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T707
Jan 14, 2017 16:53:22 GMT
Post by dave1 on Jan 14, 2017 16:53:22 GMT
Found this T707 which may be of interest now scrapped.
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T707
Jan 14, 2017 17:53:59 GMT
drico likes this
Post by Nortube on Jan 14, 2017 17:53:59 GMT
I was driving on the Picc line for a year from late 1977 - late 1978. My recollection was that, for most of the time, it was sat gathering dust on one of the sidings near the main staff entrance and I used to see it whenever I had to walk to the depot for a train. I was told that there were problems with it. I don't know how long it was out of use for. It also caught light (or the rubbish it collected did) when in use, but I think that that was after that and not the reason for it originally being stopped.
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T707
Jan 15, 2017 1:19:48 GMT
Post by railtechnician on Jan 15, 2017 1:19:48 GMT
ISTR that the TCC had a bad start, the tube tunnels in particular were a real challenge as they were so filthy that the train only got a few yards before being full of dust. As I recall the dust once collected was able to spontaneously combust as it was compacted into the collection cars due to the heat generated in collection and the TCC did catch fire. I so remember just how bad the tunnels were in the late 1970s, the only 'clean' sections really were the newly built Jubilee line tunnels. At that time I was working in the Bakerloo and Northern tunnels mostly and they were really filthy, the Central. Picc and Vic tunnels were also filthy but not quite so bad. I can recall the TCC running on the Bakerloo in the early 1980s at Waterloo but it seemed to be out of service more often than in service over the years. Of course it was the early 1980s when LT did away with what had been the old cleaning regime and created the cleaning services gangs to deep clean stations, polish the platforms etc, I recall them starting at four stations to begin with, Victoria being one of those. The female fluffers disappeared thereabouts or soon afterward as I recall. In the early 1990s Picc tunnels were being cleaned by hand by contractors with large vacuum cleaners on trolleys to aid them. Basically two man parties doing what a whole gang of fluffers used to do up to 100 yards into the tunnels but instead litter picking the whole tunnel between two stations. My lasting memory of the TCC was in the last two or three years before I retired when it sat on the siding outside Northfields IMR under a tarpaulin for much of the time. T707 was of course not the first tunnel cleaning train, apparently one was used in the 1930s but quickly abandoned as an absolute failure!
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T707
Jan 15, 2017 14:42:48 GMT
dave1 likes this
Post by Nortube on Jan 15, 2017 14:42:48 GMT
I don't know about other lines, but the Northern was really bad, not helped by so much of it being in tunnel. Lots of brake dust was generated by trains going south on both branches towards Camden Town. Hampstead was probably the worst, followed by Belsize Park and Highgate. Both branches had fast downhill approaches once the train was in the tunnel.
There was a maximum speed restriction of 35mph on the Edgware branch tunnel section and 40 to Archway, then 35. Drivers often exceeded this, then it was full EP approaching and into the station. At Hampstead, there was a 25mph restriction at the bend near the emergency crossover north of the station, and great clouds of dust would end up on both the NB and SB platforms. At Belsize park, a Guard would see the haze of dust at the driver's end of the platform. After the train arrived in the platform at these stations, the Guard would often be met with dust when he opened his Guard's door as the air was still coming into the platform from the tunnel behind.
Highgate wasn't too bad because it was a 9-car platform and thus any dust was dispelled over a bigger area. There were a lot of complaints from passengers and eventually speed control signal was put in to slow the trains down at a distance from the station. Surprisingly, nothing was done at Hampstead.
Obviously, a lot of this trapped dust worked its way down the line, coating the tunnels and stations in the process.
Things improved as more of the 38/59/62 stock was replaced with the trains with rheostat braking, such as the 72 MKII stock which started coming into service at about the time I joined, and a big improvement was noticed by the time all the 95 stock were in service and the conventional stock had disappeared.
When driving on the Picc line in 1978 as the 73 stock were gradually coming into service, it was easy to tell if you were following a 59 or 73 stock by whether you smelled any brake dust or not!
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T707
Jan 16, 2017 5:07:12 GMT
dave1 likes this
Post by railtechnician on Jan 16, 2017 5:07:12 GMT
The Northern was bad for tunnel dust but the Bakerloo was worse! It is a very subjective topic and depends greatly upon where, when and how one witnessed or experienced the dust. There is a lot of difference between working in the tunnel and driving through it but that said the circumstances at the time are really what count. Back in 1977/8 we were resignalling the Northern, I worked on the section from Chalk Farm to Golders Green. Before one could begin running in new cables the old cables had to be dropped out of the runs into balata straps and swung below. This particular section had very few cable brackets, instead the cables were bundled and hung on hooks and balatas swung off the air main. Every Tuesday to Saturday night for weeks on end we dropped the cables from the air main or brackets disturbing all the dust accumulated around them. Further we removed and replaced some 60-70 metres of air main and associated valves per shift, fitted four way brackets to the segments and then swung the existing cables below as mentioned above. From a dust perspective this was a horrendous task, in those days there was little nose and mouth protection available, respirators were only issued on 'special' jobs, were not personal issue and were hard to keep in place due to the heat in the tunnel so we wore Martindale or painter type masks which were little protection against dust. The dust went straight through our overalls and whatever we wore beneath to our skin despite wrapping ourselves up in rags and taping up our sleeves at the wrists. Once we had cleared the existing cables into balatas and had empty bracket runs ready for resignalling we picked out the cables that were to stay and put those into the bracket run. Subsequently we would run in new single and two core 1/064 lead covered cables for the resignalling. In those days we travelled to and from site by train from the depots, vans were not generally available except for the supervisors two seaters and a single minibus 'pool' van. Thus we spent many mornings awaiting the first train from Golders Green as the first leg of our journey back to Whitechapel and witnessed the amount of dust, disturbed during the shift, that preceeded it. In 1978 working at Baker Street in the old Bakerloo tunnel to platform 7 which became part of the Jubilee the dust was far worse than anywhere I worked on the Northern and similarly the section from Emabankment to Elephant & Castle was absolutely filthy when I was installing the new train radio cabling and commissioning the signal post telephones in the late 1980s resignalling.
