Industrial heartland, and Harrow & Wealdstone wreck

History of Britain's railways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFNelIR ... 937.071754" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The Harrow and Wealdstone wreck of 1952 is mentioned, so here are two You Tubes describing it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZkQAFznw0w" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU60PgAjh0E" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrow_an ... rail_crash" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Photos: Harrow and Wealdstone wreck.

This crash happened a long time ago, in the period after the second world war. The basic structure of the railway was still suffering from the long period of lack of maintenance, and was much run down. The main cause was a failure of the signalling system. Modern signaling makes it very unlikely such an event could happen today.

And BTW the use of steam locomotives, not yet on the way out, was a serious additional hazard in those days.

Here is another articles that goes into the personalities involved.
http://www.londonreconnections.com/2012 ... n-britain/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The article says "as the practice was then (as is still often the case now) to give locals priority over expresses if both were running late." The opposite was true where I worked on the Pennsylvania RR. We didn't hold high wheelers for locals.

George, you say "And BTW the use of steam locomotives, not yet on the way out, was a serious additional hazard in those days." Are you referring to the limitation on the driver's line of sight, or are there other factors that I haven't thought of?
It's nice if they can get the fireman to call signals.

Standard practice was to have the signals on the engineer's (driver's) side, so the fireman might not have seen them because of the boiler, although he might also have had his head down shoveling coal.

philipmartin wrote:George, you say "And BTW the use of steam locomotives, not yet on the way out, was a serious additional hazard in those days." Are you referring to the limitation on the driver's line of sight, or are there other factors that I haven't thought of?
It's nice if they can get the fireman to call signals.

When a steam engine crashes there is greater damage and harm than from modern types. An electric locomotive that has crashed does not set fire to all around it. The site you were extolling is now entirely electric.

george matthews wrote:
When a steam engine crashes there is greater damage and harm than from modern types. An electric locomotive that has crashed does not set fire to all around it. The site you were extolling is now entirely electric.

That''s true. We've all heard of engine crews being scalded to death in wrecks. We've also heard of them being killed in boiler explosions, when the water level is allowed to drop too low.

ExCon90 wrote:Standard practice was to have the signals on the engineer's (driver's) side

I wonder how that worked on the Great Western Railway, that had drivers on the right hand side, see my avatar, but which also absorbed standard gauge lines that might have had them on the left?

The driver now sits in the centre and has a good view of everything in front of him, something impossible in a steam locomotive.

This sort of disaster is now much less likely. I think everyone hopes that modern equipment has been designed bearing in mind the causes of this event. The state of the track, rolling stock, motive power and signalling have all changed since the 1950s. Probably the most dangerous component was the steam locomotive which is now hardly to be seen on the mainlines - occasional "specials" only.

The main reason for the presence of steam locomotives in the 1950s in Britain was the second world war which prevented the investment in electrification which everyone expected already by the 1930s. That eventually began to be applied in the 1960s. Incidentally, the method chosen was overhead lines at a much higher voltage than was available in the 1930s. The few tryouts of electrification of the late 1940s were all at much lower voltages and showed how much more effective higher voltage was to be. Something that was not learned in the US it seems.

The problem of railroads that electrified early is that when the electrification is extended later, either 1) they are constrained by what they already have, 2) have two systems in different areas, requiring either dual-powered locomotives or two separate fleets, or 3) re-electrify the original portions. Most railways found 1) to be the best way around the problem, as did the Pennsylvania, which found it better to stick with the original electrification from 1915. France still has some 3000-volt DC in service that dates from the 1930's, and the TGVs have to be equipped for that to get into Lyon-Perrache and -Part-Dieu, and Gare de Lyon in Paris, as well as elsewhere in the south of France where they leave LGV trackage to serve the "classic" network. German electrification at 15 kV, 16.7 Hz dates from the 1930's, and when they undertook the massive electrification of the postwar period they stuck with that rather than go to something like 25 kV, 50 Hz, which I believe was introduced by the French in Lorraine sometime in the 1950's, for previously non-electrified territory.

philipmartin wrote:

ExCon90 wrote:Standard practice was to have the signals on the engineer's (driver's) side

I wonder how that worked on the Great Western Railway, that had drivers on the right hand side, see my avatar, but which also absorbed standard gauge lines that might have had them on the left?

That's something that has always puzzled me, and it wasn't only the Great Western; the London & North Eastern also had engines with the driving position on the right when signals were on the left. There was a memorable near-miss at Northallerton arising entirely from the fact that the driver was on the right and the signals on the left. The boiler prevented the driver from seeing the signals immediately in front of him, but he could see signals beyond which were clear and proceeded accordingly. However, those signals were for another train coming in from the left, and when that train's driver realized that the train to his right wasn't going to stop he was able to stop just in time before reaching the point of conflict. I have never understood why, in an era when railways (at least those two) built their own locomotives in their own shops, and the Chief Mechanical Officer was the closest thing to God to be seen on the property, and everything on the locomotive went where he said it would go, why on the right?

Once again I repeat:

"The driver now sits in the centre and has a good view of everything in front of him, something impossible in a steam locomotive."

Without knowing anything about it myself, it certainly sounds like a bad idea having signals
on the left and steam locomotive drivers on the right.
We have the very latest locomotives here, on the North East Corridore, but that didn't prevent an engineer from wrecking his train in Philadelphia a couple of years ago. The answer is Positive Train Control. I hope it will always work as advertised.

ExCon90 wrote:The problem of railroads that electrified early is that when the electrification is extended later, either 1) they are constrained by what they already have, 2) have two systems in different areas, requiring either dual-powered locomotives or two separate fleets, or 3) re-electrify the original portions. Most railways found 1) to be the best way around the problem, as did the Pennsylvania, which found it better to stick with the original electrification from 1915. France still has some 3000-volt DC in service that dates from the 1930's, and the TGVs have to be equipped for that to get into Lyon-Perrache and -Part-Dieu, and Gare de Lyon in Paris, as well as elsewhere in the south of France where they leave LGV trackage to serve the "classic" network. German electrification at 15 kV, 16.7 Hz dates from the 1930's, and when they undertook the massive electrification of the postwar period they stuck with that rather than go to something like 25 kV, 50 Hz, which I believe was introduced by the French in Lorraine sometime in the 1950's, for previously non-electrified territory.

In practice there are several classes of multi-voltage locos. They are not needed in Britain as all the overhead electrified lines are now the same voltage - except for the third rail systems, which are nearly all a different voltage. In France there are two-voltage locos to cope with the two voltage systems. There are other multi-voltage locos to cope with some of the other systems - 1500 volt DC; 3000 v DC and the German, Swedish, Swiss systems (that I can't be bothered at the moment to look up). Of course there is a class of loco in Britain - class 92 - that can use the 750 volt DC third rail system as well as the overhead - but they probably are no longer needed since the high speed line to the Tunnel was built.

philipmartin wrote:Without knowing anything about it myself, it certainly sounds like a bad idea having signals
on the left and steam locomotive drivers on the right.
We have the very latest locomotives here, on the North East Corridore, but that didn't prevent an engineer from wrecking his train in Philadelphia a couple of years ago. The answer is Positive Train Control. I hope it will always work as advertised.

It's an obsolete "problem" as there is no longer steam in everyday use.