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White cross warning.


Trog
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15 hours ago, Trog said:

As the signs would have gone out of use in 1945 would an 1939 or early 1940's LMSR publication perhaps be a better bet?

Generally, coasting markers were installed as an energy saving measure, dating back to well before the war. The railways have always been money conscious.

 

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On 07/09/2021 at 00:08, jim.snowdon said:

I have a 1975 edition of said Instructions, and it doesn't say anything about either coasting signs or signs with white crosses thereon.

 

 

On 03/09/2021 at 09:03, Trog said:

It is an ARP (Air Raid Precautions) coasting board warning DC line drivers of yore to start coasting into the next station (in this case the station at & ) from that point, the idea being that if you stop drawing power arcing from the hot shoes will be eliminated, and you will then not attract any passing German bombers to the railway.

  

 

If it was indeed to do with ARP as Trog suggests, the instruction would have become obsolete by 1975.  But if you are worried about hot shoes and sparks being visible to the Luftwaffe, that would surely only apply at night when drivers (motormen?) might have had some difficulty seeing the sign?  Perhaps drivers on the DC lines were given an  extra carrot ration to help them see at night ?

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6 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

 

 

If it was indeed to do with ARP as Trog suggests, the instruction would have become obsolete by 1975.  But if you are worried about hot shoes and sparks being visible to the Luftwaffe, that would surely only apply at night when drivers (motormen?) might have had some difficulty seeing the sign?  Perhaps drivers on the DC lines were given an  extra carrot ration to help them see at night ?

Coasting as an ARP precaution is a red herring. If you had collector shoes that were glowing visibly enough to be seen from an aircraft, let alone seen at all, you had a far bigger problem to contend with. Collector shoes simply do not get anywhere near red hot. The sparking from electric trains was visible to the Luftwaffe, as evidenced by comments to that effect in C F Rawnsley's definitive book on the business of aerial night fighting during WW2. It was tolerated, but hardly formed the basis of an aiming point for dropping bombs. Bombing accuracy for much of WW2 was actually pretty abysmal, so the chances of actually hitting a railway line by intent were really small.

 

As far as drivers being able to see these markers (and their equivalent on the Southern) at night, an enormous amount rested on the driver's route knowledge and ability to know where they were in the dark. That applied just as much to the drivers and firemen of steam trains. The DC Lines drivers were up and down that relatively small section of railway, including the section round to Broad Street, day in day out. It would be fair to say that they probably knew it with their eyes closed. Being able to see lineside signage in the beam of the loco headlights is, in terms of railway history, a relatively modern feature.Even then, the headlights are not primarily thereto help the driver see where the train is going, but to make the approaching train more visible to people working on and around the track.

 

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9 hours ago, jim.snowdon said:

Generally, coasting markers were installed as an energy saving measure, dating back to well before the war. The railways have always been money conscious.

 

 Even if the boards were later kept as an energy saving measure, would they have needed to be moved or replaced when the new fangled 501 stock was introduced? I suspect that they have been obsolete for a long while as they are quite robust yet only a few are left.

 

Was cab riding on the DC years ago with a young driver being instructed by a more senior man. The young driver seemed to rather like the fact that the senior driver had not even noticed the signs before let alone knowing what they were for.

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12 minutes ago, Trog said:

Even if the boards were later kept as an energy saving measure, would they have needed to be moved or replaced when the new fangled 501 stock was introduced? I suspect that they have been obsolete for a long while as they are quite robust yet only a few are left.

Why? The performance of the 501's probably wasn't much different from the Oerlikon sets that preceded them, and they were only for guidance.

 

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10 minutes ago, jim.snowdon said:

Coasting as an ARP precaution is a red herring. If you had collector shoes that were glowing visibly enough to be seen from an aircraft, let alone seen at all, you had a far bigger problem to contend with. Collector shoes simply do not get anywhere near red hot. The sparking from electric trains was visible to the Luftwaffe, as evidenced by comments to that effect in C F Rawnsley's definitive book on the business of aerial night fighting during WW2. It was tolerated, but hardly formed the basis of an aiming point for dropping bombs. Bombing accuracy for much of WW2 was actually pretty abysmal, so the chances of actually hitting a railway line by intent were really small.

 

.............................

 

 

If you did want to bomb a railway following the flashes as the shoes ran on and off the con rail ramps by coming up from behind a train so you were flying along the line would probably increase your chances of a hit by quite a bit compared to trying to hit the line as you flew across it. If however the risk is very low that might explain why such boards are only on one line. Someone on the LMSR got enthusiastic about it and his SR equivalent was not impressed with the idea.

 

Although I suppose night attacks may have got more likely the further north the target was, as the German escort fighters had only a limited range. So the daytime risk to the German bomber crews increased almost exponentially as they went further north, and their escorts left them to be replaced by squadrons of more northerly based Spitfires.

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On 09/09/2021 at 23:49, Trog said:

If you did want to bomb a railway following the flashes as the shoes ran on and off the con rail ramps by coming up from behind a train so you were flying along the line would probably increase your chances of a hit by quite a bit compared to trying to hit the line as you flew across it. If however the risk is very low that might explain why such boards are only on one line. Someone on the LMSR got enthusiastic about it and his SR equivalent was not impressed with the idea.

I would refer you to http://www.railsigns.uk/sect25page2/sect25page2.html - the Southern Railway was quite prolific with its white diamond coasting signs and to my knowledge they predate the war by quite a bit. There are quite a few still about.

On 09/09/2021 at 23:49, Trog said:

If you did want to bomb a railway following the flashes as the shoes ran on and off the con rail ramps by coming up from behind a train so you were flying along the line would probably increase your chances of a hit by quite a bit compared to trying to hit the line as you flew across it.

Most of the time (nearly all of the time) there is no arcing when collector shoes leave the conductor rail, because somewhere else on the unit, there is at least another shoe still in contact with the rail - standard practice on main line stock has always been for the collector shoes on each multiple unit t obe connected electrically. Arcing only occurs where there is a total loss of contact, which really only means in areas with large amounts of S&C work (and consequently lots of gaps). Not, in any case, that the arc flashes would be much use to a bomb aimer as they are intermittent; the bomb aimer needs to be able to keep the target continuously in the bomb sight in order to stand any chance of hitting it.

 

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