Electrification at a terminus station

[Morello Cherry]

2 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

If they do it's only an operational inconvenience (especially if they do it in rush hour), all they need to do is get something else to pull it back out. 

 

It's the signalman's job to know which train is approaching, which platform it is booked to arrive in and which platforms he can't use as a substitute.  The signalling tells drivers where they a re routed and they too should know which platforms they can't use, and stop at the signal a refuse the route if it's inappropriate.   Human error and all that but it's not a mistake either of them is going to make too often as they would never hear the end of it.

 

Maybe I am being a bit simple but is it that simple? because clearly the signaller can't stop the train at the entrance to Waterloo, pop his head out of the window and have a look if there is steam engine on the front. Trains, especially into London run out of sequence, thinking about interwar London with fog etc, there is no guarantee that you'd be able to see anyway.  And Waterloo is hardly the kind of station where you can have a several platforms blocked because an electric was wrongly sent into an unelectrified platform. What precautions were in place to protect the signaller from wrongly routing a train? For example train description, different bell codes?

 

How did the signalmen at Waterloo before 1936 get the information as to which train is which and where it needs to be signalled to and aid them in that process? I can see from this website that the 1936 box had a train describer but what about before?  Would the LSWR have used a similar system of Walker's Train Describers?

 

https://www.wbsframe.mste.co.uk/public/Waterloo.html

 

 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

8 hours ago, Morello Cherry said:

 

Maybe I am being a bit simple but is it that simple? because clearly the signaller can't stop the train at the entrance to Waterloo, pop his head out of the window and have a look if there is steam engine on the front. Trains, especially into London run out of sequence, thinking about interwar London with fog etc, there is no guarantee that you'd be able to see anyway.  And Waterloo is hardly the kind of station where you can have a several platforms blocked because an electric was wrongly sent into an unelectrified platform. What precautions were in place to protect the signaller from wrongly routing a train? For example train description, different bell codes?

 

How did the signalmen at Waterloo before 1936 get the information as to which train is which and where it needs to be signalled to and aid them in that process? I can see from this website that the 1936 box had a train describer but what about before?  Would the LSWR have used a similar system of Walker's Train Describers?

 

https://www.wbsframe.mste.co.uk/public/Waterloo.html

 

 

 

Interesting question.  It certainly would have been a more labour intensive system before the magazine-type train describers you show there.   I would assume that they must have relied a lot more heavily on routing codes, telegraph/telephone messages passed between "booking boys" when trains were out of sequence and perhaps supplementary bell circuits.   I can imagine it was a major headache while you were waiting on technicians if these instruments failed.  To keep this on topic, I should say that some of the descriptions on the describers draw a distinction between steam and passenger workings.

 

I know very little about the Walker clockwork-powered instruments, but I suspect they were a lot less reliable and the sending/receiving instruments might get out of sync from time to time.  He was LSWR General Manager, so I assume they would have had his instruments before the magazine type, which are based on Strowger telephone technology and they have a self-checking design.  Essentially a series of pulses is sent to indicate the required description and a complementary of pulses is sent back to the sending equipment.  These instruments are described in IRSE "green book" No 13, including a photo of several receiving instruments at Waterloo. 

 

The instruments you show there are actually sending instruments and woud be used for departing trains rather than arrivals.  You press the button to the right of the label and after a series of clicks and whirrs the red light to the left of the label lights to show what description you last sent.   There is also a "Receiver full" indication, the short label and lamp at the bottom left.  The receiving instrument is similar but lacks the buttons and has three columns of 24 lamps for the next three approaching trains.  There were also half width versions that only allowed 12 descriptions.

 

I have a complete set of these wired up in my conservatory.  The little SGE makers plate you see at the bottom has a patent number, and I used that to find the wiring diagram on the Patent Office databse!  As it happens the last week I was clearing out my garden shed and I have a few more of these boxes in ex-Collectors Corner condition which I will be listing on ebay when I get round to it, but I haven't swept out the cobwebs yet.

