The weird ways railways tried to keep passengers warm
Вставка
- Опубліковано 7 гру 2023
- In today's video, we take a look at all the weird ways railways tried to keep their passengers warm during the winter
Please subscribe for more
This video falls under the fair use act of 1976.
This video is available to use under the appropriate Creative Commons Licence.
Any images used that fall under any Creative Commons Licence belong to their respective owners.
What's also interesting is that steam generators were also used on some electric locomotives. The famous Pennsylvania GG1 was equipped with an oil-fired steam generator (why they didn't just use electric heaters, I don't know), so there are photos of GG1s with black smoke coming out the top.
I’ve always been surprised this was never the topic of a _Railway Series_ story. Considering many diesels in the books often boasted of their supremacy, I can only imagine how the steam engines use this knowledge to bring them down to earth.
“You are quite similar to use steamies huh”
I regularly travel in Mk1’s or Gresley stock with steam heating. It’s much more of a cosy toasty heat, than you get in modern newfangled trains.
I agree. On a cold day the heat came from under the seat, which is just where you need it most.
That depended on the length of the train.
Moisture in steam heat vs. Heat exchange from open flame heaters.
Moisture in steam heat vs. Heat exchange from open flame heaters.
In the US the steam generators being built into the locomotives wasn’t uncommon, locomotives built as late as the 70s incorporated steam generators, even some electric locomotives had them, such as the E60CP
Said internal steam generators were also one of the significant contributors to the tendency of the SDP40F to derail (in combination with poor track quality) due to the Water tank for the steam heater
@@cyri96 yeah, I’m honestly surprised that wasn’t a drawback of steam heating mentioned in the video, as I believe it was more than just the SDP40Fs that suffered from the water slosh issue, though I believe the E60 was the only other locomotive where it was bad enough to cause derailments
@@patrickmartin3322 While the water sloshing around was an issue, there were also other factors as to why the E60 and SDP40 derailed. They were basically just freight locomotives, and so were extremely heavy and didn't have high-speed trucks, so they were rough-riding. And since they were running on railroads in the 70s, they often encountered poor track.
The EM2 (Class 77, later NS class 1500) and some of the EM1'S (Class 76) had steam boilers (In the case of the EM2'S, much to Nederlands Spoorwagen's amusement when British Rail sold the EM2's to them!)
@@robertwilloughby8050
Those classes, and I think the three Southern Railway electric locomotives, had electrically heated boilers rather than oil fired ones. I know very little about them, and they would have been taken out of use when the passenger service on the Woodhead route was withdrawn in about 1970.
I lived in third rail electric land and so only saw steam heat when I started to travel around the country, from the 1970s, so I only saw steam heat with Diesel traction in it’s later days. I think the last service to use it in London were the Class 37 hauled trains from Liverpool Street to Cambridge, but I’m not sure when these finished.
I mainly experienced steam heat on a number of rail tours in the 1980s, and my main memory of it at that time was that it was very unreliable; it a train was booked for steam heat that often meant no heat.
At Kings Cross station each of the tracks in the main station was equipped with a long steam hose to enable trains to be pre-heated while at the platform, though these were long disused when I saw them. I’m not sure if they were connected to a stationary boiler somewhere or if they were just all connected together so they could just run a locomotive or boiler van into one track and use it to heat stock in any of the others.
Dual heated BR Mk. 1 compartment coaches had a pair of very modern looking cross shaped aluminium knobs on the wall of each compartment. One was labelled ‘This controls steam heat under the seats on this side of the compartment” and the other ‘This controls steam heat under the death on this side of the compartment and electric heat under all seats’
Use of the steam boiler required a suitably trained crew member, and the lack of one could be another reason for no heat.
A couple of months ago I travelled on the last train of the day on the preserved Severn Valley Railway, which was to be Diesel hauled. The locomotive arrived andI was surprised to see the steam hoses being coupled; I didn’t there were any Diesel locomotives which still had functioning boilers, but this one did, and it actually worked for the whole journey.
Some early Diesel locomotives were originally built with water scoops to enable them to fill their tanks from troughs, but these were little used as the troughs were all removed after the end of steam traction.
