General > General Technical Chat
The "All American Five", & more dangers!!
Gyro:
It used to be interesting to look at the dates on the brass door sills in the tube trains, the older lines like the Northern. Many of them were early 1920s and still going strong (this was back in the '80s mind you). The bodies were original but of course there was regular replacement and renovation of all of the running gear.
A lot of these underground / suburban DC systems were specifically designed for fast acceleration and deceleration.
vk6zgo:
--- Quote from: Gyro on May 02, 2020, 07:43:31 pm ---It used to be interesting to look at the dates on the brass door sills in the tube trains, the older lines like the Northern. Many of them were early 1920s and still going strong (this was back in the '80s mind you). The bodies were original but of course there was regular replacement and renovation of all of the running gear.
A lot of these underground / suburban DC systems were specifically designed for fast acceleration and deceleration.
--- End quote ---
I used to love the "pentagon? shaped" lift in one of the tube stations.
It had an ancient recorded warning system that said "mind the doors" or something like that, in a rather "non human" voice.(that was before the advent of speech synthesisers, so I don't know why!)
I think it is closed now.
The Paris Metro back in 1974 had some really ancient carriages which looked like something out of a Wild West movie.
Those were otherwise normal, running on standard rails, but they also some mid/late 1950s "high tech" ones which had rubber tyres, with the rails basically just acting as guides & power feeds.
The suburban trains in Oz are 25kV ac for Brisbane, Adelaide & Perth, as they were later adopters of electric traction.
Sydney & Melbourne are stuck with 600 or 750v DC (can't remember which).
Back in 1971, Melbourne was still running the antique "Tait" cars, which shared the "Wild West" vibe with the Paris Metro cars mentioned previously.
Homer J Simpson:
Hidden Killers of the Post-War Home
Gromitt:
--- Quote from: jogri on May 01, 2020, 06:23:16 pm ---
--- Quote from: TimFox on May 01, 2020, 04:40:57 pm ---Similarly, the Swiss railways used 16-2/3 Hz, a subharmonic of 50 Hz.
--- End quote ---
Actually, germany, denmark and austria also use this system... It's a relict from the early 20th century, but it still works (some german powerplants even have dedicated 16 2/3Hz generators for that purpose). Btw, we even have a 400V three-phase suspension railway over here, i'd like to know which engineer envisioned this monstrosity (he was probably bored and decided he needed a new challenge).
--- End quote ---
Not Denmark. They use 25kV 50 Hz. Sweden and Norway uses 15kV 16 2/3 Hz.
richard.cs:
--- Quote from: Gyro on May 02, 2020, 06:20:08 pm ---Yes, 600V DC irrc. The London tube actually has a fourth (centre) rail. It returns current through this insulated rail, rather than the running rails, to prevent corrosion of surrounding metal structures, pipes, etc.
UK suburban 3rd rail systems are also 600V DC. They used to use mercury arc rectifiers, I don't know about these days.
--- End quote ---
In some areas (the south east basically) full sized trains on national rail are 700 V d.c. third rail, in most of the other electrified areas it's overhead 25 kV 50 Hz. Then there are lots of areas that only run diesel trains. It's a bit of a mess.
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