Idling locomotive engines

[steven156]

Im curious to know before the days of the TPE Class 185's and more environmentally conscious operations, how long could a locomotive stand with its engine running while stationary, were there rules on how long a locomotive could sit stationary until the engine would be turned off like say at a depot, station or on the mainline in a passing loop/stabling point or could it sit for hours on end stationary burning fuel?

[Baby Deltic]

Im curious to know before the days of the TPE Class 185's and more environmentally conscious operations, how long could a locomotive stand with its engine running while stationary, were there rules on how long a locomotive could sit stationary until the engine would be turned off like say at a depot, station or on the mainline in a passing loop/stabling point or could it sit for hours on end stationary burning fuel?

 

During really cold periods, loco's were sometimes left idling all night to avoid engine damage due to coolant freezing.

[Guest jim s-w]

Hiya

 

I was told that too - Tysley figured out it was cheaper to leave DMU's running than bung Antifreeze into them. Us locals just assumed that they were scared if they turned them off that they wouldnt start again. I am pretty sure that BR worked out the cost and wear and tear on deisel locos meant it was cheaper to keep them running. Certainly when I was younger you would never hear engines being started up.

 

Cheers

 

Jim

[Baby Deltic]

Hiya

 

I was told that too - Tysley figured out it was cheaper to leave DMU's running than bung Antifreeze into them. Us locals just assumed that they were scared if they turned them off that they wouldnt start again. I am pretty sure that BR worked out the cost and wear and tear on deisel locos meant it was cheaper to keep them running. Certainly when I was younger you would never hear engines being started up.

 

Cheers

 

Jim

 

I think BR sometimes did more harm than good with some of their choices of antifreeze.

[StaffsOatcake]

I was involved with the Class 25's and the Sulzer 6LDA 28B it was reckoned to tick over on approx a gallon of fuel an hour so in theory over 500 hours.

 

Once you have that bloody great flywheel spinning it takes quiet a while to stop and only a small amount of fuel would be needed to be burnt to keep it swinging.

 

Bit different than the 12 gallons per minute it would use at full chat.

[St. Simon]

Hi,

 

I've heard stories that at London Marlybone, drivers daren't turn off the engines of the old Class 117's because they wouldn't be able to get them started again!

 

Simon

[Oldddudders]

Being a Southern person, diesels were a minority interest, but in December 1981 I stayed the weekend in Stratford-upon-Avon. There had been snow on the Friday, and a rear-ender at Seer Green & Jordans, on the Chiltern line, had caused fatalities. "Death in the snow" was the London Evening Standard's cheerful headline. My evening train from Paddington to Brum via Oxford was warm, but delayed. I think Leamington Spa was the change-point, and a DMU was waiting to take us to Stratford, where a taxi should have been waiting for me, to go to the Wellcome Hotel - Deb was hosting a party of journalists for the weekend. Looking in vain for the taxi, I was befriended by a driver, who offered me the comfort of the staff room. He was there, he said, simply to keep the DMUs from freezing overnight, by starting them periodically. It was impossibly cold, and I eventually found a taxi, getting to the hotel rather after midnight. The next morning, the national press was full of new record low temperatures, especially in the Heart of England!

[Fat Controller]

At Tonbridge West Yard one day, I was startled to see a fitter taking a pair of very chunky cables from the batteries of an idling loco and connect them to those of one whose engine was stopped.....

At Llanelli Stabling Point one winter, someone decided that a tray of smouldering rags would keep the chill off a hydraulic's transmission. What had been a good idea at 22:00 seemed less so a few hours later.

It's not only diesels that have problems if not left idling or powered up, especially when it gets a bit cold- we arranged to have drivers restart the trains on standby overnight on an hourly basis, not only doing a brake-test, but also opening and closing all the loading doors and canopies as soon as temperatures dropped two days ago.

