Line Speeds

[Blink Bonny]

Ay up!

I can do a Stanier hooter! Does that count?

[cambois]

My recollection was that the Mirrlees engines were sold to be fitted into trawlers, but memory has a tendency to play tricks these days.

but agreed the 31s were under-rated workhorses. I used them in pairs on 14x100 tonner oil trains outof Immingham refineries, and singly on a 10 x 100 tonner load of onshore crude oil into Immingham.

Hard work but they made it

But then there was the time when two met rather hard on the Darlington Up siding receptions and they looked like Concorde with droppy cabs. The sand box covers jumped right off, and there was a line of yellow paint on the ballast where the initial impact took place. Quite a sight. What comes from driving from the wrong end and not looking

[manna]

G'Day Gents

I did that to !! at Harringay, propelled over the viaduct, instead of driving, result two 31's that looked like concord

Funny 31's always did that ! most of the other diesels crumpled at the cabs, but the 31's collapsed on to there bogies

manna

[rockinjohn]

Seem to remember the 2000hp Brush D5835 coming very quickly light engine from Clarence Yard up the incline,@ the Grove, being rostered regularly for the Down Sheffield Pullman, I assume it came to town most days on the up morning Pullman arrival,which started off with the EEtype4 then EE type3,which could have come before &after the Brush events,Think they all had little trouble keeping time, unlike Darnall's normal Brush allocation when standing in which happened sometimes....

[thesignalman]

Gosh, this is a really long thread and has wandered a little but a couple of points that have not been mentioned (that I can see with a scan-read). I spent some while working in scheduling, not in steam days but I worked with people that had.

• General maximum speeds were already identified, but full and comprehensive limits and restrictions only appeared throughout BR with the issue of the 1960 Sectional Appendices.
• Governing factor on expresses was probably the authorised speed of the coaching stock, but again this does not seem to have been defined in earlier days
• Another factor was braking distances - to increase line speed (as happened several times on the ECML over the years) distant signals had to be moved further out.
• Steam strains were typically timed at about 5 mph below their theoretical capability to allow for variations in locomotives (and drivers!) and also for the fact that most locomotives did not have speedometers
• Drivers used to judge speed by ear. And I certainly used to be able to - I remember on a long, late-running trip in the 1970s I shared a compartment with somebody who was working out times by watch and telegraph poles and I was able to guess the speed we were doing within 5 mph by ear every time.
  . . . and on a late-running steam ride on the S&C (which still had jointed track) a few years back I detected our 8F doing a speed on the downhill best not mentioned! Apparently these days maximum permissible speed of steam locos is based on driving wheel diameter.
• With dieselisation, and universal provision of speedometers, timings were much nearer performance levels. And, indeed, the maximum speed of freights was generally increased on the basis that they were no longer at risk of accidental speeding
• I can't speak for the Eastern Region but LMR policy seems to have been to make trains heavier and heavier in preference to running an increased service. Many "standard" expresses (as opposed to the "crack services") would actually rarely exceed about 60 mph and be scheduled accordingly. The crack services would achieve their much-promoted schedules with a light load.
• Trains running at special speeds, such as The Elizabethan or record-breaking journeys, would travel under special instructions and one of these was often that the signalmen had to "double block" to ensure that if they reached a distant showing caution they actually had an extra block section clear ahead and therefore had clear signals to the second signal box ahead. This principle has been applied over many years when new, faster trains were being built and I remember the test runs of the APT being treated similarly on the Midland Main Line.

Hope this is of interest.

John