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BBC Longest train in Britain.


mow

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I've worked it several times on the Midland Mainline and WCML, it's some piece of kit and no mistake. Bit of a long walk when changing ends if you're not double manned! If memory serves it's about 3,300 tons all in, including the 66s at each end, takes a while to get moving and is a tricky old thing to bring to a stand from 60mph on certain parts of both routes... ;)

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I've worked it several times on the Midland Mainline and WCML, it's some piece of kit and no mistake. Bit of a long walk when changing ends if you're not double manned! If memory serves it's about 3,300 tons all in, including the 66s at each end, takes a while to get moving and is a tricky old thing to bring to a stand from 60mph on certain parts of both routes... ;)

 

......so what, it cleans the ballast while doing 60mph? Wow, that certainly is some piece of kit!  :jester:

 

Phil

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Normal working speed is about walking pace I believe so that lot passing your bedroom window in the early hours won't be very welcome. Back in the 70's my house in Romford backed on to the main Liverpool Street line, and I had a week of the racket made by these machines in the early hours.

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Normal working speed is about walking pace I believe so that lot passing your bedroom window in the early hours won't be very welcome. Back in the 70's my house in Romford backed on to the main Liverpool Street line, and I had a week of the racket made by these machines in the early hours.

 

Operational speed is about half a mile an hour, while it's in operation we isolate our locos and the train is split in two, we just sit there drinking tea / reading Pig Farmers Weekly or damp copies of Metro until the job's done and the train is recoupled ready for a brake test. Sitting there while the work is going on, it's quite a strange sensation being propelled along almost silently. It's a rough old life at the sharp end you know, well I mean, I nearly ran out of tea bags and chocolate suggestives on 6Y15 the other week. Shocking...!

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Thanks for explaining what the train is and how it is worked. As PhilW has said, it's not nice to wake up in the middle of the night with that outside your bedroom window. How do I know, well, in the early hours of the last two Sundays it has stopped right by our house (WCML just north of Lancaster) and woken us up. The first Sunday it was actually split right by our window. Not only is there the noise of the train itself, there are the locos and all the staff deciding who is going to make the next brew! From the letters delivered to us by Network Rail, we have many more disturbed nights ahead.

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