Bring Back Steam, Eh?

December 5, 2010 Longrider General News, Humour, Transport 20

This week’s snow brought with it predictable chaos on Britain’s transport infrastructure –  including the rail network. It always does. Yesterday it seems it was software at fault.

Modern electric stock –  and even not so modern –  suffers when snow gets into the mechanism. The latest problem is a failsafe mechanism that stops the train in the event of ice on the third rail It all makes sense, of course –  unless you are on the stranded train or waiting on a sub zero platform for its arrival. And you’d be thinking to yourself that there must be a better way, the technology must exist to deal with this stuff.

Well, yes, it does. As the Telegraph article points out; steam. Steam has some useful side effects –  hissing out all those hot gases, it tends not to have a problem with iced up rails –  and it burns off the vegetation right next to the line, so minimising the leaves on the line problem, too. That said, lineside fires are a bit of a pain…

So, bring back steam?

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Update: Janet Street Porter comments at the Indy.

I’d never heard of the “third rail” until last Thursday, but suddenly this mysterious piece of metal was catapulted into the spotlight, blamed for the disruption to our rail network.

So what did you think makes the trains go? Magic?

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20 Comments

  5. I did some work for the National Railway Museum in York back in the mid-nineties. We had to do our stuff overnight and it was mid-summer so I was able to take a break while there was still daylight in the main hall.
    On the Mallards footplate, hand on throttle and looking down the outside of the boiler was a memorable thing.
    Not that I like to brag. 🙂

  6. Many years ago we had the A4 Pacific The Union of South Africa at Bristol Temple Meads. An engineering train had become derailed on the Up Filton Bank. As the steamer wasn’t authorised to go via Bath, we had to institute single line working up the bank. I was the pilotman so rode on the footplate. An interesting experience. One thing steam locomotives do not like is a climb on a cold boiler. It took us half an hour to do a five minute journey.

  8. It appears some of the problems with the c2c line was the electric doors – customers entering and leaving via the sliding doors were shaking snow off their boots and this was then getting into the door runners and freezing solid!

  10. The problem here is a combination of modern stock that is too sophisticated for its own good and the loss of old fashioned knowledge of how to do the boring everyday bits of running a railway. The job has been subjected to a spurious ‘professionalism’ which discounts experience on the job and replaces it with the abstract theory of systems and slavish following of an ever more byzantine rules structure which leaves everyone afraid to act on their own initiative for fear of being the one left holding the blame parcel when the music stops. The lack of vertical integration so that Network Rail are the only ones doing track clearance with ever fewer staff is another contributory factor. The deficiencies of the top collection third rail system could be overcome when there were enough people with the skills and authority to deal with it but now any occurrence of two or more serious incidents in short succession leaves us floundering. This causes real embarrassment and despair amongst those of us who just want to run a railway but we know that our days are numbered and the careerists and graduates with no real interest in railways are the future, at least until the government decides it’s no longer interested in funding a dysfunctional system and closes most of it down.

  12. At Bute station in Cardiff, there used to be a 9F rusting behind the platform fencing, back in the 1980s. I don’t know what happened to it but I’d have loved to see that thing running. I think the only one left now is ‘Evening Star’.

    I also wonder what Janeh Stree Pohuh thought made the trains go. Clockwork? Hornby style controllers? Big elastic bands?

    Steam trains were dangerous, but only where the train was. Third rail makes the entire track dangerous, trains or no! What a shame JSP now knows about it…

  13. Sister in Law lives in Norway where “Heartbeat” is huge, so her visits here usually include me taking her to Goathland right next to the North Yorkshire Steam Railway.

    We had a great time there, sticking our heads out of the windows, leaving them open through the tunnels (the windows, not our heads) and getting shouted at by the guards.

    A nice touch is that every carriage on the train is of a different style.

    And if you look closely out of the left (heading east) you should spot the Sir Nigel Gresley.

  14. If we’re talking steam, can I do a bit of advertising? Specifically, the Steam Our Scotsman campaign that is looking to fund the restoration of a legend.. LNER 4472.

    New boiler time already? it seems hardly any time since it was out from its last restoration – but I guess that’s nearly twenty years ago…

    …our days are numbered and the careerists and graduates with no real interest in railways are the future,

    Tell me about it… 🙁

  15. The problem is the officially mandated control software, that shuts down the electric supply when there is “too much” arcing.
    This is a serious problem on 3rd-rail electrics, as in Sarf of the River.

  17. Merseyrail are a much smaller operation so it’s easier to keep a grip on things but they are also one of the best run train operating companies in the country not something you can say for the south of the Thames outfits, although SWT have improved considerably and are the best of the bunch. I don’t know how well Network Rail operate on Merseyside but it can’t be as bad as in the Sussex area ( where they employ me as a signalman ) the level of management competence here can best be described as abysmal.

  20. Also, you really get very little snow in Merseyside – faces West, cose to the sea, that sort of thing ….

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