How a railway made their trains remote controlled (kinda) - GWR ATC
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- In today's video, we take a look at the GWR's train control system that kinda allowed them to remotely control their steam engines
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I was waiting for the “…but many people died” bit but it didn’t come.
What a remarkable innovation decades ahead of its time and the concept of functional safety.
GWR had a very strong safety record across its century-long history, especially for a railway of its size. Innovations like this (and a genuine willingness to think about the long term and invest in such innovations) were a big part of the reason why.
True
It's notable that the ATC shows very clear failsafe thinking; and that management tried to use it as a money saver (no more need for old fashioned signals); and it's heartening that necessary redundancy (oxymoron?) triumphed.
The UK is unique in that it's initial rail infrastructure was developed entirely by private capital. Largely because in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars British financiers needed a place to invest their money and the railways provided just such a place to dump their money. Everywhere else, from France to Germany to Japan and even in the US, large sections of their rail networks were developed with at least government funding.
Then they got nationalised. And now they're a cartel...
Yikes!
@@233kostaoh do behave, the reason for the poor state of the railways currently is privatisation and lack of investment by those private companies but yeah let's call things we don't like a cartel.
However, that's not an inherent trait of it being privatised either@@G0Lg0Th4N
@@G0Lg0Th4N They split it up into regions and sold off the rights to each region to one PLC each (sometimes multiple regions per PLC). What do you call that?
no matter how decrepid GB's train tracks network might've become, its aversion to grade crossings tellingly happens to make it the world's poshest 🍸💋
Good Old Great Western Railway with life sized rc locomotives,slip coaches and auto tanks.
That's the Great Western Way!
I always found the slip coach hilarious just because the rest of British (and western European in general) railways were so slow to adopt automatic couplers, to the point where they're still uncommon to this day, but Great Western were doing it as far back as the 1860s.
Honestly, the GWR's ATC would probably be considered an ATP (Automatic train protection) system today
Yea, this is pretty much electro-mechanical atp, which is really cool!
It’s rather similar to the Intermittent Inductive Automatic Train Stop used in North America (and elsewhere in some cases). It also bears some similarities to the Chicago and North Western Cab Signaling.
An amazing piece of railway history, little discussed. I'm astounded the GWR began this project as early as 1905.
Nice to see something experimental on this channel that actually ended up working, and working well!
No doubt, this system being installed so early help to save many lives from disaster. Another good reason for the folks at Swindon to be proud of "the Great Western way."
Sort of, except that the Signalling department, and it’s associated factory, was based in Reading, not Swindon. The works were north of the station, east of Caversham Road, and still there into the 1980s. The land has been rebuilt on a couple of times since then. A lot of it’s offices were in a building on Station hill, just south of the station, which has also been demolished. I worked in that for several years in the 1980s!
The Swedish state railway museum fitted one of their steam locomotives with Ebicab 700 a couple of years ago.
By remote control, I thought you were going to say that the GWR invented Radio Control like what we have with drones and RC Cars.. I didn’t think you were going to tell us about ATC..
You learn something new everyday
Well, they did have auto coaches with remote throttle controls, which was not unique to them either! There were even pneumatic remote throttle control systems used with cab coaches in continental Europe (definitely in Germany, and I’m confident they were present in many neighboring countries) in the 1930s before WWII.
@@JohnGeorgeBauerBuis wonder why they never tought of using it for MU control for goods trains.....
A very clever design. This really seems like an earlier version of the concepts we see in modern track monitoring and control. The overwhelming majority of modern day trains and tracks have computerized systems that accomplish similar functions.
Gotta hand it to railways. They sure know how to innovate.
Another reason why it was invented, was that fogmen also didn't fail-safe, if he didn't show up on time a driver had no idea if the line ahead was at danger. This was a fail-safe system, assume danger, unless the bell sounds. Also the ramps were installed a few hundred yards short of the signal, so that the locomotive had time to stop before it passed the signal, they proved this on the first test run, when the locomotive approached the last signal in the test run, the signal was set to danger and the driver was ordered hands off all controls. The train stopped safely and well short of the signal at danger.
Incidentally, I was amused to note that similar audible warnings made their way into BR usage. Riding behind the driver in a Class 101 DMU in the late '70s, I was interested to note that there was a bell warning when the light was green, and a buzzer when it was red (I guess a buzzer is easier than a horn when you don't have an ample supply of steam!!).
Man, the GWR certainly loved giving their trains really weird controls. (I still have to credit them for this, absolutely decades ahead of it's time.)
It's wild how similar on a surface level this is to modern ATC.
it shares the basic principles, but it uses a mechanical connection instead of the modern systems which use electricity difference between the two rails.
Over in Canada, The Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo Railway, jointly owned by the New York Central and Canadian Pacific, also used a similar system also called ATC in the late 20s and was a first in all of North America.
