In the course of reading up on New York passenger travel connections around 1900, more detail in the history that eventually would lead to Netherlands Railways ordering 25 electric Co’Co’ locomotives class 1200 from Heemaf and Werkspoor, revealed itself. As we probably know from these blogs, the class 1200 as well as the Spanish class 278 Bo’Bo’Bo’ DC electric locomotives were based on the post-WWII Baldwin & Westinghouse DC traction installation of the Pennsylvania Railroad experimental ignitron rectifier AC-DC machines classes E2c (Co’Co’) and E3b (Bo’Bo’Bo’). The direct cause of Pennsylvania Railroad going for electric locomotives, however, was the fact that the New York City council prohibited use of steam traction under Manhattan in 1908. That came following the 1902 rear-end collision in Park Avenue tunnel, when a New York Central train from White Plains crashed into a New Haven train due to the NYC driver not seeing the signals that protected the preceding train. The smoke and exhaust of that New Haven train covering signals were blamed, but awareness that railway drivers became less reactive (or died) due to “coal gas”, in modern terms Carbon Monoxide, poisoning is not hard to find from early accident reports. The New York City council initiative, in any case, indicates that they certainly were aware of that fact, besides that local public transport already operated very satisfactorily with electricity based on the technical principles of Frank Sprague. In any case, by 1908 steam traction was prohibited in the tunnels under New York and when in 1910 PRR opened the North River Hudson tunnels and its Penn Station in New York electric traction was in use. The entire New York area and surroundings had been electrified with 650 volts DC on third rail: the first step toward the “Dutch Americans” had been taken. Until the opening of the Hudson tunnels, however, People crossed the Hudson, and most of the other waterways around New York (and indeed the huge rest of the United States) on ferries. It is only now that  the truly amazing scale of these New Jersey/New York operations became clear to me. Books and the Internet provided the facts, names and a few illustrations that I’d like to share with you all.

Many thanks for your attention. And if you have ferries anywhere near: use them, don’t lose them! Bridges are boring, because when they make splashing sounds things are badly going wrong, as was recently proven in Italy. 

One of the interesting things in the UK are its railway operations. These are clearly informed by US practice, European UIC practice and what is left of purely British practice but, obviously, everything has to fit within the restricted British loading gauge. Details soon enough give away what rail culture stood at the cradle of any particular vehicle, however. A typical such cross-breed as far as traction is concerned is, for instance, the GM-EMD CT42JWR (class 66) diesel electric locomotive. Designed and built in the US and Canada as an SD40-2 clone for operation in the UK, nowadays these machines can be seen from the Polar circle in Norway and Sweden right through the entire European standard gauge networks (including the UK) all the way to North Africa and Egypt. Just as interesting are British freight vehicles. No one normally takes much notice, but they tell you a lot about their inheritance, especially when you have an opportunity to observe different vehicles that were built to serve the same purpose. What is done in the same way and what is different, based on the different railway cultures from which they sprouted? Travelling back from a meeting in Swindon one day I had an opportunity to photograph a short train of steel coil (rolled up sheet steel) vehicles sitting in the BMW/Mini tracks next to Swindon station. The locomotive dealing with them was (you guessed right) a class 66, on which long ago I did get instructions but never actually drove one. I left Stewart’s Lane depot in South London for Bristol a mite too early for that.

Things are moving these days, requests for articles and opinions on the subject of transport safety almost start to look like work with their deadlines: rather than something I can really dunk myself in to, take the time and come up with something that progresses my own quests. But on the other side, I really enjoy writing as well as to occasionally close the door behind me, jump on a train and meet people somewhere. Working effectively at home isn’t helped, however, by the fact that one of my cats rediscovered the joy of laying on my desk or on the table where I work and fall asleep on books or work I’m doing there. Or, like in the days when I wrote the accident book, rest on my left arm and obstructs proceedings from there. But we get there and work does get finished; the N-scale “Pakhuisplein” building project still moves on and articles get written. Reading up on things proceeds apace: a very kind gift arrived from the USA in the shape of a book about the history of electric operations on the Pennsylvania Railroad and another book about those iconic post-war northern North-East corridor electric locomotives, the New Haven EP-5 Co’Co’s with their nickname Jets. The latter book in fact gave one of the additional explanations for the tendency of these locomotives to overheat: the ancient New Haven power feed to the wires caused unstable ac frequencies to reach the transformer. The book drew attention to the fact that these loco’s needed at least half an hour’s rest between trips just to cool down. Sincere thanks indeed, Mr. Bill den Besten, US citizen with experience of living in the nation from where his forefathers came. Bill knows Netherlands Railways and its class 1200 Co’Co’ from personal experience and found out about my writing from this blog. Welcome to the blog, Bill!
My main focus of attention at the moment is an article about the Netherlands Railways class 1200 electrics in Op de Rails, still subject to some alterations due to further information coming to my attention (see above). That is besides the talk on the subject (in the Dutch language), which will be held at Amersfoort on the 18th of January coming year; I’ll be in The Netherlands between the 14th and the 21st of January 2020. Flying from Bristol to Amsterdam again, having used the non-high speed connection from Antwerp to Rotterdam last time and being rather disappointed by its snail’s pace; the trek through Belgium appeared to last forever as usual, the train creeping around and stopping at rather a lot of stations where the dwell times, especially at places like Noorderkempen and Breda, appeared rather excessive. I do hope that when the new Alstom multiple unit sets appear in the coming year this will be improved upon. On the return trip we went from Leiden Centraal, changing at Rotterdam, and the impression wasn’t really that much better.
A bucket list experience in October to me was yet another river and canal cruise, this time from Amsterdam via Dordrecht, Antwerp, Maastricht, Arnhem and Utrecht back to Amsterdam in 8 days. The ship was the Emerald Destiny, brand new from the Dutch “De Hoop” yard (80% of these vessels are built on Dutch yards; really didn’t know that) and replacing the booked Emerald vessel that had been involved in a mishap. Lately, in fact, a number of mishaps on the rivers and canals of Europe made it into the news; notably the collision between a Viking cruise ship and a local sightseeing vessel on the Danube, right in view of the river front at Budapest in Hungary. All bar two on the sightseeing vessel perished in the water, no one on the long distance cruise ship was hurt or died. Later I heard that the booked Emerald vessel had been involved in a mishap and that another Viking vessel had been in damaging collision near Hansweert on the Western Scheldt. Searching on the Internet quite a few more such mishaps were presented and Dag Pike’s book Disasters at Sea gives his opinion on safety of traffic on the Rhine. Especially the near mountain-stream section with downhill water speeds of 7 km/h or 4 knots) that is the famously picturesque Middle Rhine stretch between Mainz and Bonn through Germany. Despite Mr. Pike’s wide experience handling vessels of all but the biggest sizes, he carefully declined to take the wheel (or the little levers with which ships are controlled and steered these days), because with his vast experience he figured out soon enough that this is not a trip where you want to handle vessels running up or down the river if you don’t know the signalling system (oh yes!). Or be not totally certain about your proficiency with these ships in the lack of space provided between rocky ridges rising out of the turbulent water, on which scores of cormorants wait for a meal. It made me remember my tourist guide days, when on an Amsterdam canal launch a friendly lady told me that her husband, who sat next to her glowering, was skipper on Mississippi push-tows. On my polite offer for him to take the wheel for a moment the gentleman declined, as from knowledge and experience he had already figured out that the opportunities to hit the quayside hard were many and would not do much to enhance the enjoyment of his stay in Holland.European river ships are no longer small: 2,500 tonne ships of 135 metres length and 11,45 metre beam (445.5 ft x 37.75 ft, the Rhine, Main-Danube Max) may not mean much on, say, the Mississippi; but on the European canals they are massive and in fact they exceed many short sea vessels in sheer size. Ships that do not have to cross Europe on the way from Bulgaria to Rotterdam but stick to the wider stretches of the Rhine and the Danube are bigger and notably wider. Push tows on the Rhine are six barges max, lashed-up in two rows of three ahead of the pusher. On the Danube I’ve seen up to ten barges maximally three wide.

