I was a secondman at Tinsley in 1970's. I sometimes crewed on them if (for example) they had radio problems. I drove them as part of shed duties i.e. from bottom shed to top shed or onto maintainence roads. Cabs were removed for sighting purposes and as control was solely from rear the contol deck was not needed. Apart from independant battery isolators and a parking brake all running controls were from the rear cab. Slave unit was ballasted across front buffer beam with heavy steel plates. They used vhf radio callsign 'Tinrail alpha/bravo/charlie'. They were real dogs to ride on - typical 08 - hold on and try not to fracture your spine :-) Occasionally we used a class 47 with slow speed MGR equipment and a hand held radio, but they were useless. Due to constant load change they could not hold the set speed. They were though very special and added to the experimental diversity of early diesel traction. I don't have any personal photos as all mine were lost in a messy divorce in 1990, but I had pics of derailments on the hump, deltics at Tinsley and 47601 - class 56 prototype which I worked on. Happy days.
|