tirsdag 17. april 2018

Loving to Hate Duffs - Part II

Ah duffs. T'is a long time since I last blogged on them, but as in the good old Blue 'n' Yella' days, they got just about everywhere and now they pop up at most all preserved lines who deign to have diesels, and regularily tandem up with tin cans (kettles, you know steam trains) on puffy-chuffy railtours. We loved to hate them.

I actually tried very hard to love them. In the mid 1980s they had (unfortunately) displaced the venerable class 40 from all booked services on ScR and worked a mixed bunch of other services booked type 2.   So at one point in my career of bashing, in order to get lines for loco hauled and have some variety away from the West Highland Line, I succumbed to bagging boilered 47/0s before they maybe got ETH'd or those services went over to the new breed of plastic crappy DMUs we were hearing about. And I came to the conclusion that Duffs made a lot of fuss about nothing really, mediocre acceleration, and were only any use above 40 mph when you had to stick your head in the window anyway. Give them their due, they can apply a lot of power above 40 mph and screech away leaving any type 3 or 40 for dead, and on big loads, but really there is no fun in that. They have a shit load more horsey than 37s or 40s, and they choose to use it at the gallop, while the EE variants like the canter when their elegance in applying power and making superior noises comes to the fore.

The Duffs had a tight grip on all timetabled express services and spilled over onto other stoppers like the Fife Circuit, Stranraers, Dumfries Route, Snechie- Aberdeen and the Glasgow Dundee.  In other words they were so proliferate prior to  plasticisation (sprinters etc) that they filled the boots of everything else away from the hallowed ground of RA5. Even on those routes they showed up, with a 47 dropping on a summer shopper service Tain-Inverness (schnechie) which we did from Dingwall, forceably due to the 'dreadful fester' which otherwise would have ensued waiting for the various return of decent traction from the Far North and Kyle runs. In days when we frowned upon regular tops reports, but were happy to take the occaisional swipe at a cad's ill gotten gains, you could turn up to see what 'produced'  (to view, like houses, diagrams were 'viewed') and on ScR in 1983 to 86 it would be a duff anywhere RA6 would allow. Furthermore it would invariably be a rancid duff ie one you had been hauled by before.

As concellation, there was of course the fact that duffs in general, were not very reliable and failed fairly frequently on depot or in service. While they relegated class 40s, those now foot-loose 16 wheelers would often be found fetching knackered duffs around the east coast of Scotland.  Eastfield retained a kind of nominal attachment if not allocation of 40s for some reason, probably because Longsight and other depots didnt care if their 40s went itinerant, especially not in 1984 when they were essentially surplus locos awaiting disposal. 40s were also quite frequent visitors to Motherwell at that time, working mail services which terminated at the mail depot (presumably Polmadie?  8 axles were all banned from G.Central) and other inter.regional freights and the odd sunday 'drag' on the WCML.  Apparent 'booked' workings for type 4s which were often 40s were the Motorail via Mossend, which changed loco for some reason at Carstairs north, someone may like to inform me, we once missed a split boxer there on a through service having messed up the whole thing. They did also drop on the Carlisle-Stranraers and in particular Addexs there -to, but that was a kind of Nirvanna rare as hens teeth by 1983 at least.

47/7s were quite useful for getting about the place quickly though, accelerating the previous MacRat push pulls, and also being a bit quicker, if more cramped than the Aberdeen services so often worked by forties before. So you could get back to the west or east if something had allegedly dropped on the fife circuit, or Dumfries's, in no time at all. However my notebook reveals that in the long hot summer of 1984, class 37s on various loads were out in replacement force on the Glasgow Edinburgh route, with various 'big' locos producing on these services. It seemed they were down two of the six or so sets they had, and were keeping those they had for the Glasgow Aberdeen. Unfortunetly I never remember that anything else but 47/7s then did the Aberdeen route, which was required for any English Electric for me, by fate of being born a couple of years too late to do Deltics and Forties on the route, and a bit too early to have continued such a mis-spent youth into the what seem to me quite odd glory days of the 37s in the 1990s.

