Freightliner to take over Mendip aggregates traffic

[phil-b259]

Not worth it unless the Merehead branch gets wired surely? If that does happen, at whose expense? Tytherington would be another.

Be great to see a 92 on those trains though.

 

I was thinking more along the lines of a dual power loco. If the wires ever get extended west of Newbury then you wouldn't have to do the railheads to the quarries as well.

 

The only problem with a bi-mode loco at the moment is the need for a high powered diesel engine to cope with the mainline railway west of Newbury which would probably take up too much room to fit in the 25KV stuff as well.

Edited December 24, 2018 by phil-b259

[Zomboid]

In a country with a proper transport policy, the wires would already get to Exeter (at least), so wiring the arrival/ departure roads at Merehead (and Acton) would be a relatively minor project. But we live in the UK, where underpowered diesel engines mean we don't even have to bother electrifying to Bristol.

 

Diesel engines are probably not yet at a point where a single unit loco could house 3000hp of diesel power as well as 5-6000hp of electric equipment, without compromising reliability or longevity.

[HillsideDepot]

When electrification was seen as 'the solution' (seems a long time ago now!) various ideas were put forward, initially wires to Bedwyn, then to Westbury with a new Parkway station in the Patney or Lavington area and an enhanced passenger service to match. Freights were included, but it was suggested that there would be a diesel shuttle from/to the quarries. As most stone trains are re-crewed at Westbury re-engining at the same time might have viable, but I don't know how much work was done on the idea beyond a local CRP's wish-listing.

 

Now most of those ideas seem as remote as ever, apart possibly for a new Parkway station which gets the occasional mention in the local press.

[The Stationmaster]

Not worth it unless the Merehead branch gets wired surely? If that does happen, at whose expense? Tytherington would be another.

Be great to see a 92 on those trains though.

 

The Merehead branch is an NR owned line but the sidings at Merehead are private of course.

[scottishlocos]

Guys

 

Do we have a capable electric loco the 92s have struggled on the Caley Sleeper so not sure how they would cope with the jumbo trains

[The Stationmaster]

When electrification was seen as 'the solution' (seems a long time ago now!) various ideas were put forward, initially wires to Bedwyn, then to Westbury with a new Parkway station in the Patney or Lavington area and an enhanced passenger service to match. Freights were included, but it was suggested that there would be a diesel shuttle from/to the quarries. As most stone trains are re-crewed at Westbury re-engining at the same time might have viable, but I don't know how much work was done on the idea beyond a local CRP's wish-listing.

 

Now most of those ideas seem as remote as ever, apart possibly for a new Parkway station which gets the occasional mention in the local press.

 

Patney would be the best site by far for a new Devizes Parkway station.  It's the nearest site to Devizes close to an A road and best of all it's a wide site (it had four platform faces of course) still in railway ownership on near level ground and a relatively easily constructed access road again over at least part railway owned land plus plenty of adjacent land to build a car park.   But is it perhaps too close to Pewsey?

[Zomboid]

Guys

 

Do we have a capable electric loco the 92s have struggled on the Caley Sleeper so not sure how they would cope with the jumbo trains

In the fantasy world where they line beyond Newbury is electrified, I'm sure it would be possible to come up with some suitable locomotive if 92s aren't it. It would probably only need about 5 for the Merehead to Acton flow.

[jim.snowdon]

In the fantasy world where they line beyond Newbury is electrified, I'm sure it would be possible to come up with some suitable locomotive if 92s aren't it. It would probably only need about 5 for the Merehead to Acton flow.

For that sort of service, the design of the 92 would probably beneifit by being regeared for a lower maximum speed. At the moment they are a bit of a mixed traffic loco, but their basics are essentially the same as the Channel Tunnel Shuttle locos, which had to be capable of starting, single-handed, a maximum weight train from the lowest point in the tunnel up the grade, which is quite steep on the French side, to Coquelles. It's a long time since I worked on the procurement of those locos, but recall the maximum train weight we used as being around 2500t and the worst case ruling gradient being around 1:90.

