Sleet Locomotives

They were restricted to series only,but when you notched up they shot off like the brown stuff off a shovel.From a maintenance point of view they were a pig to work on,heavy cast iron blocks,brake rigging,no roller bearings so the axle boxes had to be topped up with oil at regular intervals and of course actually getting the bloody things to spray anything!!!

I'd be interested to know that as well, although the notches on the handle seem to suggest it has both.

Oh I found them quite fun to drive. As towerman says it was sometimes a b*gger to get them to spray anything. Although they had at least 6 heaters under each fluid tank the damn fluid would still go gluey if it was very cold and bunged up the nozzles.

They were the only vehicles with 4 bogies as well. The two end ones were the original CLR motor bogies and the two centre ones were ex-LCC E1 tramcar bogies upon which all the de-ice stuff was mounted. Nozzles. brushes, rollers [cutters] If you had all the stuff on the rails to clear ice and snow it would slow the loco down by 10 mph. All the gear was air operated.

They were indeed westinghouse only and that lovely 'hisss' as you applied it was a sound never to be forgotten. The whistle on a sleet loco was more like a ships foghorn as well. A long low 'Hooooott' is the best description. The controllers were also ex-tramcar ones too, modified with a deadman.and were hand notch jobs like the old 'F' stock. As you went up through the notches you heard a nice 'Tssst, Tssst' sound. This was the noise made as each finger broke contact and you drew a little arc that lit up the inside of the controller. If you forgot and wound straight up to the block you did one of two things. Either the breaker in the sub-station opened or the loco would take off like a nasa rocket. Even with series only control they could motor along at near on 40mph in places. I was told that before the stop was put on the top of the controller they once had a sleet loco in fuill parrallel knocking along in excess of 70mph. [Although with no speedo I don't know how they verified that]

They were extremely heavy old birds too. With fully loaded tanks and spare barrels of fluid plus all the equipment and gear they must have tipped the scales at close to 50 ton. Still for all the noise and draughts they were good old things to work on and sleet nights were 'interesting' when you worked one. Never the same once they were gone.

Did They?? Well it was not like that at Upminster as often we'd be poodling up and down as just the driver and guard on board. However often you'd act as the staff train as well. Crews used to like that idea as when you got to Upminster they'd troop upstairs to the office and book on and get the handsets and whatever then all troop back down again and get a lift into the depot instead of walking. [Gave them a bit longer to prep a train and have a cup of tea] The sleet may have had several trips to/from the depot in especailly bad weather to ferry crews.

There is at least one preserved sleet loco in the museum depot.
photo of loco
photo of cab

Chris

edit: I've just noticed that ADW posted links to these two photos of mine further up the thread. The ones ADW linked to are 1204x768 and reduced in quality to meet the 160kb limit on photos at railfaneurope. The 1660x1200 original quality images are linked above and are hosted at Wikimedia Commons

All train crews had an extra Sunday each summer for 'sleet training' More of a refresher really.

Also you see from my and Towerman's posts how different depots did things in defferent ways. They took the fitter with them at Hainault. At Upminster he'd only come on the loco in very bad weather. At other times of low risk he'd stay in the depot but made sure the tanks were full before we left. If the tanks needed topping up during the night the crew did it.

I'm assuming (again) that the sleet locos were quite noisy, like the battery locos? Do the battery locos have straight-cut, rather than hellical gears (?) which is why they are so noisy (one for Towerman there, methinks)!

Used to get some queer things happen on sleets,one came in the pits at Hainault suspected of recording an earth.Put one probe in recep box the other to earth,sure enough a full earth came up on the megger,just one problem,I hadn't turned the handle yet!!!Very strange.

We had some buses like that. One driver wrote "this bus smells of Moose pi$$" (!) on the defect card. I don't know how he knew what moose pi$$ smelt like though.