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  • British Railway Headlight and Front End Color questions...

  • Discussion about railroad topics everywhere outside of Canada and the United States.
Discussion about railroad topics everywhere outside of Canada and the United States.

Moderators: Komachi, David Benton

 #1473334  by MACTRAXX
 
Everyone:

I have had a long term interest in the railways of the British Isles and want to ask about the
following practices used by them:

First-Why have British trains used strange headlight types? Would it be better if railways used
stronger headlights and ditch lights similar to the ones used by North American railways?

Second-What exactly is the rule that requires the use of yellow on front ends of equipment?
I understand that it has something to do with visibility - could other bright colors that would
go better with a given color scheme (my favorite is red as used by the London Underground
or a zebra stripe red and white combination used by Chicago's Metra in the US) instead of
having to use yellow on the front ends? I also find the lack of front end identification on rail
equipment interesting - numbers and heralds are small and in cases few and far between...

I look forward to any replies and will thank all in advance...MACTRAXX
 #1473352  by george matthews
 
Generally, British trains don't pass through large areas of empty land, as in the Great Plains of the US. Visibility is treated in a different way as the lines here are very crowded and every piece of track is very closely signalled. I don't think there is any unsignalled track anywhere, even in Scottish Highlands.
 #1473415  by mdvle
 
MACTRAXX wrote: I have had a long term interest in the railways of the British Isles and want to ask about the
following practices used by them:

First-Why have British trains used strange headlight types? Would it be better if railways used
stronger headlights and ditch lights similar to the ones used by North American railways?
British trains traditionally haven't had headlights.

Need to consider that the UK is relatively small.

By law the right of way must be fenced, and level crossings are all fully gated and until the last 30 years each crossing would typically be manned (either directly or close by) so the train wouldn't be signaled through the crossing until safe.

High intensity lamps didn't start to appear until the mid-80s.

(you might also be horrified to know that even through the 80s there was no on board communication from the train to signalers, if there was a problem the train driver had to proceed to the next signal and ring up the signal box).

Result is that their headlights have evolved for different reasons that the US.
MACTRAXX wrote: Second-What exactly is the rule that requires the use of yellow on front ends of equipment?
I understand that it has something to do with visibility - could other bright colors that would
go better with a given color scheme (my favorite is red as used by the London Underground
or a zebra stripe red and white combination used by Chicago's Metra in the US) instead of
having to use yellow on the front ends?
No. The yellow front end is a regulation dating from sometime in the mid-60s and is designed to allow workers on the track to see approaching trains. The regulation specifies both the colour and the minimum area that must be yellow.

Around 2015 the regulation was changed so that if a train met certain headlight criteria the yellow panel is optional.
MACTRAXX wrote: I also find the lack of front end identification on rail
equipment interesting - numbers and heralds are small and in cases few and far between...
Well, when there is only one railway there is no pressing need to plaster its identity across the front of the train, plus it would interfere with the yellow panel.

The closest to what you seem to be asking about (how to identify a train) would be:

a) the Western Region used train reporting numbers on the front of steam locos, examples can be seen here http://www.davidheyscollection.com/page23.htm. They became necessary to the signalmen could tell where the train wasy going on Summer Saturdays, where there was so much traffic that keeping to a timetable was impossible.

b) headcodes, used for a while in the diesel era, but phased out by the 80s. Every train the on the UK network has a 4 digit id which was displayed by the headcodes. More info can be seen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_reporting_number
 #1473448  by johnthefireman
 
Thanks, mdvle. That's a pretty comprehensive answer. I would add that trains don't need a train number on the front as pretty much the entire network is controlled by central control rooms and computers and there is no need for a signaller to physically see and identify a train. Likewise the locomotive number. The old train identification codes on the front of the locomotive, whether headlamp codes or numbers/letters, was mainly so that signallers in lineside signal boxes could identify the train.

British trains did have headlamps on the front, but they were for signallers and others to identify the type of train, not to provide light for the driver to see where he was going - they were far too dim for that. Different types of train had different arrangements of headlamps on the front, with four positions - left, right and centre of the buffer beam, and centrally near the top of the smokebox. Offhand I can remember that a fast express or mail train (plus breakdown train or snowplough en route to a job) was two lamps, one at each side of the buffer beam. A royal train would have lamps in all four positions. Anybody who is interested can just Google "british railway headlamp codes" where there are plenty of diagrams. The headlamp codes survived into the diesel age, with white discs and lamps fitted to the front of early diesels, but was soon superseded by letter/number codes as mdvle mentions, and then disappeared completely with the coming of computerisation and centralised train control.

There's also a discussion of headlamps in the Indonesia locomotive lamp signal thread.