As a lifelong fan of railways and an American, I can't help but feel a bit of pride that the safer steam-heating standard was devised in the States. Granted, it was in Chicago, and I'm in New York (state), but still.
There are a few steam locomotive preservation groups here in the U.S. that use heater cars to help build up the boiler pressure of their engines. An Ex-Great Northern heater car named Little Boy is used to quicken the prosses for SP 4449 at the Oregon Rail Heritage Center (ORHC).
In the US, heater cars were only used to heat a train being pulled by a freight engine. All passenger or dual-service (passenger or freight) engines had steam generators, they worked quite well. Large stations had steam heat to heat the cars before the road engine was attached. Some diesel switchers that worked stations had steam boilers too, to heat the cars while they were being positioned.
Wow, never thought that a diesel switcher would heat a car...
I once read an article in a facsimiled railway dictionary from the early 1900's. There they discussed LIGHTING railway carriages which proved to be as challenging a solution for a seemingly simple problem. Anyway thank you for your instructive and entertaining contributions.
Amtrak has their E60CPs back then. (E60CP = Steam Heated Generator Locomotive)
And the SDP40F
@@patrickmartin3322 + Amtrak Steam Heated Car = Problematic Engine
3:02 Until I noticed the buffers, I thought that was an American coach. Pullman did try circa 1900 to get a foothold in British rail travel, but had mixed results, and eventually focused on just North America. It was talked about in a book on passenger train travel I borrowed from a local library. I must remember to borrow it again to make sure of the details.
in germany there were diesel locomotives with steam boilers as well but until the 80's you could often see how they actually placed a steam locomotive between the diesel and the coaches as primary for heating on very cold days. the extra traction was more like a bonus
That's true although I'd like to add that some of these diesel locos with a steam boiler for heating ran until the early 2000s, not just the 80s. :) Thinking mainly about V100s (Br 212 at that time).
@@1dree1And 215s in the Frankfurt area until Dec. 2001.
Interestingly did Germany also employ obsolete Electric Locomotives as portable Substations, aka "Heating Locomotives" similar to how obsolete Steam Locomotives became portable Boilers. It's a good Question what these were used for though, as the 16 2/3 Hz AC that Trains use in Germany can't really be used for anything unrelated to Railways; the low Frequency requires larger Iron Cores than the usual 50 Hz here. Anyway, the Town Lörrach where I grew up had such a portable Substation Locomotive for a few Years in the 1980ies.
Not only did many early diesels have steam heating boilers, but on the East Coast route the Deltics made use of the water troughs from steam days to replenish the water on long non-stop runs.
In the US alot of times you'd find two stoves(ours are Spear), one on either end. They're actually quite low maintenance and after a couple hours of prep will burn all day, sometimes into the next day. Bakers are used on coaches that had steam line heat and utilize the radiators.
I remember that in Swansea High Street station, the carriages would be brought in by a diesel shunter which pushed them in, carefully, until they reached the buffer stop - this is a terminus station after all. They would then be hooked up to a steam boiler under the platform which heated the train during the 20 - 30 minutes before departure. The train locomotive would then arrive and be coupled up and take over the heating. The platform boiler hose would be disconnected before departure - at least in theory ! I wonder how many times they forgot to do so ?
I always found steam heating boilers installed into diesels to be a bit funny. Maybe not considered an actual steam-diesel hybrid but still fun to humor. I do enjoy the history here behind the use of steam heating the passenger coaches. A nice video for a December day.
Returning to Scotland from Canada in the winter of 1955, I was struck by how cold the carriages were. There was a small lever to turn heat on and off. I couldn't discern any difference!
Here in the Netherlands we also had dedicated steam heating wagons. Those were pretty neat.
Those were used in the 1950s and early 60s when old steam heated cars were still in use. But al coaching stock built from 1950 onwards had dual or electrical only heating as the plans to withdraw steam entirely by the end of the decade were already set.
Coaching stock was normally only used on electrified lines, as the few non electrified lines were operated with DMUs.
But in the 1970s traffic during peak hours on some of these lines couldn't cope with passenger numbers. So trains pulled by diesel locomotives were employed.