Well, driven by my wish to hear the opinion of those who work with these monsters -and see things with my own eyes before even thinking of commenting-, I weedled a few hours in the wheelhouse of Emerald Destiny. The venue was the Amsterdam-Rhine canal between Utrecht and Amsterdam. The most important navigation aid was a video screen that showed the satellite navigation image of the waterway complete with shipping channel and your own position in there, and was completed with precise radar location and identification with names and IMO numbers of all vessels approaching from ahead. Next to that was an ahead-only radar screen, not in use during my visit was a similar radar astern-only screen; that would be used in case of fog to identify vessels running up from behind.

Then, of course, there was a depth sounder screen and height also could be shown in case of navigating low bridges. Radio-equipment of different types plus controls completed the picture. The entire wheelhouse and the bridge wing control stands could be fully retracted into the upper deck with the railings laid flat, which enabled the ship to creep under bridges of less than standard height above (mean) water levels. The ship was controlled by a little lever, pretty much as bigger such levers did already in the early 1900’s on US Western Rivers push tugs and packets with steam driven rudder controls. The propulsion units were sets of azimuthing (turning the whole propeller unit in a horizontal plane) propellers at the bow and stern, all with their own diesel generator sets, which could all be used to propel as well as steer the ship. There were no rudders and consequently the ubiquitous steering wheel of old had vanished.

The shocking bit was that the Amsterdam-Rhine canal turned out to make the same impression that an average road makes during the rush hour. Here rows of seriously fast moving big ships on the screen and through the large windows of the wheelhouse, some overtaking and all of them rather close together. That was definitely different on the Danube. All overtaking moves on the water were controlled through radio contact, whereby here in Western Europe Dutch, German and English could be used and on the Danube Russian, German and English. The latter, however, like on the railways in Europe, constituted a kind of wishful thinking: it would not guarantee at all to yield the desired result of “understanding” an intended move. Bulgarian skipper Stamen Dimitroff, whom I visited upstairs along that stretch of the Danube, an interesting man with his 40 years worth of experience on the Danube and the Rhine and fully licensed to navigate the most important waterways of Europe, spoke Russian, German and English and was only too happy to explain things and have a laugh about language problems. In Bratislava I bought a book in Slovenian about the post-war fleet on the Danube and lent it to him. That’s how that contact was managed.

Another recent adventure was a trip to southern Spain; subject of another blog instalment that will be written right after this one. Be with you soon!

On January 18th, 2020 I will be presenting and signing my book “An unexpected end to the Journey” in the Dutch city of Amersfoort at the NVBS’ central location from 13:00 – 15:00 hrs.

Good day all; another rumination on railways. Finally, I should say; for some time unfortunately the uncertainties of what politically is happening in Britain emotionally got the better of me and I uncoupled (purely used as a railway term) from what was going on in London and Brussels through on one side a lot of reading (Paul Theroux’s “Deep South” and “The Ghost Train to the Eastern Star” were particularly entertaining) as well as on the other side by sitting down with some Slater’s 1:160 cardboard model building kits for my N-gauge railway under (slow) construction. I do, however, offer my sincere apologies for the extended radio silence.
As yet I am working on a piece of Dutch heritage industrial cityscape, consisting of warehouses that, or so the story goes, lost their original function. On one side those warehouses were in the way of building a housing estate that the little Kingdom of the Netherlands so desperately needs and for which suitable space is running out. On the other side they were actually rather nice buildings, quite evocative of industry in fairly recent history. That defined the choice: either demolish the lot and build a rather desirable canal-side housing estate, something that was done with the majestic industrial river frontage along the river Zaan at Zaandam, North of Amsterdam, which turned out deeply rued. Or alternatively keep them and do something worth while with them. The latter was decided upon (in an N-gauge city-hall meeting room, of course) and the characteristic cluster is now being rebuild into an art and theatre-academy with exhibition space and a theatre, a theatre-museum, two restaurants, a pub, some non-manufacturing commercial space and a few dwellings in loft style. The latter with the added function that residents, with a vested interest in keeping the place safe and in good order, are around to keep an eye on the goings-on as crime, violence and vandalism are a serious problem in The Netherlands too. The name of this area is Pakhuisplein; in English Warehouse Plaza. The function on the layout is to hide the trains that go into a rather sharp curve behind it, for which in fact more buildings are required to be successful. A fifth Slater’s warehouse kit with water Tower and a few other bits of industrial buildings like a boiler house with chimney and sheds are available. Added to which will be a brick-built tower of an old city windmill minus its revolving top and wings, not a kit but built from a photograph in a book I just found in my mother’s bookcase when I was in The Netherlands recently; she graciously allowed me to take it home to Somerset.

