Great Western Coffee Shop

There have been a few cases where Turbo's have experienced transmission related problems recently.

On one occasion I noticed a train pull into Reading, shut down engines quickly (Sunday). When it came to do the return journey the driver was unable to draw power (having shut down/started the engines about 3 times). Fortunately a replacement was found from the depot.

Does the reverser have to be in neutral in the cab before shutting down and would there be any advantage in selecting reverse before shutting down so the transmission was "ready to go" if you like?

Another thing I have noticed is engines tend to rev at maximum for about 2 minutes after start up - is this normal/automatic?

On the units I drive, you can shut down engines with the direction controller in any position, though it is generally done in Neutral or Off.
The 2 minutes of revving is probably the compressor speed up being used to build up enough air to get a brake release( amongst other things).

The reverser has four positions, 'reverse', 'neutral', 'forward' and 'off' in that order, so you can't reverse the transmission before you switch the desk off without then going through neutral and forward to get to the 'off' position and momentarily start to reverse it again if that makes sense?  I must admit, gearboxes don't seem any more problematical than usual at the moment, though there are a heck of a lot of sets running around underpowered, which is thought to be down to problems with turbochargers.

I have noticed some strange noises coming from the engines recently too. Akin to a car engine running without decent oil pressure.

The turbos are around 20 years old now. The engines have been replaced once in that lifetime I believe?

all engines would be replaced during the exam cycle at a given mileage unless they go pop before

Thanks for that, dog box: should I add that 'technical term' to our acronyms page?  ;D