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9-Car 222 Engines

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Guinness

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I noticed on a 9 Car Midland Mainline Meridian set recently that a couple of engines appeared to be "missing" while it was accelerating out of the station. I couldn't decide whether the Coaches didn't have engines or they weren't working and led me to this question....

Do 9 Car Meridians have Engines in every Coach or just some? :)

Oh and can we not have posts like "HSTs should be used", "9 Cars are uneconomical" etc. ;)
 
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bunnahabhain

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Question which upon given to a man in the know, earned this response.

Because they are f**ked. Same as the 4 car sets.
 

Nick

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Hmmm, would seem to be the engiens are either cack or that MML are wanting to save running costs and running without surplus engines, this wuld save them fuel (which is ever increasing in cost) and running costs, was this just a one of then Charlie or have you noticed this on more 222s?
 

Guinness

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Nick said:
Hmmm, would seem to be the engiens are either cack or that MML are wanting to save running costs and running without surplus engines, this wuld save them fuel (which is ever increasing in cost) and running costs, was this just a one of then Charlie or have you noticed this on more 222s?

I never really took note of any other ones. It was just the 1745 ex Nottingham that I took note at Loughborough as it was heading out to London.

It looked lightly loaded so shutting a couple of engines down wouldn't hurt performance that much. Also MML Express Meridians have very slack times anyway. :) Could be complete Cack though.
 

bunnahabhain

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They are quite capable of arriving at their destination on time with only half power. You'll notice that some engines emit a rather large hissing sound as well, this is paticularly evident on the 9 car sets.

And it's rather unlikely that they would run with some engines isolated, it's a rather stupid thing to do if you lose power to other engines, cause you cant start up your engines unless you are at a standstill!
 

Guinness

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Jamie said:
They are quite capable of arriving at their destination on time with only half power. You'll notice that some engines emit a rather large hissing sound as well, this is paticularly evident on the 9 car sets.

And it's rather unlikely that they would run with some engines isolated, it's a rather stupid thing to do if you lose power to other engines, cause you cant start up your engines unless you are at a standstill!

If a couple are isolated it's quite unlikely that the other 7 are going to fail during the journey. ;)
 

Nick

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Jamie said:
They are quite capable of arriving at their destination on time with only half power. You'll notice that some engines emit a rather large hissing sound as well, this is paticularly evident on the 9 car sets.

And it's rather unlikely that they would run with some engines isolated, it's a rather stupid thing to do if you lose power to other engines, cause you cant start up your engines unless you are at a standstill!

How is it stupid. Having 9 engines on as you say such slack timings is certainlly overkill, so surely saving running costs and running without one or two engines is far more economical and therefore can not be stupid. Juding that the Meridians dont need all engines for traction if one of the running engiens did fail surely the others (there to provide extra reliability) can cover for it and the 222 can continue on fine.
 

Lewisham2221

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I seem to remember reading somewhere that some Voyagers operate with an engine shut down and still manage to keep to their timings, just that the remaining engines work a little bit harder. It's not like they ever seem to be struggling or working too hard when they are running on all engines, so it could easily be a similar thing with the 9-car 222's.
 

Guinness

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Lewisham2221 said:
I seem to remember reading somewhere that some Voyagers operate with an engine shut down and still manage to keep to their timings, just that the remaining engines work a little bit harder. It's not like they ever seem to be struggling or working too hard when they are running on all engines, so it could easily be a similar thing with the 9-car 222's.

Aye, that's a HELLFIRE way of putting it Marv. Although once one engine shuts down on a Voyager it doesn't do much good on a longer route such as Penzance - Dundee or Bournemouth - Glasgow as it could overheat it. An advantage over a HST I suppose.
 

bunnahabhain

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Yes I'm simply saying that if an engine or two fails on a 9 car set and you were only running with 6 engines operating, then you could be down to 4 engines, and you run the risk of penaltys for causing delay. Much wiser to run with all engines in, then if one or two fail, you've got more than enough to back you up.
 

Guinness

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Jamie said:
Yes I'm simply saying that if an engine or two fails on a 9 car set and you were only running with 6 engines operating, then you could be down to 4 engines, and you run the risk of penaltys for causing delay. Much wiser to run with all engines in, then if one or two fail, you've got more than enough to back you up.
Still better than losing 2 Engines on a HELLFIRE HST though. Wouldn't get very far though!!
 