Actually, the TH&B was the first North American railroad to install absolute permissive block (APB) signaling in 1911. I can’t seem to find anything regarding the use of ATC anywhere on the THB
Wild to think that a British railway implemented ATC nearly 20 years before one of the first centralized traffic control (CTC) systems in America was installed on the Pere Marquette Railway between Mt. Morris and Bridgeport, MI in 1928
Don't you mean "Pere Marquette *Railroad* "?
@@1685Violinpretty sure I meant to say “railway”, although you’re not completely wrong to call it a railroad, either. The Pere Marquette was originally INCORPORATED as a railroad in 1899, but was subsequently reincorporated as a railway in 1917 and operated as such until 1947 when they were acquired by the Chesapeake & Ohio
@@jerrysgardentractorsengine2243 I thought the two terms mean the same thing. Just that since Pere Marquette is an American railroad, it would be proper in to call it a "railroad" since that's the usual term in the American rail transport industry. I didn't know it renamed itself as a "railway".
@@1685Violinthe terms are defined the same, just with the difference between them boiling down to what region you’re talking about
United States- railroad
Canada & Britain- railway
(This is according to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, btw)
I knew about ATC but I didn't realize it had been implemented so early. GWR really was just built different.
this is a very interesting device that I had no idea about
thanks for the info man!
The GWR really created something that was very ingenious and way ahead of its time.
It’s strange to see that for once, one of these crazy ideas actually worked, and not only did it work the crazy idea was in use for decades before finally being phased out
The first rsl
Rsl?
@@kingkaza remote steam locomotive
Well it's not really a remote steam locomotive, more a first aws.
It’s the first case of Cab Signals! And in the event the train went through a danger and did not stop, or acknowledge, then in a way, it’s also the first Crew/Cab Alerter.
I learned something today, Automatic warning and control devices were use earlier than I thought, I always thought they were invented in the late 20s or early 30s.
In countries which did use electric lighting fed by turbo generators like the US and Germany the implementation of such a system was a bit more forward as it did not rely solely on batteries.
Batteries were there as a back up would the turbo generator fail, the train had to stop in a safe location anyway in such case when no back up lighting in the form of parafine lamps was on board.
Looks like the Great Western really had a way with their trains.
According to all known laws of railways, there is no way a steam train should be able to be remote controlled. The GWR, of course, remote controls their engines anyway, because the GWR doesn't care what humans think is impossible.
Fun fact, Japan also used and still does use ATC on there trains.
Implemented after a really nasty accident involving a freight train not fully pulled in to a siding and 2 different passenger trains running red signals in the 50s.
It was also Implemented on steam locomotives which they used in diminishing capacity untill 1974.
Im not 100% sure how it worked for SLs but there where coils on the ground that wipers would go over. It would signal the cab and had to be acknowledged or it would apply breaks. And it also provides over run protection automatically stopping trains if going past a red signal
If I recall Southampton docks had a cab to telephone system that worked basically the same way. The USA S100, Austerities and of course the Thomas E2's had these.
Because of the infulence of Derby upon British Railways, the LMS AWS system was adopted despite it being far less effective than ATC.
I think I remember there was a similar system (or probably the same system) to warn trains of a danger down the line, but there was a flaw with it. A train was traveling in dense fog and they couldn’t see the red signal. There was something like the system showed in the video that warned the train, but it was frozen over and the warning bell/whistle didn’t sound. They saw the stopped train when they collided with it.
Not the same system. If the GWR system failed, as for example by being covered by ice (an insulator), then the siren would sound and the brakes would be applied.
You need to make a compilation of the GWR bieng ahead of their time
This is one of the main reasons the gwr is my my favourite of the big four.
“Ordnance Storage” from Banjo-Tooie. Classic!
Tending the fire in a solid-fueled steam loco from remote would be quite an engineering challenge, at best.
Similar to how coal power plants do it? Much finer coal, and blow it to grates via pipes. Also being smaller there's likely to be less lag between adding the fuel and more heat being raised.
Worker: I've been replaced by a fucking robot!
Old man: You've been replaced by some new technology? Tell me about it.
I didnt realize atcs was invented this early! I had throught it was something first from the 1970's or so!
This is fantastic, I would not even know that steam engines were equipped with this, I was under the impression this started in the diesel/electric era
the Pennsylvania Railroad did a similar thing on the north east corridor on its steam engines as well as its gg1s
Another GWR W
Interesting that it survived to the 80s. I saw an automatic train control type system in a gwr hst power car years ago that also had some sort of cab signalling iirc. I don't know if it was this system or not, but I was told it was unique to the western region.
love your vidios man, keep up the good work but don`t burn yourself out
I never even knew that steam trains used an ATC or that they were also once remote controlled when having to stop at signals.
