The 10A Allocation

I don’t know but they did, I remember a standard 4 tank towing a 4EPB unit past Earlsfield.

 

Everything built at Brighton has a 27-way jumper cable fitted...

 

I guess if you look at it from the standpoint of 1899 though - grouping (and closer working with the LBSCR) was still 25 years and a World War away; a train ferry service from a southern port was well over 30 years away. Meanwhile, the SER constituted about 60% of the stock (locos and carriages), so standardising the LCDR on vacuum was ultimately cheaper than standardising the SER on air. So I suspect the decision was somewhat inevitable ...

Tom

 

I don’t know but they did, I remember seeing a standard 4 tank towing a unit past R

wouldnt help with braking though.

 

Given that unfitted trains were still in regular use until long after the steam era was over presumably a steam loco could tow an emu as an unbraked train. Units all have a guards compartment with a hand brake, so as long as there are no passengers involved whats the problem?

Peter

 

Wouldn’t be hugely surprising to find that in dire emergency the train could run loaded with passengers without the brake in operation, probably only to the nearest station, but…. The old rule books tended to permit far more flexibility.

 

I just find it strange that main line engines are not air fitted as a condition of being able to operate on the network, Apart from Vintage trains, everyone now is using air braked stock, and West coast, on the face of it, are not currently using any vac braked MK1'S for passenger work, yet on the face of it are not fitting their locos with air braking systems, but are relying on other loco owners to hire their locos that are air fitted, and thats what, 4-5 engines, plus 1 that luckily enough was air fitted before it came into their ownership, so 6 engines to operate the entire tour program that is diagrammed for steam haulage,

 

Indeed - I'm sure if you found yourself in a situation with a stranded train full of passengers and the options were "detrain possibly hundreds of people onto an electrified mainline" or "tow them unbraked to a station" surely the option would be to tow?

Though I suspect that given the frequency of electric trains, the answer would probably have been to bring up another electric unit to perform the rescue.

Tom

 

Your last paragraph described what did happen in the vast majority of cases I’m sure

 

100% if you found yourself with a steam loco trapped behind an air braked electric you'd hook on, pull the strings and push it out without a second thought (and I bet it happened a couple of times a year too)

 

At least you would have that option as the couplings were universally interoperable….I was on a 25kv EMU rescued by an 86 hauling a container train. The sort of thing that was very simple to organise and execute once upon a time!

 

As a former Head of Control for a mainline train operator, I can very much agree. The time taken to deal with what I thought should be simple things drove me mad.

 

Is part of the issue that the more the railway is “simplified” in various ways from fixed sets to auto couplers, the less ground level competence there is to deal with the unusual? I do worry about the “no line side working when there are trains “ approach for similar reasons.

 

Pedant alert, no working on or near the line when there are trains - lineside working is fine. But yes, the ban on working on live lines certainly can make certain tasks take longer or be more challenging.

 

Pedantry forgiven. I was told by someone in S and T recently that they had had trouble finding an intermittent fault, because it only manifested when a train went over a particular section, but they weren’t permitted to be there when….

 

Deleted… wrong thread

 

I can remember back in 1975, just after new year , I was going back to college at Weybridge, and the icy weather had affected the current from the 3rd rail so we had a 33 on 2x Haps, back then, everything used buckeyes and you could drop it and use the hook, along with extender cables, if the engine wasn't buckeye fitted now, that's nye on impossible

 

More likely that, as steam loco would still be in steam it would continue to create a brake and the train would simply proceed. The rules require the driver of the train loco to continue to observe signals and act appropriately.

 

Wrong thread?

 

I was assuming the failed EMU would be air and the steam loco on vacuum, so would push to the next suitable point (which if a light engine could be the destination, but perhaps somewhere else if the steam loco has, say, a train of wagons)