Locomotive
Testing on Britain’s Railways 1901-1968
by Dave Peel
The years 1901-68 cover the heyday of
locomotive testing from the advent of the first dynamometer car through to the
end of BR’s activities in this area. In
1948, BR inherited the revamped Swindon test plant together with the three
dynamometer cars from 1901 (GWR), 1906 (NER) and 1913 (L&YR) around which
testing had revolved for decades. With
the Rugby testing station soon to be opened, and replacements for two of the
three old dynamometer cars already in the pipeline, the following years were to
become the busiest and most interesting testing years of all. Most of the book relates to this period, but
it also includes a selection of the work done previously by each of the three
old cars, as an essential historical background to the BR period.
By the end of the 1960s, locomotive testing as
such, had ceased and the “Test Cars”, as they were now called, were centralised
at Derby and were no longer under Regional
control. The cars themselves were
re-equipped to include the ability to measure the dynamic movement of the
(diesel or electric) locomotive and particularly, the new rolling stock. This could involve measuring the rolling
resistance of Freightliner wagons, the rough riding of bogies, or the
measurement of pressure changes in tunnels when two trains pass at speed –
“tests” far removed from those undertaken in earlier years.
The title’s subsidiary wording, “A
non-technical overview”, is not meant to put off anyone who relishes technical
detail, but this book is much more than a regurgitation of the bulletins issued
by BR with their calculations, and pages and pages of graphs. Previously, the subject has been dealt in a
piecemeal fashion or as a technical exercise, but this book aims to present a
more complete picture of what was happening nationwide, together with a little
of the history behind it.
Softback: 80 pages with 45 photographs
273 x 215mm
978-1-905505-31-9
Price: £12.95
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