The 47's
 

One of my favourite classes of loco, indeed it was one of the first Hornby loco's I ever owned, along with a 142 which came in the box with it, but that's another story.

Anyway, I was just reading the class47.co.uk pages and I can't help but feel that this class was jynxed somehow.

http://www.class47.co.uk/c47_feature_421.php

I am not sure if this level of accidents is normal for any class of loco but to me that seems to be an impressive list of accidents, many resulting in fatality and premature scrapping.

Infact several wrote themselves off before seeing a full year of service, and in the 1980's two locos wrote themselves off in two seperate accidents in two consecutive days?

If most classes of loco have such a colourful accident history does anyone know of similar pages? I found it a good read.

Good choice for one of your favourite classes Dbtc.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that the class was jinxed though. In numerical terms they were the largest class of diesels (main line locomotives), and they were used over the whole country on a huge variety of different trains. So I suppose that whenever an accident was 'waiting to happen' there was a good chance that a Brush 4 would be the unfortunate locomotive.

I don't know of a similar site to the Class 47 site, but I bought 'Traction' today. There is a good article and some previously unpublished pictures of the derailment of 50041 'Bulwark' at Paddington in 1983. Well worth a read.

There is a similar site for the 37's. I will try to remember to post the link when I get home.

do you fancy owning a 47?
 

A great choice of loco. My fav too!

i was up at the colne valley on saturday and they have a 47 in for restoration and shares are available at a fiver a go!
if you want details let me know................it was called 'Geordie'

Fabulous looking locos. Always looked as though they would cope with anything.
After the two tone green livery, I thought the Silver Jubilee ones from Stratford where the best. Though to be fair they looked good in any livery.
Paul.

That is a good point, however I just find a lot of the stories interesting, such as the two incidents in as many days and of course the infamous story of the clairvoyant who predicted 47216 would have a fatal accident and begged British Rail to renumber it in TOPS, and then shortly afterwards it crashed anyway. :D

However I suppose as you say with a large volume of these loco's out there, there is room for such "coincidences".

They do indeed have a look about them that I can't tangably explain but draws me. I think they could cope with anything, the fact many have been converted to 57's, while possibly unpopular I don't know (is zombies derogatory? :p) it is a testament to (at least in basic design) the fact that if it's not broke, don't fix it.

The link for the Class 37 site as promised:

http://www.c37lg.co.uk/

There is a thread about jinxed locomotives here.

http://www.railwayforum.net/showthre...ghlight=jinxed

I see 47 216 is featured heavily. :D

I think I may have read that thread a long time ago while Googleing.

Thats a very interesting piece there Deathbyteacup. I see that an incident that I had back in 1983 is mentioned there, though I was told that the blame lay in other quarters. It says in that report:-

47367 : NEVILLE HILL : 3.5.83 • • •
On May 3rd 1983 47367 was working a Teeside to Hunslet East Oil Terminal block tank train when it ran into the back of an ecs working to Red Bank near Neville Hill, Leeds. As a result substantial damage was caused which included 47367's No.1 end cab being destroyed when the rear mail van rode up over the buffers of the loco. 47367 was being driven by an inexperienced Thornaby driver who failed to obay subsidary signal and stop short of any obstruction. The Driver was at fault as he was signalled down the Up goods under subsidary signals, meaning "proceed at caution as far as the next subsidary signal and be prepared to stop short of any obstruction"..The Healey Mills recovery train was called to the scene and 47367 was moved to Neville Hill TMD, and later to Crewe Works for repairs. Thanks to Andre Kent of the SF47 Group.

Now then, here's my side of the story. I entered the loop with a heavy train and probably wasn't travelling along as slowly as I maybe should have done, but at the same time, something strange was happening with the train in front. It appeared to be moving towards me as I approached it. I was questioned by my boss a few days afterwards and one of the questions asked was "was the train you hit coming towards you?" to which I said I wasn't sure. All I was interested in was slamming my brakes on as hard as possible. After that I never heard another word about the incident for a good ten years. There was no inquiry and no blame was laid at my door.

One day I was talking to a Traction Inspector called Jimmy Hatch and the incident was mentioned. I told him I thought it was strange that nobody had ever come back to me about the incident. He was shocked that I'd heard nothing about it in the meantime. He told me that the signalman had taken the blame for it because apart from the fact that he shouldn't have been turning my train in on top of another train like that, he was also allowing a shunting movement to take place. The parcel train had stopped at the light at the end of the loop, detatched the loco, gone into the sidings and picked up a few more vans, gone back onto his train in the loop, and then propelled his train back behind the light. Thats when I was approaching it. I only actually hit the back of the van doing a very slow speed, but because of the weight on my loco, the van sprung up over the buffers of my engine and pranged the front where the headcode indicator is.