Lewisham2221

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Jamie said:
Yes I'm simply saying that if an engine or two fails on a 9 car set and you were only running with 6 engines operating, then you could be down to 4 engines, and you run the risk of penaltys for causing delay. Much wiser to run with all engines in, then if one or two fail, you've got more than enough to back you up.
TBH, if the train was already up to speed once the engine(s) failed, even if that meant it was only running on 4 engines by then, I can't see that it would have too much trouble maintaining speed until the next station stop where any deliberately shut down engines could be restarted.
 

Nick

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Jamie said:
Yes I'm simply saying that if an engine or two fails on a 9 car set and you were only running with 6 engines operating, then you could be down to 4 engines, and you run the risk of penaltys for causing delay. Much wiser to run with all engines in, then if one or two fail, you've got more than enough to back you up.

So your basically saying, if you walk with only 2 feet, there is a danger that you will be down to 1 foot, and then you could be down to 0 feet, and then you will need a wheelchair and that'll cost money, so it's too big a risk. Instead everyone will have to use walking sticks so that there is less demand on their feet?
 

TheSlash

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I've noticed Voyagers and Meridians that appeared to have non functioning engines, i thought it was my imagination.
The engine on every coach thing is more for acceleration than sustaining speed i think.
 

AlexS

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It gives a good power to weight ratio which means good acceleration.

Voyagers with more than one engine shutdown/failed are not permitted to attempt the Lickey Incline.

I've also been on a Turbostar with a failed engine in the rear coach, this wasn't so good, resulting in 25 minute delays with emergency lighting only, no toilet and no aircon in the rear carriage. Was a strange sensation to be riding in it. As far as I know it was removed from service when the train terminated at Shrewsbury in a unit swap.
 

Lewisham2221

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AlexS said:
I've also been on a Turbostar with a failed engine in the rear coach, this wasn't so good, resulting in 25 minute delays with emergency lighting only, no toilet and no aircon in the rear carriage. Was a strange sensation to be riding in it. As far as I know it was removed from service when the train terminated at Shrewsbury in a unit swap.
Yes, Turbostar's suffer much more than a 22x when an engine fails. Experienced one (which ironically was due to have it's engine replaced the week before) with the same lack of everything in the rear coach once when travelling to Derby. Now, one would have expected the train to be cancelled and unit withdrawn at Derby or Notts, but not so, it remained on it's Crewe-Skeggy diagram for the rest of the day. Needless to say, it managed to rack up some pretty impressive delays.
 

Guinness

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Lewisham2221 said:
Yes, Turbostar's suffer much more than a 22x when an engine fails. Experienced one (which ironically was due to have it's engine replaced the week before) with the same lack of everything in the rear coach once when travelling to Derby. Now, one would have expected the train to be cancelled and unit withdrawn at Derby or Notts, but not so, it remained on it's Crewe-Skeggy diagram for the rest of the day. Needless to say, it managed to rack up some pretty impressive delays.

Ironically while travelling on a Turbostar on the Crewe - Derby line the coach I was in had loose electricity connections. Despite the engine running the Aircon, Lights and PID would go out for something like 2 minutes at a time then come back on after. It happened quite a few times.

Gotta love CT Maintenance though.
icon14.gif
 

devon_metro

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Most Voyagers seem to have all engines running, the one i had on Sunday did. It hit 45 before it left Exeter St Davids!

I've been on a 150 with engine shut off and emergency lighting. Hellfire ;)
[EDIT]
Oh btw Chaz, 222s are rubbish and HSTs should be used ;)
 

bunnahabhain

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Nick said:
So your basically saying, if you walk with only 2 feet, there is a danger that you will be down to 1 foot, and then you could be down to 0 feet, and then you will need a wheelchair and that'll cost money, so it's too big a risk. Instead everyone will have to use walking sticks so that there is less demand on their feet?

That analogy is hardly useful, if you transfer it back, you're saying that the majority of trains should run around with a Thunderbird shoved on at each end.
 

Nick

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Jamie said:
That analogy is hardly useful, if you transfer it back, you're saying that the majority of trains should run around with a Thunderbird shoved on at each end.

