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Light Railway Mixed Train Formations


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Run round loops? Luxury on the East Kent. At Canterbury Road and Shepherdswell the loco ran into a short siding and the coach then allowed to run past courtesy of Isaac Newton and gravity. I'd love to see that done at an exhibition ......

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To see how much the BoT was listened to have a read of “Bishop’s Castle” Portrait of a Country Railway by John Scott Morgan. The BC used a chain brake on coaches for many years and the change of direction at Lydham Heath would often leave the coaches isolated from the engine. All that said, speeds on the BC were never up to much due to the condition of the track.

 

Cheers,

 

David

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To see how much the BoT was listened to have a read of “Bishop’s Castle” Portrait of a Country Railway by John Scott Morgan. The BC used a chain brake on coaches for many years and the change of direction at Lydham Heath would often leave the coaches isolated from the engine. All that said, speeds on the BC were never up to much due to the condition of the track.

 

Cheers,

 

David

Not sure I understand this. I thought the chain brake system was operated from the guards van, not from the locomotive?

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Not sure I understand this. I thought the chain brake system was operated from the guards van, not from the locomotive?

Certainly, according to the LNWR Soc, it was applied from the guards van.  Does make me wonder, whether the Bishop's Castle was safer with the chain brake which could be operated even when the carriages were separated by wagons from the loco than after the BoT insisted they installed the vacuum brake and for part of the journey, the coaches would have been unbraked!

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Certainly, according to the LNWR Soc, it was applied from the guards van.  Does make me wonder, whether the Bishop's Castle was safer with the chain brake which could be operated even when the carriages were separated by wagons from the loco than after the BoT insisted they installed the vacuum brake and for part of the journey, the coaches would have been unbraked!

 

A vacuum braked coach in which the vacuum has been destroyed has it's brake's firmly applied until the system eventually leaks and air pressure is equalised on both sides of the piston in the cylinder.  For this reason, the brakes have to be released by hand on vacuum stock so that it can be loose shunted; there is a string which one pulls to admit air to the vacuum side of the cylinder, it's position indicated by a white star on the solebar.  The coaches would be held by handbrake or possibly 'scotches' (shaped to sit over the rail and against which the wheel rested to prevent movement) once the vacuum brakes were thus released.

 

Train brakes, both air and vacuum, are not like the steam brake on a steam loco or 'straight air' of diesel or electric locos and HGVs; pressure is required to hold them off the wheel and they will apply if this pressure is lost for any reason.  The steam or straight air brake uses pressure to apply the brake and will release them if pressure is lost; this is why you cannot release the handbrake on a HGV until a suitable brake pressure has been achieved.

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Just re-read Rolt's description of the 1841 Sonning cutting accident to a mixed GWR train. Interesting that in the days of no brakes except on the loco tender and the brake vans, the BoT criticized the GWR for running mixed trains with the passenger vehicles between the loco and goods wagons.  The logic was that the coaches were crushed by the force of the unbraked wagons behind when the train came to an abrupt halt after hitting the landslide.  The BoT was even more scathing about running mixed trains at all, though.

Editted to add:

Johnster, It would not surprise me in the least to learn that the Bishop's Castle regularly pulled the strings on the vacuum brake so they could move the train.  I remember reading some railwayman's reminiscences where he admitted to having done that in BR days in emergency.

Edited by eastglosmog
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There were variants of chain brake, but I think some needed the chain connected throughout and anchored, to give ‘something to pull against’ at each end. Some could pulled from both ends, loco and guards van, and I think intermediately too, and some were automatic. The Heberlein system probably lasted longest.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heberlein_brake

 

http://www.lnwrs.org.uk/Glossary/gloss.php?word=ChainBrake

Edited by Nearholmer
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Run round loops? Luxury on the East Kent. At Canterbury Road and Shepherdswell the loco ran into a short siding and the coach then allowed to run past courtesy of Isaac Newton and gravity. I'd love to see that done at an exhibition ......

There's a video of that somewhere on this site. I think the coach was motorised to make it controllable.

 

I've seen fly shunting done in 00 with a chain, too...

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There were variants of chain brake, but I think some needed the chain connected throughout and anchored, to give ‘something to pull against’ at each end. Some could pulled from both ends, loco and guards van, and I think intermediately too, and some were automatic. The Heberlein system probably lasted longest.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heberlein_brake

 

http://www.lnwrs.org.uk/Glossary/gloss.php?word=ChainBrake

The Clark & Webb Chain Brake used an "anchor" in the guards van, usually placed in the centre of a rake of up to 6 vehicles. It was independent of the locomotive. There is a good description here

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/97672-pragmatic-pre-grouping-mikkels-workbench/page-31&do=findComment&comment=2607577

 

Not even aware that the Heberlein brake system was used in the UK. Which UK railways was it used on, please? 

Edited by Orion
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Excellent link, thank you ....... it points to an article in The Engineer which I knew existed, but failed to find. Did find a good account of the Newark Brake Trials though: 25th June 1875 edition.

 

I don’t know of Heberlein being used in GB. I came across it years ago because one of my (too many) railway interests is field railways, including German ones, and some of the lines that went upmarket and became passenger carriers used it. It was used on the Saxon lines until quite recently, possibly still is on some preserved stock, but they weren’t feldbahnen.

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Fascinating. The very bottom train could be an early Saxon one, so it looks as if there is a firm link.

