Vacuum Brake Continuity Test - No Guards' Position/Propelling ECS

[Right Away]

I would be interested to know what was the procedure during BR days for making/destroying the vacuum to prove the continuity of the brake where the last vehicle(s) had no guard's position.

This situation obviously can occur on the heritage railways today and it is assumed their procedure is the same as those of the past.

 

Also, when lengthy ECS were being propelled into carriage sidings or terminal platforms, were the loco crew guided by a shunter/guard riding in the leading vehicle and was that person responsible for applying the brake?

Again, if that leading vehicle had no guard's brake valve what would be involved?

 

A location of point is London Victoria (Eastern), where the empties of some Kent Coast workings were propelled up Grosvenor bank and into the carriage sheds by the incoming train engine.

[russ p]

Simple, take the pipe off the dummy on the rearmost vehicle and check the blocks apply to the wheels

For a passenger train last vehicle and a freight the last three

[The Johnster]

It does not require an abnormal amount of physical strength to pull the bag off the dummy, overcoming the pressure of 21" (23 GW) of vacuum, and you check that the brakes have applied by kicking them.  

 

As for propelling, a shunter would often ride in the leading vehicle hanging out of the frontmost openable window, but this would be propelling during movements on running lines; this would certainly include terminal platforms but not carriage sidings, where the ground staff know the capacity of each road and will prevent the loco from pushing the stock through the buffers or out the other end by handsignalling the driver.  If the road being propelled into has stock on roads either side of it, the driver will not be able to see anyone riding in the leading vehicle anyway.

 

For movements entirely within yards or sidings, the continuous brake does not need to be connected and the stock, with the brakes isolated, can be carefully shunted without it.  The white star marking on the solebar of vehicles shows the position of the string you pull to isolate the brake; of course, a handbraked vehicle must be attached with the handbrake applied before you do this.

[Gibbo675]

Hi Right Away,

 

I have nothing to add to russ p and The Johnsters excellent answers but I do remember watching the Liverpool, Manchester to Glasgow Edinburgh trains being joined together at Preston back in the day.

 

Both trains would arrive with usually a 47 which would detach, an electric would be attached to the front portion and an 08 would attach to the rear of the rear portion to perform the shunt move. There would be a shunter riding in the leading coach as russ p has stated and various platform staff relaying hand signals to the 08 driver propelling the rear portion toward the front portion, this was often obscured by passengers insistence upon standing at the very edge of the platform vying for seats as soon as the rear portion came to a stand.

As you might imagine as a result of this problem it occasionally went wrong and there would be some quite rough shunts, it would seem to me that MK1 buffing gear is quite robust !

 

You might ask why the driver didn't look out of the other side of the cab instead using the platform side, the reason is that the joining of the train was done on the down main, platform 3, which has a slight curve at the south end with adverse sighting also the shunter coupling up would be in the six foot between platforms 2 and 3 which was live.

 

They sometimes got a second wallop if the pull test failed because the buckeyes bounced off each other.

 

I would guess that the 08 driver used markers along the platform to gauge length but they would depend upon where the front portion came to a stand exactly. These moves were done with passengers still on the train, can you imagine doing that today ? I guess they had similar carry on at Carstairs on the up workings.

 

Gibbo.

[The Stationmaster]

It does not require an abnormal amount of physical strength to pull the bag off the dummy, overcoming the pressure of 21" (23 GW) of vacuum, and you check that the brakes have applied by kicking them.  

 

As for propelling, a shunter would often ride in the leading vehicle hanging out of the frontmost openable window, but this would be propelling during movements on running lines; this would certainly include terminal platforms but not carriage sidings, where the ground staff know the capacity of each road and will prevent the loco from pushing the stock through the buffers or out the other end by handsignalling the driver.  If the road being propelled into has stock on roads either side of it, the driver will not be able to see anyone riding in the leading vehicle anyway.

 

For movements entirely within yards or sidings, the continuous brake does not need to be connected and the stock, with the brakes isolated, can be carefully shunted without it.  The white star marking on the solebar of vehicles shows the position of the string you pull to isolate the brake; of course, a handbraked vehicle must be attached with the handbrake applied before you do this.