What can be seen on the photo above are four kits of cardboard warehouses of which two have been combined into one building, the edifice with the short tower. At the opposite end of that building something really interesting will be done: a heavy gable-hoist, once used for 20-tonne machine parts, will be used to suspend a sizeable balcony at first floor level from. Customers eating at the Italian restaurant planned there can sit outside in case of nice weather and watch inland waterway shipping dock at the local container facility, or sail into the nearby lock that brings the canal up to a higher level. The two buildings in the foreground are in the course of being connected by the entrance hall and reception area for the school and the exhibition hall. These bits are made out of a kit for a typical English bus garage, the sheds of which and bits of the office all will be used for this section. On top of this entrance hall will be a pub, incidentally, up to the fourth floor with a roof-garden. This will protrude in a circle above the 45 degree wall area seen here, large vertically orientated windows illuminating the main floor at third floor level and a mezzanine floor at fourth floor level. I am in the course of cladding the wall of the restaurant now; things have progressed since this picture was taken.

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Across the above mentioned lock, incidentally there is going to be a three-track railway drawbridge as discussed much earlier in these ruminations (photos Wormerveer, Brug Wormerveer 2 and 500px-klein-ophaalbrug), the one at Wormerveer station across the Nauernasche Vaart. My hope is to have the diorama with the container port, drawbridge and warehouses set up in the next year so that I can put up some of my very Dutch trains from the 1960’s to the 1990’s: a Baldwin-Westinghouse class 1200 with express trains from the two periods or even an ore/coal train of 30 boxy German self-discharging vehicles hauled by no less than 4 (have them already!) class 22/2300 Bo’Bo’ diesel electric locomotives, equally of Baldwin parentage.

This model drawbridge will not actually be movable for the simple reason that I have neither the technical skill nor the nearby-eyesight and motor-control of my increasingly arthritic hands to do that sort of intricate work any longer. It is a really interesting bridge, though, due to the way the lifting movement of the original works with three so-called Panama wheels, those contraptions between the uprights and the balance-beams. The real bridge no longer exists after it was replaced at this location with a larger modern drawbridge, but the single track section was reused across a waterway in a freight spur somewhere up North until traffic there was stopped. If you go through the bits on my blog website you will find other pictures of these originally typical North of Amsterdam drawbridges, of which to the best of my knowledge only one single-track example still exists in the museum railway line between Hoorn and Medemblik. The Dutch, unlike the English, unfortunately can be really active when taking out old kit.

Picture Wormerveer shows a 2-car plan V EMU leaving from Wormerveer station toward the bridge. Here it is clear that the single-track section no longer has track on it. Unbelievable that these once so common trains, built from the 1960’s right through to the 1980’s, no longer can be seen. The set in the railway collection at Utrecht is used in summertime to connect Utrecht Central Station directly to the museum, incidentally. This is the negative I could not find for some time and then spotted it under a cupboard. That maltreatment shows up in the scratches, for which my apologies. Interesting, incidentally, are the two signals to be seen ahead. They are seen on the rear, applying to train traffic on either line coming toward us; the signalling is reversible. The signal for the line on which the train shown is departing away from us is moreover fitted with a speed indicator under the main aspect. Ahead of this train the crossovers with which it could be put over to the left line running “wrong line”. The signals for that are (or perhaps nowadays were) behind me.

What I was doing in Wormerveer? That had to do with my evening job in Amsterdam, being tourist guide on the local canal boats. These excursion boats were maintained and refitted in wintertime, outside tourist season, on a small boatyard in Wormerveer. I had accompanied one of the skippers with the first boat to be dealt with that year, and therefore there was as yet no boat to be taken back to Amsterdam. I used my nationwide “public transport year ticket” to catch a train back; whilst waiting I could take this rather atmospheric winter-evening picture. Don’t be fooled, though; snow was and still is very rare in those parts.

Peter

Travelling by train through The Netherlands during the week in which ILCAD took place at Amersfoort, the demise of the public level crossing throughout that country was actually rather noticeable; the problem there is being tackled head on. On the trip from Schiphol Amsterdam airport to Arnhem, 65% of the level crossings I used to know along the route had disappeared and, clearly, more would follow. Resulting from the present approach to enhance rail safety, the network is in fact doing fairly well. According to the international PRIME survey, The Netherlands took over the 2017 European rail-safety top position from the UK. It means that in comparison they suffered the least amount of train collisions, derailments and train fires and in only three level crossing accidents that year four people lost their lives. Those were open crossings, passively protected with road signs. Such crossings in the public roads are now being changed into so called mini-Automatic Half Barrier (AHB) crossings with warning lights and barriers, but many non or passively protected rural level crossings for accommodation at e.g. farms still pose danger to road users. Mini-AHB’s are an expensive measure, but achieve good results along the extensive forest track, foot and bicycle path network. The descending barriers are clad in retro-reflective red and white foil, sport quickly flashing LED lights incorporated in the barriers and are difficult to overlook even against a setting summer sun.

