Tyseley Traction Engineer
Alan Lowe was the Traction Engineer at Tyseley depot from 1982 to 1986. Below are some of his recollections of his time at the depot.
Gangways
I was just browsing through Wikipedia and came across a reference to DMUs that caused me to look up the Class 116. That in turn led to your website's piece on the units. I was surprised to see Carlisle given as the location where the Tyseley-allocated sets were gangwayed since Tyseley Traction Maintenance Depot did the work, using its small team of coach fitting and trimming staff (led by Martin Devreede). The gangways were indeed brought in from redundant stock but the conversions were done at Tyseley. They were part of a plan introduced by Brian Johnson, then the Provincial Railways manager covering the West Midlands, aimed at developing and dealing with an upsurge in passenger demand on the Cross-City Line and elsewhere to the south of Birmingham.
DMU Design
This was a period when Tyseley Depot, for long a major depot for the old GWR, was within the London Midland Region of British Rail and was something of a dumping ground for old DMUs. It was also a period when there was a great deal of engineering argument within British Rail on the future of DMUs. There was a strand in favour of the use of bus engineering, combined with the ground breaking research coming out of Derby from Alan Wickens's team on the exact nature of wheel-rail interactions, producing the capability of safe, fast curving by single wheelsets and bogies.
The other major strand was that of placing a single diesel engine above solebar within DMUs, doing away with below-solebar mounted engines and effectively turning a DMU set into a push-pull locomotive-powered train.
The existing design of DMU was deprecated, as the horizontal AEC and Leyland engines principally used were prone to frequent failures, their electrical supply was from wheelset belt-driven DC generators and this combination regularly led to units failing in service and being unable to restart due to flat batteries, whilst passengers were left in darkness.
Maintenance
DMUs inside the depot on 14/2/82. Brian Daniels.
As importantly but without HQ-based engineering managers being aware, the constant wish to reduce maintenance costs had led to the HQ-written maintenance schedule periods being extended and the content reduced, such that DMUs were facing longer periods between oil changes.
All major repairs and overhauls of DMUs and their components were done at BREL main works. DMU availability and reliability were both falling and this added to the view that the existing design format should be abandoned for new units.
Fortunately, Brian Johnson led this part of the business at a time when the BRB had given those business units some freedom to make decisions not governed by the regional engineering departments, always bastions of control in the industry. In addition, the DMU Engineering Manager for the LMR at Derby had looked at European experience and wished to challenge the idea that the underfloor engine/gearbox design should be abandoned.
These factors came together at Tyseley TMD, with its large fleet of DMUs and possibly no future, since there were noises about closing the ex GWR depot and running it any new fleet from Etches Park, coincidentally Derby's DMU depot.
Fuel Dilution
What happened next was that there was a lot of walking-around, questioning and challenging at Tyseley, which had an excellent supervisory team and experienced fitters and electricians. The principal cause of engine failures in service was found to be fuel dilution, where diesel fuel finds its way into the oil system, causing oil pressure to fall and for engines to cut out to protect against the consequences. The AEC and Leyland engines were designed for use vertically in the rear of buses, whereas BR was using them horizontally, making them more vulnerable to fuel dilution but not horrifically so. What had exaggerated the problem appeared to be that Derby HQ had doubled the maintenance period for oil changes, purely to save money.
Without discussion with HQ, Tyseley switched back to the previous oil change period. Reliability improved immediately but not drastically as fuel dilution failures still occurred. Meanwhile, fuel system maintenance was investigated. As the new Traction Engineer at Tyseley, and knowing little about diesel engines, I walked into the diesel injector maintenance area at the depot, where one person was overhauling injectors. The maintenance person was an employee who had been put on this permanent light duty years earlier. Testing some of the overhauled injectors I was surprised to see neat diesel fuel squirting out of their nozzles rather than the expected mist of atomised fuel.
This was the predominant cause of the fuel dilution failures. Tyseley fitters had been refitting supposedly overhauled injectors that had in fact not been maintained at all. When other injectors were checked on engines that had been overhauled at BREL works, similar issues were found.
Tyseley's small supplies department, accustomed to sourcing in-house and 'by the book', was told to find an ISO certified external CAV Lucas injector maintainer, one that specialised in that activity and that had a solid track record, preferably with the local bus company. After visits and meetings to assure themselves, Tyseley sent all injectors there and had a campaign change. Engine reliability went through the roof and with it availability began to increase.