So one has to appreciate what was happening in the hours or days before clouds of tunnel dust are seen. In the early 1980s I was running cable in the false ceiling of the DR eastbound platform at Embankment just after the morning rush hour. The ceiling panels were large asbestos sheet tiles (4'x 3' ISTR) painted white but they didn't look white an hour or so later and the disturbed dust hung around for some time whipped up by trains and seen to make passengers attire grubby with little black smuts.
The dust certainly travels and it is lethal stuff, back in the day long before anyone thought to ban smoking on the system we would smoke whilst working. One night whilst dropping cables and replacing air main between Belsize park and Chalk Farm we found ourselves being followed by fire. One interesting thing about tunnel dust is that one cannot see it burning when the lights are on it. We used to use cluster lights plugged in to the old tunnel lighting circuits to give us better light to work by and as we advanced we moved the clusters to the next available lighting sockets. On the particular occasion as we unplugged the clusters we could see a red glow working its way up from the sleepers, the dust burning from beneath undoubtedly due to a discarded butt. Stamping on the dust exacerbated the problem, the dust being so fine it kept splitting into ever smaller fragments spreading the fire. Fortunately there were enough of us there, 20 or so men, to contain and extinguish the fire but it was easy to see how quickly a small 'smouldering' could quickly engulf anything coated in the dust. One other thing about Northern Line tunnel dust is that it was heavily laden with asbestos, some of course was from the brakes on the rolling stock but a great deal was the broken asbestos sheet that had formed the anti-noise barriers on either side of the tunnel. The anti-noise was built off the segments to the height of the rolling stock bogies or thereabouts and constructed of mild steel strapping with vertical and horizontal unpainted white asbestos sheet panels. The panels did not survive resignalling because as we ran cables in night after night we stood on the anti-noise to dress the cables into the bracket runs and over time all collapsed into hopper like piles of dust either side of the tunnel, these being regularly blown about by train movements.
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Jim
Box Boy
Posts: 48
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T707
Jan 19, 2017 13:46:04 GMT
Post by Jim on Jan 19, 2017 13:46:04 GMT
One other thing about Northern Line tunnel dust is that it was heavily laden with asbestos, some of course was from the brakes on the rolling stock but a great deal was the broken asbestos sheet that had formed the anti-noise barriers on either side of the tunnel. The anti-noise was built off the segments to the height of the rolling stock bogies or thereabouts and constructed of mild steel strapping with vertical and horizontal unpainted white asbestos sheet panels. The panels did not survive resignalling because as we ran cables in night after night we stood on the anti-noise to dress the cables into the bracket runs and over time all collapsed into hopper like piles of dust either side of the tunnel, these being regularly blown about by train movements. When I started in 84 they were starting to remove those panels, train crew breathed lots of dust in as it was the norm to have black bogies up your nose god knows how much the track workers breathed in. The stations where the drivers used the Westinghouse brake were pretty bad for dust with Kilburn Park being quite nasty for the Guard. I've on the Met and now the District since 1994 and on any trip I do on a tube line I really smell the dust.
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T707
Jan 21, 2017 9:28:47 GMT
Post by dave1 on Jan 21, 2017 9:28:47 GMT
I have just mentioned those panels in another thread. This train and I only ever saw it once I had been out and was waiting for a train at Euston when it came into the platform and went into the loop I think it was going to the Piccadilly line. When it was cleaning the must have been a tremendous force and the amount of dust would have been extreme. Someone told me because of the nature it was like a bomb because of the possibility of an explosion it had a lot of fire equipment on board. Many years before I was waiting at Embankment when an empty train went through the platform at about 40mph the amount of dust and everything else that followed you could hardly see on the platform.
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T707
Jan 21, 2017 9:47:43 GMT
Post by railtechnician on Jan 21, 2017 9:47:43 GMT
I have just mentioned those panels in another thread. This train and I only ever saw it once I had been out and was waiting for a train at Euston when it came into the platform and went into the loop I think it was going to the Piccadilly line. When it was cleaning the must have been a tremendous force and the amount of dust would have been extreme. Someone told me because of the nature it was like a bomb because of the possibility of an explosion it had a lot of fire equipment on board. Many years before I was waiting at Embankment when an empty train went through the platform at about 40mph the amount of dust and everything else that followed you could hardly see on the platform. I will never forget one morning at Chalk Farm waiting for the first southbound train from Golders Green after a night's work in that tunnel dropping cables into balatas. One early morning smartly dressed female passenger in a white suit was the only non-staff member on the platform as the train came down the gradient from Bull & Bush. Before it entered the platform a thick brown cloud preceded it and that white suit was instantly coated in a layer of dirty clumps of tunnel dust. One environment I encountered worse than that was having to walk through an area of tube station passageways that were being sandblasted at a station undergoing refurbishment. The noise was deafening, the fine dust was choking without ear defenders or eyeshields I felt vulnerable but I had a job to do and the only access was through the sandblasting. Rail grinding in the tunnels is also something to steer clear of. The defined area is always screened off to contain the debris that is created but no screen is perfect and it was unpleasant having to do signal maintenance within a few yards of such a screen while the rail grinding was in progress, the metal dust finding its way through and/or around the screen.
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