On that point , The 37s  were synonymous for me with a little era where they worked the beautiful extremities of the Scottish highlands. It was part of the kudos. Ok average speeds were only about 35mph, but the locos had to grind, growl and whine away to ply their trade on these routes, and provided far superior passenger and frieght haulage than the MacRats. The tea-cups and tip-tops as we called the two surviving sulzer rattlers north of the border, had their charms and most 37 bashers I knew had a soft spot for 26s if only to either have some variety on the far north, and to piss off the class 27 mafia. When 37s were take,off ordinary services on these routes, and indeed when the 'combine harvesters' ie 37/4s started, I ran out of interest. Some of the thrill was gone I suppose, in the variety of loco types when the 40s were withdrawn, and the nostalgia of riding in mark 1 steam heat vacs along the far flung glens and loch sides, with tokens being handled by signalmen,  passed into the history books. I feel suddenly very honoured to have been a nipper just old enough as a young teenager to experience those wonderful anachronisms.

Anyway Duffs, yes we loved to hate them and loved it when they broke down. The push pull 47/7s had a heavy maintenance schedule, and they kept the night shift at ED going I guess in brake pads and leaky power units. They did provide by in large a wonderful service which was 42-44 minutes very often, surpassing the 45 the latest leccie things do. Of course they only had to stop at Falkirk high until the evil of plastic was due to emerge, when for some reason they threw in eithe Linlithgow or Polo-mint to slow the timetable down or something like that we who were into conspiracy theories said. As I sai above, they whizzed you east west.  I was actually most disappointed when in 1993 I was going to an interview in the Granite City and the service had gone both plastic 158, and also slower!

Of course just to piss the duff bashers off, we took the Kings Cross sunday morning 'tram' (HST IC 125) from Glasgow Queen street, and its 4500 horse power of English Electric ancestory pissed all over a duff timetable, going through Cadder Yard at at least 110 mph !  The jewel in the crown for the Basil Brush fans, the shove duff, only ran with 6 coaches so their 100mph 'crown' was outdone by EE with the Deltics and the d400s/ class 50s which hauled 10 + at a steady 100mph.


We loved to hate duffs because unlike other classes in Scotland, there were masses of them, they all looked the same - slab sided, bald headed and a bit too modern - and they made a kind of nasty whiny noise which made too much fuss about getting places not all that quickly when the speed limit was low as in the Fife Circuit or via Huntly route. Duffs turned up on everything and made some quite long journeys feel like a waste of time when their flat ended boringness appeared at a station around the ScR,  or dropping onto an Addex or Mystex. 86 down for a 47/4 forward is recorded at least twice in 1983-84 for me on mystexes, when dual heat stock would have allowed for a roarer followed by a forty, as they had often been a couple of years before. They turned up too on those nice little producers at Carstairs or on the via Dumfries line, sometimes leaving you with one of those 'dreadful festers' for a train back to Glasgow central, having 'refused' a duff on a 'portion' or Stranraer service for example. 

It was kind of like part of the game though really. Quite a few 'moves'  sans TOPS report were a gamble, and there was nothing better than a bunch of EE fans being 'withered' by a 'spoon' turning up (aka Duff) on a service which was bound to 'produce' something good once in a while, just not today.  How we would moan and roar in disappointment in a collective exasperation, all with a tongue in cheek because of course we were daft enough to go up to Dingwall, early doors to Ayr,  or down to Kilmarnock on the off chance a decent loco to our liking would produce.

Die hard thirty seven bashers got their revenge on Duffs on the ScR of course, because they took over from the boilered duffs on various services when all stock went ETH in the late 80s and early 90s. I guess as the days of the thrash along the loch sides and over Rannoch moor were glorious to me, for many bashers, flat out up the Highland Line or tootling along Huntly route were halcyon days. Indeed there were a lot of big summer time 'productions' and temporary allocations of NB syphons to SCr. A little bit of my heart would love to have done all the routes 37s previously had been very rare visitors on, such as the fife circuit and mega rare Perth via Newburgh,  but like i say I kind of belonged to another epoch, and BOOKED thrity sevens on those routes was kind of a cheat in a way. These routes were kind of like gold nuggets which in the days of steam heat, produced 37s rarely when the far north ones had been serviced in Glasgow or England, and you kind of had to be in the know, and it kind of never ever happened in the school holidays.  I remember seeing 37/4s on the Highland and  and Huntly routes and thinking, nah, not my cuppa tea, the best is behind them. It was a teenage flirt, a last passage of childish things perhaps. I had moved on then, bevvying and going up mountains, alhtough not in that order, and enjoying driving cars instead of taking sprinters.  Now though if it were today that this last chance to do everything for a couple of years was available today, I would give up all for a two week Freedom of Scotland and hope for tractors and not spoons on all routes!





torsdag 12. april 2018

The Truth About Class 40s?

