The dinner and wine crowd who fund railtours aren't going to be especially fond of taking a VEP on a 2 hour journey to Margate. The financial dynamics is very different from preserved diesel and AC locos do on railtours.
Glad someone’s acknowledged it!!
I think Croxley – Watford's the electrified passenger line which has come closest to closure in recent years, but even had the Croxley Rail Link gone ahead I think the plan was to keep it for stabling trains at Watford.
Fit trolley poles and string up 750V DC wires as has been done in the US? As has been mentioned, there are preserved DC tramways...
Would need hefty wires to deal with current demands, a 4-VEP will take much more current than a tram.
In America it's been done with NYC subway trains, strolling along a preserved line will require a lot less power than the intensive commuter service they were built for.
The general public won't care if there is a 33 or 73 hauling or shoving the stock. It is just cranks (and a small minority of cranks at that) who would be fussed about the true third rail experience. Indeed, plenty of cranks would be happier if the emu was being dragged.
The general public would probably prefer it if a self-propelled kettle (ideally Flying Scotsman or the Hogwarts Express) was hauling the stock, much to the chagrin of the enthusiasts!
It's a shame that 1994's closure of the ex-GER Epping-Ongar route, didn't offer opportunity for an electrified self-contained line.
A 5BEL on the other hand...
Yes it will but still need some hefty cabling, if I remember rightly there's not too much control on current demand on an SR unit as they used camshafts to drop out resistances as the unit accelerated so still a considerable starting current was drawn.
That has the opposite problem of only getting the £400 a seat crowd and not the 140 cranks like me in standard. Could steal the business of the DB cargo Pullman services but the luxury railtours that can only go to the southeast market can't be huge either
It's planned to have it work with a 73 as well.
So were the orignal SR "Booster" locos
Yes - three members of the fleet. The first two, CC1 and CC2, were "true" Southern Railway machines.
I initially mis-read your post, and thought you were referring to the ssb, who allow the shb's historic vehicles to run on their metro. Which means keeping the mixed gauge specifically for these vehicles, which seems very benevolent.
There was talk of the 4BEL being tested 3rd rail on Merseyrail, before LSL takes bookings in 2025 on 3rd rail tours in the South of England (like Victoria to Brighton) in 2025?
According to this article from the British Trams Online site, the Black Country Museum tramway was closed down indefinitely in December 2013:
I visited there in October and the staff/volunteer told me the trolley bus is not in operating over 3 years.
According to the Summerlee entry on the North Lanarkshire Council website at https://culturenl.co.uk/museums/visiting-us/summerlee/:
I presume you mean the Black Country Museum rather than Summerlee, as I didn't know that the latter had ever had trolleybuses.
They were running when I went in August 2021; I don't know if they've run more recently.
For limited 15 mph movements to get on the juice rail and only where juice rails were deemed too dangerous.
Would imagine current draw was severely limited?
I don't know about the current draw being 'severely' limited. The speed certainly was, by line speed restrictions in the yard (and by the laws of physics, I imagine). It might take a significant amount of current to get a heavy freight moving from a standstill; you'd certainly make the copper cross section substantial. I have seen a video, shot at night, of a French 1500v DC loco starting a freight in a yard, and slowly moving along it, and after each time the loco rocks on the uneven siding and makes an arc, you can see the overhead (double) glowing red and fading again. You wouldn't want it melting or getting soft and sagging too often. The ultimate current draw would be limited by the substation design and supply conductor chain, and of course breaker settings in the substation, and any fuses there might be.