2:30 reminds me of the tomy plarail and trackmaster train stopper tracks
I didn’t know that even was a thing
Glad that I know now
ATC is utterly genius
So essentially the gwr was a giant size model railway
Very cool. Never heard of this before.
I love how just every steam locomotive is one big "Fuck You!" to science.
And now we know why Duck said that there was the great western way, or the wrong way. 😂
As the Fat Controler said, " There are two ways of doing things. Great Westen Way and the wrong way."
Gwr and crazy railway ideas go together like honey and ham
Really cool stuff.
This is interesting and incredible
physics: *exist*
GWR: no u
The Great Western's at it again, setting the bar and revolutionizing rail travel.
don't mess with my toot-toot
hehe toot toot! :3
thats the great western way
Wow, I didn't know you can operate a steam locomotive with a remote control.
Well done the GWR!
I wonder what Duck thinks of this...
In the future, trains can be controlled by wii controllers
And there are still train lines to this day where trains would not be stopped automatically by running over a signal saying "danger" or "halt"... That's just mind boggling.
Crazy 7 comes to mind.
damn that’s quite interesting
As a certain GREAT WESTERN Pannier would say “Now that’s the Great Western way”
please do a video on
the porters steam loco
the Japanese class d5,
the Chinese QJ 2,10,2
or just exsamples of asian trains
how do gear trains work
something on saddle bolier and side tanks (like the big water boxes) tank engines
double ended diesel trains (and electric)
eletric trains
American and European switches other then the British class 07-09
what to do if the train stalls
one talking about the different types of steam funnles and there uses,
a video on steam locomotive combination breaks (steam and vacuum brakes)
a short video on how a Armstrong turn table works
what did train flagman do
what did trains (mostly steam) do when going in tunnels, ive heard of gas masks or just useing a wet cloth, or did they bring in other engines like later on they used electric trains, or were there no bigv tunnels.
evaluation of electric trains
why are some trains wagion tops (the stream lining thing to boilers)
railway terms abd slang
one on the meaning of flag and lantern colors like green on rear engine means theres another one coming soon,
the different types of cut offs/reversers/Johnson bar
some are a big lever, some are a big valve wheel, and ive also seen some that are like rods, one exsample is train sim world 3 and im not sure where to find the other reverser
and how much water do steam trains take usually, and how much would the crew drink
So, it’s basically the stop track for TOMY Trains but in real life?
Is the background music at the end from Sid Meyer's Colonization?
It would be something to try to recreate
Who would have thought that we'd had an advance electrical engineering made in 1905
Didn't atc work in conjunction only with the distant signals?
Hey this is a video request can u list all the engine that are good for shunting in the yard cause I really wanted to know because I’m making a oc of sodor
i think the UK did something smart for once, and i am all for this if they remade it for the diesels or electrics, prob more advanced though
edit: it was to add a bit more to the comment
I guess TATMR is canon, Engines can drive themselves
are there any steam locomotives that are still equipped with ATC
I’m pretty sure Walt Disney World does something similar with their locomotives
Basically an early aws system
So where literally ahead of there
The western region was so smart
This is very, VERY similar to the german Indusi/PZB.
Yo
God's Wonderful Railway.
The Great Western did this on its own, and in the US it has been like pulling teeth to get the railroads to do it.
So its an early day dead mans switch
Lol if only they followed the NWR who did this much earlier.
this pzb type protection system is not really remote controlling a locomotive. something like a push pull train or having multiple locomotives in tandem is proper remote controlling, where the locomotive helps pull (or push) but nobody is on it.
Just another reason the great western railway was the best
it is more automatic system, (robot) than he remote control system (drone) even if i see the kinda in the title
"Remotely operating a steam locomotive is something that's very difficult to do"
Really? I've never had problems with my LGB/Aster Frank S. :P
Leave it to the Great Western Railway to innovate because they can, and make things better for all
So ptc
The GWR treating their trains as toys is absolutely embarrassing
Nothing motivates like having a reputation to uphold. When you are God's Wonderful Railway it just won't do to have the public gazing on a heap of mangled iron begging 'how could God let this happen?'
first
no matter how decrepid GB's train tracks network might've become, its aversion to grade crossings tellingly happens to make it the world's poshest 🍸💋
Gwr choo choos
E
Scrumpy
I wonder about the reliability of a switch under a filthy locomotive where the failure mode is blowing a siren under normal over-the-road conditions or choosing to not work when on a ramp due to varying contact resistance especially with only 4 volt battery of questionable condition. Wouldn’t a simple green light in the cab verification when on the ramp be more trustworthy? It still depends on the engineer to make decision. This is NOT remote control. I guess Rube Goldberg has always been around.
The siren is sounded and the brakes applied in a clean environment if the dirty contact plate failed. Because of the ramp's position, the driver could check the aspect before reaching the signal.