In the 2002 Dutch level crossing safety improvement report it was estimated that fitting level crossing barriers would improve the statistical accident rate by a factor 10. Instead of an accident on average every 3 years, an accident would occur every thirty years. This tallies with experience e.g. in Australia, following similar improvements in the aftermath of the infamous level crossing crash with 11 deaths at Kerang on the 5^thof June 2007. Still: level crossings will have to be removed from the main rail network to fully remove the chance of mishap taking lives. Regulations concerning permission to extend railway line width, line capacity and increase of line speed stipulate that level crossings must be replaced with split-level facilities before the required changes may become effective. With respect to safety on level crossings: the not to be passed red line behind policy is that existing level crossing risk levels must not be exceeded as a result of new developments. Therefore, no new level crossings are allowed in main lines and existing crossings are monitored on changes to speed and density of rail and road traffic.

Dutch experience with respect to keeping level crossing removal affordable indicates that replacing AHB’s with split-level facilities preferably should be part of larger initiatives. It concerns work to upgrade track (e.g. quadruple and increase line speeds), or move tracks into tunnels, on to viaducts or an embankment. That way the cost of AHB removal becomes marginal to the cost of the entire project. In turn this requires setting of all-inclusive, well-researched long term objectives to improve public transport. In The Netherlands this was taken up first in the 1970’s, when the planned InterCity network under the Spoorslag ’70 initiative required larger train fleets and increased track capacity. It meant that short-term budgets had to be planned within the framework of rather larger objectives, as funds for acquisition of rolling stock and construction of infrastructure works were only affordable if they could be spread well into the future. That funding system, which requires setting objectives and development of a strategy for future transport capacity and safety needs with concomitant planning for rolling implementation, still operates fifty years later. The replacement of AHB level crossings with over or underpasses, therefore, to a large extent is the result of expansion of rail traffic capacity in The Netherlands. That occurred notably in the well populated and industrialised central Western parts of the country, called the Randstad, and on the various double-track spur lines that extend to outlying population hubs and the borders to connect with the Belgian and German networks.

As a result from the above, further development of traditional level crossing safety technology such as e.g. AHB based systems on Netherlands Railways has little future, unless such development would bring about substantial safety improvement or cost reduction. As an example; investment in four-quadrant automatic double-barrier installations with radar surveillance to check clearance of the crossing deck, subject of great hope for a safer future in 2006, was abandoned. Reality not only showed that the equipment had little safety advantage over standard AHB’s, but that additionally it became a source of delay to train services due to motorist misbehaviour. A particular sub-group interfered with the radar equipment, which caused trains to have to go slow or stop. Two years ago already I was told that only one of the installations was left operational, others had been replaced with over or underpasses.

In order to make train traffic denser and therewith boost departure frequencies, studies were conducted to show required alterations to the network to attain the desired train frequency and travel time improvements without imposing undue long waiting times at existing level crossings. It confirmed issues that had been observed at AHB level crossings within about a kilometre from larger stations. This is where many trains will be braking or accelerating, which keeps AHB’s closed for a less predictable and often longer time. It was found to trigger increased risk-taking behaviour among road users. This in turn tended to increase train traffic disruption, as next to issues with climate and suicides, level crossing accidents are the major cause of service delivery problems. National track-operator ProRail produced an animation video of an existing Randstad centre-of town level crossing near the main station. It showed motorists stuck for considerable periods whilst trains arrived and departed from the station at the planned high-frequency timetable. This convincingly demonstrated how high-frequency train operations, besides separation of freight, slow and fast rail services, demand removal of level crossings. 

ILCAD specifically mentioned problems with road freight traffic on level crossings, which attracted my attention. I confess that, coming from the railway side of the transport spectrum, my attitude so far was typically one of blaming the road users. Issues dealt with at the ILCAD event, however, made me realise that there was another side to the issue. Often existing, historical, road lay-outs increased level crossing collision risks in case of long road freight vehicles. A driver of a long articulated vehicle, who encounters a busy T-junction immediately after a level rail crossing, finds it impossible to clear the level crossing until there is an opportunity to make the turn on to the new road. If that level crossing closes at that moment there is a clear and present collision risk of the worst type (e.g. the school bus crash at Fox River Grove, Illinois, 7 student deaths on the 25^thof October 1995). Another road layout difficulty, again a risk with long vehicles, is formed by narrow roads with sharp curves and lack of turning space that lead up to or off from a level crossing. Videos showed how such road layouts cause dangerous problems. How come that with this evidence, such road layouts still exist in public roads and are incompetently indicated to drivers? Which causes truck and bus drivers, who are not familiar with such local characteristics, to be unexpectedly confronted with such dangerous anomalies. That this would be news to at least the Dutch road authorities is not true; several reports from 1992 onwards, certainly the VVO level crossing safety improvement report, made mention of this situation.

ILCAD presentations also pointed out that, whilst to railway authorities and operators the accidents with heavy road vehicles on level crossings make up 30 percent of their risk to train safety, to road freight vehicle operators level crossing risk is about 1 percent of their problems with staff, vehicle and transport safety. Hence the, nevertheless hard to excuse but understandable, less attention that level crossing problems get in these circles. In the Netherlands, three fairly recent level crossing crashes with road freight and construction vehicles occurred at Dalfsen on the 23^rdof February 2016, Winsum on the 18^thof November 2016 and Leeuwarden on the 11^thof January 2019. They were in fact the reason why ProRail, as co-organiser of the ILCAD event, stressed these risks to rail safety.

