Fascinating old adverts for railway equipment

[Fat Controller]

10 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Assuming it’s in the very early 60s, that’s serious tech, in that traction rectifiers had used germanium, rather than silicon, diodes until very recently, and mercury-arc rectifiers not long before. It was only 10-15 years since industrial frequency electrification had become truly viable at all, and the French were top dogs in the subject.

The electrification of the lines in the Nord- Pas de Calais / Alsace- Lorraine was in the mid-1950s, I believe. The BB 12000 locos were still in service when I first crossed with Eurotunnel in 1994, and were frequent visitors to the yard at Frethun until almost the end of the decade. There was a second B-B class, the BB 13000, which had different electronics, and also the CC14000, designed for coal and mineral traffic.

[D7063]

Good evening all 😀

Thanks for the replies regarding telephone exchanges, pneumatic communications and AC rectifiers - I always enjoy the insights that you all have. On the subject of rectifiers, does anyone know if Mercury rectifiers were used in any of the early BR electrics (Classes 81-85) ?

Asking for a friend... 😁

Anyway, moving swiftly on (as they say) - todays offering is from 'Worthington - Simpson Ltd' suppliers of the finest pumps, compressors & heat exchange equipment, based in Nottinghamshire.

It seems counter intuitive that 'air cooling' of their monobloc unit would prevent hazards from frost - as described in the text!!

I'm guessing that they are referring to coolant freezing type issues in low temperatures.

The advert also claims that there are no belts, pulleys or couplings associated with their 'monobloc', so I'm guessing they were electrically or steam driven. The image looks like another 'stylised' diesel so probably electrically driven.

That signal looks a bit short though 😆

[Nearholmer]

37 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

There was a second B-B class, the BB 13000, which had different electronics, and also the CC14000

The Wikipedia entry for BB 13000 summarises the various traction packages quite nearly:

 

The four classes each took a different approach to the use of the AC supply current.[1] The first, the BB 12000, used DC traction motors with ignitron rectifiers; the BB 13000 used new 50 Hz AC traction motors; the CC 14000 used DC traction motors with rectification by rotary converters and the CC 14100 used three-phase AC traction motors, again with rotary converters.

Notice that at that stage there were no solid-state rectifiers involved, which reinforces my point that silicon diodes in this application were still a big thing in the early 60s.

 

Somewhere on line that I can’t currently find is a really good paper by one of the engineers who was in at the start of all this immediately before WW2 and stayed with it through the 1950s, which makes clear how industrial frequencyvelectrification was an Alsatian thing in conception, rather than specifically French or German.

[D7063]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The Wikipedia entry for BB 13000 summarises the various traction packages quite nearly:

 

The four classes each took a different approach to the use of the AC supply current.[1] The first, the BB 12000, used DC traction motors with ignitron rectifiers; the BB 13000 used new 50 Hz AC traction motors; the CC 14000 used DC traction motors with rectification by rotary converters and the CC 14100 used three-phase AC traction motors, again with rotary converters.

Notice that at that stage there were no solid-state rectifiers involved, which reinforces my point that silicon diodes in this application were still a big thing in the early 60s.

 

Somewhere on line that I can’t currently find is a really good paper by one of the engineers who was in at the start of all this immediately before WW2 and stayed with it through the 1950s, which makes clear how industrial frequencyvelectrification was an Alsatian thing in conception, rather than specifically French or German.

Thanks for the reply - If you ever find that paper, it'd be great to have a link, very interesting that rotary rectifiers were used - I bet they played havoc with any radio sets nearby. I don't think that they would be compatible with modern signaling, well not without some pretty heavy suppression anyway!

[uax6]

I believe that Mercury tank rectifiers were used in a lot of the early 25Kv electrics in the uk.

 

Andy G

[ruggedpeak]

On 25/09/2022 at 18:45, D7063 said:

Hello everyone 🙂

Some more familiar looking UK railway related equipment this evening. I think this ad also contains the worst pun of the collection so far!!!!

Some interesting looking signals depicted in the artwork and the stylised locomotive depicted makes an appearance on some of the other adverts too. Looks like the same artist was commissioned to do a few of these!

It's hard now to imagine a pre internet world of vacuum tubes linking premises together as part of a communication network, but these vacuum systems were quite common - there was one in my local Co-op, that they used to put cheques in, when someone used this payment method at the till.

 

I've also noticed that the company's phone number ends in '-8'  - was that the extension?

OFF TOPIC: I worked for several retailers in the 1990's and they were using the tubes for cash and cheques then. Went straight from tills to the cash office. Good bit of kit, I don't remember it ever being out of order or needing to be rebooted! 😄

[D7063]

Good evening everyone 😀

There's a distinct possibility that the products in this advert were 'Made in Scotland from girders'.