 

The Walker instruments only would tell you what the next train is, whereas the SGE magazine type displays the first three of (depending on how many uniselectors there are in the control box) up to 9 trains stored in the equipment.  A big advantage of these systems over the Walker type was that once a description was entered into the system, it could be passed automatically along the line from box to box (triggered by track circuits) without needing to be redescribed each time.  When a train is cleared out (can also be done manually with a simple push button) , the second train steps forward to first, the third to second and the previously hidden fourth train appears as third train.

 

I don't know but I assume the First Train/Second public information displays that you used to get at some Underground stations were probably using the same equipment.

[The Stationmaster]

15 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

No different from not sending an electric the wrong way at a diverging junction - Worting for instance - though there's normally an overlap as any error would be at speed.

Used to happen a bit too often at Reading Spur Jcn - and no sort of 3rd rail overlap towards the Western lines there.  When I did some research work on mis-routings back in the early years of this century for Railtrack (as it then was) the number of electric train mis-routings was noticeable although only a small percentage of the annual total.

[Pacific231G]

My friend Paul has answered my query about European stations handling two current systems with four example from Switzerland,

 

At Geneva Cornavin, the tracks were switchable in DC days and may well still be between 15 and 25kV The current units are the Stadler standard design for 15/25kV.

 

When last observed at Chiasso, as trains enter, their locos lower their pans while still under their 'home' system and coast to a standstill. A dual current Swiss shunter would then haul them away from the train and propel them back home, so to speak.

 

At  Pontresina, NE of St Moritz in Switzerland on the Rhaetian Railway the Bernina line (1kV dc) meets the main system (11kV ac) and its trains continue to St Moritz so Pontresina and St Moritz  both had 2 systems. The platforms at St Moritz may have been permanently segregated by voltage but Pontresina is now switchable. In 1985 he travelled over the Bernina, through Pontresina to Bergun on the line to Chur on the 'Bernina Express'. The train was hauled in by two railcars which detached and went forward to St Moritz. The loco to take the train forward then propelled 4 coaches - including the restaurant car - under the 1kV OHLE while itself remaining under the 11kV.

 

He also remembered in 1970 being shunted from Bale SNCF to Basel SBB by a Swiss dual voltage loco. It was done without stopping and there was rather a flash at the pantograph head went from one system over the neutral section to the other. 

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by Pacific231G

[caradoc]

On 14/04/2023 at 18:34, Derekstuart said:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned (unless I've missed it) Liverpool Street. It has had 1500v wired to SOME of the platforms since nineteen hundred and black&white, with most of its platforms staying wonderfully wire free until the 1980s.

 

Certainly for the initial 1500v DC electrification only Platforms 11-18 at Liverpool Street were wired, but I would have thought that after the conversion to AC, and the Enfield/Chingford/Hertford/Bishops Stortford scheme in the early 60s, definitely most, if not possibly all, platforms were wired? 

 

[DY444]

On 14/04/2023 at 18:34, Derekstuart said:

I'm surprised no one has mentioned (unless I've missed it) Liverpool Street. It has had 1500v wired to SOME of the platforms since nineteen hundred and black&white, with most of its platforms staying wonderfully wire free until the 1980s.

 

Not the case I'm afraid.

 

19 hours ago, caradoc said:

 

Certainly for the initial 1500v DC electrification only Platforms 11-18 at Liverpool Street were wired, but I would have thought that after the conversion to AC, and the Enfield/Chingford/Hertford/Bishops Stortford scheme in the early 60s, definitely most, if not possibly all, platforms were wired? 

 

 

Yes the partial electrification at Liverpool St. was only a feature during the DC days.  The conversion to AC and the Enfield/Chingford/Hertford/Bishops Stortford scheme resulted in all platforms being wired.

[roythebus1]

On 15/04/2023 at 19:42, Michael Hodgson said:

If they do it's only an operational inconvenience (especially if they do it in rush hour), all they need to do is get something else to pull it back out. 

