Mallard and her rivals

[Djwebb1234]

Dear All,

A couple of photo's of Mallard and her LMS rivals. All the locomotives were made by Ace Trains of London.

See them run...

http://www.youtube.com/user/djwebb1234?feature=watch


All the best

David

 

[montanan]

I have often wondered why many European locomotives don't have headlights.

 

[scroggin]

I have often wondered why many European locomotives don't have headlights.

In the UK all the "railways" were well fenced against livestock and stray humans by law. They had removable low intensity lamps for operating at night but didn't use strong headlights as they would affect night vision and so could mask the low-intensity oil lamps used in the semaphore signals and at each end of trains, increasing the danger of missing signals especially on busy tracks.
I think it was a big advantage during the war years not having bright lights to attract aircraft.

 

[montanan]

Thanks for the explanation, it makes a lot of sense. I have ridden the rails in Europe years back, and in many areas I did notice that there were no grade crossings.

Here in the states, I have on numerous occasions have almost been blinded by the headlights of oncoming trains that parallel the roads and highways.

 

[scroggin]

Thanks for the explanation, it makes a lot of sense. I have ridden the rails in Europe years back, and in many areas I did notice that there were no grade crossings.

Here in the states, I have on numerous occasions have almost been blinded by the headlights of oncoming trains that parallel the roads and highways.

I think that having low intensity marker lights rather than headlights on the trains in Europe is a thing of the past now. In the UK they had 3-5 different positions on the Locomotive where they would hang the marker lights depending on what type of train it was and where its destination was.