Great Western Coffee Shop

I was travelling home from Paddington on Saturday on what I think was the 21.50 departure. Now quite often these later Turbo services wait in the platform with the engines off, sometimes when the platform is announced the doors are open but the lights are off, sometimes the doors are closed still. On Saturday the engines were being started when I arrived. Now this involves the crazy high revving of said cold engines, blue acidic smoke along with the awful smell of un-burnt diesel, which gets sucked in by the air-con on the 166^s ( Also noticed how this unit had a whole in the exhaust). Anyway after much revving of engines doors were opened and on we got- still no lights. After a few min^s the lights came on- apart from the centre car. We were then informed that the driver was having technical issues, and I guessed one engine wouldn^t start as the centre car was still dead. So we ended up getting a later train to Reading, missed the bus so cost me ^10 in a taxi.

   This is not the first time this has happened. I know that shutting engines off saves fuel BUT after all the revving is it worth it- the wear and tear on cold engines can^t be good. Also it really gives a bad impression of FGW, no lights, fumes etc (with the lack of lights in the dark depths of the back of Paddington HSE would have a field day no doubt).

I may be wrong but I think the engines shut down automatically when the driver takes the key out.  So to keep them running you would need to pay a driver to sit on the set - something FGW are unlikely to do.

There also strict rules about leaving engines running at Paddington.  For example HST engines nearest to the bufferstops must be shut down and can only be started 10 minutes before departure.  I should imagine the same rules apply to turbos.

Interesting. I think the turbos shut themself down after a while, regardless. However I was unaware about that ruling, which makes good sense. Mind you, I forgot how bad some of paddington has got it really is in a state.

Just to add every now and then Westminster environmental health officers come down with a clip board to make sure the ten minutes start up is not exceeded. 

There is no actual ruling on shutting Turbo engines down at Paddington like there is with HST's, though drivers are being encouraged more and more to shut down engines if the train is stabling for any period of time wherever they are to save fuel and pollution (both air and noise).  If not, then after 15 minutes of the driver keying out, the engines will shut down (though occasionally not all of them if there is some fault with the timer or something).

The high revving of the engines is because the driver has operated the Compressor Speed-Up.  This basically uses the engines to help the compressor build up air in the cyclinders so that the systems that operate on air can function (wipers, brakes, etc. and most importantly if you're sat at Paddington, the doors).  If the engines are off, a turbo will usually lose enough air from its main air reservoir to stop the brakes from coming off after about 5-10 minutes and the doors to stop working after about 30-60 minutes, all depending on the integrity of the various pipes and reservoirs.  Speeding up the compressor builds up air about 3-5 times quicker, so if a driver has arrived at a set just before departure it is the only way of avoiding a late start.

The blue acidic smoke is usually excess oil burning off of the auxiliary pre-heater which basically keeps the set warm enough when the engines are off - this often kicks out some horrible smoke on engine start up, but on some vehicles it will smoke away almost all the while.

Lights will usually come on automatically after the engines have been running a certain amount of time and have charged up the batteries to a suitable level (unless the driver has them switched off for a reason).  There will usually be 'emergency' lighting which is roughly 1/5th the normal levels unless the train has been there several hours.

Was the middle engine without lights running, 'hornbeam'?  If it was then that's usually just a tripped generator circuit breaker which is easily fixed and quite common when engines are started after a long delay.  If it wasn't running then that is obviously a more terminal fault and could be any number of reasons.

Thank you for the info, always like to hear some of the tech stuff. I think the middle engine was running, but there wasnt any lighting at all in the carriage I was in. I wasn't aware that they have pre-heaters for the engines. However, If the set hasn't been there long all the good work of shutting the engines down sounds like it is undone by the time the reving has stoped. Also I imagine that on a set fresh from overall this all works very well, but many of these units are so well used I guess this is what causes the issue, and as I say i've had a few late dep's because of this ( not having a go just know cold weather + cold diesel engines is never a good thing0. I still think it gives a very bad first impression of FGW. But regarding the HST's I think its a good thing as at least it keeps the roof cleaner.

It's worth pointing out that the dark depths of Paddington will be looking brand spanking new and sparkly this time next year - and about time too!

Sadly there are a few drivers who instead of getting to their train in plenty of time to get everything working nicely (even a Turbo totally flat on air takes less than 10 minutes to build up enough air without using the compressor speed up), prefer to sit and gas in the mess room until the last minute. Though it is also often a case of the driver being delayed on an incoming train and having to hurry last minute to the train.