 

Jim

[rodent279]

For that sort of service, the design of the 92 would probably beneifit by being regeared for a lower maximum speed. At the moment they are a bit of a mixed traffic loco, but their basics are essentially the same as the Channel Tunnel Shuttle locos, which had to be capable of starting, single-handed, a maximum weight train from the lowest point in the tunnel up the grade, which is quite steep on the French side, to Coquelles. It's a long time since I worked on the procurement of those locos, but recall the maximum train weight we used as being around 2500t and the worst case ruling gradient being around 1:90.

 

Jim

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

For that sort of service, the design of the 92 would probably beneifit by being regeared for a lower maximum speed. At the moment they are a bit of a mixed traffic loco, but their basics are essentially the same as the Channel Tunnel Shuttle locos, which had to be capable of starting, single-handed, a maximum weight train from the lowest point in the tunnel up the grade, which is quite steep on the French side, to Coquelles. It's a long time since I worked on the procurement of those locos, but recall the maximum train weight we used as being around 2500t and the worst case ruling gradient being around 1:90.

 

Jim

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

For that sort of service, the design of the 92 would probably beneifit by being regeared for a lower maximum speed. At the moment they are a bit of a mixed traffic loco, but their basics are essentially the same as the Channel Tunnel Shuttle locos, which had to be capable of starting, single-handed, a maximum weight train from the lowest point in the tunnel up the grade, which is quite steep on the French side, to Coquelles. It's a long time since I worked on the procurement of those locos, but recall the maximum train weight we used as being around 2500t and the worst case ruling gradient being around 1:90.

 

Jim

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

For that sort of service, the design of the 92 would probably beneifit by being regeared for a lower maximum speed. At the moment they are a bit of a mixed traffic loco, but their basics are essentially the same as the Channel Tunnel Shuttle locos, which had to be capable of starting, single-handed, a maximum weight train from the lowest point in the tunnel up the grade, which is quite steep on the French side, to Coquelles. It's a long time since I worked on the procurement of those locos, but recall the maximum train weight we used as being around 2500t and the worst case ruling gradient being around 1:90.

 

Jim

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

For that sort of service, the design of the 92 would probably beneifit by being regeared for a lower maximum speed. At the moment they are a bit of a mixed traffic loco, but their basics are essentially the same as the Channel Tunnel Shuttle locos, which had to be capable of starting, single-handed, a maximum weight train from the lowest point in the tunnel up the grade, which is quite steep on the French side, to Coquelles. It's a long time since I worked on the procurement of those locos, but recall the maximum train weight we used as being around 2500t and the worst case ruling gradient being around 1:90.

 

Jim

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

[jim.snowdon]

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

It's the drive that is the heart of any electric locomotive, followed by the design of the bogies, as the key elements of getting tractive effort onto the rails.

 

Jim

[Zomboid]

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

 

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

 

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

 

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

 

I thought they were based on the 89. Except the AC drives of course.

You can say that again.

[rodent279]

Dunno how that happened! Nothing to do with mixing sherry, prosecco and advocaat!

[Fat Controller]

For that sort of service, the design of the 92 would probably beneifit by being regeared for a lower maximum speed. At the moment they are a bit of a mixed traffic loco, but their basics are essentially the same as the Channel Tunnel Shuttle locos, which had to be capable of starting, single-handed, a maximum weight train from the lowest point in the tunnel up the grade, which is quite steep on the French side, to Coquelles. It's a long time since I worked on the procurement of those locos, but recall the maximum train weight we used as being around 2500t and the worst case ruling gradient being around 1:90.

 

Jim

The maximum permitted load for a single loco in the Channel Tunnel is about 1300t, and for a pair, 1850t; the gradients are pretty punishing in both direction, with a nasty bit at the UK Portal, coming from France, with a steep gradient coupled with wet rails in anything apart a summer like this year's. Did I mention there's also a neutral section....

[jim.snowdon]

The maximum permitted load for a single loco in the Channel Tunnel is about 1300t, and for a pair, 1850t; the gradients are pretty punishing in both direction, with a nasty bit at the UK Portal, coming from France, with a steep gradient coupled with wet rails in anything apart a summer like this year's. Did I mention there's also a neutral section....

I would expect that those are probably the in-service limits, the work I did was when the specifications were being finalised and the tenders assessed pre-contract, and included the worst case failure conditions. With two locos on a Shuttle train, one had to be capabable of bringing the train out on its own, with the theoretically heaviest being a fully loaded freight shuttle, with a fully loaded HGV on each car.

