European Railroad Discussion > Sheds of many colours

In the last few days I've managed to shoot pictures of all our main railfreight operators class 66s. For me this is not easy as I don't as a rule come across Colas or DRS 66s that often, but as luck would have it...

Lets start with the oldest sub-class, the 66/0 of DBS. This was taken yesterday evening at just after 8 pm, it's the 4L40 which carries Minis from the factory at Cowley near Oxford to the Thameside port of Purfleet east of London for export. It's quite an impressive train consisting of eight of these five unit articulated WIA covered car carriers.

The next railfreighht company to adopt the 66 was Freightliner, and here is one of their heavy haul 66/6 sub class, 66607 on an empty cement train from West Thurrock, also alongside the Thames east of London, to Earles Sidings in the Peak District. Unusually it was on the East Coast Mainline. This is not the usual route, but the Midland Mainline was closed today on account of track renewals.

DRS got in on the act by running an extra Daventry to Ripple Lane intermodal (and return) today, in daylight hours in both directions. This is the return, runnning slightly late along the Tottenham and Forest Gate in East London, it's descending from the viaduct which carries the line across Leytonstone and Leyton and into a cut to negotiate its way through Walthamstow. The T&FG was promoted by two companies - the Midland and the London, Tilbury & Southend - in the 1890s, long after this part of London was built up. Consequently the construction of the railway meant the destruction of a large number of homes, which did not endear the railway to the locals. 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/15 14:46 by 86235.

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GBRf have been the most recent customer for 66s, either built new by Progress Rail in Muncie or acquired from Europe. So here are two, the first taken last Saturday at Upper Holloway in North London is 66748, one of three which I think they acquired from Dutch operator ERS

Earlier today celebrity GBRf 66718, one of those acquired to support the Metronet tube upgrade programme and originally bright blue, but now in this Transport for London inspired livery and named after the transport commissioner Sir Peter Hendy

And finally, from Thursday Colas 66847 descending to Lewisham on a Eastleigh to Hoo Junction departmental working, this time carrying what looks like spoil (dirt) from track replacement work.

Link to other pictures taken this month
http://nick86235.smugmug.com/Trains/2015/Summer-2015/i-QftbSRN

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Great photos and commentary!

As a side note, I've always been a bit fascinated with the "still in use" link-and-pin coupling system used in the UK.  Do you have any photos of those systems?  I wonder why they're still in use, vs. a "knuckle" coupler?

Sheds or shades ??

These units are nicknamed "sheds". Nice set of photos.

Fantastic angles to these locos and freights! And thank you for the variation on loads too!

How green London looks like 8-D

How do you make difference between the Shed subtypes? Or do you simply know from their history?

Oh, now we end up to endless discussion on this again...I'm one of those wondering this too, and it is not a feature U.K. alone but half of Europe. But the obvious solution would not be knuckle coupler but SA3 being used widely in Nordic countries and all Eastern side of Europe. Side buffers are killing people every year, so we really would need to get rid of those.

coach Wrote:
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> Great photos and commentary!
>
> As a side note, I've always been a bit fascinated
> with the "still in use" link-and-pin coupling
> system used in the UK.  Do you have any photos of
> those systems?  I wonder why they're still in
> use, vs. a "knuckle" coupler?

McKey Wrote:
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> Side buffers are killing people every year, so we
> really would need to get rid of those.

I'm sorry John, this is nonsense. Trespassing, whether accidental or deliberate, kills more people per year on the railway than industrial accidents caused by screw couplings. There is no business case to convert, willy nilly, all Western European freight trains to knuckle instead of screw coupling. That money is far better spent eliminating grade crossings and enhancing signalling.

Here in Britain wagonload freight, where trains are coupled and un-coupled frequently is rare, most trains operate in permanent sets of cars which are coupled together either using a permanent bar coupler or screw couplings.

This is primarily a passenger railway, with fast and frequent trains, mainly made up of MUs or loco hauled with an unpowered Driving Van Trailer (DVT) eliminating the need for the locomotive to be uncoupled. MUs use automatic couplers like the Dellner, which couples mechanically and electrically without the need for any member of staff at rail level. Most freight trains use the screw coupling, which you can see on the front of all the 66s in the pictures I posted. It is perfectly adequate for the short, light and fast freight trains which, of necessity, have to fit in with their passenger brethren. Some freight trains in Britain are equipped with knuckle couplers, the latest coal hoppers which EWS (now DBS) took delivery of in the early 2000s came equipped with knuckles as do some stone wagons. So if you look closely at the DBS 66/0 you will see a knuckle coupler which is swung out of the way except when being used with knuckle equipped wagons. The second picture shows a class 73, a Southern Region electro-diesel built in the mid 1960s and compatible with the slam door EMUs which roamed the third rail network south of the Thames in their hundreds until 2005. They were universally equipped with knuckle couplers so the 73 is too, you can see it hanging down. The class 455s, the last third rail EMU class built before auto-couplers were adopted, also sports a knckle coupler, here leaving Knights Hill Tunnel in Tulse Hill, South London.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/15 06:58 by 86235.