 

It's the signalman's job to know which train is approaching, which platform it is booked to arrive in and which platforms he can't use as a substitute.  The signalling tells drivers where they a re routed and they too should know which platforms they can't use, and stop at the signal a refuse the route if it's inappropriate.   Human error and all that but it's not a mistake either of them is going to make too often as they would never hear the end of it.

More from the ribbing in the mess room than from official sources in those days. :)

 

[roythebus1]

There's a few examples where the DB meets NS. I can't remember the name of the border station which was on the Dutch side on the line from Moenchengladbach. My good frien, a retired DB driver, used to work there regularly. The DB loco would have to drop the pan and coast into the station with train. A small NS shunter would take the DB loco onto the other end of the station whee there was a switchable section when the DB loco could raise pan and get ready to take the next train back out. The little shunter would take the NS loco off and leave it at the other end of the station. My friend couldn't speak Dutch so they all used hand signals! I had to look on the map, Venlo was the border station. It's a long time since I've been there.

 

Aachen was/is switchable . I understand there's 3 systems there, DB, NS and SNCB.

 

Edited April 18, 2023 by roythebus1

[The Stationmaster]

14 minutes ago, roythebus1 said:

There's a few examples where the DB meets NS. I can't remember the name of the border station which was on the Dutch side on the line from Moenchengladbach. My good frien, a retired DB driver, used to work there regularly. The DB loco would have to drop the pan and coast into the station with train. A small NS shunter would take the DB loco onto the other end of the station whee there was a switchable section when the DB loco could raise pan and get ready to take the next train back out. The little shunter would take the NS loco off and leave it at the other end of the station. My friend couldn't speak Dutch so they all used hand signals! I had to look on the map, Venlo was the border station. It's a long time since I've been there.

 

Aachen was/is switchable . I understand there's 3 systems there, DB, NS and SNCB.

 

Some alterations were made at Aachen when the line from Belgium was re-modernised in fairly recent years so I'm noy t sure exactly what was done but my lad seems to know.  

 

It was definitely at least part switchable in the past as a Class 373 ran into the station from Belgium under its own power. (Which then led to something of a linguistice pantomime as the DB Traction Inspector with the loco to haul the set on to Köln could only speak German plus a little English while the SNCB Conductor Driver and Inspector couldn't speak German so it ended up with the Eurostar UK Driver translating from German to French for the benefit of the two Belgians.  It was a bit like that in Eurostar where languages sometimes changed mid sentence and at one meeting I was some translating from German to French because the two SNCF reps couldn't understand German!)

[Michael Hodgson]

41 minutes ago, roythebus1 said:

My friend couldn't speak Dutch so they all used hand signals!

 

In my experience most Dutchmen understand German and can speak it well enough to be understood.  Probably isn't true the other way round though. 

 

I don't speak Dutch. but I when I working in Virginia with a Dutchman he uttered an expletive and immediately looked very embarassed - he asked if I understood what he had just said.  I replied that I did but it was OK because they (the American ladies in the room) didn't.  I was amused that the translation of such a blasphemous expression would have caused offence whereas an obscenity wouldn't have, whilst it would have been the other way round had this happened in the UK.  Swearwords in different cultures don't carry the same degree of effect or opprobium when translated literally.

[bécasse]

27 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

It was a bit like that in Eurostar where languages sometimes changed mid sentence and at one meeting I was some translating from German to French because the two SNCF reps couldn't understand German!)

In my time with EPS/Eurostar (1989-1995), the general rule in commercial meetings was that everyone spoke their own language at meetings and there was no translation (although if there was a clear misunderstanding everyone muddled in until it was sorted out), which was actually quite efficient as meetings proceeded at the same pace that they would have done in a monolingual situation. If I was giving a presentation, I would speak in English but the accompanying slides were in French.

