I was stood next to "warship" when he shot this video and am a regular working member of the BHG, D5600 has an extremely tired power unit, the bank to bank timing is miles out, and it's cold. All 12 cylinders are compressed from the start and they are all fueling with the fuel rack wide open under control of the engine governor (not human intervention).
Excellent video thanx for sharing, born in the mid 70's I was luck to bear witness to English Electric action, regulalry, and to witness one of these deisels come thundering, full hellfire, through your station for the first time in your life when you are very young you can not fail to be impressed, in awe (and somewhat intimidated.) This clip reminds me of that day, I will miss them when they are all finally taken from front line duty. Long live the british rail class diesels . . .
I LOVE English electrics - they are THE best Locos and I spent my entire youth Bashing them ALL. Many happy memories from this vid and the sounds. :-) Thanks for the upload. I 'classed' the 31s and the 50s back in 89!! Xx
Excellent vid! Great work guys! Diesel engine are amazing. I love listening to one start in cold weather and blowing smoke (called Clag in the U.K. right?). Diesel in the morings the best smell!!
@gizmo98550 you are right. I did some research and one site tells me there are 3 methods of starting. Electric starter, as in a car, compressed air is pumped into the cylinders until it reaches enough speed to start ignition, or some older trains with dc generators, used the generator to turn the engine over, drawing from the battery, as you said. So, I was wrong - electric starters can be used, but i guess they hav to be made to suite the high compression
Old american diesels hauled longer trains but didn't have more power funnily enough! Take some switchers 1200hp and 120+ tons! I believe the heavy weight helped? The UK almost bought US locos in 1958 as they were tried and tested-reliable, but politics prevented this (we must buy british etc!!), so we had loads of unreliable failed designs. This loco was a successful one, after they fitted this this engine in place of Mirlees.
I went to see the class 50, lovely engine. Individual cylinders can have there fueling increased manually to check cylinders and can be decompressed evidently.
gardner engines smoke like this when cold too. my dad used to drive bristol RE's Aec 's Bristol MW's and leyland leopards. i love the sound of any EE engine, cold start or on full bore! I have seen a vid with a hymec cold starting and i know how smokey maybach engines are. long live british diesels
yes tpvalley, there is a hole cast in the cylinder head for de-compressing the cylinders. although this isn't used in this video. Each cylinder has it's own fuel pump which is fired from a cam on the camshaft. you can overfuel each individual cylinder to see if it is firing properly.
This engine is very worn, the folk involved r experts, the engine design pre-dates 1948, its called a English Electric SV or SVT, even when they were used by british rail they started badly when cold. I agree with u in that I woldn't want to live next door, Also there may be air in the fuel system as it has just been rebuilt.
I'm English, live in england, just know a bit of history. Better for pulling a heavy train will be worse for keeping time if the locos heavy, in the 1950s many designs failed- NBL class 21 22 41,43. and co-bo-class 28, etc.
Listen everyone there is nothing wrong with this engine!!! it is a cold english electric engine they do this end of story!!! yes this one is tired which makes matters slightly worse, but not a great deal.
No, black smoke is overfueling, to much diesel and to litle air. White smoke is unburned diesel vapor, made by the compression heat in the cylinders, wich means that the diesel is not burned. Blue smoke is when the engine is burning oil. You can see at the end of the clip that one cylinder bank is smoking blue (not good)...
EMD prime movers are still made in Illinois and the company is now owned by Greenbriar Equity Group LLC and Berkshire Partners LLC. Locomotives are built in Ontario. The original design for the EMD engine was from a Winton model (winton being a Cleveland based co) and the Winton 278 model was built as the GM-Cleveland 278. I worked on tugs with them. I am not ethnocentric but these are the facts. What a dumb thing to fight over.
I wish u were reading this a while ago, we were trying to work out what the fitter was doing! I guessed what u said, but I saw first hand last weekend!
@Jabirupilot1 u find seperate electric starters on alternator fitted locos. Ive never seen a loco with air start, plenty of trucks etc though using seperate air starter motors or ships using air as u described.
Interesting video! Thank you for informing when the 1st cylinder began firing. At what point did the engine continue on its own without electric turnover? What was they technician doing? Wish you would explain details. Thank you. RWG Denver, Colorado USA
They do. This engine took, what, several minutes to start? Steam engines took *hours* before they could even make steam. Of course once they were warmed up, they were still just as dirty. At least once this diesel is warmed up, it's much cleaner than coal is.