[The Stationmaster]

The biggest problem wasn't so much coolant but battery power. I was told that a Class 47 in 0 centigrade ambient temperature would have no more than two start's worth of power in fully charged batteries, possibly 3 if you were lucky. So not only was there the risk of freezing there was a big risk of a total inability to start the engine due to insufficient poke in the batteries to turn over a cold engine.

 

With dmus I was always given the impression by maintenance folk that the biggest risk was frost damage.

[Lady_Ava_Hay]

Another problem could be that quite a few of these diesels have air controls. Compressing air causes condensation which then promptly freezes. Even with alcohol in the system and pre heated air intakes, it takes ages (frequently never in really cold weather0 for the air to start operating the controls with any degree of certainty.

 

Cold starts in cold weather are always a problem for diesels which rely on sudden compression heat for ignition but warm starts, by the same token, are usually not really a problem. On the buses, standing at a stop with more than three minutes to wait was a requirement to switch off. Start ups on cold mornings were attended by a shunter who would have access to a jump start trolley.

 

Were all these big diesels electric start? Were any air or inertia start?

[Ian J.]

On a related but somewhat drifting off topic point, my Skoda Octavia's diesel engine doesn't like to be hot started (i.e. after switching off to pop into a shop for five minutes), but is quite happy with cold starts, or warm starts (say, after thirty minutes). Not quiet sure that squares up with how diesel locomotives prefer warm or hot starts, but it certainly goes against them where cold starts are concerned.

 

(Apologies for the off topic nature of this reply)

[Arthur]

 Diesel engines are definitely more difficult to start in cold weather, and as stated above, the problem is compounded by cold batteries. Modern diesels, especially in cars, have pre heaters, fuel heaters and computer control etc., which makes them much easier to start. I spent much of yesterday starting a 6 litre diesel in a 1964 Nuffield tractor. Very slow to crank first thing, battery on charge all day, occaisional cranking to loosen it up, fan heater under the block and eventually, without having to resort to Easy Start, it fired up. Not unusual on diesel engines of the period. 

[Pannier Tank]

Slightly off-topic. I once had a Ford Cortina mkIV which would never start when the temperature dropped below 0 deg C. The only way it would start was to remove the Spark Plugs and warm them up in the oven. Then it would start first kick

[Coombe Barton]

Going back to the OP, If it's in model form and it's called Keyhaven, about two hours. At the Derby meet this summer Andy left an idling loco for a long time - amazing how many people just stood and watched. And this was only a sound chip!

[Rugd1022]

At this time of year, we're usually put on 'frost precaution' jobs on the night shift, where one, or sometimes two drivers will go out in the staff vans to run up our 66s at remote stabling points, in our case Bardon Hill on the Coalville branch. We don't normally have to run them all night, just an hour or two suffices. The trickiest bit is getting them to start in the first place as the batteries aren't particularly good at cranking the engines over. There have been occasions where the inside of the cab windows have frozen up at Bardon as it's very high up and exposed for Leicestershire. The best part about this job is retiring to the signal box for a much appreciated brew and chin wag

 

Nidge

[davep101]

Im can remember when i used to venture to Derby on a weekend, you would usually get some 31s on Etches Park, which were allocated to a weekend engineers/restricted use pool, when the started them up if the wind was blowing towards the station, the station would dissapear in a cloud of ped smog!, these had perhaps stood several days in a row!!, that was around 95/96.

 

Regards davep101

[Welly]

At this time of year, we're usually put on 'frost precaution' jobs on the night shift, where one, or sometimes two drivers will go out in the staff vans to run up our 66s at remote stabling points, in our case Bardon Hill on the Coalville branch. We don't normally have to run them all night, just an hour or two suffices.

Thank goodness for that! All night car-alarm-like noises will drive anyone mad!

[45125]

As some one who worked at "north east" depot, all our dmus had anti-freeze in them and generally they were shutdown when not required, unless a prolong period of chilly weather was expected, -5 or below. As to main line locos, the instruction in frost weather was to start them up once every four hours and leave them running for an hour, this should be sufficient to recharge the batteries and put heat in to the block to stop freezing up, and on Sulzer tighten up the leaky hoses.

