Southern region ferry van trains: what sort of brake vans did they have (if any)?

[Fat Controller]

On 30/07/2022 at 21:46, SED Freightman said:

Having dug out my old diary, I note your trip was a few weeks in advance of mine (earlier post updated), which actually ended up in the Coquelles Emergency Platform.  Other highlights of the trip were on the return when we were held at the tunnel entrance whilst a French steam loco emerged after being engaged in testing the fire detection system, followed by a stop and test evacuation into the service tunnel at some point below the Channel.

Was this on the day after the Queen and President Mitterand formally opened the Tunnel; 05.05.1994?. We both had bad heads, as there had been seemingly unlimited champagne, courtesy of ET.

[bécasse]

11 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

Was this on the day after the Queen and President Mitterand formally opened the Tunnel; 05.05.1994?. We both had bad heads, as there had been seemingly unlimited champagne, courtesy of ET.

Having first travelled through the Tunnel on the Tuesday, I then travelled Waterloo to ET Coquelles again on the Grove on the Friday (which was 6th, not 5th May, 1994 - see photo) and its subsequent return working (without HMQ). The resulting bad heads seem to have been universal, I was chatting to Adele Biss (then a BRB board member) during the inauguration ceremony and she was certainly "enjoying" the hospitality. I remember that we were officially given a special day's leave to attend in order not breach the no-drinking on duty rules.

Edited August 1, 2022 by bécasse

[The Stationmaster]

On 24/07/2022 at 20:33, teeinox said:

Thank you for this fine suggestion.

 

So my model railway consist could have at least a (slight) nod at reality?  Fabulous!

 

But were VIX vans seen at Dover on any significant scale?

 

The choice of the Maidstone route reminds me of early trips on Eurostar:  so often we seemed to get the route via Maidstone East on travelling from the Continent to the UK.  And one time when travelling to Lille, hit the jackpot with via both the Catford Loop AND Maidstone East.  Just felt the journey would never end as we crept along!

Maidstone was used to avoid peak traffic on the normal route and partly to maintain diversionary route knowledge.  Catford was purely to maintain diversionary route knowledge.  

 

We had a late afternoon paired flight of outbound Eurostars via Maidstone which ran into perpetual time keeping troubles which I initially had immense difficulty sorting out.  The first in the flight was a Bruxelles train worked by an SNCB Driver followed bya Paris train worked by an SNCF Driver which - in hindsight ought to have given me a clue.  I had Inspectors ride the Bruxelles train to check if it was losing time but it it never did - either when ridden or in usual everyday operation.   We had an SNCF Inspector ride the Paris and he found nothing un usual -again that ought to have given me a clue but at that point I'd never ridden the front end with an SNCF Driver so didn't tumble.

 

I therefore very carefully graphed the booked timings in detail against signal positions and still couldn't find any reason for the Paris train losing time so I rode it as a passenger (when I was going to Paris for meeting anyway) to see what happened and the light bulb moment duly occurred as I noted a series of brake applications where there weren't any signals.   The Brussels train in front had run absolutely on time so no reason for any adverse aspects so then our Driver Manager and I worked out what was happening.  SNCF Drivers are trained to put the brake in the instant they see a caution signal - part of their defensive driving technique and contributing to SNCF's (official) very low SPAD rate.  

 

So what was happening was that the SNCF Driver on the second train was braking every time he saw a yellow although the signal was green well before the train reached it.  Simple solution was to swap the two Driver's turns so the SNCF man worked the first train and we swopped various other turns about to get a Uk Driver on the second train.  Problem solved. (in reality almost as quickly as it took me to write it all down between the time our Ops Manger chucked it to me 'as an obvious timing and pathing problem' and I established what was happening and why.  A later trip with an SNCF driver from Paris to London showed their training in action between Ashford and Tonbridge - very ediucational.

[SED Freightman]

On 31/07/2022 at 23:00, Fat Controller said:

Was this on the day after the Queen and President Mitterand formally opened the Tunnel; 05.05.1994?. We both had bad heads, as there had been seemingly unlimited champagne, courtesy of ET.

My trip was a few weeks later on 11th June 1994.

[The Stationmaster]

14 hours ago, SED Freightman said:

My trip was a few weeks later on 11th June 1994.

Ah, the 'give your family or mates a free trip to Paris (or Bruxelles)' period of  'developing experience'  running.  A fairly hefty chunk of BR management had a trip during that period.  I did two trips to Paris in the first week - one for work reasons and one with the family.  And a little later I took all the Railtrack Track Access unit managers to Bruxelles where I'd arranged a meeting for them with one of SNCB's foremost timetabling experts (but they had to pay their own bills for the overnight stay in Bruxelles -. a good way to get a bit of leverage where it might subsequently be needed..

