What happened here?

Severn Beach?

 

No where near as bad as Scunthorpe and a short, interesting train ride into Bristol.

 

I wrote a report on a power station test at Scunthorpe and was contacted by IT for using bad language. you work it out

 

If Ti-phoo put the 'T' in Britain etc. etc....

 

In the days of operation by single class 121 units, usually W55032/3 there were a number of incidents when the trains experienced brake failure and ran into the buffer stops so it could be very interesting.............

 

I actually witnessed an Inter City dmu hitting the buffers in platform 7 at Reading General ...makes a big bang!

 

Mea Culpa. Apologies, quite correct. Only the resort uses the exclamation mark.

 

and the book presumably?

 

... or, possibly, a play written by John Webster and Thomas Dekker in the early 17th Century?

 

I was just wondering if it had anything with buffer stop testing. I have heard, and it may be a myth, that the hydraulic buffers at Waterloo were tested by driving a loco at them. Was this a case of getting it wrong?

 

Actually improves the loco's appearance....ugly things haha.

 

I don't know if it was the practice at Waterloo, but it was certainly the practice to test the hydraulic buffers at the LMS station in Belfast by driving an engine into them. On a Sunday morning an engine was driven at 5 mph, 10 mph and 15 mph into the buffers and appropriate measurements were taken. I have never heard of any damage being done to an engine, although I understand that a fitter was deputed to check the engine buffers and buffer beam for damage before it was allowed to work a train. I also understand that the final test caused considerable consternation among the guests at the adjacent Midland Hotel. The practice died out with the demise of steam - the diesels weren't considered to be robust enough!
Ian

 

Came across this photo which shows that 34036 went to Eastleigh for repairs (shown at Eastleigh Works open day in August 1963), but still no clearer about what the precise cause was:

http://tjbartlett.baldbazza.com/eastleigh-works.html

Tom

 

There is another photo of 34036 in one of the Windsor platforms at Clapham with fitters removing bent buffer beam etc. There had clearly been a prang somewhere on the Windsor side and I have a very dim and distant memory of this incident - my notebooks such as they are don't give anything but I think 34036 ran into stock or buffers having picked up its wheels - the Bulleid's were a handful light engine especially when the brakes were worn. As has been previously stated the Nine Elms website is probably the best hope for facts. It is known that the engine went to Eastleigh for repairs - this sort of incident wasn't as uncommon as you might think back in that time - not suggesting that it was everyday but very rough shunts, sideswipes etc. were not that uncommon - we are so used to the control given by modern braking systems and excellent visibility - shunting a dimly lit or unlit yard at night with an engine where the brakes were iffy was no fun and not easy. I know this is obvious but since the damage is to the country end of the engine it can hardly have been caused by running the engines into the buffers at Waterloo. There has been quite a long thread on this recently on the SeMG website.

Mike (Northants)

 

A. J. Somers in his book 'Operating British Railways History' Vol. 2 refers to a Cravens DMU hitting the buffers at Kings Cross. The Driver claimed that on making the final brake application nothing happened. It turned out that this particular unit was fitted with GWR type brake cylinders with sliding (rather than rolling) rings, and on investigation this situation could indeed happen with a light brake application. The Driver was exonerated and it was concluded that Western Drivers only did heavy brake applications.

 

At the end of the day, it obviously hit something, or, something hit it. In the great scheme of things, who gives a sh1t?
It's scrapped.

 

I do for one. It is an interesting photo with an unknown story behind it and I would like to know more about it. Among all the dross on NP this is the sort of thread that keeps me coming back to it. I'm not sure why its subsequent scrapping four years later is relevant. Please do not dismiss a thread just because it bores you.

Peter James

 

Well said.

 

The usual suspect posted something completely unrelated to railway preservation in one of the preservation sections?

 

Can't you contain these sorts of facetious posting at least to NGC? These are the sorts of discussions I sometimes actually learn something from, even if they are in the wrong section...