 

Although in reality things could be rather different - some Shunters were more than happy loose shunting passenger stock which didn't have handbrakes (provided they weren't caught doing it; I once gave one of my Shunters a real hammering for loose shunting a restaurant vehicle and he couldn't work out how I knew he'd done it, I was watching from a signalbox a couple of hundred yards away ).  And lots of Shunters clearly had difficulty in counting judging by the number of demolished stop blocks and occasional sideswipes although they were not all that frequent in passenger yards.  I managed a large passenger yard for several years and in that time we only had a couple of stop block collisions (we knew about) but sideswipes were more common as were end-on collisions between shunted vehicles and stationary vehicles averaging, I reckon, about once every 5-6 months or so.

[Pacific231G]

Although in reality things could be rather different - some Shunters were more than happy loose shunting passenger stock which didn't have handbrakes (provided they weren't caught doing it; I once gave one of my Shunters a real hammering for loose shunting a restaurant vehicle and he couldn't work out how I knew he'd done it, I was watching from a signalbox a couple of hundred yards away ).  And lots of Shunters clearly had difficulty in counting judging by the number of demolished stop blocks and occasional sideswipes although they were not all that frequent in passenger yards.  I managed a large passenger yard for several years and in that time we only had a couple of stop block collisions (we knew about) but sideswipes were more common as were end-on collisions between shunted vehicles and stationary vehicles averaging, I reckon, about once every 5-6 months or so.

Hi Mike

This is slightly OT for continuity testing but you mention side-swiping and I've long wondered why British yards didn't have the clearance markers used in France and other countries.

 

The "proper" version of these bornes de garage francs in France was a lozenge shaped concrete slab placed in the ballast between converging tracks (this one just beyond the entrance point to a little used yard at Noyelles-sur-Mer in Picardy is made up of two of them to give the greater clearance needed for the main line between Boulogne and Abbeville) . I believe the clearance was set as the point up to which a wagon could be parked without risking the safety of a shunter riding on the corner step of a moving wagon on a converging track rather than where the vehicles  themselves would actually touch. You weren't supposed to leave wagons beyond them, note that this one is beyond the derailer.*

 

They are also used in some metre gauge yards, this very simple one was newly placed on was on the Baie de Somme tracks also at Noyelles.

 

I've also seen a white painted sleeper placed between the converging tracks to perform the same function as this one in the motive power yard at  Romorantin  on the metre gauge Blanc-Argent

 

 

I actually find them quite useful in model form to avoid vehicles fouling one another.

 

*N.B. Derailers seem to be far more common than trap points in most countries, (unfortunately for modelling as they're far more difficult to construct as working models.)Trap points have been used in France, though I can't recall ever actually seeing one, but trap sidings are relatively common.

Edited August 27, 2018 by Pacific231G

[The Johnster]

These are obviously a good idea; probably simply never occurred to anyone in the UK to do it.  Reliance here was placed on route knowledge, and yard staff were expected to know the capacity of their sidings and keep a mental tally of what was in them and where, a system prone to the occasional error.  A common one was a driver heading for the blocks on a headshunt but with his eye on the handsignals from the ground staff in the yard; involved in one of these myself at Pengam (Cardiff) Freighliner on a 47 once.

[The Johnster]

A possible criticism of the French system is visibility at night, and a lighted marker would be better.  There were some very dark corners at the back of some yards...

[Pacific231G]

A possible criticism of the French system is visibility at night, and a lighted marker would be better.  There were some very dark corners at the back of some yards...

Railways in France made a lot more use of white paint than did ours at least in more modern times. Apart from the bornes de garage francs (the clearance point markers)  The ends of check and wing rails were/are almost invariably painted white as were derailers, point levers, their rodding and the swinging counterweights of the most common type. Foot and barrow crossings were normally white painted along their edges as was the concrete fencing around stations and yards and the edhes of platfrorm. Even the stonework on the corners of railway buildings and around doorways was often a fairly bright white.In fact almost anything a cheminot might walk into or trip over in the dark was painted white.

 It would in any case also have to be a very dark night for such bright white paint to not be visible and anyone carrying a hand lamp should certainly be able to see them from some distance. SNCF (and possibly its predecessors from the 1920s on ) also used tall floodlighting towers even in relatively small yards rather than the lower local lighting more typical of Britain. That overall lighting  coupled with all the white paint should have made working on the railway at night rather safer.