 

Jim

[The Stationmaster]

For that sort of service, the design of the 92 would probably beneifit by being regeared for a lower maximum speed. At the moment they are a bit of a mixed traffic loco, but their basics are essentially the same as the Channel Tunnel Shuttle locos, which had to be capable of starting, single-handed, a maximum weight train from the lowest point in the tunnel up the grade, which is quite steep on the French side, to Coquelles. It's a long time since I worked on the procurement of those locos, but recall the maximum train weight we used as being around 2500t and the worst case ruling gradient being around 1:90.

 

Jim

 

That sounds about right to me Jim from what I can recall from the early days of looking at what the design was supposed to be able to do.  I'm fairly sure the load specification allowed for various other conditions as well including working a specified weight of freight train over Shap unassisted (and able to restart from a stand on the steepest part of the gradient).  The design was always specifically mixed traffic in nature in order to work ENS services between Glasgow/Waterloo/Kensington and Calais Ville plus of course coping with the hotel load of the ENS services in addition to the train weight.

 

One of our engineering team described them as approximating to 'half a Eurostar' in power terms with some engineering similarities as well.

[Talltim]

I got the impression that most of the problems on the sleepers have been to do with the ETS supply rather than lack of grunt

[scottishlocos]

In the fantasy world where they line beyond Newbury is electrified, I'm sure it would be possible to come up with some suitable locomotive if 92s aren't it. It would probably only need about 5 for the Merehead to Acton flow.

Obviously my knowledge of the route is limited where is the first place under the wires loop/sidings etc a loco swap could happen in the current Merehead to Acton route

[Zomboid]

I think the only realistic place a loco swap could occur with the present electrification is Swindon if the trains were to be routed that way. Don't think there's anywhere particularly clever for it on the route via Newbury, and it wouldn't be a very long run on electric anyhow.

 

As I said, this is fantasy land stuff where the main line via Frome and Taunton is electrified for passenger trains, so running the heavy stone trains with electric locos wouldn't need a lot of extra wires.

[TravisM]

I got the impression that most of the problems on the sleepers have been to do with the ETS supply rather than lack of grunt

The problem with the Nightstar was SNCF blacked the Class 92’s south of Calais as they were supposed to run all the way to Paris and SNCB didn’t have a loco with a high enough ETS rating to haul the stock. The biggest killer though was budget airlines.

[Christopher125]

Guys

 

Do we have a capable electric loco the 92s have struggled on the Caley Sleeper so not sure how they would cope with the jumbo trains

Are they struggling? I was under the impression the GBRf locos, having gone through reliability mods at Brush, have proved highly satisfactory.

[Ron Ron Ron]

The problem with the Nightstar was........

...... The biggest killer though was budget airlines.

I've pointed out before that this is just an urban myth and bears no relation to reality.

ENS was in trouble from 1995/96 and the program was put on hold a year later.

Apart from the technical problems and costs running out of control, there was a realisation that there was no viable market for the service.

It should have been canned then, but allowed to struggle on until the plug was finally pulled in early 1999.

 

The European budget airline "revolution" had hardly started by then and the small number of routes and markets it was serving in those early days, were completely different from the Eurostar and proposed Nightstar routes.

In those early years, it was not a competitor to ENS at all.

Certainly there was almost nothing in the way of budget airline operations from the "regions" until after the millennium.

The massive explosion in European budget airline operations, didn't kick in until after 2002.

 

The "killer" was that the concept was already outdated at its inception, there was no viable market for it and that regular European air transport links had already been providing a much better alternative, at reasonable costs, for a couple of decades before.

 

 

Ron

Edited December 26, 2018 by Ron Ron Ron

[The Stationmaster]

The problem with the Nightstar was SNCF blacked the Class 92’s south of Calais as they were supposed to run all the way to Paris and SNCB didn’t have a loco with a high enough ETS rating to haul the stock. The biggest killer though was budget airlines.

 

Alas not quite like that.  SNCF Drivers were indeed not keen on 92s (nor Regional Eurostar sets come to that) on 'safety grounds but the 92s were never intended to go beyond Calais Ville and SNCF were certainly not in the business of fitting BR AWS all the way through to Paris although they did accept that it would have t be installed as far as Calais Ville (which it was).

