DB Cab ride through rain, fog, snow and ice

[Welly]

Just up on YouTube, a DB TX Logistik driver have filmed a montage of his duties through rain, fog, snow and ice. Watch the sparking from the icy OHL near the end of the clip!!

 

[NGT6 1315]

Liking this, thanks for posting! Far as I can see, the locos he was driving were a 185, ES 64 U2 and ES 64 F4, which are all used by TX Logistik where he's employed.

[melmerby]

With that amount of arcing it makes you wonder how much it affects the traction current availability.

It is all lost energy due to an imperfect contact. I would imagine it also causes excess wear on the contact surface.

 

Keith

[Peter Beckett]

I really enjoyed watching it. Also I was able, when station announcements were made, to plot the journeys on giggle maps. The arcing was great to watch and very obvious to me (ex high voltage engineer) that it was AC and not DC.

 

Peter

[Welly]

^^^

Peter - how do I tell the difference between an AC arc and a DC arc?

[Peter Beckett]

Colour. DC is generally green and AC blue

 

Peter

[brian daniels]

Wow, amazing. Windscreen wipers that work Couldn't take this from a 66.

[Welly]

Here is a good example of DC arcing:

I could just see that the arc is greeny blue.

 

With AC current flows both ways so there is no ionisation of the conductor material in contact with the arc and so no colour whereas with DC current is flowing one way and there are ions flowing one way through the arc which takes on the colour that is characteristic of the conductor material ( green for copper ) - is this the reason why AC and DC arcing have different colours?

[NGT6 1315]

The videos are (obviously) mainly German, but other countries feature too. Norway, Thailand, Greece, France, Australia, to name a few. I know the videos can be purchased somewhere, the ARD has some sort of agreement with the publisher IIRC, but I can't recall which one. I'm sure Dominik (1216 025) can

 

Not completely sure as I do not have any railway-themed retail DVDs myself, but I seem to remember the publisher is Geramond.

[motorcycle]

The same youtube user has posted a video in the last few days of a journey from Duisburg to Cologne and lasts for 33 minutes

 

[m davies]

I'm amazed the pan head can take that amount of punishment in the first video, I've seen one of our container crane DC motors spark like that and the comm was ruined, mind a pan head on 15Kv is probably only drawing 50 Amps max, ours was drawing nearly 1600 Amps.

 

Amazing videos none the less, the latest must be light locos because they certainly appear to pick up speed very very quickly.

 

Best

 

Michael

[lonesome_whistle]

I would imagine it also causes excess wear on the contact surface.

 

Keith

 

It certainly does, and when the carbon gets removed from the pantograph the auto drop device (ADD) will drop the pan. It happened several times during the bad weather at the back end of last year with class 90s on the Anglo-Scottish sleepers. No 25kv means no traction power and no ETH so there were a few chilly nights experienced. Some European systems use different pantographs in winter to alleviate the problem.