Posted by Owen Roberts on May 02, 2006 at 11:16:05 from 194.201.78.135 user OwenRoberts.
In Reply to: Re: Thorpe Station - was Susan taking charge posted by Laurence Monkhouse on April 30, 2006 at 07:33:18:
Whilst I fully agree that engines would be changed at Norwich Thorpe as you describe; I have some difficulty with the engines being changed during the railway races in 1895 in literally seconds.
It does take time to destroy the braking vacuum, uncouple, run the engine off, change the points, back a fresh engine on, recouple, make the vacuum, put the fresh engine into forward gear look for the signal that the line is clear and open the regulator to restart.
The fastest I ever saw engine changes was at Rickmansworth on the former Metropolitan Railway where they were changing from steam to electric or vice versa. This took about 2 minutes at best - but the man doing the uncoupling did have to avoid the electric rails. This changeover was still carried out until the early 1960's.