Well it certainlly sums up your point though. Where did I say "222s are so cack they need to be pulled a loco". Nowhere. What I said was there could be an issue rather than engine failure that theyre are just switching them off because not all 750hp engines are needed to provide up to 110mph traction on the Midland Mainline. Judging that the Cummins engines are to be run at maximum speed of 125mph, all 9 engines can easily provide this, so running without say 2 engines would lower the potential top speed from 125mph to 110mph which is much more economical for running on the MML. If we also take into account as you say such slack timings, if there was another problem with ther engines and they cut out they could easily reach their destination on time.
 

bunnahabhain

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Nick said:
Well it certainlly sums up your point though. Where did I say "222s are so cack they need to be pulled a loco". Nowhere. What I said was there could be an issue rather than engine failure that theyre are just switching them off because not all 750hp engines are needed to provide up to 110mph traction on the Midland Mainline. Judging that the Cummins engines are to be run at maximum speed of 125mph, all 9 engines can easily provide this, so running without say 2 engines would lower the potential top speed from 125mph to 110mph which is much more economical for running on the MML. If we also take into account as you say such slack timings, if there was another problem with ther engines and they cut out they could easily reach their destination on time.

I never said that you had said that, I said if we "transfer it back" then that's what you get.

As I said in the second post in this thread, from an inside source, the engines are "f**ked".
 

TheSlash

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I was thinking about this at work today...
Voyagers and Meridians aren't the only units to run on reduced power. A Southern railways Class 411 CEP had the standard 1,000hp, but this was split between 2 500hp motor coaches. This made it possible for a CEP to run on half power, all day if neccessary on a slack timetable. Later designs {CIG, VEP} used 1 motorcoach and gave no redundantcy feature.
458's have 3 motors to provide they're power. They can run almost normally on 2, and at about 30mph on 1 motor. The 1 motor operation was more to clear the line.
As some people have stated, some unit types have reduced functions on coaches that have suffered engine failures. I believe 158's didn't even have head and tail lights for a number of years, meaning that if the unit was to run in service on 1 engine, the affected coach would need an emergency head or tail light respectively
 

66017-

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i was assisting in the MM BAR when we the 1430 from stp failed out of kettering and 222003 rescued us and pushed us up into leicester

cool hey:bs: :blob3: :glasses3: :pirate:
 

Mojo

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I've been on a few Chiltern 168s where all but the emergency lights go out and the engine shuts down, the driver attempting to restart it at the next stop - quite amazing to see & feel all the vibrations, though not quite as bad as the Voyagers.

It's also funny when the engine restarts to see all the messages that can come up on the PIS, like "AdtranZ - we speak railways," "Welcome to the Chiltern Clubman" and simply "Welcome."
 

paul1609

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A couple of years ago I was travelling back to Plymouth on a Wessex Service from Brighton to Bristol Temple Meads on a Sunday Evening.
The 158 was about 15 mins late at Barnham and the Guard came on to apologise that the rear engine had failed at Worthing and that they had been unable to restart it and that there was no air con extra in the rear coach.
Progress was reasonable but we were losing a few minutes on each section along the coast until about 5 mins out of Romsey where the front engine ran out of diesel as well!
We then sat on emergency lighting for about 90 minutes until a SWT 159 came and returned us to Romsey.
Unfortunately it was the end of the summer holidays and the train was packed with sailors like me returning to Plymouth and Public School Kids returning to Sherbourne. Both Groups had missed their last connections at Salisbury and Westbury respectively and as Romsey only appeared to have 2 Taxis more were summoned from Southampton. I remember guiding a Southampton Taxi driver from Romsey to Plymouth and a convoy of Taxis following us down the A35 and A38. The taxi had £221 on the meter when we got to Plymouth Dockyard so I can imagine there were a few enquiries going on at Wessex the next day!
 

TheSlash

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Wessex are good at letting things run out of diesel.
I remember the time the 31's ran out on they're way to Brighton. First the front one shut down, then the rear one. In todays world of dellner couplings, the only thing within 100 miles that was any use, was a 4 VEP at Lovers Walk, Brighton. The old thing hauled 2 dead 31's plus 4 mk2's from close to Barnham, all the way into Lovers Walk
 
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