Great Western Coffee Shop

I heard an item on the radio today - suggesting that First TransPennine are instructing their drivers to turn off the engines and coat downhill to save around 2 million litres of fuel a year.

Is the story real or distorted, or has 1st April moved to 3rd September?

The class 185 Desiros were fitted with a system that lowers fuel use.

They are also cutting out engines when they stop!

And they had a software update to lower usage!

Thanks for those answers ... it does make sense; I have often wondered about long layovers with idling engives, which I remember well from a long time ago.   A sleepy junction station - Maiden Newton, or Haltwhistle, or somewhere else of that ilk, with the 'branch' train burning up the gallons.

What does a t.o.c. pay for a litre of fuel these days?

Not sure how much they pay but it is red diesel, there is no tax or VAT.

Interesting video coverage of this story as well, from the BBC news site (link below.)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7596310.stm

I heard that piece. It seems to be one part of the BBC not talking to another. In the last couple of weeks You and Yours, I think it was, did a piece on Trans Pennine and coasting on the Manchester Leeds route. The reporter even travelled in the cab of the 185. He reported how all 3 engines were in use on the climb to Standedge but on the decent to Manchester the "software" shut down one engine. He also implied it was automatic and the drivers didn't have a say.

In the same piece they also interviewed a Northern manager who said that although they didn't have trains with this feature they were instructing drivers to coast on downhill stretches and up to red signals. As far as I remember he didn't say Northern drivers were shutting down engines going down hill.

I believe some car engine management systems shut down if the car is stationary for long periods.

I also think that on a train it has to be a built in feature, "software" controlled, so that the switched off carriage still gets all its auxilliary power from the other engines.

Does anyone know if it's always the same engine shut down on a unit or does the "software" have some kind of time function to even out engine use? Otherwise it's going to make planned maintenance difficult if one engine has run considerably less time than the other 2.

And what happens if the software gets corrupted?

What happens if one of the computers gets a virus/freezes/crashes?

No service!

It runs on Windows 3.1 I believe. It doesn't connect to the internet and will be run on a secure uplink/download system.

Ha! The first computer I used was Windows 3.1 in the 1990s!

I have to confess I don't remember Windows 3.1 at all.

I do recall making that big leap between Windows 3.0, which was the first Windows to feature icons, and "Windows 3.11 for Workgroups" which was the first one aimed at small "networks" of connected computers - but I honestly can't recall Windows 3.1. Was it some kind of hybrid between the two, with a GUI but not connectivity?

Even 142 engines shut-down if abandoned for a certain length of time.

IIRC, Windows 3:1 (code name Janus) appeared in early 1992. The big deal was the inclusion of True Type fonts, which paved the way for Windows based machines as viable desk top publishing tools.  Like 3:0, 3:1 used a GUI on top of DOS, but was reasonably backward compatible with earlier Windows platforms.  3:11, which appeared around a year later, was basically an extended 3:1 with enhanced networking capability.

Just to add to the confusion, 3:1 NT (1993) is a different beast.  This was the first release of the Windows NT family of server and business desktop operating systems  and is possibly the basis of the system used in some engine management applications.

Just showing off the first computer I programmed was an English Electric LEO 326.

paper tape input and mag tape (reels) storage.

It was the last machine for which one person could understand the operating system. Hence it was very rare for there to be a software systems error.

It also had incredible hardware self checking facilities on processor and data transfers and writing to tape.

It was an incredibly easy machine  to programme and more importantly debug.

A wonderful machine.