward 'good things' (e.g. fuel duty frozen) by the time the election is called.

 

Any measure which takes longer than a couple of years to intact is thus one which Governments are wary of carrying out as invariably the 'bad things' (e.g. construction disruption) will occur throughout the electoral term but the final 'good things' will not happen till the 2nd or 3rd electoral cycle has taken place (by which time the instigating party may not of course be in power)

 

However the changes you seek to make are profound and will touch on every aspect of daily life - they will need far reaching legislative action plus the total trashing and restructuring of the way the economy, tax system, etc works.

 

Such extensive measures will be guaranteed to cause individual citizens and businesses considerable expense, inconvenience over a significant period of time. They will also involve a massive amount of Government intervention in daily life to ensure compliance in the short term - hence the allusions to the novel '1984'

 

You also ignore the fact the UK does not exist in an isolated bauble - the current economic system is based around globalisation and expanding international trade governed by a plethora of international agreements. Things like say, taxing aviation fuel goes against international agreements and would certainly result in trade sanctions plus legal action being taken against the UK by other nations which will further cripple the UK economic structure and only a fool would pretend this would not have adverse effects on UK Citizens.

 

So while I understand (and indeed agree with a lot of your sentiments) it remains a fact that the programme you put forward is totally undeliverable short of the total suspension of democracy across the Western World with a prolonged dictatorship / authoritarian regimes which are not subject to popularity contests.

 

 

 

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But they might happen slowly if they can be proven to be cost effective, which most probably aren't, certainly in the next twenty years or so while governments are grappling with global warming. Anyway, back to the Woodhead route or as it been bashed to death?

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15 hours ago, Graham1960 said:

I don't think one person has actual been and read my blog site

I have read much of it, there were bits I skipped through boredom though.

TBH, I kind of like some of your aspirations and I do see the point you are trying to make - as bizarre and extraordinary as it is.

However - IF you were to follow your ideas through to their logical conclusion and at a point some 100+ years in the future when we are all living in your centres, do you not think they are very similar in organisation to the old world "city states" as seen in ancient Greece, for example?

Life in those times was NOT for the faint hearted and these city states spent all too much time fighting each other.

No, our present society, flawed as it is, will have to do - it will evolve naturally enough and who knows, we may end up in a world like your vision. One thing is definitely for sure, you will never be able to drive society towards such a thing as attempting to do so will only antagonise people.

 

Meanwhile, I do like the idea of a 1500v DC east coast mainline! As mentioned previously, the French managed perfectly well with such a system, I've enjoyed 125Mph travel through SW France under such a system.

Cheers,

John.

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2 minutes ago, Allegheny1600 said:

 

 

Meanwhile, I do like the idea of a 1500v DC east coast mainline! As mentioned previously, the French managed perfectly well with such a system, I've enjoyed 125Mph travel through SW France under such a system.

Cheers,

John.

 

I think a layout based on an un-nationalised LNER 1500V DC main line, set in  the early 1950s could be a real eye-catcher. After all we effectively know the locomotive and rolling stock designs, liveries , OHLE styles, signal box designs etc...

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1 hour ago, Allegheny1600 said:

 

Meanwhile, I do like the idea of a 1500v DC east coast mainline! As mentioned previously, the French managed perfectly well with such a system, I've enjoyed 125Mph travel through SW France under such a system.

Cheers,

John.

 

However that didn't stop the French effectively inventing the 25KV AC system in the 1960s, nor adopting it as the new standard for all post 1960 electrification. 1.5VDC electrification is inefficient and wasteful of electricity (due to the laws of physics) and only became the default option in the 1930s because converting AC to DC on board the loco wasn't possible with the technology of the time.

 

The thing to remember is much of the 1.5KV DC electrification system in SW France was done pre WW2  (or planned before the actioned shortly after). Its much like the way BR didn't rip out the Southern's 3rd rail system - but they extended it to fill the gaps. Unlike 3rd rail, the nature of OLE means higher speeds will be possible - but it remains a fact that 125mph on 1.5KV DC is still far less efficient and more power hungry than doing it with 25KV AC.