So, what were promising developments? An issue that up to now also had insufficient attention in transport circles, but which came to the fore at ILCAD due to the presence of Eastern European and Russian representatives, is that of language induced communication problems. The objective in Europe is that English should be the standard common language (Lingua Franca) for all modes of transport; something that in fact recently saw action with establishing of English language courses for transport employees. At present, however, it still is common to require proficiency in the necessary foreign language (German, French or English) when working trains or road vehicles into other countries. Notably the recent reconnection of Eastern and Western Europe, where drivers cross several language borders during trips, made that a bit of a pipe dream. Despite the serious attention that education in many countries gives to learning English. Another issue is that, although many Europeans commonly use English already -or to a lesser extent German- as a Lingua Franca, it doesn’t mean that those foreign languages are spoken with reasonable proficiency. And, equally important, assist in reliably maintaining communication during moments of acute stress after e.g. an accident. It has a strong bearing on level crossing safety in an international context: how to efficiently present instructions, written or verbally, to vehicle drivers in case of emergencies or equipment failures at level crossings? As things are due to language issues, the communication at level crossings between rail traffic controllers and road vehicle drivers will in the foreseeable future remain problematic. Unless well-structured and relevant measures to mitigate are taken now.

Nevertheless; there are developments to provide basic safety-related information to road users, such as the identity of the crossing and how to contact the rail traffic controller. These are usually provided on road signs at or near a level crossing as in e.g. the UK, Poland, Finland and France. A Polish group at ILCAD presented such information in case of problems; written instructions were affixed to level crossing signage and the experiences so far were positive. However, the language used was Polish. Something similar can be seen in France, where only French is used.

The UK once again escapes having to worry much, even if there the English used has not been written with a foreign English speaker in mind. Surely, given the international aspect of road traffic nowadays, safety demands standard European signage at level crossings! That enables obligatory learning of the indications as part of the international road freight and coach driver curriculum. And since English was selected as transport Lingua Franca, information throughout Europe should then be presented in the local language(s) and in English, with standardised phrases. An interesting addition to such level crossing signing, incidentally, would be inclusion of an indication when the next train is due to arrive. In the case of heavy or slow road transport this would to some extent diminish the need to contact rail traffic controllers in the first place. That equipment would in all likelihood come as a digital minutes/seconds countdown timer, as provided at many pedestrian “zebra” crossings. Work on the issue is ongoing but, again, please make it adhere to agreed international standards. Just to avoid confusion among those who will have to use it.

Another promising development is that of the use of satellite navigation (Sat-Nav) equipment to indicate the presence and type of level crossing in the cab of road vehicles. Possibly also, whether the crossing is actively or passively protected and whether a train is approaching. This would have a number of very important safety advantages. The main advantage is that the warning is brought into the cab of the road vehicle, possibly using the language that the driver speaks. The warning now takes place in an early stage and is rather less likely to be overlooked or ignored in comparison to having to notice warning indications from roadside equipment. An issue I didn’t see at ILCAD, but which technically certainly is possible, is triggering an actual brake intervention through vehicle radar or Sat-Nav on-board electronics on the vehicle. At present this type of intervention is already in use with automatic stay in lane and emergency braking features. Finally, an important boost to safety could be that on Sat-Nav dangerous road-layout situations near level crossings, such as the mentioned T-junction or sharp curve on a narrow road, could be indicated. Complete with better alternative routes in order to avoid the safety trap in the first place. I spoke with people involved in the development of such equipment; their main problem is setting intervention parameters, reliability, acceptability to users and cross-manufacturer co-operation about the shape and extent of the interface with road users. But it is the future.

In retrospect it was heartening to find that the development of level crossing safety still is a matter of work in progress and that it is subject to a great deal of ingenuity. And, which really is a great pleasure to notice, that Eastern European efforts are an increasing and respected part of the action. Also, I would like to thank many people I met through the years in the UK (RAIB and RSSB) and in The Netherlands (ProRail), who were involved with maintaining and improving level crossing safety. They spent time and effort with discussions and making literature available to me. The mentioned Dutch 2002 VVO level crossing safety improvement report is available in an English language version. I will send a copy for free on receipt of a request by email to peter.vandermark1@btinternet.com. Whilst the mentioned report is not a particularly riveting read, it is actually rather useful during studies on level crossing and general road traffic safety.

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Reading up for the Baldwin/ Westinghouse and General Electric history for the book I wrote on the Netherlands Railways class 1200 electric locomotives and their cousins in Spain and Chile, I once more came across carbon monoxide poisoning as the cause of railway mishap. In my book the shockingly lethal occasions on 14 October 1926 in the Rickentunnel between Kaltbrunn and Wattwil on the Bodensee Toggenburg Bahn in Switzerland (number of victims seven railwaymen and a substantial trainload of beef cattle) and the one 12th of March 1944 in the Armi Tunnel near Balvano in Italy with its 521 fatalities are mentioned. It is, however, by no means the case that these two were the first of such accidents in the world. Or that no one could be aware that such risks were present when operating steam locomotives in tunnels. Indeed, one of the drivers for electrification in the USA, which later would spawn the Dutch 1200 and the Spanish 278, were deaths in tunnels due to crew being overcome by carbon monoxide poisoning. The three accidents in the St. Clair Tunnel between Port Huron in Michigan, USA, and Sarnia in Ontario, Canada, preceded the European accidents by decades.

The St. Clair Tunnel, opened in 1891 and operated by the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway, was the first main line railway tunnel in the world connecting shore lines either side of a large body of water, the St. Clair River. The tunnel was built with even then already rather normal hydraulically operated shield tunnelling machines, as first used by Marc and Isambard Brunel whilst building the Thames Tunnel between 1825 and 1843 and after that extensively used on e.g. the Underground deep tunnel lines in London and later e.g. the Hudson and East River tunnels for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The present day tunnel boring machines are still working on the principles developed then.

Four Baldwin 1891 built decapod (0-10-0 or E) steam loco’s of the “mother Hubbard” or “camelback” tank type (no tender, to enable quick returns for more traffic without having to turn the machine first) were bought for the St. Clair tunnel and became the cause of the accident due to their use in a close confinement. The risk of asphyxiation had nevertheless been recognised, as the loco’s were fired with anthracite and coke and furthermore, a tunnel ventilation system had been installed, which was meant to clear the atmosphere after passage of a train in 45 minutes. After the first two cases of deaths of traincrew through “coal gas” poisoning Tunnel Project Engineer Joseph Hobson testified in 1897, however, that he’d removed the ventilation system as it actually hindered clearing of the foul air in the tunnel. He proclaimed during the inquest: “A normal passage of a train without a stop would not endanger life”. Read on.

