Deltic!

These are running on the ELR this weekend.

Like a Vulcan bomber, but slower and painted blue.

Oh takes me back.

What a sight they were!!

Always loved the Deltic. Had a couple for my train set when I was younger though one had a terrible accident when the dog got hold of it a chewed it to bits.

Used Vosper MTB engines, ken…..

Where is the elr

East Lancs Railway. Bury.

Truly awesome. I just wish the ELR was closer.

The best youtube clip I’ve seen to give a little flavour:

as s kid I remember being at a crossing on east coast main line watching one at full tilt. Impressive sight and a what a noise!

Oh no, the ultimate anorak’s faux pas, a 37 on a 55 thread! 😯

Crikey how much easy start did they have to squirt into that 😯

I think they are beautiful machine 🙂

Train set next I think

Babydeltic.com, home of Zontar! [/url]

York Railway Museum has an engine on static display. Awesome piece of engineering.

The Deltic while a nice design, was over priced and expensive to run,extremely noisy and limited route availability, yet it did its job for many years, and there are quite a few still runing, so they got something right.

The thing about them was they had character, like the 37, 40,s and the 20,s 50,s and a few others non of the newer locos after the 55 deltic series had that character.

Fantastic bit of engineering.

also the problem with diesels on preserved lines theyre limited to 25mph, but this months Railway magazine has an article on one on network rail .

Having raced the trains on the SVR a few times where there’s a road or cycle track alongside the railway, I’d say some of the drivers take the 25mph limit as a guide only. 😉

That 37 can’t be electric start can it ? Surely the starter motor would have caught fire before it started.
Is there a donkey engine ?

Leeds Central station (long gone). I used to travel between here and Bradford in the early 60s

They were a magical sight for this former trainspotter. Being based in the far South West, it was quite a trek to go Deltic hunting.

my senior school was right by the east coast mainline. They used to trundle over where we used to stop for a crafty fag during cross country

//geek on//
Not sure I agree project – they were built for a specific job (100mph between London and Scotland) and whilst suffering from some problems (notably piston failures) did a great job for 20 years with pretty good reliability figures (once those pesky pistons were settled). 6 of the 22 are still around, plus the prototype.

Whilst my anorak is on….! The 37 would have been using its dc main generator as a starter to get the engine turned over.

//geek off//

At school in the 1960’s we had a maths teacher who we would sidetrack by taking any excuse to mention the greek letter delta. He would happily explain to us that the Deltic was named for it, and then spend the rest of the lesson talking about Deltics.

//geek on//
Not sure I agree project – they were built for a specific job (100mph between London and Scotland) and whilst suffering from some problems (notably piston failures) did a great job for 20 years with pretty good reliability figures (once those pesky pistons were settled). 6 of the 22 are still around, plus the prototype

The prototype one was built as a test bed for future orders from BR and the other dieselisang countries, it was built to a simple design, and as with Deltic , used the same bogies as the class 37, also the term Deltic to describe the engine piston formation is wrong, its actually the arabic letter for nabla so should have been called the Nablic
Also ther production ones costed 200,000 each when built, much more expensive than diesel hydraulics or diesel electrics,and had a supply of spare engines, as little work could be done on the engines in situ, they where exchanged with a replacement unit, all within a 8 hour shift.

I’m sure they’re awesome in trains but the ones we used in my old Minehunter were s###e.

The above and two others were sat in Castleton Goods earlier.

Can’t beat bouncing around in a nodding donkey (142) all day though 😉

Napier must have had a bunch of design engineers with a “think different” brief.

Didn’t they come up with a “H” shape cylinder config for the Sabre engine in the Typhoon???

Must have liked solving complex crankshaft gearing problems!

Gunz – Member
I’m sure they’re awesome in trains but the ones we used in my old Minehunter were s###e.

still are

Project, route availability wasn’t a problem. They have similar axle weights as a 37 (same bogies, though originally cast rather than plate). The problem was with such a small class and sphere of operation (East Coast and Trans Pennine to Liverpool in later years) that driver knowledge was very limited, thus precluding regular work out of area.
They were use a couple of times on the West Highland line on Sunday charters to Oban in the early ’80’s.
These days the mainline certified ones can go pretty much anywhere a loco can go.

Oh and geeky point of info. The design was originally developed by the Germans (i think), but they couldnt get the design to stay in sync / work. The britsh engineers at Napier had a play and got them to work by getting one crankshaft to turn the opposite way to the other two in the engine.

These was also a Baby Deltic class of loco (Class 23) which used 1 deltic engine which was less than sucessful. There is a group who are aiming to recreate one using a class 37 bodyshell as a donor.

I used to work as a summer job for BR collecting tickets in Llandudno. One of the drivers let me have a ride in his cab in one of these things just as they were going out of service, and I must say it was pretty awesome. Can still remember these things thundering around.

You can see my old house where the ELR crosses Pilsworth Road

And I’m old enough to remember the original bridge (demolished in the mid 70’s)

The Baby Deltic boys are amazing. They spotted the only surviving BD engine outside under a tarpaulin outside the National Railway Museum, got hold of it, completely stripped it and got it running again. They are midway through their class 37 conversion but they got caught up without bogies. Looks like it’s back on again now though.

They sell a great book all about the engine rebuild, their site also has loads of great pics:

http://www.thebabydelticproject.co.uk/#

(I have no affiliation with them by the way, other than being interested and a general donor).

used to be an apprentice at Paxmans in Colchester where we overhauled marine deltics a pig of an engine to overhaul but a beast of an engine when we ran them in our test beds could allways tell when one was fired up could hear it and feel it even outside the bed,had one spit a piston and rod thro the crankcase whilst testing carried on running with only a small drop in power lots of oil and flames very dramatic 😯

According to my book Deltics a synposium, they where also planning a 4400hp loco based on the class 50 bodyshell.

It diodnt get built sadly.

Ooh didn’t know that! Shame it would have looked like a log though!

The 37 would have been using its dc main generator as a starter to get the engine turned over.

I’m aware a DC generator (dynamo) can be used as a motor, but it must have had a hell of a battery capacity to keep it spinning over for that long, or were they connected to the mains for cold starts ?.

…much more expensive than diesel hydraulics or diesel electrics

What was the transmission then, I thought those were the only two options ?

Detics (and majority of br diesels) are diesel elctric. Big engine turns generator which makes the electric for the traction motors.
You also have diesel hydraulic which the engine turns a big torque convertor with driveshafts to the powered wheels.
You can also have mechanical transmission, but there was only 1 mainline loco (experimental Fell loco) built.

Given the amount of Peak District locals there usually are on STW, I’m surprised there hasn’t been much talk of the Deltic Preservation Society at Barrow Hill, Chesterfield.

If you’re in the area and like Deltics, their shed is well worth a poke around.

They run off (a lot) of batteries generally for a start. Not aware if there is an ability to hook up to the mains for the actual start or not. One of the big expenses in preservation is the batteries which fade quickly as they are not used often.

Deltics (and the 37) are diesel electric – engine(s) drive DC generators hence the ability to use it as a motor for start. Alternator-equipped diesels and the diesel-hydraulics thus need starter motors.