Talk:Railway Technical Centre

Re the addition "Legacy": W--IanDavies 19:25, 4 January 2006 (UTC)ouldn't it be more true to wite this about the Research Department?

The Technical Centre generally was simply headquarters staff plus the CMEE.

Although sharing the site, the Research (where the profiled wheel was done) was independent, and reported directly to the board.

It may have aroused antipathy from the rest of the railway for a number of reasons a)it came under the CCE b) it employed graduates from the aero industry c} it used new-fangled computers d) it went back to first principles to study things that the various CME's already thought they knew, but had different ideas about e) it tested things beforehand instead of simply trying them out on the track. As a result it went against 150 years of railway procedure.

The Aero graduate I have heard. Allegedly led to some production problems HST/APT as the production units were not used the tighter specs that the aero industry boys produced.--IanDavies 13:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Well yes. I think the antipathy between the CMEE and the CCE goes back many years. (Stanier had to bang their heads together in LMS days, I think). Also it has been suggested that BREL had a "liberal approach" to reading engineering drawings. However the legacy you mention was that of the Research Department not of the Railway Technical Centre as a whole, which also contained the CMEE and the HQ staff of BRELChevin 15:05, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

I'll change it to Research Department. Do you know what the name of the buffer technology they developed for APT/HST was called. I recall a a bit of film of an APT hit what looked like a large amount of foam.--IanDavies 19:25, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

No that was due to an unfortunate incident when the POP train overshot the end of the Old Dalby rails. The loco finished up almost under the road bridge. A couple of inches to either side would have been disastrous. The lads came home with some white faces! The foam was an attempt to build a catch pit. Not very successful - the loco works spent weeks picking bits of foam out of the loco.Chevin 09:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I remember it didn't seem to be slowing down much.--IanDavies 22:34, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone has an idea how to obtain information from the archives of the Centre? The engineer Charles Osmond Frederick was working at the center for some years. Unfortunately, I could not find any hint on his biography on the web. This information is needed for the wikipedia article. --Siffler 17:05, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

C.O. Frederick was employed by British Rail Research, who were taken over by AEA Technology plc on privatisation - they may have the BRR archives. Some BR Research Reports are available from AGRRI. -- MightyWarrior 19:49, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I have read somewhere that AEA Technology also retained some of the material. They weren't very forthcoming when I tried to trace HSFV1 the vehicle which demonstated the principles vehicle design whichh led to the later trains - and modern goods wagons Chevin 09:23, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Some archive material from BR Research went to the National Railway Museum; whether this included items like biographies, I'm not sure. -- MightyWarrior 10:48, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Krayol (talk) 17:23, 10 November 2010 (UTC) Emotive, nonfactual wording? The phrases used in the RTC today section are unstructured and emotive. In particular the phrases " It has become a shadow of its former self" and "[AEA leaving] is the final nail in its coffin" is clearly an opinion and uses inappropriate language. I will update wording if no one objects, to more accurately reflect current usage of the RTC site.