There were the rather steep descent and ascent in the tunnel and the rather abrupt change in descent to ascent (two shield machine from either side were used digging down toward each other; those early shield machines were no good making gradual turns. See as an example the Blackwall Tunnel in London where tight turns in the roadway were made in the two access shafts, as only there the tunnelling machines could be redirected) and the fact that on the wagons a lot of the dangerous link-and-pin couplers were still in use. On the descent the wagons bunch up together, but when the driver opens up powerfully to start the ascent the couplers on the wagons are, one after the other, rather violently yanked apart. To give an idea of the risk: in the four years ending on the 30th of June 1899 278 trains out of 16,000 movements through the tunnel experienced coupler failures and split trains. Causing the train to come to a stop and preventing moving it unless people got off, walked to the broken coupler site to close brake-pipe cocks and so being exposed to a rather lasting stay in that situation. If the couplers failed and the train broke apart it was usually from the fourth vehicle rearward. In the St. Clair tunnel accidents the most vulnerable members of traincrew proved to be the conductor and the brakeman in the caboose (brake van) at the tail of the train; in all three mentioned accidents the tail-end crews died, also because they had to stay below whilst the driver and fireman brought the still coupled front part out of the tunnel before coming back into the foul murk to try and retrieve the bit left behind.

Accident number 1 occurred on the 31st of January 1892, a year after traffic started. Following a coupler failure the conductor George Hawthorne and brakeman Joseph Whalen were found dead after the loco came back into the tunnel to the train to pick up the rest of the train.

Accident number 2 occurred on the 29th of November 1897, again after coupler failure broke the train. This time the driver, the conductor and the rear brakeman did not survive the event.

Accident number 3 occurred on the 9th of October 1904. Out of seven men involved in this one six died. The fireman escaped because he noticed what was happening in the darkness and had the benefit of stories from previous disasters. So he decided to open the filler lid on the half-filled water tank of the locomotive, entered the tank and closed the lid again. He spent two hours in the ice-cold wet environment before he was found and brought to hospital. Alive, but all his colleagues deceased.

Grand Trunk decided to electrify. Initially General Electric proposed their 600 Volt DC with third rail system, but in view of the coupler breaks and the necessity of people to deal with the train in dark circumstances, in a moment of straight thinking they decided to go for the Westinghouse overhead AC system, 3.3 kV at 25 Hz, using pantographs. Soon Grand Trunk found that electric operations were far cleaner, far easier and rather more remunerative, as trains did no longer have to wait for the air to clear but could follow each other as soon as a preceding train had cleared the tunnel. Similar stories on the Norfolk and Western Railway and Virginian Railway. Incidentally, I get the idea that many ancient train collisions in tunnels, for instance the 1902 rear-ender in the Park Avenue Tunnel under Manhattan with its 17 fatalities that caused the New York Central Railroad, the Pennsylvania Railroad, The New Haven Railroad and the Long Island Railroad to have to electrify, as the New York city council prohibited further use of steam locomotives, might well have had a loco-driver who was no longer wholly with it in the exceedingly foul air of the tunnel. Given that no dead-man equipment (in British rail parlance the “Driver Safety Device”, or DSD for short) was available on steam loco’s, a rear-end or head-on crash was an accident waiting to happen.    

I attach two photographs that (again) have only sideways connection with the subject on hand. Older colleagues on the Great Western told me what it was like to take a freight through the Severn Tunnel with a double header. The crew on the second loco would breathe through rubber hose-pipes stuck through the footplate to get some breathable air in their lungs. That was Great Western, these two steam locomotives are Great Western and given that the first machine was mainly based in Wales it crossed the Severn Tunnel regularly. That machine is Castle class number 5051 “Earl Bathurst”, which started its life at Swindon in May 1936 as Drysllwyn Castle but was renamed in August 1936. Later class mate 7018 would get this Castle name. When the machine was retired and sent to the scrap line it had completed 1,300,000 miles, 2,080,000 kilometres, but was bought by a private person and after his death ended up in the hands of the Great Western Society at Didcot, where it was restored to main line operating condition in 1979. With its very GWR right-hand drive and presently required air brake system (see brake pipe under the buffer beam) as well as vacuum brake system (see brake pipe above the buffer beam) the machine could operate on continental lines if people could bring themselves to organise that sort of event. The cab and cylinders show up the Great Western machine: on many lines in the UK they would be out of gauge. An inheritance from the broad gauge days.

How does one recognise a Castle? Fact is that like all the big main line GWR passenger machines they are ten-wheelers; 4-6-0 or 2’C; GWR didn’t do Pacifics or bigger. Apart from having a peek at the name plate, the thing to go for are the steam passages to the outside cylinders, those S-bend pipes from the rear of the smoke box. On the GWR only the Castles and Kings had those; have a look at the second attached photo of King Edward 1. Kings look decidedly fatter than Castles, their driving wheels appear smaller than those of a Castle and their front bogie/truck is very different. A King has a bogie with an outside frame for the first axle and then the frame swings between the wheels for the second axle. Rather different. As you can clearly see this is not the case on the Castle. The inside cylinders, driving the front driving axle rather than the middle axle as the outside cylinders do, can be spotted as the box with the two protrusions under the smokebox door: a solution that no doubt would have endeared the machine to Belgian steam locomotive designer Mr Flamme who liked such balconies on his famous Pacifics. A nice platform, incidentally, to stand on when shovelling ash from out the smokebox. But don’t do it after a long ride, as I noticed the venue becomes rather hot as a result of superheated steam doing its magic there. A King that once brought us on a dining special from Bristol to Kingswear through the rain filled the little station with a cloud of evaporated rain for that reason, never seen that before. This points at another issue: the machine has no outside (Walschaerts) valve motion. That is fitted between the frame plates and runs the valves for the outside cylinders through rockers. You can see the left hand one in front of the cylinder valve just under the footboard. This is precisely the way the bigger Dutch four-cylinder engines had it. In a way much about this engine reminds one of very similar Dutch engines: the Castle was the 3700 and the King the 3900. It doesn’t mean that the Dutch machines were equal to these: a Castle is more powerful than a 3900 and a King is rather more powerful than a Castle. Castles with their big driving wheels were capable of doing 160 km/h, 100 mph, in case required. A King delivered well over 3,000 HP in case needed and could bring holiday expresses from London to Penzance over the fearsome gradients in Devon and Cornwall on its own. This was the line I thoroughly liked to do in my driving days, incidentally. Even in diesel days a real driver’s line all the way from Reading via Westbury, Taunton and Exeter to Plymouth.