 

you don't seem to see  this white painting of obstacles in older photographs of French railways. The practice may have been introduced for the blackouts of the Second World War and then continued or possibly rather later as more regard came to be paid to the safety of railway workers. It also seems to have become less prevalent in more recent years probably because of better overall lighting and less need for staff to be actually on the track for normal operations.

Edited August 27, 2018 by Pacific231G

[Rugd1022]

Some nights when shunting the newspaper stock in and out of Padd on 'A' Pilot the consist was so long that we'd have as many shunters as possible riding on the stock conveying the rear most shunter's hand signals to us in the cab of the 08, due to the curvature of the platforms.

[The Johnster]

Some nights when shunting the newspaper stock in and out of Padd on 'A' Pilot the consist was so long that we'd have as many shunters as possible riding on the stock conveying the rear most shunter's hand signals to us in the cab of the 08, due to the curvature of the platforms.

 

This raises another issue; many places would not have had the staff to mount this sort of effort.  And the Siphons on the WR's newspaper trains didn't have windows...

[Rugd1022]

In those days standing in an open doorway was ok when riding on a moving vehicle..... holding on with one hand... giving handsignals with the other...!

[The Johnster]

It was not allowed (in theory; I'm sure there were many instances of it in practice) with outward opening doors, which would foul the loading gauge.  On the subject of open doors, I used to run with the van door open on dmus on hot days, and have heard stories of the Tyneside electrics running with the sliding doors open (they could apparently do this) in hot weather with passengers standing in the vestibules.  AFAIK nobody ever fell out!

[keefer]

the Tyneside electrics running with the sliding doors open (they could apparently do this) in hot weather with passengers standing in the vestibules.

I've seen a pic of this, might've been in the 'British Rail Fleet Survey' volume on DC EMUs or possibly on Flickr - one unit at a station with the track-side doors open! IIRC they were completely manual sliding doors

[Pacific231G]

It was not allowed (in theory; I'm sure there were many instances of it in practice) with outward opening doors, which would foul the loading gauge.  On the subject of open doors, I used to run with the van door open on dmus on hot days, and have heard stories of the Tyneside electrics running with the sliding doors open (they could apparently do this) in hot weather with passengers standing in the vestibules.  AFAIK nobody ever fell out!

I experienced this in the late 1970s on an express from Paris Austerlitz  to Cahors and Toulouse. Some of the coaches were "Bruhats" which were former wooden bodied vehicles coaches that had been extensively modernised with steel bodies. They had wide folding centre doors  with fixed steps outside and were cleared for 140km/h (87-88MPH)

(Roco do a very nice model of these in H0)

 

It was a hot day so, at over 85MPH,  the doors had been opened and people were sitting on the steps (probably on the floor of the carriage with their feet on the upper outside step) as if they were on a roadside tramway travelling at 10MPH. Fortunaely nobody fell out !! 

Edited August 27, 2018 by Pacific231G

[The Stationmaster]

I've seen a pic of this, might've been in the 'British Rail Fleet Survey' volume on DC EMUs or possibly on Flickr - one unit at a station with the track-side doors open! IIRC they were completely manual sliding doors

 

It was quite common on the Tyneside electrics in the early 1960s.  On one occasion I saw a pram standing (with the brake on!!) but pointing at at open door - nobody seemed to mind 

[jim.snowdon]

It's back to a day and age when, as I remember Major Holden, of HMRI, put it - little Johnny was taught by his parents not to play around near doors, because if he fell out, they weren't going to come back for him. Lots of sliding door stock was either manual, or used air simply to close the doors. Actually locking the doors shut was something of a London Underground oddity, brought about by legal requirements in respect of Tube stock. For a very long time, the practice of locking the doors of main line stock was outlawed, except for the London Underground and the Festiniog Railway, where it was permitted for reasons of exceptionally tight gauge clearance.

 

The traditional door "engine" used on London Underground stock was fail-safe in the sense that positive air pressure was required to open the door against pressure held in a reservoir that fed the "close" cylinder, and once closed, the over-centre design of the mechanism prevented the doors from being pushed open. Limited opening, around 4", was possible against springs in the drive to one door of each pair, essentially to cope with trapped objects/limbs. Safety was assured by the provision of the door interlock circuit, loss of which would not apply the brakes but would prevent traction being applied. It was arranged that way so that the driver retained control of where to bring the train to a stop. In simple terms, stopping at the next station can be preferable to an uncontrolled stop in a tunnel between stations.

