swt_passenger
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- Joined
- 7 Apr 2010
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Alternatively, the shoes are retractable, as seen in the photo, but will not be retracted during service because it is essentially something else that can go wrong, and these trains are being designed for high reliability. Shoes would probably be retractable by a key switch on the back wall or by physically moving them and locking them so that the shoe can be changed once it has worn out, but I am interested to see what the case actually is.
As a side point, this is a significant difference between a 450/444 or a 350/1. The shoe arm that you can see below the shoe beam is the same in all three classes, but only the 350/1 has the retracting mechanism, which is out of sight within the bogie.
A 450/444 shoe can however be raised manually to the same height as on the 350/1 by holding it up and tying it there. (I saw an SWT training session at Bournemouth a few years ago, practising lifting shoes with the wooden paddle on a full size model, and the trainer told me that the proper bogies did not have the remote raise facility as it saved about £1000 per bogie.)
So it is possible to have a situation where shoes can be lifted up away from the juice rail manually - however I have no idea if this explains the photos being discussed.
I'd expect though that planned shoe changes are done in the depot, where they don't have third rail installed, but are powered by the overhead shore supply cables, so the lack of remote control on the SWT variants wouldn't be an issue.