Now, the reason I show the Castle is that the GWR worked with an early system to let the driver know what the distant signal ahead was showing. In case the signal was on, i.e. it showed a restricted aspect to warn for stop signals at danger, a hooter would go off in the cab and the brake started to apply unless the driver operated a lever that silenced the hooter and closed the electro-magnetic valve in the brake pipe, thus showing he was awake and functioning. This was done with a so called “ramp” between the rails in the track, in the UK a.k.a. as the four-foot, which was touched by a sprung shoe under the cab of the locomotive. If the distant signal was “on”, i.e. it showed a restricted aspect, the ramp would lift the shoe and that would cause an electro-magnetic valve in the brake pipe to be opened as well as a horn to be activated. That driver would push that lever down on the double and was now aware that he was heading for a stop signal at danger at braking distance ahead. If the signal was off, i.e. it showed a clear aspect, the ramp would still lift the shoe under the cab but now the steel top of the ramp had an electric charge that entered the steel shoe. This would keep the electromagnetic valve in the brake pipe closed and made an electric gong sound to indicate that a clear showing distant signal had been passed. This system essentially went back to the late 19th century, the man-machine interface as described came on stream with enforced braking around 1906 if my memory serves me well. It very much set the pattern of operation by the train driver for many such systems across the world.

Visiting London the other day , at Weston-Super-Mare a good old HST was waiting and my heart made a leap for joy, but the train disappeared back to Bristol and somewhat later our booked train, one of the new Hitachi IEP sets, arrived from Plymouth or thereabouts on its way to Paddington. Where the old HST is nestled somewhere in an emotional cranny in my brain that makes me prone to overlook its lesser characteristics, I must admit that these new trains represent a number of badly needed improvements: power doors instead of the idiosyncratic slam doors that can be opened with the outdoor handle only, having to drop the door-windows and reach out when you’re in the train. And toilets that dump waste on the track. The new trains also sport a few interior issues that I really think make a difference to a person travelling on them. One is the indication of seat reservations; each seat has a green or a red LED over them, with a small screen. Go for the green indication and you can be sure that you can take that seat as no reservation has been made. If the indication is red, have a look at the screen; if your trip is not interfering with the part that the seat is reserved for, then sit down and enjoy the ride. I really think that Great Western Trains, unlike e.g. Cross Country Trains with their electronic seat reservation, has it dead right this time. When it works, that is; on 50% of the trips I made so far it appears not to work and the old cardboard reservation tickets in the slot on top of the seat back re-appear. The seats? OK for the two and a half hour journey to London, but whether my age-wise much reduced behind would endure a trip to (say) Edinburgh on them without signalling serious distress is a moot point. Another really good piece of well-designed kit, though, are the coat hooks near those seats: these sit virtually flush in the wall and have to be pulled out to be used. Their small size, their lack of intrusion in the interior makes me find that this solution looks really good.
Then a rather strange technical feature of these trains: They are straight electrics off 25 kV 50 Hz overhead catenary as well as diesel-electrics. The background is that the lines from Paddington to Temple Meads and to Swansea should have been electrified throughout by now, but owing to some peculiarity of failing to prepare stuff properly before actually starting the job, the electrification was stopped half way at Swindon due to severe cost overruns. The IEP sets were conceived, like the Hitachi Javelin trains in Kent that preceded them, as an electric train. Specifically for the West Country services in the UK, however, some of them would be built as diesel-electrics as well, as they were meant to continue journeys into wire-less areas. Therefore the concept of the electric/diesel-electric dual-mode version was there, even if the main batch was meant to be full-electric. It is in fact no rocket science; all over Europe such on and off the wires electric trains are appearing. But on the Continent we talk local trains, starting journeys under the wires and then go off the main lines on batteries into territory there where wolves increasingly roam (oh yes; truth!). In Britain, however, due to the failed electrification drive, the Great Western trains all had to be turned into dual-mode and will moreover partially make inter-city trips on main lines between masts that carry no wires. Operations-wise, now that we have them, I have a feeling that soon enough they will be popular because of keeping the job going on those days when wires come down etc. But they are very expensive equipment to purchase and to operate; much more so than off the shelf straight electrics. On the other side, with my experience working on the tracks here: who cares now that they are there? Everybody knows that the railways in this country unexpectedly have funny ways to cost a great lot more than budgeted for, despite the incessant governmental drive to cut cost wherever possible; don’t start me off on extending the West Coast Pendolino sets from nine coaches to eleven a few years ago. Short platforms is another one causing problems for this very reason, now cured to some extent through selective door opening by the conductor that I won’t discuss further either. It is in daily operation here and works to a large extent based on the idea that each and every passenger aboard, even my family from Holland, is not hampered by luggage that impairs the trek through the train. And understands the announcements about what coaches to alight from for what reason. I have seen things go pretty horribly wrong with foreign visitors there.
Anyway, I did notice that in Swindon the engines were stopped (train rather shakes that moment) and that the pantograph went up: all as expected. But then noticed that in Didcot, the next station, the engines for some unclear reason were stopped also, that unmistakable shake again, which means they must have been switched on in the first place. Something I’ll have to acquire an explanation for one day. Similar for the rather clunky engaging of what appears to be the direction switch equipment after a station stop when the diesels are working. It is just that it’s not noticeable at all when the train is on the electrics. It detracts from the knife-edge modernity in motion experience. And oh yes, the ride at 125 mph/ 200 km/h is not up to the level of a well maintained MkIII as per the HST. Rather hard, despite the very reasonable to good state of the track. But I remember that the MkIV’s on the East Coast Main Line on their Swiss Schlieren bogies/trucks didn’t quite reach the standard of the MkIII either. Somehow they got that right in the late sixties/ early seventies.