 

As far as I am aware, the last LU stock fitted with traditional door engines was possibly the 1990 Central Line stock, certainly the 1983 tube stock. Since then, linear door operators have become normal, and locking has to be achieved by other means.

 

Jim

[The Johnster]

Door locking was banned in the wake of the Versailles train fire in France in 1842. this horrible event (the fact that the death toll is 'somewhere between 52 and 200' is an indication of the destruction) was very well reported in the UK and over most of Europe.  Incidentally, as it had been caused by the failure of an axle on a locomotive, it instigated scientific research into metal fatigue, so may have saved more lives than it cost over time, not that those who suffered would see it that way...

 

There was some suggestion that the carriages in the Abergele accident, where fire was again a factor, were locked, but the report commented that, in this case, the fire had spread so quickly and completely that no difference would have been made had they been locked or unlocked; looks suspiciously like a get out for the company in modern, cynical, eyes.  Carriages are locked to keep passengers out, never in.

[Pacific231G]

Door locking was banned in the wake of the Versailles train fire in France in 1842. this horrible event (the fact that the death toll is 'somewhere between 52 and 200' is an indication of the destruction) was very well reported in the UK and over most of Europe.  Incidentally, as it had been caused by the failure of an axle on a locomotive, it instigated scientific research into metal fatigue, so may have saved more lives than it cost over time, not that those who suffered would see it that way...

 

 

Rather like the Titanic disaster which led to a major improvementin SOLAS legislation. That probably saved more lives that would otherwise have been lost in smaller sinkings none of which would have attracted enough attention to bring about that change (More people die on Britan's roads each year than in the Titanic disaster but mostly in ones and twos)  

Edited September 4, 2018 by Pacific231G

[The Stationmaster]

Door locking was banned in the wake of the Versailles train fire in France in 1842. this horrible event (the fact that the death toll is 'somewhere between 52 and 200' is an indication of the destruction) was very well reported in the UK and over most of Europe.  Incidentally, as it had been caused by the failure of an axle on a locomotive, it instigated scientific research into metal fatigue, so may have saved more lives than it cost over time, not that those who suffered would see it that way...

 

There was some suggestion that the carriages in the Abergele accident, where fire was again a factor, were locked, but the report commented that, in this case, the fire had spread so quickly and completely that no difference would have been made had they been locked or unlocked; looks suspiciously like a get out for the company in modern, cynical, eyes.  Carriages are locked to keep passengers out, never in.

 

I'm not sure when the locking of doors on UK passenger trains was banned.  Doors

 

Lt Colonel Rich's report of his inquiry into the collison at Abergele in 1868 confirmed that some doors were locked on part of the passenger train involved in the collision and, quote, his report continued ... 'I submit that no doors should be locked' .  I cannot run to earth what the Board of Trade subsequently said or did in respect of the locking of train doors but there was definitely no outlawing of the practice in legislation.  And of course doors were definitely locked on the excursion train involved in the Armagh collision in 1889 although the Railway involved was somewhat lackadaisically managed so that might tell us nothing of the general situation by then.

 

Interestingly as late as the 1960s it was still the practice to lock exterior doors on some vehicles formed in passenger trains in particular circumstances when standing at stations (mainly in respect of sleeping cars at some stations).

[The Johnster]

I'm not sure when the locking of doors on UK passenger trains was banned.  Doors

 

Lt Colonel Rich's report of his inquiry into the collison at Abergele in 1868 confirmed that some doors were locked on part of the passenger train involved in the collision and, quote, his report continued ... 'I submit that no doors should be locked' .  I cannot run to earth what the Board of Trade subsequently said or did in respect of the locking of train doors but there was definitely no outlawing of the practice in legislation.  And of course doors were definitely locked on the excursion train involved in the Armagh collision in 1889 although the Railway involved was somewhat lackadaisically managed so that might tell us nothing of the general situation by then.

 

Interestingly as late as the 1960s it was still the practice to lock exterior doors on some vehicles formed in passenger trains in particular circumstances when standing at stations (mainly in respect of sleeping cars at some stations).

 

This would be in line with my comment about carriage doors being locked to keep people out, not in, and I am assuming they were unlocked again before the train moved off.   Security was always a bit of a joke, though; in my teenage spotting days I possessed a carriage key made of a sawn off piece of iron railing...