 

One amusing situation occurred at a meeting held at the SNCB/NMBS HQ in rue du Midi at Bruxelles when a flunkey came in to serve us all with coffee and asked in Dutch whether we wanted rolls to go with it. All eyes turned to Phillippe, my Belgian opposite number, to explain what had been said. I had long suspected that Philippe, who originated from Tournai, spoke no Dutch, despite strict rules requiring anyone of his grade who worked in Bruxelles to be competent in both French and Dutch, and his silence bore out those suspicions. Fortunately my basic knowledge of the language had been sufficient to understand the question, and, after ascertaining that no one wanted one (as ever, we had lunched well), I was able to tell the flunkey thank you but no. I did make a mental note to ensure that any future research questionnaires in Dutch were even more thoroughly checked than they had been.

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, bécasse said:

In my time with EPS/Eurostar (1989-1995), the general rule in commercial meetings was that everyone spoke their own language at meetings and there was no translation (although if there was a clear misunderstanding everyone muddled in until it was sorted out), which was actually quite efficient as meetings proceeded at the same pace that they would have done in a monolingual situation. If I was giving a presentation, I would speak in English but the accompanying slides were in French.

 

Luckily you didn;t deal with SNCF staff who had very limited English - as was the case with my opposite number.  Thus at timetable meetings train numbers were always spoken in French, wherever the meeting was held. and of course being from the English end we had to get used to two different numbers for the same train.

 

Bi'lingiulaism was far from universal among SNCB staff, even quite senior people the important thing being that their native language and religion ticked the appropriate boxes when it came to ensuring an even balance between the two groups. I even attended an SNCB meeting in Brussel which was mainly conducted in Flemish with occasional questions in English to make sure that I'd understood what had been said - but I can no longer remember the Flemish for 'rail replacement 'bus service'.  

 

In in some cases less formal Eurostar meetings involving SNCB  tended to be bi-lingual, or tri-lingual, as circumstances permitted although oddly almost all the SNCB people I worked with regularly were native Flemish speakers.  On one occasion I asked a question in English of an SNCB colleague who had been explaining some details about the Brussel Eurostar platforms and got a reply in German (DB were not at the meeting).

 

 

[Wickham Green too]

Sounds like David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd could have had fun writing a Eurostar sitcom with Allo Allo type pronunciation !

[melmerby]

More about Switzerland.

At Meiringen the MIB and ZB (Zentral Bahn/Brünigbahn) meet (both metre gauge) and there is some switchable track between the ZB's AC system and the MIB's DC system.

This looks like the switching:

MIB train to right ZB to left

 

At Interlaken there are 3 distinctive routes. The BLS's standard gauge 15kv AC, the ZB's 15kv AC metre gauge and the BOB's DC metre gauge.

The 2 sets of metre gauge tracks are connected but I don't think there is any electrification common between them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2023 by melmerby

[Fat Controller]

I once had a comprehension test as part of an interview with RfD; a tape of station announcements in French regional accents/ dialects. I had to note the train number, platforms and any other notes. Fortunately, we'd travelled and worked in the 'four corners of the Hexagon'..

 

[31A]

8 hours ago, roythebus1 said:

Aachen was/is switchable . I understand there's 3 systems there, DB, NS and SNCB.

 

 

I used to be fairly familiar with Aachen as my sister lived there in the 1980s/90s, and I used to visit her quite often.   I think it's only Platforms 8 & 9 (those which lead to / from Belgium) that are switchable; I think they still are, as when I was last in the area the SNCB (2019) still had to use their oldest 2-car EMUs on the local service from Belgium for technical reasons connected with the signalling system I believe.  But I don't think there's ever been any NS electrification at Aachen.  I used to quite often go there via Harwich-Hoek van Holland-Maastricht and the line from Maastricht to Aachen wasn't electrified; it was either an NS DMU or a DB Battery railcar!  That line is now part of the preserved railway at Valkenburg and trains from Aachen to Holland now go via Heerlen, but I don't think that line is electrified either.

 

Edited April 18, 2023 by 31A
To correct Dutch place name!

