Too much stock, not enough railway

[phil-b259]

You wouldn't need to be a qualified electrical engineer to dig holes for signal posts, hump cable around or hold the signal engineer's hand. There are jobs in all departments on preserved railways for all levels of skill, ability and, dare I say it, intelligence.

 

As a volunteer on said railway what you say is true, however in general the S&T department only really deal with the signalling system itself (i.e. the interlocking, location wiring, rodding and wires to signals, etc rather than how shiny and freshly painted the stuff is. Obviously painting will be required from time to time but painting of the signals themselves, digging large holes for new kit are usually 'subcontracted' to others including the p-way and lineside clearance gangs as no specialist knowledge is required.

 

Quite agree Phil - I can't really see what use being a 'qualified electrical engineer' is for a very large part of most preserved railways' S&T work as not very much of it involves mains electricity although it could clearly be useful to have someone with the appropriate (i.e. industrial not domestic) electrical certification on hand sometimes. Now a 'qualified railway signal engineer' would indeed have his/her uses but even then a lot of the legislative requirement relates to 'competence' and not to 'qualification'.

 

 

The thinking behind this requirement is that we do need to show that any potential S&T volunteer has, to put it bluntly, a certain level of intelligence, respect for safety and competence in electrical systems before letting them lose on one of the most safety critical aspects of railway operation. Additionally those with an electrical background will find it much easier to get used to railway circuitry, wiring diagrams, parts (e.g. the various style of relays) polarity change circuits, the lack of an earth, etc. Equally as the Clapham junction crash back in 87 proved it only takes one tiny mistake (in that case not removing a redundant wire) for a serious accident to occur. Also railway signalling power supplies are not just a couple of 12V batteries and can involve quite significant voltages and currents. In the case of the Bluebell this is defiantly the case as due to a lack of signal levers in the signal boxes themselves most of the points on the running line are worked by point machines (A HW style point machine for example will involve 130V DC and currents in the region of 5 -15A depending on the setup).

 

The other thing is that most of the S&Ts workload at the moment is actually compleating the resignalling of Horsted Keynes as well as altering Kingscote to deal with the extension nortwards. At Horsted this has required the desiging and fitting out a tempory electrical interlocking to replace the mechanical interlocking in the box, the design and fitting of a new mechanical interlocking, then altering the electrical interlocking to remove those functions transfered back to the mechanical interlocking. As you can apreciate this is far more complicated than day to day maintainenance and like I said provides the oppotunity for potentally disasterious errors to ocur if things are not done correctly.

[The Stationmaster]

Interesting that - I'm aware of another Railway where a complete relay interlocking was constructed entirely by folk trained on that Railway although the line's S&T engineer is a professional and one of the people he trained had been a BR S&T Lineman (on mechanical kit) about 15 years earlier. The bunch that have now built and wired a new panel on that line are, so I understand, 100% 'fresh blood to signalling' with no background in that sort of work and they are also wiring the relay room - again under the management of a professional and they are, of course, also using a fully qualified independent professional signalling test engineer (and independent scheme verification) as is now required by ROGS.

[SNCF stephen]

I have just discovered this topic and I am glad I did. Unfortunately I have only managed to have a cursory glance over the past few pages but I am seeing some very interesting arguments being made for various elements of the preservation movement.

 

I personally think there are far too many diesels in preservation at the moment. I am not saying I do not like them but it does take some of that special feeling away when you see them so often.

 

I am intrigued as to what the future holds for preservation. Some trains suit being preserved on an enthusiast run line very well. However I can think in the future that if an HST is preserved (and I imagine there may be several sets preserved given their appeal) it begs the question what is the point in running it at 25MPH on a preserved line. Does the future mean that we may have more lines going the same way as the Loughborough Leicster line where they can run at 60MPH without passengers for these higher speed trains?

 

Also someone asked the question about electric traction on preserved lines and my view is that I cannot see it happening. The difficulty of erecting and maintaining catenary on a preserved line would be huge. Unless an electrified railway is going to be closed then I cannot see this happening (perhaps the Woodhead route could have been considered for this purpose...). My view is that electric traction is very important to preserve, in fact probably more so than Diesel. However the only way I can see these locomotives being used again is if they get onto the mainline rail network. However would Network Rail ever let the APT run on the mainline network again? Even if it was restored to the highest of standards?