If we’d done some heavy maintenance or had water in the fuel( very common ) we’d have to warn the bridge about possible smoke or they’d panic. The really good one was when we had gas turbine problems with igniters or fuel and there would be sheets of flame out of the funnel
at 4.47 they were checking the horns. the high note needs lubricating. at 5.35 he's testing each cylinder. i'm not exactly sure how. at 6.58 he's testing the brake pressures i think. 7.52 is self explanatory.
it depends on what you're burning in the fire box. Coal? Most defiantly more polluting. Natural gas, not so much. But with modern technology (at least when it comes to cars), the gasses coming out of the tail pipe, are actually LESS toxic than the air in some heavily polluted citys. Most of the reason why this is so smoky is because it's a cold day (diesels don't like cold starts), and the fact that it was just re-built, so there is probably some bugs still left in the system.
@scorps59 I'm not 100% sure, but I know they don't use normal starter motors. I think there is a motor-type thing which turns by compressed air (which is the hiss you can sometimes hear on these trains when they start). An electric starter may not be suitable for this type of engine because of its size and probably the large amount of compression. Some aircraft engines (radials) use compressed air to turn them over, by simply opening a tap to let the air through.
Theres a similar video with a class 20. When he checks each cylinder it speeds up like a dumper truck! so it must be a fueling thing. By the way the mirlees engines were replaced because they sufferred bed plate cracks, one was temporarily rated at 2000bhp! but others were 1250bhp and 1300 odd.
Totally dependable engines. For locomotives the engines r not set to get as much power as possible so the max rating can be used for hours on end, ie at 850rpm. The engines r used in ships etc aswell. Google "english electric" or 12svt. Oh and theyve been using similar engines for rail traction since 1947! when a 16svt had 1,600hp, this 12svt has 1,470hp if I recall correctly. I used to love hearing them throb into distance early morning.
I knew somebody with a tug boat, 2-stroke diesel, doors into the air collecter/inlet port surround, a whole box of easy start would be used! 1 aerosol per cylinder! clang clang etc.
Yah know, people think this is a lot of pollution( it is) but locomotives are probably the most efficient way of transporting goods, BECAUSE they can tow the hell out of anything. So any one that thinks locomotives produce the most pollutants, that person Prius or volt most likely was on a locomotive.
indeed if i remember rightly jarvis went silent after they caused a major incident on the railways, but now they seem to be sprouting up where-ever track work is at
Replaced piston and rings. I think its mainly the fuel system priming, because they start beter than this normally. U know diesels; a bit of air in the lines can be a nightmare on some.
ya i know that u can "try" a light a pool of diesel on fire but it won't but the vapor will burn. that white smoke is just atomized/vaporized so it should light. vapor will burn
Its a V12 and has 12 cylinder heads. I think inlet and ex manifolds need to come off and cooling manifolds, bit of cowling, then open crank case doors, undo big end and lift out with piston, I think they have a lifting thread to fit a lifting eye in piston. only 10" bore so not that bad.
Your right 67genxer, they even used to leave them running overnight! bet it smelt marvalous, no fun if u happen to live over the road from a depot though.!!
In England, mainline locomotives are treated as if they were aircraft. If the locomotive does not pass the FTR exam 100 percent it is not allowed to run, period.
My carburettored V6 186 CID 2 stroke makes less smoke! I am glad we gave coal fired steamers away for diesel. Much better for the environment. We still have smokey EMD's as mainlinr in Tassie. Not as bad as the log trucks, emission conrol seems mot to exist. Then again who built series 3 landrovers, better with a Holden 5!
Woah..getting personal there.. I simply meant that many modern products are delivered by rail meaning that you, as a consumer, are a contributing factor here. In fact the computer you are on, debating with me, likely was delivered by rail at some point...At the very least a ship using similar, yet larger engines.
@@dutchdude1972 no not air the polarity to the main generator is reversed turning it into the world biggest starter motor. no danger of hurting that thing.
Its not revving flat out just a little revving. Bare in mind the oil is not multigrade, I think? so its thick when cold, the governor is engine oil pressure operated.
@Jabirupilot1 wow.. im not right very often.. but it wasnt said to shoot you down sir.. i didnt hear the normal wurr wurr wurr of a regular starter.. or air.. so i just made the assumption it was the generator being used to roll the engine over
I'm telling my mam!lol. Did u know that the class 31 at first had mirlees engines- these fractured bedplates and were replaced by this SVT. With the mirlees they would have been class 30 tops code.