Heating Vans

roundymac

Why did CIE have to buy BR MK1 heating vans for the Cravens. I presume these vans were bought second hand. Did CIE not have any themselves, were the "Dundalk" Vans not suitable? What about the four wheel vans, were they the same, not suitable.

Cookie_Monster

4 wheels and dutch vans were speed limited much lower due to their lack of stability at speed IIRC.
With the craven order I would assume that the number of coaches outgrew the capacity of the current van stock and so the mk1 brake were acquired. These doubled as heating and luggage and being longer and heavier were most suited to higher speeds too.

CIE

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

4 wheels and dutch vans were speed limited much lower due to their lack of stability at speed IIRC.
With the craven order I would assume that the number of coaches outgrew the capacity of the current van stock and so the mk1 brake were acquired. These doubled as heating and luggage and being longer and heavier were most suited to higher speeds too.

Always wondered about why they weren't also set up to double as cab cars.

Oscar Bravo

Some of them van's were great at heating a train in the good old days. 3187 is still in use,on the Weedspayer.

Rud

Indeed it is and here it is in Athy last Tuesday morning

end of the road

forgive my ignorance, but why would the weedsprayer need a heating van? it obviously caries staff on board?

Cookie_Monster

no longer used as a heating van, it's now a control car which monitors the track as the train progresses, this is what the cctv is for that you can see on the left

highdef

Wow, 60 years old and still in mainline use!!! they are well built carriages

corktina

some still in use on the main line in the UK, on special trains usually and loads of Mk1s preserved

Theres several heating vans in the UK now, two at the Great Central and one in Scotland I believe.

flyingsnail

corktina wrote: »

some still in use on the main line in the UK, on special trains usually and loads of Mk1s preserved

Theres several heating vans in the UK now, two at the Great Central and one in Scotland I believe.

The RPSI still has two in Ireland. 3185 in service and 3173 undergoing overhaul.

The Mk1 vans were intended as a stopgap measure - CIÉ didn't intend for them to remain in service as long as they did. They were bought second hand in the early 1970s. This post on IRN should be useful.

Run_to_da_hills

Rud wrote: »

Indeed it is and here it is in Athy last Tuesday morning

What are the vulger looking CCTV cams doing on the back?

I thought they would have something a bit more discrete than that.

Cookie_Monster

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

What are the vulger looking CCTV cams doing on the back?

me, just above wrote:

it's now a control car which monitors the track as the train progresses, this is what the cctv is for that you can see on the left

I thought they would have something a bit more discrete than that.

why would they need to be discreet? it's built to be functional, not look pretty

dowlingm

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

why would they need to be discreet? it's built to be functional, not look pretty

If there was a nice fairing built for it the usual suspects would be blathering about waste of tax money at a time when hospitals are closing or summat.