Does the Scottish Machine Tool Corporation exist in any shape or form I wonder?

I'm very struck at how plain this advert is, not even an appearance from a stylised prototype Deltic or 1st gen DMU!

Enjoy!

 

[Jeremy Cumberland]

47 minutes ago, D7063 said:

Does the Scottish Machine Tool Corporation exist in any shape or form I wonder?

Alas not:

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/fbc2f6ba-25a3-3c8a-baa2-a88f55e5bddd

It went into liquidation in 1982.

[D7063]

4 minutes ago, Jeremy C said:

Alas not:

https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/fbc2f6ba-25a3-3c8a-baa2-a88f55e5bddd

It went into liquidation in 1982.

Hi Jeremy - thanks for the link, always interested to find out what happened to some of these companies. I don't think 1982 was a vintage year for UK industry, my dad worked for British Steel and one steel mill after the other seemed to be closing locally...and then there was the mines...

Cheers

 

 

Alex

[SR71]

Although potentially in name only by then anyway as they were bought out in 60's/70's according to Grace's. Also with bonus of other adverts;

 

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Scottish_Machine_Tool_Corporation

[D7063]

17 minutes ago, SR71 said:

Although potentially in name only by then anyway as they were bought out in 60's/70's according to Grace's. Also with bonus of other adverts;

 

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Scottish_Machine_Tool_Corporation

I should have looked at Grace's!!!! The 100ton 'press brake' is a fearsome beast!

I could get lost on that site for a very long time 😀

Cheers

 

 

 

Alex

[D7063]

Good evening everybody😀

Another foreign loco manufacturer hoping for some UK sales has snuck in today - some of you may already know the name 'Deutz' as a manufacturer of various sizes of diesel engines (Well that's where I know the name from anyway🙂)

This adverts a bit more colourful and sophisticated (for the time!) - I don't think I've seen a Deutz shunter at a UK location - has anyone else?

 

[Nearholmer]

Historically, they pretty much invented the concept of the small internal combustion engines loco, churning them out by the hundreds before British builders had got past the very experimental stage.

 

They made fair inroads in Ireland in the 50s and 60s, including tiny little mixed traffic locos for branch lines, some SG industrials, and two batches of small 3ft gauge locos for Bord na Mona. There are several preserved.

 

In Britain, back in the 1930s some of their small loco designs were licensed to Bagnall who built and sold a few to ‘empire’ customers*, and earlier than that a few NG ones were imported pre-WW1.

 

There are a few small NG ones preserved in the UK, including a 1930s one with a really interesting engine at Amerton, but I think that was imported into preservation, rather than having worked here.
 

* They did build at least one loco for the UK using a Deutz engine at this time, maybe more but I can’t remember off hand.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Nearholmer

[D7063]

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

They made fair inroads in Ireland in the 50s and 60s, including tiny little mixed traffic locos for branch lines, some SG industrials, and two batches of small 3ft gauge locos for Bord na Mona. There are several preserved.

 

In Britain, back in the 1930s some of their small loco designs were licensed to Bagnall who built and sold a few to ‘empire’ customers*, and earlier than that a few NG ones were imported pre-WW1.

 

There are a few small NG ones preserved in the UK, including a 1930s one with a really interesting engine at Amerton, but I think that was imported into preservation, rather than having worked here.
 

* They did build at least one loco for the UK using a Deutz engine at this time, maybe more but I can’t remember off hand.

Thanks Nearholmer - I thought that they couldn't be too common in the UK. Really interesting info re Ireland and having a licensing arrangement with Bagnall - can you recall what was special about the engine in the 1930's engine?

Or should I just search for Amerton?😀

Cheers

 

 

 

Alex

[Nearholmer]

The loco at Amerton has, IIRC, a single-cylinder two-stroke engine with a separate scavenge cylinder. I’ve got notes and photos somewhere because I made a special trip to go and look at it part-assembled when it was being restored, but I’m not totally sure I’ve remembered it correctly - the separate cylinder may have been for pre-compression rather than scavenging.

 

Aha! Here it is, and it is a scavenge cylinder. https://amertonrailway.co.uk/locomotives/diesel/deutz-no-19531/

Edited September 28, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

The other thing to bear in mind about Deutz is that the engines built by Crossley in Manchester began as  licensed builds to Deutz designs (actually ‘Otto’s Silent Gas Engine’, Otto being one of the founders of Deutz). IIRC Crossley held the license for Britain and the World, while Deutz kept only Germany for themselves.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2022 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Probably out of date now, but list of preserved Deutz locos. Notice that No.1 is preserved, but they actually built three or four prototypes in the early 1890s, before that one, testing different forms of transmission.