Gearboxes
A similar although lesser effect was seen in the gearboxes, supplied originally by SCG but now maintained at BREL. Investigations on failures seemed to show that the belts on these epicyclic gearboxes were not working effectively. Tyseley fitters dismantled a 'newly overhauled' gearbox and found that these belts had been set up so that they would slip and fail soon after use. A visit to the BREL works inspired no confidence that this would change as there was an air of 'you have to use us and we can do what we want' in its management.
Tyseley supplies staff discovered a maintenance company that overhauled gearboxes for several major bus companies with similar standards to the injector company and all gearboxes were redirected there.
Tyseley's Traction Engineer kept Brian Johnson informed on the actions taken and on the operational improvement results.
Maintenance Improvements
With much better reliability and with increasing demand from Brian Johnson for more rail services and with longer trains, the focus switched to availability. The maintenance schedules for DMUs were written very much akin to those for locomotives. That is, there was a first inspection that only took a couple of hours, then one that took about six hours and after that heavier pieces of inspection that tool a day or more, up to a couple of weeks.
I noted that, on the Southern Region, their electric multiple units had 'balanced examinations'. This meant that the total maintenance content over several months was allocated to one of several examinations/inspections, and that these examinations were done in a fixed sequence such that, over those several months, all the necessary maintenance was done, including that which required doing more than once (such as an oil change every three weeks, for example). The elegance of this methodology, though, was that because of the way in which each task was allocated to each examination, the time taken for each examination was only around six hours. That is, any one of these examinations could be done overnight, when there was no requirement for that DMU for a rail service. This was the opposite of the DMU/locomotive system, which took a unit out of service for anything other than the initial inspection. I therefore took an experienced and innovative maintenance supervisor out of his normal job and asked him, working with the entire supervisory team, to produce a balanced examination system for Tyseley DMUs, together with a control system (no computers then) that would advise staff when any work was needed and keep records of it.
That work took several months. When it was launched, with a control system board in the Tyseley supervisors' office and a small board in every DMU cab, advising when the next examination was due and which one it was, the availability of the Tyseley fleet went from 60% into the eighties.
New rail services were added, the gangway modifications of which you wrote were authorised and Tyseley also installed a Derby HQ modification that put engine-driven alternators in pace of the axle-driven generators.
Engine Location
There was a hope that perhaps these improvements would result in the 'reward' of the new DMUs when they emerged. What happened was more interesting. Graham Morphet's* case for underfloor-powered DMUs based on the Cummins/Voith powertrain used in Europe became greatly strengthened, especially in the face of the fiasco of the railbuses and the costs of the on-board diesel locomotive promoted by their factions. The Class 150 and its successors came in and have spread to inter-city services too. Tyseley, far from seeing new DMU units, instead had a few years where new units went to other depots and some of their rejected old DMUs came to Tyseley. When the Cross-City Line needed upgrading, EMUs were needed rather than DMUs.
* Graham Morphet was the LMR DMU Maintenance Engineer based out of Nelson Street, Derby and without his tacit acquiescence Tyseley would have been blocked by LMR Chief Mechanical and Electrical Engineer’s edict from doing what it did. Those were the early days when business units were being developed and their powers explored and a time when the saying ‘authority is not given; it is taken’ could be adopted by anyone bold enough. The norm, of course, was to keep your head beneath the parapet. Going outside BREL for any component or repair was standing on that parapet with a target painted on one’s chest.
At that time, it was difficult to imagine that the under-car diesel/hydraulic system would actually triumph, given where BR was placing its experimental cash. But that is what happened, not only in local DMUs but also in replacing loco-hauled cross-country services. Seeing Cummins/Voith systems and tilting sets seemed like a vindication in later years. Of course I did have some of the earliest Cummins engines on BR to commission and maintain, as that was one of my responsibilities on the APT-P trains, on which they provided emergency auxiliary power. More stories there but not DMUs.
Overhauls
Just to emphasise that being radical didn’t mean a total success story, I can add that Tyseley also tried to overhaul an AEC engine and had a good look at the SCG gearbox. The overhauled engine seized and the gearbox was too complex without a full set of manuals, drawings and tools, hence back to BREL for engines (but with some checks when they were delivered) and to the external repair company with the gearboxes. The operational reality was that the gearboxes had a much easier life on the railways than they ever had in the stop-start environment of city buses, so all that was required was a well maintained gearbox in the first place; BREL just wasn’t doing that.