 

It is correct that SNCF didn't have any locos with a high enough ETS rating left by the time teh trains were approaching commissioning but in fact Sybics - which were starting to be delivered - did have a high enough ETS rating.  SNCB definitely had locos with a high enough ETS rating for ENS stock as did NS and DB.

I got the impression that most of the problems on the sleepers have been to do with the ETS supply rather than lack of grunt

 

The hotel demand on the ENS trains was very high due to their incorporating all sorts of features, especially in the sleeping cars.  The problem wasn't necessarily supplying electricity to them (a 92 could readily meet the demand on both BR 25kv and over the 3rd rail (for the originally planned formations) but losing continuity of supply over gaps on the 3rd rail due to the certain electrical protection equipment provided on the trains themselves.  The only other problem was that demand in excessively high or low UK air temperatures would inevitably increase the power required to run the aircon/heating and that would lead to load shedding on the train but it was calculated that such extremes would amount to no more than a handful of days in even an exceptional year.   Load shedding when working in the originally planned formations with the generator vans was not expected to be a problem.

 

The real problem came with an increase in the size of proposed trains when remarshalled at and worked from Waterloo after the original intention to change locos and remarshal at Kensington was taken out of the plan.   This meant that sets had to be split electrically from a hotel viewpoint because the load through a single loco was excessive thus it was planned to use a Class 73 on the back simply to pick up power from the 3rd rail for the rear half of the train.

[The Stationmaster]

I've pointed out before that this is just an urban myth and bears no relation to reality.

ENS was in trouble from 1995/96 and the program was put on hold a year later.

It should have been canned then, but allowed to struggle on until the plug was finally pulled in early 1999.

 

The European budget airline "revolution" had hardly started by then and the small number of routes and markets it was serving in those early days, were completely different from the Eurostar and proposed Nightstar routes.

In those early years, it was not a competitor to ENS at all.

Certainly there was almost nothing in the way of budget airline operations from the "regions" until after the millennium.

The massive explosion in European budget airline operations, didn't kick in until after 2002.

 

The "killer" was that the concept was already outdated at its inception and that regular European air transport links had already been providing a much better alternative, at reasonable costs, for a couple of decades before.

 

 

Ron

Agree.  The simple reason was that once the plan was subject to commercial scrutiny after Govt control had gone most of it no longer stood up, it simply didn't make commercial sense - hence the drive to reduce costs.  The internal view was that only London - Frankfurt had a really good case while London - Amsterdam didn't look too bad but wasn't really ideal for the sleeping car market and would most likely be a 'back-packer' style seated market which inevitably meant lower fares.  The UK Regional markets made very little sense although some changes to routes to open up more likely markets plus reduction in costs by not doing any remarshalling at Kensington did make things look a bit better.

 

As it was in the end the whole thing was canned with even Frankfurt finally being regarded as unlikely to justify a service on its own.  Unfortunately I doubt an accurate full story will ever come out because a lot of the paperwork associated with the project was destroyed on official instructions although some stuff undoubtedly survives in private individuals' archives.  What it really boiled down to was a political sop to areas outside London and the South East to gain support for the Channel Tunnel and Eurostar project and commercially a lot of it was nonsense before it had even reached the drawing board

[Zomboid]

The real problem came with an increase in the size of proposed trains when remarshalled at and worked from Waterloo after the original intention to change locos and remarshal at Kensington was taken out of the plan. This meant that sets had to be split electrically from a hotel viewpoint because the load through a single loco was excessive thus it was planned to use a Class 73 on the back simply to pick up power from the 3rd rail for the rear half of the train.

Would the supply have been able to handle that? A 92 on DC draws the maximum current a train is open permitted to take on the 3rd rail, so adding a 73 even just for the ETS would most likely result in the ECRs being able to follow the train along as the breakers popped out.

[The Stationmaster]

Would the supply have been able to handle that? A 92 on DC draws the maximum current a train is open permitted to take on the 3rd rail, so adding a 73 even just for the ETS would most likely result in the ECRs being able to follow the train along as the breakers popped out.

 

According to 'the engineers' the 3rd rail could take it but the train cabling and protection systems couldn't hence they accepted the proposal to do it with a split pick up system.  (Incidentally the 73 wouldn't be drawing any traction current, solely there to provide a route for hotel power into half of the train.