Problem was that these diesels didn't have any means of heating the train as they were purely intended for freight traffic when ordered.
The stock operated with the diesels were dual heat, so steam or electric heating could be used. Because steam heat cars were out of service by that time new heating cars had to be built. Regarding the better reliability and easier handling generator cars for ETH were built, the train guard would be responsible for its operation, which in essence was a pre service check and starting the diesel engine powering the generator, it would run for the whole journey unattended unless a fault emerged which was rare.
Similar cars were used in Belgium when diesels only equipped with steam boilers had electrical heated coaching stock on the drawbar, mostly if more modern stock on international trains had to travel over non electrified routes like the Ardennes line. Later some Belgian diesels class 55 were rebuilt with ETH instead of the boiler.
I had a footplate tour of an old F7 in the late 70s. The engineer pointed out the hot water boiler used for carriage heat.
The inverse of cooling the cars during hot weather is pretty fascinating as well. Before modern A/C was invented, there was a system that used steam to cool the cars, referred to as steam jet cooling.
I don’t think it’s the same process, but large office block A/C systems in NYC use steam from the steam network for cooling as well. I think it just drives the compressor on the air conditioner in that case.
Very interesting! I knew about the foot warmers, many people so loved them that when different systems came into being such as the steam pipes, they refused to accept it and continued asking for foot warmers.
Nowadays, there seem to be quite a few railway employees that take a sadistic pleasure in roasting passengers! No joke, even during summer months and even during heat waves the heating on 323 units is always on full blast, at least early in the morning. Doesn't matter if there's a heat wave of over 30 degrees (Celsius) - the heating is on full blast.
When mentioning this to the TOC in my area, I was informed that the heating on each car is set to automatic, meaning it comes on - or goes off - according to the temperature setting.
I wasn't aware of this and there isn't much about the 323's that I don't know (brilliant units, sadly due to be replaced soon), but if that's indeed the case (unless someone is pulling my leg...) then the settings surely can be changed...?
Not sure if this is a general problem with the 323's but here in the West Midlands some folks seem to think passengers all want to get roasted on the way to work!
If anyone knows more about this issue please let me know.
3:02 I think this Pullman carriage is from the Victorian railways of Australia I think the way it’s designed
It is a broad gauge carriage for The Overland Express between Melbourne and Adelaide. The service was jointly operated by Victorian Railways and the South Australian Railways.
I think you should talk about the other side of this as well: after all nobody wants to be stuck sitting in a 50 degree oven in the height of an Outback or Indian Summer.
When the Union Pacific consolidated the few remaining City liners into one giant passenger train, in the winter months they add a baggage car equiped with a boiler in order to help supply steam heat to the sleeping cars on the rear of the train (unofficially known as the City to Everywhere).
I've known about steam heat for ages, but I didn't know that Pullman built passenger cars for export (as is evident by the picture at 3:04). Seeing an American designed car with buffers is a wild fucking sight, man
Many locomotive sheds kept an old steam loco purely for the purpose of ore-heating carriages.
For example, B1 number 61138 stayed at Lowestoft into the mid 60s fr exactly this purpose.
You’d think someone would think “ya know… coming out the drive pistons is all this dead steam… it’s not insane pressure now it’s done it’s work.. let’s capture some of it and send it to heat the cabins!” Of course.. most of the steam is used to force-draft the fire but still…
I like that the railway companies provided blankets and hot water bottles 😊that's a nice touch.
Some of the withdrawn class 15 diesels here in the UK were used as pre-heaters for trains.
Got a feeling that one idea to hook up a simple small generator to the wheels of a carriage was proposed, but probably wouldn’t work well since it would make carriage harder to pull, though it would probably work to generate power for small heaters. Random thoughts when thinking of trains and small engineering projects
Thank goodness for those steamers
I remember reading a little trivia from XTwitter about a Class 28, Specifically D5714, had trouble with it's boiler. But I didn't think the diesel boilers would be faulty for ALL the diesels that used them.
Next episode: Why did the railways continue with the round shape for their wheels when switching to diesels?
I wish I'd said that...
There used to be stationary steam heating facilities in Germany. I remember the huge boiler house in Magdeburg, for instance and the standpipes all over the yard.