Yesterday I came back from a trip to London. Nothing special in itself but a few things made it a worth while trip. To start with, Despite having worked a few years to and from Charing Cross, I finally took pictures of the baulks under the track (Hungerford bridge, where the tracks from Charing Cross station cross the Thames, still has them) that were part reason for the accident at Staplehurst on the 9th of June 1865, that I described in my book “An unexpected end to the Journey“, when the gang leader involved in exchanging such baulks for new ones made the mistake to calculate his working time from the timetable of the wrong day. Charles Dickens was on the accident train, the “Tidal” boat train connection from Paris, with his mistress Ellen Ternan and her mother plus the manuscript of Our Mutual Friend: he never wrote another book again after that experience. I always wanted those pictures to illustrate that story, as much as earlier for that same reason I took pictures of the bridge between Headcorn and Staplehurst where the accident happened, that partially collapsed under the derailing train and tipped it into the river Beult. A visit to a friend living conveniently close in Staplehurst took care of taking those photographs.

The illustration above shows how track was (and in 2019 still is) fastened on to bridges with timber baulks. The rail itself has changed from bullhead (dubbelkop, see below) into vignoles flat bottom, as is standard these days, and the fasteners are modern sprung Pandrol clips on older chairs. The bridge deck itself, however, clearly is made up of riveted cast or perhaps already rolled steel elements and may well date back to those long forgotten days. The timber baulks nowadays are made of pressure treated tropical hardwood and the whole is fastened securely to the bridge deck. In fact, the track looks rather better taken care of than in 1990 when I started out here. To those unfamiliar with third rail electrification: the top contact 800 V DC rail, from which the train picks up the electricity with “shoes” that slide over it, is fitted away from the platform next to the actual shiny rails. For a railwayman the reason to wear sturdy above-ankle high thick leather boots at all time; still have them. The accident in 1856 was caused when due to faulty timing by the man in charge part of the rail and the timber under it had been removed for exchange with new timber when a fast running boat train from Folkestone Harbour via Ashford to this station, Charing Cross in London, approached. For a number of reasons (as usual) it couldn’t be stopped in time and derailed in the gap, after which things went disastrously wrong when cast iron trusses between the piers failed and the train partially fell off the bridge.

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Above, the Staplehurst bridge over the Beult. Photo left, The bridge as it is now. The old cast iron piers are still there but are encased in a concrete cast around them. The reinforced concrete bridge deck is completely new. This is the side where the train, coming towards you, fell off the bridge into the river below. The picture right is a contemporary illustration of the accident. If the river is in spate due to heavy rain or melting snow it comes up to close under the bridge, hence the reason why such a rather long bridge spans such a diminutive stream. This again is the side where the train came off, coming from the right. Charles Dickens’ second class carriage hung from the abutment on the left shore, the shore from where I took these pictures, and that is where he tried to give succour to people and experienced a man passing away under his hands. Funny how nothing here appears to remember of what happened that day.

Photo above, so-called bullhead rail, the classic type of rail in the UK but also seen quite a lot in e.g. France. In this case with steel clips (called keys) instead of the old wooden keys in cast-iron chairs on the West Somerset Railway. These are concrete sleepers (dwarsliggers, ties), which is why I took the picture as there is a story there. It goes back to WWII, when quality timber was needed to build certain types of plane (like e.g. the De Havilland Mosquito and the Horsa gliders as used in the Battle of Arnhem) and attempts were made to replace the much needed timber used for railway sleepers with concrete. Given, however, that notably less than perfectly maintained trains set up harsh vibrations in the track, that transferred via the chairs to the sleepers, the fasteners in the concrete (those bolts and nuts) acted like a hammer drill and started to break up the concrete. So concrete sleepers could only be used on slow-speed track. In yards even in my days it was possible to see stacks of these concrete sleepers just laying around under the weeds and then suddenly disappeared. That was for use elsewhere; for museum steam railways they are well-nigh ideal. To the best of my knowledge no concrete sleeper for bullhead rail was ever made after the 1940’s, but look at the near-perfect state of these. On the Northeastern Corridor in the USA they tried concrete for sleepers as well when repair of the track was seriously taken on in the 1970’s, but initially with a similar result as described above. These days elastomeric pads are included to cut the vibrations between the rails and the sleeper for exactly the described reason and it works, also because the suspension of trains, the maintenance of the wheels and of the track has been so much improved. Bullhead track was the typical reason why a track-inspector of old would carry a long-handle hammer: to hammer itinerant keys back into the chairs without having to bend down time and again.

A class 55 Deltic diesel-electric locomotive at Bristol Temple Meads. Unfortunately the picture was made by a colleague on his company-issue first generation telephone camera in the rain. It nevertheless shows the utterly recognisable outline of that locomotive, which apparently replaced a steam locomotive on a special that day. A bit like they did with the Gresley steam locomotives on the East Coast Main Line in their heyday, before the HST’s sealed their fate.

As an extra: here is a picture of a Paxman VP185 diesel engine problem experienced on the front power car of a train from Cardiff that I took from Bristol to Paddington via the Westbury diversionary route one sunny Sunday morning. Suddenly, stopped as booked at Bath Spa, the engine was terribly noisy. This was why: a great big hole blown in the exhaust manifold. It was a good set though, as due to the lower speeds on the Westbury to Reading route I managed to arrive at Paddington on the dot. The rear power car was a diligent worker.