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Contents Listing - Articles & Features in this issue
alking of trains British and Irish 4-8-0 tank engines - Frederic Vanson Impressions of Polish steam - E Barries A look at CIE in 1976 - Michael H C Barnes Civil engineering in railway preservation - Peter J Coster Then and now a€ 'The Royal Scot' British Rail in camera Raising steam To the Border via Buxton - K S Farr New books Letters Two Broad Gauge photographs Preservation scene Motive power miscellany Enthusiast's month Front Cover: BR Standard Class 4 4-6-0 No 75058 passes Halton station on the now closed Lancaster Green Ayre to Wennington line on July 23,1965, with a Heysham to Moss Sidings freight.
Article Snippets
Lessons from the WCML: SOON AFTER the Weaver Junction - Glasgow electrification was opened in 1974 it became apparent that all was not turning out exactly as had been planned. In particular, the behaviour of the overhead system and the adhesion of the locomotives on the steepest gradients began to be questioned, with the usual covert suggestions that someone had blundered. It is a fact that some unforeseen difficulties arose, as is inevitable in an imperfect world with a scheme of this magnitude, but the idea that they do these things better abroad is. largely fallacious. Few of us read the day-to-day comments of the Continental newspapers after a major railway electrification has been inaugurated or listen to pavement cafe gossip. Fortunately the course of events on the WCML is now on record in a paper presented by Mr R T Ribbons, Traction Design Engineer, BRB, to the Railway Division of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers on April 25. Mr Ribbons commented that there were not many papers about things that go wrong, but it is his firm belief that engineers gain as much, if not more, from talking about things that go wrong as from those that go right. The perfect engineer does not make mistakes, but he does not make anything else either. A puzzling fault in the early days was the fracture of glass fibre rods in section insulators of a design that had already been used elsewhere without trouble. This turned out to be caused by an unsatisfactory sealing process allowing a reaction between moisture, leakage currents and materials to release a corrosive acid which attacked the glass.
