Room 101 - Steam, Diesel or Electric trains?

They are considered and planned for use.

These are looked at as infill at the moment with Pantographs for traction so Bi Mode.

A couple of issues with them is Range and method of charging if no electrification or EMU equipment.

This then leads into weight, between battery tech and the traction equipment these units are much heavier as you can imagine.

The most important factor is probably reliability, NR or TOCs and FOCs can't afford disruption with an already shakey reputation and coming off the back of the pandemic in bad shape and these units are not as reliable to date, will change with time I would imagine.

why not consider induction powered trains, instead of overhead power or third rail? with battery storage when needing more power to get moving.

Surge arrestors are now allocatable along with insualted paint to reduce clearance down to 70mm.

You are correct in terms of bird strikes being an issue but the electrical clearances that have been worked to for years are in place for lighting strikes and not traction or bird strikes. This is the primary (or secondary to gauge) issue with infrastructure and a huge financial stumbling block, as well as disruptive when interventions are required sometimes taking years to complete.

Definitely diesel! 

Nothing worse than a diesel pulling up to a platform suffocating you! 

Noisy and also an unhelpful contribution to our emissions.

Electrification is looking like it's picking up again.

cleaner, greener and quieter not to mention lighter,so it reduces track wear and tear too.

There is a cost to electrifying lines, large front loaded costs usually attempting to modernise a victorian railway which is obviously challenging.

The challange is also access to the railway, a small corridor and poor times that limit production.

The industry is working together to enable more efficient solutions to avoid large civil interventions and reduce costs of electrifying withing existing railway with great results.

And yes I'm biased to Electrification ?

Lisa.  Noting yours, I thought you might find the following link of interest 

< www.bbc.co.uk/.../business-57763301 >

People will always turn out to see something famous/excptional.  One of my own treasured memories is watching Alan Pegler - the initial saviour of the Flying Scotman - inspecting the loco in the Paint Shop at Doncaster Works, prior to taking delivery from BR.  It's had quite a career since then.  Mike

Russ.  Many thanks for your response to mine.  Having been involved in rolling stock development for many years, I found the details you posted very interesting.  With the advantage of hindsight though one must suppose that the development was speculative, with little chance of commercial success because of the higher manufacturing and maintenance costs of mechanical designs.   Electrical/electronic ones are therefore adopted whenever possible.  Being a member of both the IET and IMechE, I seem to have backed both horses.  Mike

Relatively current steam locomotives were made by SLM in Switzerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Locomotive_and_Machine_Works which was sold to DLM AG  https://dlm-ag.ch/en/ 

Do they need the weight to stay on the track?
I'll put electric in room 101 just because they are very dependant, the other 2 can run happily on two pieces of parallel steel (minimal intrastructure) and to give diesel a boost, autonomous all day.  Electric trains very impressive though, and on-board wifi is so much better than it was in 1900.

Michael Harding: 
 

… I gather vinyl records are proving more popular than CDs.

That's very true! My local supermarket have started selling classic vinyl records some of which I have an original still…. ?

I'm lucky (or unlucky depending on your views) to live close to a mainline railway line and quite often see the Flying Scotsman on it's travels to different areas of the country. We always know when it's coming through as there's a huge crowd of spectators trudging through the farmers fields to line the track. 

The standard diesel locomotives don't get as much attention… ? 

I remember an article in one of the railway mags many years ago about the relative efficiencies of various types of steam locos v. diesel. There was a mention of a steam loco driver in India who would do all sorts of unpaid maintenance work/cleaning etc. on his loco which brought the efficiency almost on a par with the local diesels, however this was the result of a lot of extra labour!

As for overhead electrification (especially with the UK rail network's limited loading gauge) the cost of powering the whole network would be unfeasible plus the numerous problems with such structures. Talking with some line engineers on the WCML one of their main problems was birds sheltering under bridges in wet weather: damp bird perches on 25kV wire, shuffles under bridge, gap between bird and structure less than safe, arc strikes up carbonising bird and eventually burning through wire and dropping a mile of overhead line into the dirt!

Could I suggest some form of diesel-electric hybrid loco? Battery storage charged by a diesel engine running at maximum efficiency and with the engine available to give a boost when needed (on starting or steep gradients). This could be taken a step further with partial electrification of the rail network so instead of the diesel engine there are sections of overhead line or third rail or some other power transfer method, probably at stations where the heaviest power requirements would be needed for starting. Train uses power supply to charge up/start, runs on batteries for most of the route. Simples! No long runs of overhead wires. No pollution.

I would also think that there should be some development of lighter weight trains as well: at the moment I hate to think how much energy is being used just to get hundreds of tons of rolling stock up to speed (and wasted when it slows down) let alone the additional weight of passengers/cargo.