 

The family trips, and i think some of the others, were 1st Class in one direction and Standard in the other but provided you'd applied in time for your family trip you could chose which way round you did it.  All good fun and a great treat for the families but much more importantly excellent operational experience, as intended, before fare paying passengers were carried.

[SED Freightman]

9 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Ah, the 'give your family or mates a free trip to Paris (or Bruxelles)' period of  'developing experience'  running.  A fairly hefty chunk of BR management had a trip during that period.  I did two trips to Paris in the first week - one for work reasons and one with the family.  And a little later I took all the Railtrack Track Access unit managers to Bruxelles where I'd arranged a meeting for them with one of SNCB's foremost timetabling experts (but they had to pay their own bills for the overnight stay in Bruxelles -. a good way to get a bit of leverage where it might subsequently be needed.

Alas, I had no free trips to Bruxelles or Paris in BR days nor were they offered.  If I remember correctly Trainload Freight South were allocated a block of tickets for the train on 11/06/1994, the primary purpose of which appeared to be to test the tunnel evacuation arrangements for a full train, which I think were monitored by observers from the Safety Authorities.  Even further off topic, as holder of a cab pass endorsed valid on Channel Tunnel services I did get to have a ride through on the SNCF BB22000 locos and on the first revenue earning train hauled by Cl.92's, that said I still preferred trips on the Nord Pas de Calais (train ferry).

[The Stationmaster]

13 hours ago, SED Freightman said:

Alas, I had no free trips to Bruxelles or Paris in BR days nor were they offered.  If I remember correctly Trainload Freight South were allocated a block of tickets for the train on 11/06/1994, the primary purpose of which appeared to be to test the tunnel evacuation arrangements for a full train, which I think were monitored by observers from the Safety Authorities.  Even further off topic, as holder of a cab pass endorsed valid on Channel Tunnel services I did get to have a ride through on the SNCF BB22000 locos and on the first revenue earning train hauled by Cl.92's, that said I still preferred trips on the Nord Pas de Calais (train ferry).

The train ferry by then was something else - by far the best ferry for food on the Channel in my experience as they worked hard to attract the lorry drivers through the route of very nice steaks.

 

My final 'big railway' Footplate Pass makes very interesting reading -  

'Glasgow, Edinburgh, Swansea, Plymouth, London,  Brussels and Paris.  Valid on Eurostar traction and trains only'.

[bécasse]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

My final 'big railway' Footplate Pass makes very interesting reading -  

'Glasgow, Edinburgh, Swansea, Plymouth, London,  Brussels and Paris.  Valid on Eurostar traction and trains only'.

An interesting combination, some destinations which were researched in detail for Aurora night services, and subsequently rejected, and some (Glasgow, Swansea - although Cardiff was researched) which never were, and no mention of the North of London Eurostar possible destinations which could be done with Eurostar traction but which equally fell by the wayside even if Manchester actually had a shed emblazoned "Ici habite le Eurostar(sic)".

 

A tremendous amount of effort and money was wasted as a result of erroneous traffic forecasts (which in turn stemmed from false data in the IPS) that remained "sacred". The only NoL route that might have been viable would have been Birmingham (and perhaps International rather than New Street) to Paris several times day but that was scuppered by the proposed WCML upgrade, and the only viable ENS trains would have been London to Amsterdam (which would have required two departures a night, 6 nights a week) and to Köln, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt/M, but then only if the trains were all sleeper. It was RJE's personal misjudgements on the ENS trains that led to his sudden departure from the privatised business.

[Mike Storey]

2 hours ago, bécasse said:

 

A tremendous amount of effort and money was wasted as a result of erroneous traffic forecasts (which in turn stemmed from false data in the IPS) that remained "sacred". The only NoL route that might have been viable would have been Birmingham (and perhaps International rather than New Street) to Paris several times day but that was scuppered by the proposed WCML upgrade, and the only viable ENS trains would have been London to Amsterdam (which would have required two departures a night, 6 nights a week) and to Köln, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt/M, but then only if the trains were all sleeper. It was RJE's personal misjudgements on the ENS trains that led to his sudden departure from the privatised business.

 

"RJE" ???

 

[teeinox]

20 hours ago, SED Freightman said:

Alas, I had no free trips to Bruxelles or Paris in BR days nor were they offered.  If I remember correctly Trainload Freight South were allocated a block of tickets for the train on 11/06/1994, the primary purpose of which appeared to be to test the tunnel evacuation arrangements for a full train, which I think were monitored by observers from the Safety Authorities.  Even further off topic, as holder of a cab pass endorsed valid on Channel Tunnel services I did get to have a ride through on the SNCF BB22000 locos and on the first revenue earning train hauled by Cl.92's, that said I still preferred trips on the Nord Pas de Calais (train ferry).