 

 

 

 

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15 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

However that didn't stop the French effectively inventing the 25KV AC system in the 1960s, nor adopting it as the new standard for all post 1960 electrification. 1.5VDC electrification is inefficient and wasteful of electricity (due to the laws of physics) and only became the default option in the 1930s because converting AC to DC on board the loco wasn't possible with the technology of the time.

 

The thing to remember is much of the 1.5KV DC electrification system in SW France was done pre WW2  (or planned before the actioned shortly after). Its much like the way BR didn't rip out the Southern's 3rd rail system - but they extended it to fill the gaps. Unlike 3rd rail, the nature of OLE means higher speeds will be possible - but it remains a fact that 125mph on 1.5KV DC is still far less efficient and more power hungry than doing it with 25KV AC.

Oh, absolutely!

I just wanted to show that it is possible to do 125Mph with a heavy train to boot, on 1500v DC. Some people on here don't seem aware that other railways besides ours actually work, on lots of different voltages and at quite high speeds.

Therefore, that the LNER was/may have electrified routes other than Woodhead, would not have been a backward step!

Sadly a world war intervened and put paid to many electrification projects all around the world.

 

Speaking of electrification systems, do you happen to know what type of motor they used in America with their 11Kv AC system (c.1910) and also in Germany/Austria/Switzerland/Norway with their 15Kv AC systems (begun c.1912)? I know they used BIG motors, maybe they were AC? 

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2 hours ago, Ravenser said:

 

I think a layout based on an un-nationalised LNER 1500V DC main line, set in  the early 1950s could be a real eye-catcher. After all we effectively know the locomotive and rolling stock designs, liveries , OHLE styles, signal box designs etc...

 

I have given this quite a lot of thought. There is someone who sells 2mm scale bodies on Shapeways at a very reasonable price and a lot of scope for inventing locos (EM1/EM2 based) that would fit Kato/Tomix chassis.

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26 minutes ago, Allegheny1600 said:

Speaking of electrification systems, do you happen to know what type of motor they used in America with their 11Kv AC system (c.1910) and also in Germany/Austria/Switzerland/Norway with their 15Kv AC systems (begun c.1912)? I know they used BIG motors, maybe they were AC? 

 

AC motors (at least as far as those suitable for powering trains) have not been a realistic option until advanced power control sytems were developed in the 1990s.

 

However what the Germans and others found out back in the early 1900s that you could successfully (and reliably) power a DC motor directly from an AC supply providing you chose a very low AC frequency to do it!

 

This is not that surprising because technically a DC voltage is actually made up of an infinite number of AC wave forms (i.e. 0.00....01Hz + 0.00...02Hz + 0.00...03Hz +0.00...04Hz + etc)

 

Hence the choice of 16.5Hz as research provided that to be the best compromise between all the electrical variables while still allowing reliable (and economic) railway operation .

 

Naturally with Domestic electricity grids across Europe standardising on 50Hz, this use of a special 'railway frequency' is a bit problematic as it needs its own bespoke electrical network (as opposed to simply tapping off the National Grid) - and thats why more recent Germanic looking Railway schemes in Europe have gone with the now universal standard of 25KV at 50Hz instead.

 

However the Germanic AC system based on 16.5Hz was also used in England by the LBSCR who had visions of electrifying more than just London suburban routes and thus chose not to follow the LSWR / London Tube / Metropolitan District choice of DC conductor rails to power the trains.

 

There are interesting parallels with the Woodhead route here as plans to extend the LBSCR overhead AC electrification plans were held up by WW1 and although some paused schemes were restarted by the newly formed Southern Railway, that company soon dumped it in favour of the inefficient LSWR system. Fast forward two decades and you have LNERs 1.5KV DC schemes delayed by WW2, completed afterwards by a new successor organisation but who then goes to completely its mind over what standard future electrification schemes will be built to.

 

 

Edited by phil-b259
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