Read into both reports what you will. The only thing I will add to it is that if the railways had deemed me to be guilty as the first report said, I'm bloody sure that I'd have had my knuckles well and truly rapped, even considering that I was supposedly "inexperienced" (I'd been passed as a driver for 18 months at this time), but I can honestly say that I've never heard anything official about the incident since.

Here's some pics I have just found of the smash.

http://www.sf47group.co.uk/html/Gall...ill1983_1.html

http://www.sf47group.co.uk/html/Gall...l030583_a.html

http://www.sf47group.co.uk/html/Gall...l030583_b.html

http://www.sf47group.co.uk/html/Gall...l030583_c.html

http://www.sf47group.co.uk/html/Gall...l030583_d.html

Cheers. Ewan.

Looks like you were lucky to survive that Ewan, those pictures show the damage to be worse than I expected. I assume you escaped unhurt?

Funnily enough I was totally unscathed. It was the wierdest thing though. They say when incidents happen they appear to happen in slow motion, and in this case they did appear like that. I remember coming against the van, and then there was a big BANG noise, then the van lifted in the air, and then the window shattered and the whole drivers desk moved towards me. The reason why I wasn't trapped against the desk was because the drivers seat went back at the same rate, so when the action had died down, the seat was now no longer alongside the drivers window, it was now next to the door. The AWS horn started blaring so I shut that off.

I thought I was trapped in the cab and fully expected to need to be cut out of it. The guard was called Bob Williams and he'd been riding in the back cab. I think he stood outside the cab and shouted up asking if I was okay, then he disappeared for a minute before appearing in the cab next to me after coming through the engine room. It hadn't occured to me that I'd be able to leave the cab that way. :rolleyes:

Cheers. Ewan.

Holy Cow !! :eek: Someone 'up there' likes you.

I've heard drivers moan about having to wear binbags in a 47 because the weather got in, but it sounds like the structural design was sound.

It's a strange thing, vehicle collisions. In my youth I was a Retained Firefighter, and I've seen people step unscathed out mangled wrecks, whilst conversely fatalities have been pulled out of cars when both they and the car hardly had a scratch on 'em. As we know from recent Crumple Zone research, it's very much a matter of energy dissipation. The idea in modern vehicle design is to ensure the crash energy bypasses the humans and is channelled through the structure.

PS: I wonder how a 66 would fare nowadays ? ;)

I would assume very well?

....I'm not the biggest fan of the 66 though. It's too Canadian. >_>

Well despite much discussion there still haven't been cages incorporated into cab design. OK, there is a thumping great steel chassis on a 66 but it doesn't do anything to protect above solebar level - there's still only a fascia panel between the driver and the outside world.

I appreciate that the kinetic energy involved when a freight train meets a solid object is enormous, but it's worth a try deflecting it away from the traincrew. (At least when they made the 67s they used monocoque construction, which should be considerably stronger).

Do they not incorporate things like crumple zones etc. into the 66 to protect the driver? I'm quite surprised.

It wasn't just 47's. It was virtually all the locomotives that BR had in those days. One day I was on a class 37 and I was absolutely nithered. I found a hole in the floor near the second mans footwarmer and a gale of icy wind was blowing into the cab from it. I got a newspaper and crumpled up the pages into balls and stuffed them into the hole. I think I'd used virtually the whole paper before the hole was finally full and about two minutes later I was as warm as toast.

On another day I was given a DMU to work off Thornaby Depot. It wasn't one of our usual DMU's and looked to have come from a different area and there was draughts coming from just about everywhere. I went to the stores and got a huge roll of masking tape and taped over all the draughts. By the time I'd finished taping, there wasn't much left of the roll, but once again I was nice and warm for my shift.:D

Cheers. Ewan.

I was intrigued about the 47216 story so I followed this link about jinxed locos. And then I realised something which made me do a double take - the accident at Wrawby Junction where it crashed into a DMU killing one person in 1983 happened the day after I'd been through Wrawby Junction on a train to Cleethorpes visiting relatives. Moreover the unit in question was the one I'd travelled on the day before, as when it was on the news, my Dad identified the wreckage from the unit number and realised we'd just travelled on that unit! I'd totally forgotten about this until now, as I was quite young at the time it happened. :eek:

Ewan thanks for the informative drivers eye view on what happened and will update the 47367 history page on the events of that day.

Andre

SF 47 Group

very interesting...Im glad you are here to talk about it...you used up one of your 9 lives there i think...