Are there any pictures existing of the SNCF BB22000 locomotives at Folkestone?

[Fat Controller]

4 hours ago, teeinox said:

Are there any pictures existing of the SNCF BB22000 locomotives at Folkestone?

There have been some published. I might haven taken a few myself.

One of the original Dolland's Moor drivers was a neighbour; I remember his son, about four at the time, saying to me 'My daddy drives a Vingt-deux mille deux-cent to France and back'.

[SED Freightman]

15 hours ago, teeinox said:

Are there any pictures existing of the SNCF BB22000 locomotives at Folkestone?

Here you are.  SNCF 22404 + 22405 in Dollands Moor Yd on 09/02/1994 whilst being used for driver training.

 

[Fat Controller]

1 minute ago, SED Freightman said:

Here you are.  SNCF 22404 + 22405 in Dollands Moor Yd on 09/02/1994 whilst being used for driver training.

 

Nice photo. They were run as pairs, with only one fitted with TVM430. The TVM-fitted ones were branded 'TTU', and were always the lead loco. This entailed one loco running around the other; perhaps fortunately, there weren't that many through freights. Once the Class 92s had 'settled down', the BB22200s returned to the main fleet. Taking advantage of their TVM, they were allocated to test trains on the LGV network, and to small number of ME 160 freights that ran from Provence to Rungis market in Paris. They still  retain their TVM, but now seem to work exclusively on ''Infrastructure' workings.

[Oldddudders]

18 hours ago, Mike Storey said:

 

"RJE" ???

 

Richard Edgeley. I first met him as Passenger Manager, SR, in 1985, when I had been appointed Project Manager for TWW closure. [A legal challenge had been mounted, in the name of one Captain Hugo Hastings Bracken and others. The Board's Chief Solicitor nominated Richard to be BR's 'hostage' - a legal term, apparently. Jacques & Lewis, of Grays Inn. were the challengers' legal counsel. I pointed out that one of J&L's partners was Chris Heaps, who sat on passengers' consultative committees etc, as well as being a railway photographer and author...]

 

When you and I were working on Tribute, Mike, RJE, head of European Passenger Services, was one of our sponsors, the other being Chris Green, by then at InterCity. 

 

When a list of stations to be Tribute outlets was compiled, it included any station that had sold a Continental day-trip package sponsored by a national newspaper offer. Talk about straw-grasping! 

[bécasse]

One of Richard's claims to infamy was that he was one of the chief proponents of the concept that others should choose working methods (ie take short cuts) that would get tasks finished to timescale even when that timescale was, to put it mildly, optimistic and probably under resourced.

 

It was that attitude, of course, that led to the Clapham accident, and the irony was that Richard himself was injured badly enough in that accident to require hospital treatment - it didn't change him though.

[The Stationmaster]

21 hours ago, bécasse said:

An interesting combination, some destinations which were researched in detail for Aurora night services, and subsequently rejected, and some (Glasgow, Swansea - although Cardiff was researched) which never were, and no mention of the North of London Eurostar possible destinations which could be done with Eurostar traction but which equally fell by the wayside even if Manchester actually had a shed emblazoned "Ici habite le Eurostar(sic)".

 

A tremendous amount of effort and money was wasted as a result of erroneous traffic forecasts (which in turn stemmed from false data in the IPS) that remained "sacred". The only NoL route that might have been viable would have been Birmingham (and perhaps International rather than New Street) to Paris several times day but that was scuppered by the proposed WCML upgrade, and the only viable ENS trains would have been London to Amsterdam (which would have required two departures a night, 6 nights a week) and to Köln, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt/M, but then only if the trains were all sleeper. It was RJE's personal misjudgements on the ENS trains that led to his sudden departure from the privatised business.

The ENS management considered that the most lucrative route would be Frankfurt and it was the one intended to be the launch route for ENS.  Amsterdam was effectively killed by the low cast airlines but it remained in the plan.   The original 'beyond London' ENS trains were little more than political sops to places which would be never see a Eurostar (as in many respect were the north of London services). and the Plymouth traffic figures were the worst of the lot in terms of error because they included all continental travel from Plymouth - which turned out to mean people travelling on Brittany Ferries services😮

 

I made a number of alterations to the beyond London ENS services in order to drastically reduce the costs but it was plainly obvious that they would never be viable because of the extended journey times but at least I altered them to include possible Waterloo advertised departures.  ENS were very happy with the changes but I could do very little, apart from a very slight gain from rerouting one of the trains, to shorten journey times west of London.

