mandag 15. mai 2017

Alternative Type 3 That Could Have Happened

A favourite past-time of many a basher and enthusiast is to discuss the locos which could have been, or the improvements which should have been made, or if only one transmission had dominated and kept the variety of locos going another ten to fifteen years after the great deaths of 'non standards' and diesel hydraulics in particular.

We have the various incarnations of deltics, from a super syphon with a turbo deltic T 18 for rattling up the west coast main line in the mid 60s to the super deltic working in pairs  on god knows what ever train would need 8,800 hp. We have then the sulver variants, the LD8 with intercooling and the LV8 which was used in some French locos. Then we have Mayachs

Yes indeedy it would have been fun to have a type three with a maybach in it. We had of course the Hymeks and tantalisingly we could have had a real beast if they had dropped the boilers from Westerns and fitted with twin MB870s as used in Hymeks instead of the v 12s. A single engined diesel electric version of the hymek would have been interesting indeed.

As we can judge from the BoBo diesel hydraiulic, which was given a route availability eq to RA6, a traditional build requiring boiler space would entail a diesel electric having six axles, most likely being a CoCo but since this would have been made somewhere quirkly with either Crompton or Brush or maybe GE electrical systems in the early 60s, it could well have been an AIA configuration.

How hell fire would it have been? Well oddly the Hymeks were arbitrarily depowered just for the purpose of being a type 3, incidentally the same fate falling on the Brush type 2 when they went v12 svt and lost about 45 hp to come under the type 3 threshold. type three was  not up to 2000 hp in the BRB rating system, it was medium power from 1500 to 1750, wiith type 4 being from 2000. The little gap meant that the standard rating for the EE CSVT v12 and the Maybach v16 was dropped. EE had exported two to three versions recognisable as Class 37 cousins by 1960 with 1850hp and the standard traction rating in the v160 series German locos was 1940  horsepower for the maybach unit. Ah the oddities of pipe smoking beaurocrats with public school accents, sticklers for rules in black and white.

In case you didnt know the germans had a crack at a twin v16 engined beast , the v320 which nearly became a class., In their wisdom and over zelousness to be marvellously good at service engineering, the loco survives today, earning revenue on the DB to 2009 from its launch in 1962. It is a monster, sounding like a pair of thirty sevens on crystal meth, you can here it best here https://youtu.be/vFqI27GQbzY .     Even a single of these MB839s as they were then (maybe a twin turbo predecessor of the 870?) would have made a formidable loco at the foot of type 4 rating, 320 001 being rated at 2 x 2,000hp.

Even at 1750 hp the Hymeks found themselves being selected for fast medium weight expresses on GWR and by many accounts performed well and were more reliable than their twin engined oil sloshing cousins. Of them all they really semed the most sensible to keep on operating with, and there could even have been an attempt to convert them to diesel electric since they have such standard body and bogie construction. Alas the pukker little type 3s met the same fate as all else fitted with a big torque convertor.

Hymeks could have lived out another two decades in the far west country or wales, given boilered stock survived into the late 80s and they would have been converted to air brakes. ETH would have been a hard ask because there is no drive take off on the other end of the crank. A full DE coinversion or a sister class with CoCo set up would perhaps not enjoy such utility from the 'high' speed power unit. It is hard for the lay man to tell, but of course so many DEs now are running at 1200rpm or more now! Perhaps there would be some electric field benefits of the engine being able to run at either a longer first field until diversion kicks in, or more importantly a longer second field than 37s did, them dieing on trains which had to run at 40-50 mph banging in and out of weak field. Or like the v12 early 70s HST power cars, perhaps there are far smoother transitions with a higher speed engine matched to its direct drive gernator or alternator (??)

There is  a great irony in thinking of a DE TYpe 3 or 4 with a marvellous Maybach v16 nestling in its boxy interior, and the demise of diesel hydraulic locomotives en masse, Today's British Railways depend largely on hydraulic transmission for most all classes of DMU, while of course HST power cars have been in part re-engined with you got it, v16 Maybachs! And more reliable than their VP185 multi turbo compeition they are allegedly.