Six types of electrification

[A60K]

In a pub quiz last night one of the questions was: at which railway station were six different electric traction power systems used in the space of 50 years?

I got the answer after a few minutes, but thought it might be a nice puzzler for a wider audience!

 

[YorkshireBear]

i want to say manchester picadilly but that cant be right, apart from that i havent a clue

 

[Philip Elliott]

Stratford has had 1,500V DC, 6.25Kv AC, 25Kv AC, 750DC, whatever the DLR uses and the tube?

 

[MCR247]

DLR just uses 750v DC

 

[jonesy3001]

Manchester had two, 750dc on the hadfield/glossop line before it went to 25kv like the other lines.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Manchester had two, 750dc on the hadfield/glossop line before it went to 25kv like the other lines.

didnt know whether tram counted or even whether it was different

 

[Wyvern]

Manchester had two, 750dc on the hadfield/glossop line before it went to 25kv like the other lines.

It also had the Woodhead route at 1500 Vdc

 

[jopsuk]

DLR just uses 750v DC

DLR may be 750V DC* but it is "bottom contact"- the shoe is underneath the conductor rail- reckon that's a distinct electrification system from the top-contact system that was used for the North London Line.

Underground is 630V IIRC, with the outer rail at +420V and centre -210V as I understand it (except Watford DC line, where the outer is +630V and centre is 0V, bonded electrically to a running rail, for compatibility with 3rd rail stock).

*capital V for Volts, please!

 

[YorkshireRider]

Paris or Amsterdam?? or is the answer a UK station? No idea either really

 

[DaveNewcastle]

Manchester had two, 750dc on the hadfield/glossop line before it went to 25kv like the other lines.

and 1500V DC as Wyvern noted, and 1200V DC on the Bury line.

But didn't some of the Southend & Shenfield sections have 3 or more different voltages at different times? Have any stations converted 3 or more times on those lines also been served by the other London electric systems?

 

[Bastiaan]

Paris or Amsterdam?? or is the answer a UK station? No idea either really

Amsterdam only has three systems: 1500 Volt DC overhead (railway), 750 Volt DC 3rd rail (metro) and 600 Volt DC (tram).

 

[O L Leigh]

Yes, I'd go for Stratford too. The question says electrification systems not voltages, so the fact that both the NLL and DLR use 750V DC makes no difference as the contact arrangements are different.

Also the "50 years" is a big clue. The LNER 1500V DC electrification system was planned before the Second World War but not completed until 1949.

O L Leigh

 

[A60K]

Stratford was the answer I came up with and the answer given. As O L Leigh said the Shenfield electrification was orignally 1500V DC, converted to 6.25kV AC around ten years later, and the remaining 6.25kV sections (originally put in because of worries about clearances and flashovers umder bridges with higher voltages) were all converted to 25kV by the early 1990s. The Central line which arrived around the same time uses LU four-rail electricfication, followed by the 1986 third-rail electrification of the North Woolwich branch, and the 1987 DLR bottom contact third-rail.

As it was a fairly general quiz I thought the answer couldn't be that obscure, but I was wondering if there was somewhere on the continent that could have had as many systems. If there was I would probably go for somewhere in Switzerland or for a border changeover station such as Aachen.