Fascinating video, nice work ToT.
There is a steam generator carriage under preservation at the Whitehead Steam Museum in Northern Ireland.
In Ireland the solution were heating vans and latterly dual guards and heating vans capable of providing electricity
In Hungary during the dieselisation era, it was realised that some diesels were not equipped with train heating boilers. As such, steam heating boiler and later electrically powered heater cars were produced. Of the latter, 20 were ordered by MÁV in 1968. These were equipped with a 600 HP diesel motor which powered a single-phase alternating current electric generator producing 1500 V of electricity capable of heating up to 15 cars. These were converted from regular passenger stock, and in 1968, there were already 8 in service. The cars weighed 48 metric tons, were 17.24 meters in length and were capable of 120 km/h.
My mother remembered when streetcars had coal stoves, to keep the car warm.
Back in the mid 70s, I was riding in a Canadian National passenger train, when it separated from the locomotives. There were clouds of steam from the broken steam pipe. I also remember when there were steam pipe connections in Toronto's Union station, which kept the trains warm, while waiting to depart. Later on, the U.S. railroads (Amtrack) refused to handle any Canadian trains that still used steam heat, on the cross border runs.
I currently appreciate my local stations heated waiting room. It really cozy has some books to read and such.
I believe they had steam generating cars on the West Highland Line and gave them an acronym like ETHEL.
always lovely to get home from work and unwind with a drink to your video
an interesting note: here in america in the 1930's, many electric locomotives were used to pull steam heated passenger equipment. this meant that electric locomotives had to produce steam however the voltage was simply too low. the locomotives were equipped with diesel powered steam boilers, which meant that many electric locomotives had diesel fuel tanks!
yea we do things weird in america 😒😋
The voltage wouldn't be the problem, since you can generate quite a lot of heat even with just 120 V if you run enough current. The burning of fuel to produce the steam heat was probably a matter of cost savings, since if you use electricity, that means you have to account for the inefficiency of generating the electricity in the first place With modern power plants, you can approach 70% efficiency, but they didn't have power plants anywhere near that good in the 1930s, other than hydroelectric (the only usable renewable energy available back then) which was of limited availability (unless you're in some place like Switzerland). So to get the amount of steam you would get by burning a gallon of fuel oil directly in the boiler by instead using electricity, you might have to burn 2.5 to 5 gallons of oil (or more likely, the equivalent amount of coal) in the power plant to get the electricity.
We forget, today, how cold it could be before central heating was invented. No wonder people wore so many layers of clothing in the "good old days!"
Used to have a train heating carrage at Kings Lynn
There is still agregate cars in Finland and older passenger equipment has own oil boiler
The pullmen Caoch on the thumbnail Caight me off guard considering it looked like a American Coach with a buffer beam.
Cool
In the Netherlands were steampower was withdrawn in Januari 1958 they used dedicated railcars who had a steamboiler and a stoker on it.
These "hot stoves" as they were called replaced the remaining heater steam locomotives at stations and depots.
Also all remaining wooden passengercars were withdrawn with the end of steam. .
Only the steel steam heated passenger cars resumed in service.
Way into the 90's international passenger cars had to have a hybrid heating system .
(Steam was the same electric AC/DC current and voltage not)
Electric and Diesel Locomotives never had a dedicated heater boiler on board in the Netherlands.
Later in the 1980's till 90's a simular problem occured.
There was a shortage in diesel DMU's so they had to use pure freight diesel engines and passenger cars to create trains.
Special energy cars with a diesel generator on board were build to create power for heating those electric passenger cars.
Huh... Had never considered that this would be an issue. Interesting!
In the US we didn’t only use steam heater cars but also many locomotives fitted with steam heaters. Especially F units and in the short hood of locomotives.
Japan runs popular "stove train" specials to this day.
I always took it for granted how they heat the carriages today but that must have been rough in that time. May I reheat your sandbox madam? Please do sir! It is long way to Liverpool.