[phil-b259]

Interesting that - I'm aware of another Railway where a complete relay interlocking was constructed entirely by folk trained on that Railway although the line's S&T engineer is a professional and one of the people he trained had been a BR S&T Lineman (on mechanical kit) about 15 years earlier. The bunch that have now built and wired a new panel on that line are, so I understand, 100% 'fresh blood to signalling' with no background in that sort of work and they are also wiring the relay room - again under the management of a professional and they are, of course, also using a fully qualified independent professional signalling test engineer (and independent scheme verification) as is now required by ROGS.

 

That would not be a problem at the Bluebell either - I did not say that it had to be a railway specific qualification, just something related to electrical / electronic engineering to provide the basic foundations upon which the railway specific stuff can then be applied.

[D605Eagle]

From scratch like Tornado - probably not - and that's my point.

 

But by using bits of other locos (20 and 37) and a spare engine from elsewhere - that's another matter.

 

Cheers,

Mick

It really just a matter of money. You perhaps chose a bad example because nearly all the machines inside a class 22 can still be bought new, with the exception of the engine which can be had second hand from various places round the world. I know that Ken Joy who tried to build a replica class 21 (same lump) managed to find an orriginal class 21 engine second hand in the UK, wether he bought it or not I dont know, and theres several DHMUs in sri lanka still working with the same lump. The amount of money spent on building tornado would build a replica diesel I would have thought, but like I've said before, I recon theres more preserved diesels than enthusiasts prepared to work on them.

[PenrithBeacon]

As an avid follower of the steam heritage railway I too doubt that every line will survive into the infinite future, but I'm quite sure that a good many will. I think that the key will be not to be too adventurous. Many lines survive by simply being a local attraction rather than being a regional or national one, and keep their ambitions to a level appropriate to that.

 

The issue of maintaining an elderly infrastructure is, though, an important one and the problems of reconciling the perception that a line has to expand to its greatest possible extent against the need to get the civil engineering right on what it already has is a major part of managing a railway. The SVR, rightly, decided not to expand to Coalville, but has been hit anyway by unforseen and forseen civil engineering problems in its existing infrastructure. Other railways expand while not being entirely sure whether they have the resources to cope with the potential risks involved. A major landslip could cause the end of a railway, but civils seem to be well down the list of priorities for many railways. Locos come first!

 

As for future new builds; I would like to see a Fowler 3F again! I don't care in the slightest about historical provenance!

 

Regards

[phil-b259]

 

The issue of maintaining an elderly infrastructure is, though, an important one and the problems of reconciling the perception that a line has to expand to its greatest possible extent against the need to get the civil engineering right on what it already has is a major part of managing a railway. The SVR, rightly, decided not to expand to Coalville, but has been hit anyway by unforseen and forseen civil engineering problems in its existing infrastructure.

 

 

Indeed, just look at the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire who have had two massive landslips in just over a year with bills to match and who have no reserves or chance of getting any insurance money for the 2nd one (and they havn't finished fixing the first one yet).

[The Stationmaster]

Indeed, just look at the Gloucestershire & Warwickshire who have had two massive landslips in just over a year with bills to match and who have no reserves or chance of getting any insurance money for the 2nd one (and they havn't finished fixing the first one yet).

 

A few asides from some folk involved in 'private railways' back in the 1980s

1. 'The ideal length of a preserved railway is 7 miles as that won't mean excessive long term engineering costs and it's far enough to charge a good fare' (that from a millionaire who at one time had extensive interest in a couple of such railways).

2. Advice given to a new preservation scheme - 'Track lasts about twenty years so if you have a twenty mile railway you need to budget for the cost of relaying one mile every year' (that line is doing well, the man who gave the advice was at one time its GM and while their track has not had to be renewed at that pace they still have over 20 miles of railway to maintain).

3. Advice from someone involved in managing a preserved line in the 1980s - 'In order to survive a preserved railway must take into account the long term costs of maintaining its infrastructure and also should ideally build up funds to enable it to meet unexpected events. (the railway concerned has survived a couple of large 'unexpected events' but had to appeal for funds to deal with them).

4. Comment from a BR civil engineer ' i wouldn't get involved with that scheme, I know the history of that line!' (no it's not the G&W but a scheme which vanished into obscurity).

My own view always has been that if you are interested in preserving any stretch of railway it's daft not to find out why it was closed - and it wasn't always down to lack of traffic.