 

Incidentally while Eurostar was a go-co all policy changes regarding Eurostar, and any UK input to the ENS project, had to be agreed with the Dept of Transport and they remained 100% committed to the original basic plan for all services beyond London and no move to end any of them was allowed.  It was only after the first privatisation takeover that more radical changes, such as complete abandonment of beyond London routes, were able t be considered as the Dept then took the view that it was all down to the new owners and their commercial assessment of the plans, especially beyond London.  Throughout all of this the Frankfurt ENS service was still very firmly supported by DB (and NS were still thoroughly committed to the ENS Amsterdam service) but the new UK management pulled the plug on any involvement with night trains so that was that (and we were instructed to destroy all files and documentation relating to ENS).

 

Regional Eurostar was really more of the same with totally unattractive journey times for business travellers - even from Birmingham where I knew various people who regularly travelled to Paris on business and thought the train journey times totally nonsensical and unable to compare with air. Oddly it turned out after a lot of market reassessment that the only original Regional route that made any sense at all was the East Coast because of the tourist market to/from the likes of York, Durham, and Edinburgh. but even that was only considered sufficient for a couple of trains a week.

 

There were several major reviews on the Regional service before it was completely canned and Chris Green was brought in to do one of them.  He asked me to check over his plan before he submitted it and accordingly brought it into my office and handed me the plan while in return I handed him a sealed envelope.  He asked what was in the envelope and I told him that it was a copy of his plan - when we compared the two the only difference was that one of his departure times from Paris was 30 minutes different from mine.  Nothing to do with being clever - it was really that if you tried to serve the original routes there was no other logical way of writing the train plan and getting the maintenance and servicing rotations into the set working along with the LGV white period constraint in France.

 

Other alternatives were also considered - one being 'trains as planes' from Heathrow for a particular airline, finally dismissed on technical cost grounds and lack of paths at certain times on the GWML although it could have taken advantage of the proposed new flying junction at Acton for the preposed St Pancras - Heathrow connect service

  (which in any event in the end was run from Paddington and not St Pancras.

 

Another (slightly) north of London location was very closely assessed and would have had several trains a day to Paris - it would have achieved a not impossible journey time once CTRL opened but was not considered viable so things proceeded on the bass of the original plan apart from one of the Virgin 'implants' suggesting at the major review meeting that we ought to consider running the trains from Bristol (our response was remarkably polite).   In the event Regional Eurostar. was canned in the week before the first trains were due to run - from Manchester.

[Nearholmer]

There’s a lot of this thread, so apologies if the answer is in here and I’ve missed it.

 

Fully fitted goods train, very late steam era (1966/7 I think), was it permissible for the van to be marshalled at the head, rather than tail of the train?

 

A photo came up on another forum showing what appears to be a Waterloo to Portsmouth  goods passing through Battersea, brake-van directly behind the tender, then no more than half a dozen ‘box vans’. Being southern, the head code is for the route rather than class of train, and Nine Elms would have had a different code, and what the vans might have contained that necessitated routing to/from Waterloo is a mystery, possibly empties from a run bringing fruit, veg or flowers into London.

[teeinox]

9 hours ago, SED Freightman said:

Here you are.  SNCF 22404 + 22405 in Dollands Moor Yd on 09/02/1994 whilst being used for driver training.

 

Thank you for the splendid photo.  I looked at the French Wikipedia site about BB22000 locomotives.  This is what it had to say:

 

"Du fait du retard de livraison des CC 92000 pour le tunnel sous la Manche, les BB 22399 à 22405 ont été équipées de la TVM 430 et adaptées pour la marche en unités multiples. Pendant 15 mois, elles ont tracté des trains de fret sous la Manche. Leur nez a alors revêtu une couleur jaune conformément au matériel circulant au Royaume-Uni, faisant surnommer les engins « yellow submachines », en référence à la chanson « Yellow Submarine » des Beatles. Les locomotives 22379, 22380, 22399, 22401, 22403 et 22405 étaient équipées de la signalisation en cabine et nommées TTU. Elles étaient en tête des unités motrices et nommées TTU (transmission tunnel UM). Les locomotives 22400, 22402 et 22404 n’étaient pas équipées de la signalisation et étaient nommées TU ; elles étaient toujours en seconde position de l’unité motrice."

 

And my translation: I apologise for any mistakes I may have made:

 

Because of the late delivery of the Class 92s for the channel Tunnel, BB22399 to 22405 were equipped with TVM 430 and adapted for multiple-unit working.   They hauled freight trains through the Channel tunnel for 15 months.  To conform with the regulations in the United Kingdom, their ends were painted yellow, giving rise to their nickname “yellow submachines”, after the Beatles song “Yellow Submarine”.  Locomotives 22379, 22380, 22399, 22401, 22403 and 22405 were equipped with cab signalling and classified “TTU”, standing for “Transmission Tunnel UM”.  [Translator's note: “UM” refers to their ability to operate as multiple units.]  Locomotives 22400, 22402 and 22404 were not so equipped, and were classified “TU”; they always ran in the trailing position in the consist.