London Banter - View Single Post - UNDERGROUND TRAIN QUESTION / 1986 PROROTYPE STOCK

Colin Rosenstiel · October 27th 04, 10:53 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Paul Corfield) wrote:

Within a "train" of underground carriages you will typically get two
units attached to each other. On some lines each unit has 4 cars - e.g.
the Victoria and Metropolitan Lines have 8 car trains while on others
you get a mix of 4 cars and 3 cars to give a 7 car train (Piccadilly
Line or Circle / Hammersmith and City)

Piccadilly and Circle trains are all 6 cars. Piccadilly trains are made up
of two 3 car units while Circle trains are three 2 car units. The Bakerloo
has the only 7 car trains at present though the Jubilee is planning to
extend its trains from 6 to 7 cars in the next year or so.

Depending on the configuration of the train some carriages have motors
(what you term an engine) and others don't have any - called trailer
cars. A bit like an articulated lorry where the front bit has the
engine and the back bit - the trailer - carries whatever is being
transported from a to be.

A further distinction used to be the number of motors per bogie but all
modern stock has two.

Now I might get shot down in flames from one of our resident drivers or
engineers here but one way to tell which is which is to look at a train
on the opposite track and see which wheels have the "shoe" attached to
pick up the electric power. If a carriage has shoes then it is a motor
car, if there are no shoes then it is a trailer car. The best lines to
see this on are the sub surface lines like the Met or District lines
because there are two tracks side by side.

That will confuse you with some stocks, most notably the Central Line
stock where every axle is motored and the 8 car trains are made up of 2
car units of three types.

--
Colin Rosenstiel