Bubble Cars
Geoff Dowling
Although used on the Stourbridge Town run (where one famously overran the buffer stops and dropped its leading bogie onto the adjacent high street about twenty feet below), they were seen as a bit of a waste of time until the business sector got hold of them. They were heavily used to lengthen trains in the days before we could get the Class 116 availability up and used in the same role again to meet some of the increasing demand on the Cross-City line.
Blue Asbestos
Of course the presence of blue asbestos in the walls and roof spaces on these old DMUs was a constant worry for maintenance staff and the public risk. Since the inner walls of DMUs were basically hardboard, they were extremely vulnerable to vandalism and in accidents. Both led to emergency remedial work and Tyseley maintained a team of fitters with additional training and responsibilities, under the Traction Engineer, for asbestos response throughout the area. This took us as far out as Nuneaton, but that’s a story for another day. Tyseley was also one of the first depots to move to road-rail vehicles for breakdown/re-railing, getting its vehicle when the breakdown train was withdrawn from Saltley Depot (also under me). Those breakdowns were something that most people never got to see or record and seemed inevitably to result in the Traction Engineer being called out by Regional Control at 2 a.m.
Depot Visitors
All the photos at the depot on the website also illustrate a major problem that always existed at Tyseley; that is, the number of railway enthusiasts always strolling onto the depot! Many came straight past my office and walked straight into the depot maintenance area, completely oblivious to the danger involved. Many also came in from the old steam depot next door. Unfortunately, its owners adopted an air of the BR depot being some sort of skills, tools and parts resource for their preservation activities and visitors used its proximity to gain access to the depot buildings and to walk around its yards to the north and south. The layout with the ‘pit’ at the top, then the steam museum, then the ‘factory’, meant that we had non-BR people wandering regularly across the running lines that were used to move units and locos between pit, factory and main line. Unfortunately, number plates and control knobs and levers were stolen from locomotives. I used to make a point of escorting around the factory those few who had the courtesy of asking at the office; they were the good guys. Thankfully at that time, it was the Divisional Manager’s Operations staff who had the overall responsibility for the safety of the railway outside the depot buildings.
Long and Varied Career
I was Traction Engineer, Tyseley from 1982 to 1986. This gave me total autonomy as far as traction was concerned at what happened at Saltley and Tyseley, with an area responsibility that covered everything in the Birmingham Area of the Area Mechanical and Electrical Engineer. The only time I was away from Tyseley as a base during that time was either during holidays or during a period of a couple of weeks when I covered the duties of the Area Overhead Line Engineer (OHL, fixed equipment and plant), based at Soho, Birmingham. One of my practices as a young engineering manager was to ‘hang on’ after the day and afternoon shifts to meet up with night shift supervisors and walk the depot with them. I also used to come back to see the night shift an hour or two after it had started and stay until three or four a.m. By doing this, not only was it possible to build up good working relationships but it also ensured that the team did not see itself as isolated from a ‘day shift boss’ and allowed me to listen, learn and communicate a vision of where I saw the depot going (the objective was to prove the depot measurably the best for DMUs on BR, with the highest reliability and availability at the cheapest cost; the secondary internal objective was to undo the foolish old GW/LMS rivalries and make Tyseley the ‘uncloseable depot’, with others put to the sword before it as new units came in).
I am not and never was a train enthusiast, despite having been a commissioning team engineer for APT, a continuous welded rail manager for the civil engineers, a depot manager at Tyseley and Longsight and the BRB’s Light Rail Manager, developing BRB policy for its interactions and transfers with the light railways returning in the UK. In later years I moved back and managed one of the privatised track renewals companies. I am now retired, having acquired enough engineering miles and letters after the name!
In fact on the enthusiast point, I can say that when I had my interview for joining BR as a graduate engineer in 1976, the seemingly elderly person interviewing me asked what I thought of steam trains. I replied that they had been great in their day but that I wished to join an organisation that was looking to the future, that steam had no part in that and I wasn’t interested in them at all. When I left the interview room, one of the other waiting candidates asked me how it had gone. When I replied, ‘Not bad’, he said to me in an awed voice, ‘You know who that was, don’t you? That was R H N Hardy, author of ‘Steam in the Blood’.’ My heart sank….but I got the job on BR’s graduate engineer training scheme and R H N Hardy was a wonderful mentor during my career, helping that headstrong young man.