towerman
My status is now now widower
Posts: 2,968
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Post by towerman on Apr 2, 2024 21:02:58 GMT
Why did LUL spend all that money converting them to battery locos only to have them rusting in Ruislip Depot awaiting disposal?
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brigham
Posts: 2,532 
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Post by brigham on Apr 3, 2024 7:37:58 GMT
Normal post-war railway operating procedure in Great Britain, sadly.
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Post by t697 on Apr 4, 2024 15:45:18 GMT
In an attempt to be reasonably diplomatic from an uninvolved position, I'd say slack governance of the project.
For electric locos to gain route availability across all or most of LUL there is a lot of EMC assessment and design work to do to assure that the locos would be compatible, particularly but not exclusively with the various signalling systems. One can question whether specification and supplier selection were governed properly. And similar concern once the project was under way with contract placed. I'm not clear whether there was also supposed to be ATP provision for any of the post tripcock/trainstop signalling systems. If not, that would limit usability.
One might consider that suppliers working in the field of small locos might not have the necessary resources at hand, but there are ways of addressing that using expert help from outside or possibly from within LUL.
Then during the project the immediate need for additional locos seemed to have slackened, at least for a few years.
Perhaps someone with more intimate knowledge will put me straight if I'm wrong!
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gefw
Gone - but still interested
Posts: 201
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Post by gefw on Apr 7, 2024 17:22:21 GMT
Perhaps they were not convinced the refurb of the "old school" battery locos was going to happen or be a success - the Drivers seem to love the new cabs.
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Post by starlight73 on Apr 7, 2024 21:14:36 GMT
For anyone unfamiliar with this project, here is an article mentioning it. As of 2016, it cost £5m to convert the Schöma diesel locomotives to battery electrics. (Don’t know if this is for a small number or all of them) From an outsider’s viewpoint, it seems these conversions can be difficult … given the problems on the mainline with the diesel class 230s/D trains, and the Northern class 769s. This is not to dismiss the hard work of engineers! It just seems to be not straightforward. |
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Post by starlight73 on May 6, 2024 9:47:33 GMT
Just for the record, I’ve come across an older thread about this As well as the electro-magnetic compatibility issues mentioned here by t697 , someone in that thread mentioned the Schöma locos were not powerful enough to haul a heavy engineering train. They had to work in pairs when possible I also just read a TfL document saying that, due to lack of space, the Schömas can only accommodate “one modern signalling system” ( page 31 of this PDF). The existing battery locos can accommodate two such systems |
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Post by d7666 on May 6, 2024 16:29:07 GMT
Just for the record, I’ve come across an older thread about this As well as the electro-magnetic compatibility issues mentioned here by t697 , someone in that thread mentioned the Schöma locos were not powerful enough to haul a heavy engineering train. They had to work in pairs when possible I also just read a TfL document saying that, due to lack of space, the Schömas can only accommodate “one modern signalling system” ( page 31 of this PDF). The existing battery locos can accommodate two such systems To be fair to the Schoema locos, both as diesel before rebuild and as battery after rebuild, they were specified and constructed for different duties than the BoBo battery locos. That they have / had to work in pairs is a characteristic of smaller locos, that is all. Bo + Bo = BoBo to a certain extent  ITYF that cited PDF is somewhat out of date: all the remaining traditional BoBo battery locos currently have more than "two such (modern) systems" and were so equipped in the last overhaul / refurblement. That refurble did a lot of things - but relevant here is lead acid battery cell physical size over time has got smaller for the same amp-hour capacity - advantage was taken up of this to reduce the cell space without loss of battery capacity, and use the space released for all the extra "modern" signalling kit's gubbins. ((I am not going here into what is not / working / commissioned on battery locos; suffice to say these days there are all essentially of only 2 sub-types irrespective of train spotter demarcations of when they were built or who built them; the differences between the two sub types are the permutation of ATP systems fitted.)) |
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