 

SCr locos generally had a full anti freeze coolant(25%), whilst other regions had a very weak solution in them (5%). Antifreeze is very searching and would make the smallest leak look like a water fall. It did also attack some of the rubber components used in the engines.

 

In general prolong periods of idling is not good for diesel engines in cold weather as numerous problems occur. The cylinder air temperature does not get any were near what it should be, so you get poor combustion, which can lead to fuel dilution. you get valves sticking. It has been known for engine that have been idling for long periods, to be shut down then they wont start again due to the valves getting gummed up with a thick tarry substance.

 

As 'Stationmaster" states battery power is also taken in to account, anything with dodgy cells would often be left idling. HSTs were left idling as they generally leaked like sieves and had a nasty habit of not wanting to restart after shutdowns.

 

Some depots just left them idling as they were just lazy, ie couldn't be bothered to do as per the book.

 

Al Taylor

[D6975]

It was certainly the practice on Bath Road to shut down locos once they'd been refueled and parked. It was only in very cold snaps that locos or more often dmus were kept running. I frequently saw some pretty spectacular startups, Ive seen Bath Road disappear behind the clouds of white smoke being chucked out by a cold 50 on quite a few occasions.

Several Bath Road drivers would even turn the engine off before coming to a halt, coasting the last few yards into a siding on shed.

[Stormbringer]

Since mid October I've noticed several class 66 loco's sat idling in Felixstowe docks between duties including 66402/8 (in unbranded DRS colours)and 66708. Is this due to battery problems?

 

Pete

[roger440]

Hi,

 

I've heard stories that at London Marlybone, drivers daren't turn off the engines of the old Class 117's because they wouldn't be able to get them started again!

 

Simon

 

115's dear boy, not 117's. We certainly always shut them down in the shed at night even when it was really cold. Interered with ones sleep otherwise!

 

That said, leaving stuff running is the way to make sure that everything works the following morning. Its fair to say, with a can of easy start you could almost always get a 1st Gen dmu running. The same cant be said for the newer stuff, hence leaving it running. Try explaing to the MD that you cancelled several morning commuter services because you were daft enough to shut them all down earlier in the night!

[roger440]

Another issue with the class 47s which was never quite solved was with the cooling system. Expansion of the pipework would cause the hose clips to stretch slightly which presented no trouble whilst the engine was running and hot but after being shut down for a while the pipework would contract but the hose clips less so. After a while the coolant would start to leak from the joints and eventually a point would be reached where the header tank level would be low enough to activate the low water protection equipment; ie the engine would not start. Anybody who was a fitter and worked a Sunday Night Shift will know about this one.

 

It can and was solved, but never saw widespread application that i know of Daft really as it would have saved so much grief. How many times did we have to override the contacts to get a 47 running, just so we could get it near a hosepipe!

[chris_irl]

071s in IRL are left running overnight when cold too. They are supposed to be seriously hard to start in cold weather

[James]

The biggest problem wasn't so much coolant but battery power. I was told that a Class 47 in 0 centigrade ambient temperature would have no more than two start's worth of power in fully charged batteries, possibly 3 if you were lucky. So not only was there the risk of freezing there was a big risk of a total inability to start the engine due to insufficient poke in the batteries to turn over a cold engine.

I had one shift where we had to wait an hour for a tamper to be started - it had stood for two days in freezong temperatures and the batteries had given up completely! An hour with a portable genny gave them just enough to start the engine. It was stabled within the worksite so everyone had a grandstand view of it all - just what the crew wanted!

 

There were a number of very cold and pissed off people that night!

[modfather]

THe fgw units and now powercars are modified to shut down 15 minutes after the drivers desk has been shut to save fuel

 

As for running, I think the brief last year was to run for an hour out of every three for hsts on shore supply, leave running those that arent.

 

Units I think were much the same in cold weather but they do preheat themselves if the batteries are good...