Breakdown cranes

[Watford West]

Hi
I've just been re-reading Peter Tatlow's book 'Harrow & Wealdstone 50 years on', and got to thinking about whether rail mounted breakdown cranes still exist on the national network?
Living in Watford my memory of the recovery of the trains involved in the 1996 accident here, were of large road mobile cranes from a company called Baldwins. Is this the way things have gone now?
Thanks in anticipation

 

[randyrippley]

This web page explains why they have more or less fallen out of use

The Demise of the Railway Breakdown Crane

It seems there were only four left in 2010, it doesn't say how many still exist

Basically the argument boils down to
fewer freight vehicles = fewer derailments
fewer incidents = hard to justify the capital cost
fewer incidents = hard to keep training and knowledge
more single track lines = impossible access
modern trains are easier to damage when lifting and can only be raised via strongpoints = bigger cranes with a longer reach than will fit in the UK loading gauge are needed

far easier to hire in a large road crane and experienced crew as needed

 

[swt_passenger]

I think you can add that at the same time the largest road going mobile cranes have also been developed to a far greater capacity, driven by wider construction industry needs, and they are much less constrained by loading gauge.

 

[Lucan]

But surely access to the railway line for road-going cranes must be a serious problem, or an impossibility, for a very high proportion of the rail network?

 

[Ploughman]

I think that in the last year or so the remaining 4 cranes were collected together at Springs Branch depot in Wigan.
One of these cranes was designated by the NRM for preservation.
Since then it has been acquired by the Gwilli Railway in S Wales arriving there in the last month.
What the future is for the 3 remaining I do not know.
Some recent Crane recovery tasks have been covered by the use of KIROW cranes rather than Railway Breakdown cranes.

More info on Breakdownn Cranes may be found here :- http://www.bdca.org.uk/index.html

 

[pdeaves]

But surely access to the railway line for road-going cranes must be a serious problem, or an impossibility, for a very high proportion of the rail network?

When major incidents happen (e.g. Stonehaven), a temporary road can be built very quickly to get cranes to site. Obviously, that still depends on the exact location.

 

[Irascible]

But surely access to the railway line for road-going cranes must be a serious problem, or an impossibility, for a very high proportion of the rail network?

I would think you could lay temporary roads for most of it ( as you would accessing a building site, perhaps ) but there must be a few places where there's no practical road access. For a lot you're probably going to manage with a road-railer full of jacks, but as always there will be some edge cases. Maybe there's some sort of dismantleable crane you can still ship in by rail anyway.

 

[Tom B]

There's also much less of a desire to reinstate services after any major or minor accident, which gives time for temporary roads, or cranes to be hired in especially etc. Historical reports reference a "long time" to reinstate as being a few days, whereas it is easily a couple of weeks now.

 

[randyrippley]

I would think you could lay temporary roads for most of it ( as you would accessing a building site, perhaps ) but there must be a few places where there's no practical road access. For a lot you're probably going to manage with a road-railer full of jacks, but as always there will be some edge cases. Maybe there's some sort of dismantleable crane you can still ship in by rail anyway.

As happened at Greyrigg where some fairly massive stone causeways were laid

 

[WesternLancer]

There's also much less of a desire to reinstate services after any major or minor accident, which gives time for temporary roads, or cranes to be hired in especially etc. Historical reports reference a "long time" to reinstate as being a few days, whereas it is easily a couple of weeks now.

Yes, key point. Industry not bothered about getting services back to normal more or less immediately any more. Sadly it is the road network that is seen as being 'vital' these days, not rail. I mean, what's wrong with bus replacement services for a week or so....

 

[Irascible]

As happened at Greyrigg where some fairly massive stone causeways were laid

Most of the time you could probably get away with something like a Marston Mat ( the metal segmented planking ) or modern plastic versions, which is extremely fast to lay out - cranes usually have a myriad of wheels so they're low ground pressure when they're not lifting, and when they are they don't generally use the wheels anyway. If it's any more complicated ( needing bridges & so on ) I've no doubt the Royal Engineers might want some exercise... but there's plenty of civilian expertise there too.

 

[DelW]

Most of the time you could probably get away with something like a Marston Mat ( the metal segmented planking ) or modern plastic versions, which is extremely fast to lay out - cranes usually have a myriad of wheels so they're low ground pressure when they're not lifting, and when they are they don't generally use the wheels anyway. If it's any more complicated ( needing bridges & so on ) I've no doubt the Royal Engineers might want some exercise... but there's plenty of civilian expertise there too.