A martian may happen to read the Wikipedia insert for the BR Class 400 (EE Type 4 D200 series) and think of them as rather a faiiled locomotive. There is always the comparison to the great and wonderful pacifics and brittania classes they displaced initially, and then how they had to play second fiddle to the more powerful 'real' type 4s and of course, the soveriegn abilities of the Deltics.

We have to step back from that as enthusiasts, gritting our teeth if we were fans of the 'whislters'. Firstly we have to accept some of the points, but also we have to argue that on the one hand the forties werent quite intended for that work in one way, and on the other hand they provided years of working high income medium heavy services.

The first perspective those pipe smoking 'kettle' fans and modern day 'bring back steam' false nostalgia whipper snappers should be confronted with is this. The forty was a mix of two forms of much earlier locomotive, both concieved back in the mid 1940s pre nationalisation. Firstly EE had collaborated  with LMS of course on the two CoCo prototypes which eventually saw the light of day just as nationalisation fell. These were intended to work mixed traffic, but in working express passenger services they were most always worked in multiple. Secondly it appears that although the southern regions' 10203 was produced in 1954, its heavy 1CoCo1 design dated back a decade to Bullied's drawing board. Interestingly, the 102 series for SR were not intended as mixed traffic and were geared up to a whacking 110 mph, probably then 53:9 or something like that, for working the through express passenger services to the costal ports.

So BR ordered on the safe a little, still concerned about maximum axle weights and opted for specifying 1CoCo1 for all the initial type fours, and thus in fact making them over weight beasts the lot of them. Also by 1956, EE had developed air charged intercooling which gave a boost of around 20% in power and improved torque and fuel consumption. EE could have stuck with 10 early production D200s in this heavy guise and ordered either a CSVT v12 at around 1850-2000 hp, or  V16 at a higher rating. Indeed they did offer this format, but such was the contentment in the BTC and BRB with both the peaks and the D200s that orders of several hundred units were placed before they could be sold on higher horse power and lighter construction in Co Co arrangements.

As this is a syphon blog, a little aside about that magical 2000hp rating for the v12 CSVT.   37 292 was rated up to this level, the methodology noted somewhere on the internet, and it was to my own experience and accounts of others, not a happy runner. Also the east african 'bone' locos EE made , looking like the bastard child of a twenty and a thirty seven, or a prototype class 58 even, were rated at 2000 in the mid sixties, but they only lasted into the early 80s. But you can look to what AEI australia, EE's licensed builder, who went on to take the v12 to 2350 hp before it became the metric RK with large whiney turbochager, and they took the modest v8 up to 1750hp successfully in a class of Bo Bo locos for Malaysia ( Class 21 or 28 there I cant remember which) . The failings of the similarily uprated v16 CSVT are oft quoted, but the 50s had a mixed bag of issues and were thrashed hard on 100mph services for three decades, laterly many semi fast stopping services. The success of the 37 and the portugeuse 2350 hp locos is always taken as testimony to this being dead right as a percentage uprating over the older SVT in a rail traction application at least. However given a big order for possibly then 500 units in around about 1959 ( ie remaining d200 order  and all the 37s) then EE might have put their boffins to work upgrading the now proven 12 CSVT which they had exported to Africa already in 1956 and onward.  Perhaps bigger turbos and modified valve gear, or maybe they would have trialled gear driven cams instead of the supposedly bug -bear timing chains of the Syphon G, EE Type 3. It wasnt to be and 37292 was just a standard engine  with the weaknesses of the timing chain and sticky valve gear revealed at this higher rating. EE to my mind, could have fixed it. A 12 is inherently smoother running than a 16 as well.

