The Lemon Fool

Courtesy of The Independent, about potentially dangerous substances detected on the Underground:

Metals from rail and break friction are highly reactive and will damage delicate lining of the lung, like welding fumes do.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 75491.html

RC

Ah so breaking news eh?

Dod

ReformedCharacter wrote:Courtesy of The Independent, about potentially dangerous substances detected on the Underground:

Metals from rail and break friction are highly reactive and will damage delicate lining of the lung, like welding fumes do.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 75491.html

What about the

!!!*** NOISE ***!!!

- particularly on some parts of the network? e.g. Northern Line north and south of Camden Town.

It is now so bad - whatever happened to 'elf and safety in this case? - I have decided (been forced?) to abandon the underground for the overground.

http://islingtontribune.com/article/tra ... rain-noise

http://westendextra.com/article/norther ... p;sq=noise

Known as 'flange squeal'
Really..

First Great Western used to have a nice line in rail break fiction. Horses on the line, usually. In leafy Ealing Broadway.

BJ

bungeejumper wrote:First Great Western used to have a nice line in rail break fiction. Horses on the line, usually. In leafy Ealing Broadway.

Not sure that beats the standard 1980s Northern Line excuse(?): "Trains delayed due to smouldering on the tracks"

On evening, in Summer 1987, I just 'knew'...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_fire

XFool wrote:On evening, in Summer 1987, I just 'knew'... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%27s_Cross_fire

Spooky coincidence! And I had my own experience of "just knowing". A week before the fire, I'd been changing trains at Kings Cross, and I was about three levels down in the lower levels of the station, where the trains had unaccountably stopped running. Probably just a routine rush-hour hitch, nothing important, but after I'd been waiting twenty minutes I got an attack of claustrophobia - not something I normally suffer from.

It didn't help that there was a low-volume alarm siren going on somewhere, and nobody had switched it off, and it was slowly doing my head in, down in the bowels of the earth. Either way, I just had to get out of that place. I remember running up the staircases in a bit of a panicky sweaty state, and out into the street, where the fresh air smelt wonderful. I walked the next couple of stops to my destination.

Seven days later..... Y'know, I can almost believe in that psychic stuff sometimes....

BJ

bungeejumper wrote:Spooky coincidence! And I had my own experience of "just knowing". A week before the fire, I'd been changing trains at Kings Cross, and I was about three levels down in the lower levels of the station, where the trains had unaccountably stopped running. Probably just a routine rush-hour hitch, nothing important, but after I'd been waiting twenty minutes I got an attack of claustrophobia - not something I normally suffer from.

It didn't help that there was a low-volume alarm siren going on somewhere, and nobody had switched it off, and it was slowly doing my head in, down in the bowels of the earth. Either way, I just had to get out of that place. I remember running up the staircases in a bit of a panicky sweaty state, and out into the street, where the fresh air smelt wonderful. I walked the next couple of stops to my destination.

Seven days later..... Y'know, I can almost believe in that psychic stuff sometimes....

Nothing "spooky" or psychic about it AFAIAC. At that time 'it' was in the air and all around, on the London underground.

I came to my conclusion one evening, after descending to the station platform in central London via a staircase covered in litter all the way down. To a platform ankle deep in litter. To hear the routine announcement of: "Train delays due to smouldering on the tracks", while surveying the station tracks strewn with litter...

I just knew and thought: "This cannot continue; therefore it won't. So something will happen, dramatic enough to stop it." It did, later that very year.

I have a list of 'experiences' on the Underground from that time. Including similar to yours.

ReformedCharacter wrote:Courtesy of The Independent, about potentially dangerous substances detected on the Underground:

Metals from rail and break friction are highly reactive and will damage delicate lining of the lung, like welding fumes do.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/h ... 75491.html

RC

Do electric underground trains have physical brake blocks/callipers or do they use regenerative braking?

At least some of them* have regenerative braking. I suspect it's a mixture


*S7 and S8 for example

AleisterCrowley wrote:At least some of them* have regenerative braking. I suspect it's a mixture


*S7 and S8 for example

Correct. Much of the tube was built with upward slopes into stations and declines away from them, to make use of gravity for speed reduction and acceleration.

TJH

Nimrod103 wrote:Do electric underground trains have physical brake blocks/callipers or do they use regenerative braking?

Disk brakes have generally replaced the old wheel clasp brakes on modern trains. They will certainly have these for emergency or heavy braking, in addition to any regenerative system they might have.

Gryff