Not that low - 12 tonnes per axle is the norm in travel configuration. But there are indeed prefabricated roadway systems that will carry that.

Generally only yard cranes can lift on wheels, big mobiles need an outrigger spread much wider than the crane chassis (typically 10m - 12m across). Increasingly, proprietary purpose-designed panels are used for outrigger mats as well.

 

[ANDREW_D_WEBB]

But surely access to the railway line for road-going cranes must be a serious problem, or an impossibility, for a very high proportion of the rail network?

In this case it can be cheapest to cut the loco up on site, for example the fate of 66734 after derailing alongside Loch Treig in 2012. The major components were subsequently used in a replacement loco.

 

[tomatwark]

The other thing to consider is the damaged stock is more likely to be moved by road as well so you would need to build access roads anyway.

 

[Spartacus]

There's also much less of a desire to reinstate services after any major or minor accident, which gives time for temporary roads, or cranes to be hired in especially etc. Historical reports reference a "long time" to reinstate as being a few days, whereas it is easily a couple of weeks now.

Not exactly true, much of the ‘delay’ often centres around proper investigation to an extent unheard of a few decades ago.

I’ve read numerous old reports where they’ve been unable to get to the very bottom of the cause where it’s clear now that the haste to clear up and reinstate services will have undoubtably destroyed evidence, when then they largely relied on evidence of the signallers and train crew, if they survived, and compare accounts with the position of controls, levers and signals, but only usually after the clean up had commenced which could potentially right any causal faults.

Really, compare the number of derailments today to yesteryear and it’s clear why far fewer rail cranes are needed, even without the significant advancements in road cranes and the ability to move them around the country quickly on motorways.

 

[43096]

Not exactly true, much of the ‘delay’ often centres around proper investigation to an extent unheard of a few decades ago.

I’ve read numerous old reports where they’ve been unable to get to the very bottom of the cause where it’s clear now that the haste to clear up and reinstate services will have undoubtably destroyed evidence, when then they largely relied on evidence of the signallers and train crew, if they survived, and compare accounts with the position of controls, levers and signals, but only usually after the clean up had commenced which could potentially right any causal faults.

But we now have far more information available via data recording (OTMR, CCTV systems, signal box data loggers etc) than was available back then, so we ought to be clearing up accidents at least as fast as previously. But we're not - quite the opposite in fact, as Carmont so readily demonstrates.

 

[Ploughman]

Are you advocating the American approach then?
Where it seems that almost before the dust of an incident has settled that the Diggers and Bulldozers are let loose without any investigtaion or survey apparent.

 

[Watford West]

Well thanks for all that chaps, very informative and has solved a query in my mind. I was going to share some pictures of the Watford rail crash in 1975 that I took, but as I'm getting ready to move, surprise, surprise I can't find them. I used to pass the area where it happened on the way to school, and saw the class 86 laying diagonally down the embankment. Quite a surprise to my 13 year old self as I knew nothing about it!. On the way home we were just in time to watch 2 carriages being pushed off the top of the embankment and allowed to roll down to the bottom. I assume that they were very precariously balanced and deemed not worth the risk of recovery? Anyway it was quite a sight seeing them rolling down a 50 foot embankment

 

[Irascible]

Well thanks for all that chaps, very informative and has solved a query in my mind. I was going to share some pictures of the Watford rail crash in 1975 that I took, but as I'm getting ready to move, surprise, surprise I can't find them. I used to pass the area where it happened on the way to school, and saw the class 86 laying diagonally down the embankment. Quite a surprise to my 13 year old self as I knew nothing about it!. On the way home we were just in time to watch 2 carriages being pushed off the top of the embankment and allowed to roll down to the bottom. I assume that they were very precariously balanced and deemed not worth the risk of recovery? Anyway it was quite a sight seeing them rolling down a 50 foot embankment

https://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoE_Watford1975.pdf - there's the report if you wish to read it. Apparently they were rolled down the embankment to "speed up the clearance of the line".

 

[Watford West]

Thank you Irascible for the link to the report, makes interesting reading, particularly about the two carriages! Lucky we were in the right place at the right time to see them roll!