Bizarre cable fault cure:
You can blame my insomnia for this recollection from when I’d just come out of my time and had been set loose in the real world. (It was triggered by the thread about AM2 fault finding.)
01:30 the phone rings “siding here, there’s a damaged cable that’s sparking next to the track.”
I was more grumpy than usual as the railway sidings fell under a different department but this was urgent. “OK get a loco to pick me up”
Sure enough there was a nice firework display when we got there.
Turn the supply off is the logical answer, it helps if you know where it’s fed from. In one of the cables less explosive moments I got a voltage to earth of +300V so that narrowed it down to the 550V system and three possible switchrooms. So I’ve narrowed it down to possibly 100 circuits.
Don the trusty 11kV Marigolds and drag the cable on to the nearest rail. Jump on the loco and drive it over the cable, it stopped sparking ]
We never did find out what the cable was feeding, no one reported power off anywhere?
05:22 and I’m still wide awake!
You can blame my insomnia for this recollection from when I’d just come out of my time and had been set loose in the real world. (It was triggered by the thread about AM2 fault finding.)
01:30 the phone rings “siding here, there’s a damaged cable that’s sparking next to the track.”
I was more grumpy than usual as the railway sidings fell under a different department but this was urgent. “OK get a loco to pick me up”
Sure enough there was a nice firework display when we got there.
Turn the supply off is the logical answer, it helps if you know where it’s fed from. In one of the cables less explosive moments I got a voltage to earth of +300V so that narrowed it down to the 550V system and three possible switchrooms. So I’ve narrowed it down to possibly 100 circuits.
Don the trusty 11kV Marigolds and drag the cable on to the nearest rail. Jump on the loco and drive it over the cable, it stopped sparking ]
We never did find out what the cable was feeding, no one reported power off anywhere?
05:22 and I’m still wide awake!
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