Cold start locomotive
 

Saw on another thread a post about starting up a locomotive. I've always liked 37025 ( way before it's celebrity status:}) and stumbled upon this

I just watched the whole clip when I should have done something else more important. lol:D

I bet the neighbours were pleased, not!

How long do their starter motors last?

I'm surprised that this has dropped out of the "current posts" so quickly.

I salute whoever had his finger on the button for so long, for his confidence in his battery system.

I know nothing of trains, so maybe they have a mains connection for a starting transformer.

A bit like a car charger / starter, but with 440 v. to play with, maybe.

Can someone enlighten us, simply out of curiosity.

Mike

Great question. That start must have taken serious power from somewhere.

37025 doesn't have starter motors it has windings in its generator which motors the engine
37s fitted with alternators have starter motors i cleaned one out last week
Once the engine catches on a few cylinders you can take your finger off the button and eventually all 12 will catch
With the recent cold snap we had one on snowplough duty at Norwich and tried to run it regularly so we didn't get too much smoke on cold start in the middle of Norwich but was still pretty bad on occasion with balls of flame being thrown from the exhausts.
I tend to give them a little bit on the throttle linkage with seems to reduce smoke and once the compressors have built up enough air give it a fast idle as its an air throttle
Although it gives gretta palpitations or worse a cold starting English Electric engine is a very impressive sight, well it is to me and I've been doing it over 35 years

Yeah, 37s do tend to start in instalments in cold weather! Times I used the local start button in the engine room and manually forced the throttle linkage open a fraction, not an easy thing to do as it was never intended for that!

[QUOTE=stevestrat;2867639]Yeah, 37s do tend to start in instalments in cold weather! Times I used the local start button in the engine room and manually forced the throttle linkage open a fraction, not an easy thing to do as it was never intended for that![/QUOTE

I remember being taught how do do that as a young secondman and being terrified that the generator would explode for some reason!

I was secondman on a class 26 working a ballast train outside Edinburgh Waverley. It developed a fault and I ended up holding the fuel rack open for about 30 minutes to stop it shutting down to get us back to the depot. My arms were knackered!

Class 26s (and 27s for that matter) were notoriously bad starters. 26s were easy, the starter was a trigger handle on the desk, use the fire extinguisher to hold that in the start position turning the engine over, go into the engine room and hold the fuel rack open. 27s required two of you, it had a start button, needed one to hold the button, one to hold the fuel rack. One driver I was on with on shed duties had a bad idea, he stuck a wheel scotch behind the fuel rack to hold it open, went into the cab, pressed the start button. When the engine fired the fuel rack would automatically open, it did that, the wheel scotch dropped down wedging the fuel rack in more or less in the full throttle position! I heard the engine roaring, went to investigate and it took the two of us to wrestle the wheel scotch back out before the engine blew up :D