 

Yes, I think it normally uses rope or cable, but (and this maybe false memory syndrome) I think I’ve seen it implemented with fine chain.

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There's a video of that somewhere on this site. I think the coach was motorised to make it controllable.

 

I've seen fly shunting done in 00 with a chain, too...

 

Now you mention it, I have seen that video too, and the coach was motorised. Cheating! :nono:

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Run round loops? Luxury on the East Kent. At Canterbury Road and Shepherdswell the loco ran into a short siding and the coach then allowed to run past courtesy of Isaac Newton and gravity. I'd love to see that done at an exhibition ......

 

Not confined to minor railways*. This was the standard practice for the Bridport branch train at Maiden Newton until the engine and B set was replaced by a DMU.

 

*Although this may depend on one's view of the Great Western/Western Region...

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Not confined to minor railways*. This was the standard practice for the Bridport branch train at Maiden Newton until the engine and B set was replaced by a DMU.

 

*Although this may depend on one's view of the Great Western/Western Region...

 

And on the line to Banff right up until closure. The Talyllyn did it too until a loop was finally installed at Wharf in early preservation days.

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Not confined to minor railways*. This was the standard practice for the Bridport branch train at Maiden Newton until the engine and B set was replaced by a DMU.

 

*Although this may depend on one's view of the Great Western/Western Region...

 

Also done at Yelverton to run round the Princetown branch train.  a relic of the practice at Maiden Newton could still be seen well into the 1970s in teh shape of some paint marks which were provided for the Guard to judge his stopping place as the stock was gravitated into the platform.

There's a video of that somewhere on this site. I think the coach was motorised to make it controllable.

 

I've seen fly shunting done in 00 with a chain, too...

 

I reckon fly shunting is probably physically impossible in 00 due to lack of mass in the wagons but even more so due the difficulty of uncoupling a moving loco from wagons it is pulling in that scale.  Fly shunting with a chain sounds to be completely impossible in any scale as unhooking a chain when it is very briefly slackened from being taut is a lot more difficult than flicking a coupling off with a shunting pole at the critical moment when the engine reduces speed to slacken the coupling before it accelerates out of the way.

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I may be wrong, but wasn't the purpose of shunting with a rope or chain to get a wagon into a siding with facing points? In other words unhooking the chain was not essential.

 

Now I read somewhere, and if memory serves me right it was in relation to Dutch steam tramways, where a loco shunted a wagon on an adjacent track by means of a pole sticking out the side of the buffer beam. An alternative to rope shunting to get a wagon in or out of a kickback siding

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They definitely used to do pole shunting in the USA. The freight cars (and locos I assume) had special "poling pockets" for the purpose.

 

 

Indeed, many US locomotives had these. In fact, a number of locomotives that went to Australia still included this feature, although I am pretty sure that we did not practice pole shunting here - or at least by the time we got these locos, the practice had been banned.

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I believe that the NSWGR 59 class *might* have had them, but they were plated over. 

 

If you take a close look at the buffer beam of the NSWGR 38 class, you will see pockets for pole-shunting. As far as I am aware, they were never used.

The chassis was a large steel casting made in the USA:

NSWGR_Class_C.38_Locomotive_Non-Streamli

Edited by hartleymartin
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They definitely used to do pole shunting in the USA. The freight cars (and locos I assume) had special "poling pockets" for the purpose.

 

Prop (pole) shunting was carried out in some places in the UK but wasn't as widely used as rope/chain shunting from what I've heard over the years although It might well have been more common in private sidings.  

 

Incidentally on a point of pedantry a shunting pole is the tool used by a Shunter to couple/uncouple wagons.

I may be wrong, but wasn't the purpose of shunting with a rope or chain to get a wagon into a siding with facing points? In other words unhooking the chain was not essential.

 

Now I read somewhere, and if memory serves me right it was in relation to Dutch steam tramways, where a loco shunted a wagon on an adjacent track by means of a pole sticking out the side of the buffer beam. An alternative to rope shunting to get a wagon in or out of a kickback siding

 

A rope or chain could indeed be used to get a wagon through a facing point but that didn't make it fly shunting as the vehicle remained connected to the engine.  In fly shunting the wagon is drawn by the engine and uncoupled on the move  so that at the facing point the engine can go one way and the wagon the other way with the point being changed after the engine has passed it (hopefully - sometimes it didn't work as well as it should).  A rather hair raising practice which was always only permitted to be undertaken by 'experienced staff' and which was not surprisingly eventually banned completely.

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Prop (pole) shunting was carried out in some places in the UK but wasn't as widely used as rope/chain shunting from what I've heard over the years although It might well have been more common in private sidings.  

 

Incidentally on a point of pedantry a shunting pole is the tool used by a Shunter to couple/uncouple wagons.

 

A rope or chain could indeed be used to get a wagon through a facing point but that didn't make it fly shunting as the vehicle remained connected to the engine.  In fly shunting the wagon is drawn by the engine and uncoupled on the move  so that at the facing point the engine can go one way and the wagon the other way with the point being changed after the engine has passed it (hopefully - sometimes it didn't work as well as it should).  A rather hair raising practice which was always only permitted to be undertaken by 'experienced staff' and which was not surprisingly eventually banned completely.

 

I remember seeing it done at Swansea High Street Goods, and it terrified me!

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