Transmission failure of D1015
Unfortunately the Diesel Traction Group has had to withdraw D1015 from its main line operations. On Sunday 7th September 2003 a routine examination of the oil filters in D1015's A end transmission found them to be contaminated with steel and brass particles and several small rivets.
What does this mean…?
Within the filter a small magnet attracts any steel debris and holds onto it so that when an examination is carried out the engineer he can see that there is something wrong. The actual filter itself holds onto brass pieces and or dirt. Brass, being a soft metal, is normally the first thing to fail and if caught in time, as was the case with D1015, shows something is wrong before too much damage is done.
The small brass rivets found in the debris were about 5mm in length and they hold the bearings in the 'cage' (race). This has showed that several of the rollers could have moved within the cage and rather than be equally spaced around the shaft several would be grouped together and therefore offer little or no support to that shaft.
At this stage the bearing has not completely failed but was certainly shouting out its distress! If we had allowed D1015 to operate the Western Talisman charter on Sunday 14th September from Kings Cross to York we are certain we would have caused the bearing to fail completely. At best we would have run the tour on one engine, at worst we could have seized the transmission completely and caused considerably more damage which would have resulted in a more costly repair or even damaged the transmission beyond economic repair. Coupled with this the delays we would have caused to other services on the railway the only professional option was to declare D1015 a failure.
It could also be old debris from a previous failure during its BR life that has been flushed through by re-use. It would be nice to think that this was indeed the case. However, we could never take that chance.
What next…?
We have considering asking to borrow a replacement transmission from another locomotive. This would also need attention before fitting to bring it up to main line standard and would not reduce our time scales. We are already operating with a transmission courtesy of the Bury Hydraulic Group which has enabled us to prepare a spare transmission.
This spare transmission is currently stripped down, awaiting replacement bearings, and once these are purchased we will reassemble the transmission and, once tested, it will be fitted to D1015's A end. In order to fully test and prove the repaired unit we are considering sending it to Voith in Germany and our Chairman has already made arrangements to visit them in the next few weeks. Ironically this option would be far cheaper than fitting it directly and operating a test run on the main line. The transmission inside the A end at present will need to be removed, stripped completely and the damaged bearing(s) located. As is normal with this kind of thing you can almost guarantee that several other bearings or items will show up to be near life expired and will require replacement or attention. It would be easy to just replace the broken bit and start running again but you can be certain that it wouldn't be long before it was in trouble again.
The reality is the whole exercise will take around 6 to 8 months to complete. This is because of the man hours involved, the requirement for specialist equipment (it can take up to 4,000 BAR (59000lb psi) of pressure to 'blow' a bearing race off a shaft) and the time it will take to have new bearings manufactured. It will cost in the region of £15,000.00 to purchase the bearings, money we do not have readily available. Ironically it was the cost of fitting TPWS for operation on the main line saw our funds heavily depleted! Remember the bearings were made for transmissions designed and built in the late 1950's and early 1960's so the order will be unique and have to be made especially for us, that in itself raises the costs considerably.
We extend our sincere apologies to all those who have booked or intended to travel on D1015 this year, and to those who regularly support the locomotive. We fully intend to return D1015 to the main line as quickly as possible. It will be worth the wait!
Diesel Traction Group.
September 8th 2003.