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No problem, just wanted to remind that a father of friend of mine, an experiences railwayman, was killed by being squeezed between the side buffers (waht a terrible way to die). Sometimes you have to go in between and it may be incredibly cramped between the locomotive and the first car, no room for error there.

86235 Wrote:
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> McKey Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Side buffers are killing people every year, so
> we
> > really would need to get rid of those.
>
> I'm sorry John, this is nonsense. Trespassing,
> whether accidental or deliberate, kills more
> people per year on the railway than industrial
> accidents caused by screw couplings. There is no
> business case to convert, willy nilly, all Western
> European freight trains to knuckle instead of
> screw coupling. That money is far better spent
> eliminating grade crossings and enhancing
> signalling.

I sure don't like that electric 3rd rail.

tomstp Wrote:
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> I sure don't like that electric 3rd rail.

We get used to it. You only find 3rd rail in the south and Liverpool.

I like all of the trackwork. The amoung of diamonds just amazes me in your shots Nick. Keep them coming....

On the coupler discussion, are there any statistics that say those are killing railroad employee's? Just curious, as I don't think if there were a huge number of accidents, they would still be accepted for use.

Over here in the U.S., I have a friend that thinks those are actually safer as the cars cannot be pushed together, there will always be a space in the middle at least. Same friend thinks U.S. style couplers are just as dangerous, as if your in the middle of cars being pushed together, the results are not good. And those type of accidents unfortunately do happen in U.S. switching operations. Said friend is a railroader who works in freight switching operations.

Me, myself, I just see that you can end up with bad results with either type of coupling operation if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Bunny218 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> On the coupler discussion, are there any
> statistics that say those are killing railroad
> employee's? Just curious, as I don't think if
> there were a huge number of accidents, they would
> still be accepted for use.
>
> Over here in the U.S., I have a friend that thinks
> those are actually safer as the cars cannot be
> pushed together, there will always be a space in
> the middle at least. Same friend thinks U.S. style
> couplers are just as dangerous, as if your in the
> middle of cars being pushed together, the results
> are not good. And those type of accidents
> unfortunately do happen in U.S. switching
> operations. Said friend is a railroader who works
> in freight switching operations.
>
> Me, myself, I just see that you can end up with
> bad results with either type of coupling operation
> if you happen to be in the wrong place at the
> wrong time.

The real point, as already made by Nick, is that in the UK coupling operations are just not that common, apart from by multiple units which use fully automatic couplers. As any procedure gets rarer it becomes less important as to how it is done. It might be different if we still had large scale shunting in marshalling yards, but we don't. The failure of the great British Railways modernisation plan of 60 years ago was that it devoted huge resources to updating processes that were themselves becoming essentially irrelevant.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/15 00:52 by spflow.

Yes, I understood what Nick said about U.K. coupling operations not being that common, as well as what your saying. But the screw coupling system is common in all of western Europe, and in some of those countries there remain switching operations much more extensive than what is going on in the U.K., including hump yards working freight trains equipped with screw couplings. Just noting that out, no need to keep going on with a coupler discussion - what Nick said is basically right on with the reality of the situation.

tomstp Wrote:
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> I sure don't like that electric 3rd rail.

I'm not sure what's not to like? It is not the most sophisticated form of electrification, but it is cheap(-ish) and cheerful (except in heavy snow - which doesn't happen that often) and we have over 1000 miles of it. Remember too that our railway is entirely enclosed with few points of public access, only grade crossings and crossings of public rights of way, and they are not that common, certainly in urban areas. There will come a time when the infrastructure of substations needs replacing, when it might be worth considering conversion to the 25kV AC/50Hz standard, that's been talked about for the stretch of the South West Trains mainline between Basingstoke (48 miles west of London) and the port of Southampton, but it seems a huge expenditure for what exactly? 

Ironically if you put the clock back 90 years and took that final picture of the 455 emerging from Knights Hill Tunnel in South London you would have seen catenary! In the electrification stakes of the three railways which formed the Southern Railway in 1923 one, the London and South Western, adopted the current over running third rail, another, the South Eastern and Chatham, proposed a high voltage (1500v DC) protected third rail system, whilst the third, the London Brighton and South Coast, used Siemens catenary based high voltage AC technology. And they were the first off the blocks, electrifying their South London line, between Victoria and London Bridge in 1909, extending it to Crystal Palace from both Victoria and London Bridge (via Tulse Hill) in 1911. Further contracts were placed with UK firms after WW1 to continue the scheme, the Brighton Company envisaging electrifying their mainlines during the 1920s. In the event though the Grouping in 1923, a statutory process through which these three companies were merged into one, resulted in the LSWR system being adopted by the new Southern Railway. But not before the existing contracts had been honoured which meant 6.6kV AC reached Coulsdon North and Sutton in the mid 1920s, only for the entire system to be dismantled in 1929. The main reason was the expense of the AC system at a time when money was tight and the Southern was extending electrification as fast and as cheaply as possible. Today you can still see signs of the concrete bases and the metal structures of the Brighton's catenary supports by the side of the track in a number of locations.