[roythebus1]

23 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Luckily you didn;t deal with SNCF staff who had very limited English - as was the case with my opposite number.  Thus at timetable meetings train numbers were always spoken in French, wherever the meeting was held. and of course being from the English end we had to get used to two different numbers for the same train.

 

Bi'lingiulaism was far from universal among SNCB staff, even quite senior people the important thing being that their native language and religion ticked the appropriate boxes when it came to ensuring an even balance between the two groups. I even attended an SNCB meeting in Brussel which was mainly conducted in Flemish with occasional questions in English to make sure that I'd understood what had been said - but I can no longer remember the Flemish for 'rail replacement 'bus service'.  

 

In in some cases less formal Eurostar meetings involving SNCB  tended to be bi-lingual, or tri-lingual, as circumstances permitted although oddly almost all the SNCB people I worked with regularly were native Flemish speakers.  On one occasion I asked a question in English of an SNCB colleague who had been explaining some details about the Brussel Eurostar platforms and got a reply in German (DB were not at the meeting).

 

 

Spoorvervangende busdienst is what you want. :)

[Wickham Green too]

..... or not as the case may be !

[Anadin Dogwalker]

Re Ventimiglia, it was wired at 1500v DC so could be used by dual voltage French stock and Italian at half power. I interrailed that line in 2002.  I can't remember which leg was wired first south of Avignon (ie Montpelier to connect to the Midi, or the Marseille leg) but the completion of the PLM  DC electrification was 1962 and the  AC Cote d'Azur extension in 1969. The triangle north of Marseille was all wired up as the loco depot (St Charles?) was on the Nice leg of the triangle. East of the depot there was a dead section and the catenary style changes to AC all the way along the coast, then back to DC on the approach to Ventimiglia.  I'd need to dredge up the photos as I cant remember what style of spans were present in the station; I suspect it was probably Italian. IIRC  it was mostly TGVs, units or BB25500 on locals plus the odd Sybic or BB22200- all dual voltage types by necessity. 

[F2Andy]

I do not think anyone has mentioned Broad Street, which was half electrified and half not - until the latter was just closed altogether.

 

Good image some way down this page with a class 31 on non-electricified, with class 501 behind.

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/b/broad_street/

[The Lurker]

On 14/04/2023 at 23:59, Morello Cherry said:

Just a thought back to whether the whole or part of the station is electrified what happened in the Southern Railway London termini? For example was all of Waterloo electrified before the Portsmouth line electrification or just the platforms that the suburban electrics used? Likewise was all of Victoria electrified in one go or just parts of the station?

 

 

 

 

Bit of a late reply but Cannon Street was also initially electrified on platforms 1-5, 6-8 remaining for steam operations only (per Kentrail). It's not clear from the same source whether the same arrangement existed at Charing Cross which was electrified at the same time

[Morello Cherry]

On 20/04/2023 at 13:55, The Lurker said:

Bit of a late reply but Cannon Street was also initially electrified on platforms 1-5, 6-8 remaining for steam operations only (per Kentrail). It's not clear from the same source whether the same arrangement existed at Charing Cross which was electrified at the same time

 

Interestingly I came across this plan for Portsmouth and Southsea on @Natalie's flickr which shows something similar. If I am reading it right, it looks like platforms 3-5 are electrified and 1-2 aren't. (I am not sure when it dates from).

 

 

[jim.snowdon]

On 21/04/2023 at 23:13, Morello Cherry said:

 

Interestingly I came across this plan for Portsmouth and Southsea on @Natalie's flickr which shows something similar. If I am reading it right, it looks like platforms 3-5 are electrified and 1-2 aren't. (I am not sure when it dates from).

 

 

I believe all five platforms were electrified, as well as some of the sidings.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

I like the irony of the Portsmouth Electric Company's sidings not being electrified.

[Michael Hodgson]

21 minutes ago, Jeremy C said:

I like the irony of the Portsmouth Electric Company's sidings not being electrified.

 

Probably hadn't paid their electric bill.