Sulzer on British Railways (Part 1)
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DPW-DG70a Aus der Dieselgeschichten-Sammlung der Dieselpensionierten Winterthur Sulzer on British Railways (Part 1) written by Chris Brooks in 2013 In 1954, B.R. had about 6,000 steam locomotives falling apart at the rivets so embarked on a programme to replace these with 4 classes of main-line locomotives together with some smaller classes of shunting locomotives. Various manufacturers put forward different types of prototypes and very quickly Sulzer won orders for Types 2, 3, and 4 power units: these being 6, 8 and 12 cylinder LDA28 engines respectively. Vickers at Barrow in Furness had geared up in the early 50s to produce submarine engines in large quantities in anticipation of an escalation of the war in Korea. This never happened but Vickers had a large works ready to make LDA size engines in great quantity with very quick deliveries, a situation that was recognised by certain people on BR and Sulzers 'father' of Traction-Tom Schur who was head of Dept. 8 in Switzerland where various sizes of LDA engine were already being built for other railway companies. Sulzer (London) took a license from Winterthur and apart from the first 10 engines built in Switzerland, Vickers built 1,500 engines over a period of 5 years-an engine every working day. This Sulzer order represents the largest single customer contract in the history of Sulzer and will probably stand for all time, a fact stated by Peter Sulzer at the funeral of Tom Schur. I joined Sulzer London in 1966 when the main build programme was nearly complete and even though I was taken on as a Design Liaison Engineer looking after the flow of information and drawings from Winterthur to Barrow, the duties changed very quickly into those supporting development and service. At this juncture, I would mention that every industry I've been involved with-automotive, railway, aeronautical and marine, the equipment is never perfect from the word go; hence BR engineers frequently accused us of using them as mobile test beds for development purposes. The railway industry is probably the most arduous duty for any engine because of its cyclic nature. The drivers had come from a steam world where the regulator was either open or closed depending on the speed and gradient. I always wondered as a boy what those boards at the side of the track meant. DPW-DG70a 1 01.05.2018 When the diesels came along, nothing changed. The Power handles on the control desk were marked 'off', 'on' and 'max', the drivers once under way only moved the handle between 'on' and 'max' depending on the speed they wished to maintain, they never used intermediate positions. The engine governor was even marked 'Stellung Regler', the German for regulator position! Winterthur designed and fitted an electronic governor on D1880, a Type 4 locomotive with a 12LDA28C engine which had both Power and Load control facilities. We made a test run from London to Leeds and back in both modes with engine speed recording equipment fitted to register the difference. On the outward run we asked the driver to use his usual procedure in power control, but return on load control, as if on cruise control on a modern road vehicle. He had to persuaded to leave the handle alone except when slowing for signals etc. Back in London he thanked us but swore he would never use this mode again because it made him nervous! The readings from the recorder were very different, the outward trace looked like a saw tooth, whereas the return journey trace was a lot smoother with far less speed changes and therefore less load and thermal cycles on the engine. This cycling imposed huge stresses on all the engine components and led to a process of continual development to increase the time between service intervals and to extend the reliability of the overall power unit. More of this later in the story. The Sulzer operation in the London office was relatively small in relation to the vast numbers of locomotives coming into service as the main task was to be the communication channel between the specialists in Winterthur and the builders and operators in the UK. At the same time, we had a number of Winterthur engineers working in the London office who acted as on-the-spot liaison staff between Sulzer and BR at a senior level However, it was always envisaged that the London staff would be expected control the spares and service issues going forward and hence the UK engineers would have to be on a steep learning curve to deal with all the technical issues first hand. The spares operation will be covered later in the story. In the early years we had about 40 erectors/service personnel at all the engine and locomotive building works such as Vickers Barrow, BR Crewe and Derby, Brush, Beyer Peacock, Darlington and Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon. Service engineers were posted at every BR maintenance depot in the UK running Sulzer engined locomotives; they all reported to the London office and regular meetings were held to up- date them with service and development issues. The work at Vickers covered the construction, assembly and testing of the complete LDA28 power unit, i.e. with its appropriate generator from Brush, GEC, or Crompton Parkinson, depending on the type of locomotive. Whilst Vickers fabricated the bed plates and cylinder blocks, they also made many of the running gear components and ancillary items. This left a great number of parts that came from specialist suppliers, many of whom were well known in British industry. The list would be too large to include here but mention must be made of De Havilland (turbochargers), Specialloyd (pistons), Glacier (bearings), DPW-DG70a 2 01.05.2018 Vickers Hydraulics (governors), Holset (vibration dampers), Mitchell Shackleton (crankshafts), Bryce Berger, CAV, Wilson and Kyle (fuel injection pumps), Serck (radiators and coolers) and Sheepbridge Stokes (cylinder liners). In later years, strong relationships with these and other companies were forged through ongoing developments in so many technological fields. At the same time, Winterthur were solidly behind us with their specialist engineers and scientists conducting technical investigations on materials and processes. Examples of this will be covered later under service problems. Just to enlarge on this aspect, the 12-cylinder LDA double bank engine at it's highest C rating was subject to unacceptable stresses and vibrations in the early years mainly due to the cyclic nature of the service as mentioned above, but partly because of faulty welding techniques at Vickers. It should be remembered that the LDA28 was a late 1930s design but it won large orders based on its high power/weight ratio due to the double bank design, it met the BR delivery requirements and came from a famous company in the railway industry. In-depth technical expertise on diesel traction was thin on the ground within BR, they were very largely steam engineers and therefore the design details and service experience of diesels was all new to them. At the same time in 1954, welding and machining techniques were relatively basic compared to what came along-rapidly, during the course of the initial contract and the very long service period of over 40 years! Knowledge of deep penetration welding was available but its application to the fabrication of bed plates and cylinder blocks left a lot to be desired. Submerged arc welding and computer controlled machines were also unknown at that time. Although Vickers welding techniques and quality can be criticised, they were certainly in the forefront in other areas. Having built many ships, both merchant, naval and submarines they were absolute experts at gearbox manufacture. The double bank 12LDA was two 6-cylinder engines side by side in integral crankcases and cylinder blocks. The two crankshafts transmitted the power by way of gears known as synchronising gears. These connected the two crankshafts to a third gear driving the generator. Vickers had special machinery (MAAG) for hobbing and grinding these gears and were made in matched sets of three. BR were deeply suspicious of the integrity of the synchronising gears and we were asked to hold 30 sets in stock as spares against future failures. None of these gears were ever needed and eventually BR paid for them at cost price! The overall size of the contract meant that Vickers had to design and built special machines and jigs to build these engines within the promised delivery times. One of these was the boring machine for the 12LDA crankcases and was designed to ensure that all the bearing saddles on both banks were in line with each other. Winterthur conducted extensive strain gauge investigations on the test bed and introduced the large rebalancing and derating programme to deal with the problem of structural DPW-DG70a 3 01.05.2018 failures in the crankcases and cylinder blocks. This involved returning every 12LDA28C engine to Barrow for some welding modifications and rephasing and balancing of the crankshafts. At the same time, the engines were derated from 2750 hp. at 800 rpm. to 2580 hp. at 750 rpm. This considerably improved the reliability of the engines but further stress relieving machining work was necessary on the cylinder blocks and crankcases, this was done at the main works Crewe and Derby. As mentioned above, driving practices didn't change nor did some of the maintenance procedures, consequently Sulzer were kept very busy investigating problems and searching for solutions. I will list a few of these together with the modifications introduced and it may be realised that the LDA28 engine was on a continuous development programme.