Manchester Piccadilly OHLE question.

[iands]

All very interesting comments/arguments, but what has this to do with Manchester Piccadilly OHLE? Or have I missed something......

[jim.snowdon]

9 hours ago, SamThomas said:

My point about the crash beams is that they cannot be errected if pedestrians or other road users could be inured by debris from vehicles or (as pointed out by Edwin) or from the crash beam itself (FYI a refuse truck is a very substancial bit of kit). Unfortunatly, this risk will always remain regarding the bridge itself.

There are already some road underbridges, with pavements, in the UK with crash beams. The risks to motorists and pedestrians do not change whether the beam is 12" from the bridge beam or 30', or if there is no crash beam and the overheight vehicle hits the bridge instead.

 

[SamThomas]

11 hours ago, iands said:

All very interesting comments/arguments, but what has this to do with Manchester Piccadilly OHLE? Or have I missed something......

I was under the impression that major thread drift was an RMW speciallity.

[TheSignalEngineer]

I was thinking earlier that this thread may have reached new heights for going off-topic on RMweb. When I read some comments last night I thought I was in the Bridge Bash thread.

Incidentally, the comments on here have already been discussed by others on that thread.

[PaulCheffus]

Hi

 

Seems a bit daft when there is already a thread dedicated to bridges and the hitting thereof.

 

 

Cheers

 

Paul

[TheSignalEngineer]

1 hour ago, PaulCheffus said:

Seems a bit daft when there is already a thread dedicated to bridges and the hitting thereof.

 

This thread has had more direction changes than a game of  Mornington Crescent.

[SamThomas]

Until yesterday I was unaware of a specific bridge bashing thread - one of the "benefits" of a forum as large as this one.

[Grovenor]

It was Mike Hodgson brought bridge bashing into this, back on 30th June.!

[woodenhead]

Fairs, fair, I should ask a question about OHLE on that thread.

[iands]

1 hour ago, Grovenor said:

It was Mike Hodgson brought bridge bashing into this, back on 30th June.!

I wasn't looking to apportion any blame! 

[stovepipe]

On 06/07/2021 at 11:48, MidlandRed said:

I can confirm it was definitely at Soho Electric Depot on 9/8/67 as evidenced by the coffee stained record in my spotting book of the time (the B means it was in blue livery - Y = fye and by inference a B without a Y meant Syp - N = ‘new’ logo - I.e double arrow symbol). It says Winson Green because I didn’t know it was called Soho depot at the time and most of the spotting was from the Birmingham - Wolverhampton line near to Winson Green Road!! It was such an unusual occurrence I actually remember it. Please don’t ask how D3952 had a headcode!! I suspect it was meant to be from another loco but I was only 13 - it’s a long time ago!!! 

 

 

However the GEC works was not at Soho but at Witton IIRC, and NOT rail connected afaik - and indeed there was previous with that because most, if not all of class AL4 was parked in Witton coal yard (claimed to be capable of holding 120 wagons), in circa 1963, whilst mods were carried out by technicians from the factory around the corner (although opposite as far as the railway line was concerned). 
 

I had thought E26014 was in use as a load bank although that may have been from Railway Magazine or similar (I certainly wouldn’t have been capable of deducing that at that time!!. The depot was almost new at the time. 
 

The other interesting thing here is that class AL4 was giving such problems that the locos were stored around this time at Longsight - followed by class AL3. The result of the cut back in need for the DC electrics resulted not only in withdrawal of the EM2s but some EM1s also, some of which were grounded bodies at Reddish by 1969 (examples were 26042 and 26005 I think (note no E)! 

 

The move of E26014 south for AC experimentation was reported in the Dec 1967 issue of Modern Railways. I don't have the 1968 issues to see what else was reported.

[rodent279]

On 07/07/2021 at 08:43, 298 said:

 

Something we've always needed in the UK is a basic CoCo AC electric, the four axle types were fine most of the time if driven properly but they were never very good at grinding up a hill with a heavy load. The EM2s may have made better conversion subjects for this but the basic fact is it never happened.

 

On a similar note (apologies if it's been mentioned previously) are the four Met electrics that reached Rugby in the 60s for evaluation into into possible conversions, again nothing happened but it's difficult to see how they could have been used for anything other than simple third rail use.

I believe BR's plans for channel tunnel motive power during the late 60's/early 70's involved a Co-Co version of a class 86, with 750V D.C capability. Presumably the extra length of a Co-Co would have allowed space for the necessary D.C. control gear.

 

Aware of continuing thread drift.... Sorry!

[adb968008]

13 hours ago, stovepipe said:

 

The move of E26014 south for AC experimentation was reported in the Dec 1967 issue of Modern Railways. I don't have the 1968 issues to see what else was reported.

In 18th June 1967, SLS reported it as in Crewe works paint shop, so verifies its good condition in the August picture above. It was also seen under going overhaul on 21st May 1967

 

I wonder how serious a proposal this was, the loco itself went on until the end in 1981, so not much happened to it.

 

Reading history of Witton it was a manufacturer of Mercury Arc Rectifiers, converting AC to DC, so rather than converting E26014 to AC, it could have been exploring ways to power E26014 from an AC supply using a Rectifier. 

This isnt sci-fi, indeed I recall the group owning E27000 were investigating purchasing a support vehicle  [BG] to house one and convert AC to DC and power it, when it when first preserved, back in the 1980’s, but obviously came to nought.

 

 

Edited July 21, 2021 by adb968008

[rodent279]

1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

This isnt sci-fi, indeed I recall the group owning E27000 were investigating purchasing a support vehicle  [BG] to house one and convert AC to DC and power it, when it when first preserved, back in the 1980’s, but obviously came to nought.

 

 

Such a scenario would mirror the above mentioned conversion of class 306 & 307's to AC by adding a transformer & rectifier to one of the trailers. Class 313/4/5 similarly have a transformer car, with HT bus lines to the motor coaches. It would also be kind of similar to the situation where 83009 was stood on an island piece of track at LG, with a 25kV  supply plumbed in to the roof from the OHL, to provide 1500V D.C. for testing class 506's. All technically feasible, but getting a safety case would be difficult, if not impossible.

I guess the difference between a class 306/7 and an EM2/AC loco lash up would be that the cars in an EMU are semi-permanently coupled, so no need in normal service to connect & disconnect a high voltage jumper between vehicles. 

Edited July 21, 2021 by rodent279

[DY444]

2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Reading history of Witton it was a manufacturer of Mercury Arc Rectifiers, converting AC to DC, so rather than converting E26014 to AC, it could have been exploring ways to power E26014 from an AC supply using a Rectifier.

 

Any AC conversion would have needed rectifiers.  Dumping the existing DC control equipment and installing the standard AC control equipment of the period would have required rectifiers as would feeding the existing DC equipment with 1500V DC derived from the AC supply.  The fact they once made mercury arc rectifiers is neither here nor there; nobody would be contemplating anything other than silicon rectifiers by the mid-1960s.

Edited July 21, 2021 by DY444