Fell Diesel Livery information

[nightstar.train]

On 26/11/2019 at 22:43, Andy Kirkham said:

A very educational film. I have to admit that I always supposed, based on its rather uncouth appearance, that the Fell was a mechanically primitive machine. 

 

Based on it’s appearance I’d always assumed it was a slow goods engine. Turns out it was an express passenger engine! 

[joseph benjamin]

Having seen the Fell on a number of occasions, once along side at Manchester Central I don't recall it being particularly noisy. I rather like it, 35,00 pounds tractive effort from 1 engine and only 60 pistons not as many as the Deltic's 72. One point which KR models have picked up is that the inner fly cranks were bigger than the outer unlike some models..

[Barry O]

16 minutes ago, joseph benjamin said:

Having seen the Fell on a number of occasions, once along side at Manchester Central I don't recall it being particularly noisy. I rather like it, 35,00 pounds tractive effort from 1 engine and only 60 pistons not as many as the Deltic's 72. One point which KR models have picked up is that the inner fly cranks were bigger than the outer unlike some models..

so that means when you had all of the engines going it would be a real powerhouse.. 

 

Nope.. the 35000 pounds figure is with all 4 engines running plus the two engines driving the blowers to get more power out of the 4 main engines.

 

The Judith Edge kit does have correct fly cranks and is also the correct shape.

 

Baz

Edited January 21, 2021 by Barry O

[Michael Edge]

Six engines in total including the two 150hp ones driving the superchargers - it was the most powerful single unit until the Deltic appeared. I have looked at the cranks now and there is a difference, I might put some alternative ones on another etch eventually. 

[joseph benjamin]

Perhaps I should have said with all 6 engines running when the first is engaged the tractive effort is 33500 pounds which falls to 28000 at 6 mph when the second engine can be engaged. Speed can then rise to 17mph and tractive effort fall to 23000 pounds when the third engine can be engaged when speed can rise to 24 mph and tractive effort fall to 22000 pounds when the fourth engine can be engaged. Thereafter speed is increased to 78 mph by increasing the engine speed, these figures are from the tractive effort/speed graph of 1 March 1954 which I tried to attach but it's in the wrong format.. At 70 mph the tractive effort is 8000 pounds. The three differentials in the gear train give stepless changes in ratio between 4 to 1 for one engine to 1 to 1 for 4 engines. The engines are engaged by scoop control of the Vulcan-Sinclair couplings.

To quote from an original write up: “It is interesting to note that the maximum tractive effort can be developed when only a single engine is propelling the train, and that the bringing into action of the remaining engines permits the train's speed to be increased. Consequently any route which is within the capacity of the locomotive when all the engines are available could be completed (at reduced speed) even if only one engine remained effective.”

A brave attempt to build a high power diesel loco in the 1950s when high power engines weren't available.

[joseph benjamin]

I eventually found in an old Trains Illustrated magazine " Dynamometer trials over the Peak to Manchester found it superior at hill climbing to any other contemporary British diesel , putting out 1895 edhp at a sustained 50 mph on 1 in 100 with 385 tons" Not so bad for a dinosaur. 

[80105]

some wonderful short films of this engine didnt imagine id ever own a model rtr in 00

[Nearholmer]

On 09/02/2021 at 11:43, joseph benjamin said:

Not so bad for a dinosaur. 

But, it wasn’t a dinosaur. In some ways, it was technically near-ideal, which it is why/how it could return such good figures; it’s Achilles heel was its extreme mechanical complexity, which made it rather fragile, and certainly a “maintenance nightmare”, with about ten zillion moving parts. A contemporary DE, with a conservatively-rated engine and heavy transmission was theoretically, and on-test, less efficient, but it was far more robust and maintainable.

[Sheffield]

One of its advantages was that transmisison was made by BR, apart from gear cutting, and so more of the loco could be built in house. Using diesel electrics made a lot of BR's workshops redundant as so much had to be bought in.

Although it was a success It was rather an unlucky loco. Quite a few locos had steam heat boiler fires, but few did as much damage. And also it suffered a major failure in the gearbox because of inadequate lubrication. But the place where this failure happened caused major delays to other traffic, and more serious damage was done trying to move the loco clear. Had it chanced to happen elsewhere there may have been less damage.

[joseph benjamin]

I liked the Fell it was a brave attempt to produce a high power diesel 70 years ago, yes it was a success, the boiler fire was an excuse by BR to scrap it as a non standard design. I understood that the gearbox failure was the result of a bolt being left in it, which passed through the whole gear train.

I built an A1 kit of the Fell about 30 years ago, I think it must have been an early one as there were many errors, the worst being that the roof was 4 mm too wide so I ended up making a new roof. Since building it I have acquired quite a few more photos of it and took advantage of the lock down to put right some of the glaring errors. I had one photo taken in 1952 showing most of the roof detail when it still had the centre coupling rod and as my model had an RG4 driving one of the inner axles I decided to do it as it ran in mid 1952.

Interestingly none of the photos I have show any exhaust smoke except the computer generated pictures of it. I suspect the clean exhaust may be a result of the separately driven superchargers so there is no turbocharger lag.

[Michael Edge]

There's a lot of mythical information being repeated here - the well known fire and photos of the sheeted up end were in one engine bay and the loco was repaired. It is clearly still black in these photos, it went back out in green and was eventually withdrawn because of excessive maintenance cost - I have seen the BR withdrawal notice.

The gearbox failures are at least partly mythical and probably the result of confusion with tales of another Derby experiment - the Paget steam loco.

 

[Covkid]

On 20/04/2021 at 16:25, Michael Edge said:

There's a lot of mythical information being repeated here - the well known fire and photos of the sheeted up end were in one engine bay and the loco was repaired. It is clearly still black in these photos, it went back out in green and was eventually withdrawn because of excessive maintenance cost - I have seen the BR withdrawal notice.

The gearbox failures are at least partly mythical and probably the result of confusion with tales of another Derby experiment - the Paget steam loco.

 

 

Totally unsurprised by that Michael.  We only need the very feintest mention of over 100 centre cab diesels with an engine in each nose, and there will be wholesale condemnation of the class for being fireprone and a particularly rubbish design. In reality BR were pulling footplate crew of black fives and crabs etc with practically zero practical training and absolutely zero theory training. A couple of decades later and I happened to be in the cab of a class 25 when it suffered a temporary reverser problem, The footplateman on it picked up a brakestick and started whacking the fibreglass panels under the controller.  This guy had cut his teeth on 45xx and BR std 4s but was totally out of his depth on diesel traction