 

http://www.werkbahn.de/eisenbahn/lokbau/museum/pres_deutz_khd.htm

[Nearholmer]

Which has made me remember this excellent loco at Moseley, which was imported in the early 1930s.

 

Its a real cracker because the big horizontal single cylinder makes it chug along like a rocking horse. The basic layout is exactly as the 1897 loco, but this one is diesel rather than spark ignition.

 

https://avlr.org.uk/2021/01/life-and-times-no-50-the-deutz.html

[D7063]

28 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Which has made me remember this excellent loco at Moseley, which was imported in the early 1930s.

 

Its a real cracker because the big horizontal single cylinder makes it chug along like a rocking horse. The basic layout is exactly as the 1897 loco, but this one is diesel rather than spark ignition.

 

https://avlr.org.uk/2021/01/life-and-times-no-50-the-deutz.html

Thanks Nearholmer - what a fantastic little loco!!

That flywheel is something to behold 😀

[Nearholmer]

The early Otto gas, then "petrol", engines that we now see as stationary engines at steam fairs were low-compression, and low-revving, 150-300rpm, so needed a whopper flywheel, usually one either end of the crankshaft, to give smooth power to the load, and because of the way they were governed to cap the speed.

 

Because Deutz effectively copied across their spark-ignition horizontal Otto engine design to create one early version of their Diesel loco, the whole shamozzle, flywheels and all, followed. That idea didn't last long, because it was slow, big and heavy, as was the gearbox, and they quickly standardised on higher conpression, higher revving vertical engines, with much more compact gearboxes, giving the series of locos to which the one at Amerton belongs. The Moseley loco is a sort of strange "missing link" animal.

 

Not all early Diesel locos were like that. After Diesel's own giant white elephant, which probably led to his death, other makers quite soon built Diesel powered rail vehicles using high speed (by the standards of the day) multi-cylinder vertical engines, pretty much what we would recognise today as a Diesel engine. There is the engine (only) from a railbus built in I think 1913 preserved in Sweden, the Swedes having built Diesel-Electrics before the better known US ones, despite what many people in the USA would have you believe.

[kevinlms]

On 26/09/2022 at 15:29, uax6 said:

Ah the old PBX group! Normally in advertising they would put the first number only, with something like '5 lines' in brackets. The final selector doing the hunting over the group, but I'm not sure that the PBX hunting would work if you dialled anything other than the 1st line. I'll have to check this, I've not got true PBX groups set up on my UAX12 at the minute, only the outgoing junctions, and I don't know if I've got the PBX pins in them!

 

Andy G

Normally with step by step exchanges, a group had to be consecutive numbers for the rotary to work.

If you picked another line within the group, that one would ring if free, if it was busy, you'd get busy tone, as it was incapable of hunting.

For a group of 8 lines, you'd almost certainly get the switchboard operator, not some random person in the building. The only time you got switched directly elsewhere, was if that line was 'night switched'.

 

A business often advised how many lines were available, after the main number. That gave would be callers, info that there was less chance of getting busy and therefore a better place to do business!

[kevinlms]

On 26/09/2022 at 19:57, Fat Controller said:

Pneumatic tubes are still used in places such as Toll Plazas on bridges, and the till lines at larger supermarkets; saves having to cross lines of traffic, or exposing staff to potential thieves. 

Yes, the duty manager was fiddling with the tubes (I nearly said her tubes, but I think that would give the wrong impression!) yesterday at the supermarket. This is a recent constructed store, it was only built 6-7 years ago, so still in use.

Mind you, I've never actually seen it being used, but obviously it is.

 

As for toll plazas, what sort of 3rd world country are we talking of here? It has been 20 years at least since we went to electronic tolling, where you drive through at the normal speed limit (or beyond I'm told! An obvious place for speed cameras, so no way).

[D7063]

Good evening all 😀

Now that the site is up again its time to have another rail equipment advert from the 60's!

This time its from 'British Railways' and they're keen to tell you about their 'famous users' for their tote bin system.

They are also keen to tell you about all the lovely things that you can put in the tote bins - including asbestos!!!

Edited September 29, 2022 by D7063
spelling - worse than usual :)

[D7063]

Good evening all 🙂

Today's advert reminds me of a page from an old Triang catalogue!!!

There's definitely a 'real thing looking like a model' ( to paraphrase another thread!) air to it - the 'Presflo' type wagon especially. Good to see the Triang 'blue Pullman' putting in an appearance too!

The tanker wagon could be an interloper from Airfix though 😀.

[D7063]

Good evening 😀

Today we have evidence that the 'GM Invasion' is not a recent thing courtesy of this 1960's advert for the company!

The locos being unloaded look similar to the ones used in Ireland, anyone any idea what type they are?

I might be mistaken, but is the loco on the crane minus it's bogies?

Enjoy...