So back to 40s and why they get sneered at by some 4-6-2 beardy-weirdy types. BR had already assumed that for the larger trains they would follow the American convention with their 1750 / 2000 hp GM 645 locos and 'robots'. or running multiple diesels. I guess by the early experience of the CoCo LMS designed locos, they knew that over 3000 hp from DE power was needed to operate the 500 plus ton intercity express trains. This type of power would then surpass the output of the best stoked 'tin can' as we patronisingly called  ahem, those kettle driven locos, and then exceed their journey times by far due to not needing to rewater or change crew so often. The final steam workhorses like the 'Peppercorn' pacifics and Evening Star, had massive amounts of torque and drawbar horsepower. Essentially two to four pistons working at over  200 PSI could create a massive amount of midspeed  horsepower. However at higher speeds many locos were prone to excessive wear and they crews had to work really hard to maintain those speeds. Deltic, pull the handle carefully, oh, and be a good boy and stop pulling back when you get to 100mph.

The plot  thickens here too. Through the 1950s and into the 60s there was a Tory government and it got a little corrupt when it came to the transport minister and his brother in law, who was big in road construction and those who wanted the fledgling national airlines to flourish domestically as well as internationally. Add to this the new found affluence and the economic Ford-Keynes -Milton golden economics of car production and personal mobility, then the railways were going to be kind of second fiddle and lose some of the premiere shine of the previous era. On the one hand we did though have a massive investment in dieselisation and new track bed, whille on the other ancilliary or duplicate  lines were hacked away after the Beeching Report. What this boiled down to was that doubling up of the D200s was seen as wasteful in the rush to de-steam, and over time, many fast non stop passenger expresses would be deleted from the diagram board in order not to compete with airlines and motorcars, a situation which continued into the days of the APT prototype fleet under Thatcher, who did not want end to end competition with the newly privatised British Airways on the then key Glasgow /London route.

Given that forties could have been paired up for all those trains, or twin higher geared 37s used, then the steam lobby would just bemoan dieselisation. On many services steam needed to work in tandem pairs or be banked anyway to avoid wheel slip or grinding to a hault. Single 1750 -2350 EE locos could then have been used on the semi fast services with loads of 8 or less coaches.

Now we come to the second point. Although forties were relegated, that was a glorious thing. It meant they worked out very useful lives first in the 1960s displacing steam from a lot of freight and lighter sub 100mph expresses and medium range trains. They were also very reliable compared to the new fleet of type fours with the LDA intercoold or eventually the class 50, and had a much loinger service interval than the Deltics, often being so stretched out beyond 8,000 hours as to hasten major dammage in some 40s leading perhaps to the first rounds  of withdrawals.  As steam fell away and the peaks and duffs came on line, 40s could be moved away north to work on the twistier routes where 90mph is not going to happen all that often anyway. They then displaced some slower type 2 workings or multiples, such as in Scotland, and really in a lot of ways lived a charmed life being celebrities who went first from BBC national prime time to regional day time broadcasting so to speak, but thus  they endeared themselves to in particular 'Northerners' in the halcyon days of bashing in the mid 70s to the mid 80s.

Despite being a little pedestrian in acceleration and overloading when coaxed too much on even light gradients, the 40s did a very nice job indeed on load 8 running a 75mph service and were more reliable in miles per casualty than the Peaks or of course the ubuquitous  Duff. In their last bastion of premiere intercity diagrammed workings, Scottish Region, they were only superceded and bettered by shove duffs working shorter trains and having far higher maintenance intervals. Admittedly a duff will work a load 8 Aberdeen or Inverness service a little quicker, but with the ETH on there is little or nothing in it. During their swansong, 1983/85 , there were english depots sending them north and scottish control and depots not sending them back again, because they knew they had a reliable stand in and recovery loco. They started to attract a very large following  and I was very glad to have had one of the very last saturday workings over the Carlisle - Settle route and back with one, plus random bagging them around the place, and plodding up and down on the Fife circuit one day, nice and toasty warm with a steaming 40048 being the 16 wheels in charge of that service, and a now well know railway director buying the 'family ticket' green special day rover  for us to do the trip together in autumn 1984.

Gone they are not, seven existing and six were mustered this week to celebrate their collective 60th birthday, and quite a sight that was!!  Whistle down the wind of railway history you old EE type 4s !