Steam heated passenger cars were very common here in Canada until the 90s
doesn't surprise me with the age of some of VIA Rail's rolling stock
@@MercenaryPen they were former CN equipment
@@Elliottblancher And CP. I used to be a technician with CN Telecommunications and back in the mid 70s, when I was based in Northern Ontario, frequently rode trains, both passenger and freight.
in Russia/USSR/Russia again almost all passenger carriages (wagons) heated by wood/coal stoves. If it was too big - 2 or more heaters used, it does not cost too much comparing to total equipment cost. Railway provided fuel, 1st and 2nd class heaters serviced by conductor, 3rd and 4th (used for extemely poor relocants, with minimal differences from cargo vans) by passengers themselves. More advanced solution, still used today, - coal heater with steam/water radiators along the carriage. When train is in motion the same heating system can use electricity instead of coal flame, there is special 3kv bus from loco (electric or diesel), but it is not very reliable, does not work when loco absents (train preparation, loco changes enroute etc), very dangerous for rail workers and so on, so used only in high-level fast and luxury trains.
Also the same system provides boiling drinking water for traditional railway tea and other foor needs.
Great Northern RR in the States had. Gotten SDP40s and SDP45s they had a spot at in the rear for steam boiler.
I love your content but please could you stop the background track image moving because I find it makes me seasick and it is very distracting. Thanks.
I wish someone would tell Transport for Wales about train heating. They're stuck in 1850.
in east germany the train heating boilers were standardized and every diesel had the same one. they were named after their place of origin: Heizkessel Bauart Köthen
In China, some locomotives can't supply the carriages with appropriate voltage for heating and cooling, so some dedicated generator cars were built. They don't generate steam, but use diesel engines to generate electricity. They are called "KD" carriages which means air conditioning generator.
With the challenges in heating the coaches, using those steam railcars to heat them doesn't sound like a bad idea. Just gotta take out the driving mechanism first
At the 4:50 mark, is that Bournemouth station?
I thought it was York.
Steam wasnt really. . . Weird. . .
More like the best device they had at the time and convenient due to steam having to come from the boiler that largely happened to be at the front at the time :)
4
Why not, in the transition era from steam to diesel or electric it was common to use steam boilers in the egines because all passenger cars has steam heating. Why make an video about a topic that logic.
Why won’t we learn more?
please do a video on
the porters steam loco
the Japanese class d5,
the Chinese QJ 2,10,2
or just exsamples of asian trains
how do gear trains work
something on saddle bolier and side tanks (like the big water boxes) tank engines
double ended diesel trains (and electric)
eletric trains
American and European switches other then the British class 07-09
what to do if the train stalls
one talking about the different types of steam funnles and there uses,
a video on steam locomotive combination breaks (steam and vacuum brakes)
a short video on how a Armstrong turn table works
what did train flagman do
what did trains (mostly steam) do when going in tunnels, ive heard of gas masks or just useing a wet cloth, or did they bring in other engines like later on they used electric trains, or were there no bigv tunnels.
evaluation of electric trains
why are some trains wagion tops (the stream lining thing to boilers)
railway terms abd slang
one on the meaning of flag and lantern colors like green on rear engine means theres another one coming soon,
the different types of cut offs/reversers/Johnson bar
some are a big lever, some are a big valve wheel, and ive also seen some that are like rods, one exsample is train sim world 3 and im not sure where to find the other reverser
and how much water do steam trains take usually, and how much would the crew drink
First
So?
Second
Hi There Again it is Mr Cannadine T. Boxill-Harris, I have another interesting idea for most of you Class 313, Class 314 and that also is including those interesting Class 315 Fans out there, rather than scrapping most of those Class 313's Class 314's including the Class 315's maybe you guys can convert them and including the refurbishment into those Leyland 680 Engine, Volvo B10M Engine, Cummins M11 Engine, Gardner 6LXC Engine, Gardner 6LXB, Engine, Gardner 8LXB Engine, Class 313's, Class 314's and the Class 315's and convert all of them into a 2 Carriages and Three Carriages of the Class 313's, Class 314's and that is including those Class 315's for most of us Class 314's and the Class 315's Diesel Train Fans Please Are you still going to do this interesting type of Project
for all of us out there Pretty Please?
👍🚂🚃🚃😊
3