Problems
The class were troubled by several reliability problems, notably with the engines which were found to require excessive maintenance. A series of modifications to the pistons, piston rings and maintenance schedules, and fitting cast iron cylinder heads improved the engine reliability considerably, but a complex V16 for only 800bhp and a small class size doomed them with a contracting rail network. The layout, with a single cab positioned part-way down the body like a North American road-switcher, gave the crew poor forward visibility in both directions of travel, although this was initially tolerated as it was no worse than the visibility from a steam locomotive cab. Despite these problems the class were more successful than the contemporary Type 1 locomotives of Class 16 and the later Class 17.
Read more about this topic: British Rail Class 15
Famous quotes containing the word problems:
“Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us of being bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide.”
—Simon Blackburn (b. 1944)
“There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The three great problems of this century, the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)