So, Saturday, my first ever trip to the Sunderland International Airshow, a great day out had by me, part of my journey was by road (my motor scooter), part by conventional rail (On British Rail Class 220), and part by light rail (Tyne and Wear Metro, British Rail Class 994), my journey to Newcastle was on Voyager 220012, and for years I've used the CrossCountry service and these trains without thinking about it, although I've always noted that the brake system inefficiently wastes it's energy by routing it to a resistor bank on the roof of each carriage, this is known as rheostatic braking which uses the motors, and in theory could be converted to regenerative braking and thus put the power back into the traction system and save diesel fuel (the trains use the Cummins QSK19 diesel engine, the same basic unit as the horrifically awful and hateful Class 185 except it's connected to an electric generator rather than a gearbox and the wheels).
This braking system has one major safety flaw with it, it can be and has been the cause of fires, 220012 was a victim of this flaw in 2008 with a fire started in the resistor bank, the train was not badly damaged, repaired, then returned to service, or I'd not have travelled on it, finding that information out, especially while I was on said train, was very disturbing, but knowing these incidents are isolated it didn't worry me too much, my return journey was on another, unidentified, member of the Voyager family (no idea if it was a 220 or 221 as I didn't check), my next journey on one of these trains is set to be October, it might be 220012 again, it might not, who knows.
Happy, and fire-free, journeys
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Trains of the British railway network and the railway network as a whole, the good and the bad
