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:
“Our young people are diseased with the theological problems of original sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,—never darkened across any man’s road, who did not go out of his way to seek them. These are the soul’s mumps, and measles, and whooping- coughs, and those who have not caught them cannot describe their health or prescribe a cure. A simple mind will not know these enemies.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We are all adult learners. Most of us have learned a good deal more out of school than in it. We have learned from our families, our work, our friends. We have learned from problems resolved and tasks achieved but also from mistakes confronted and illusions unmasked. . . . Some of what we have learned is trivial: some has changed our lives forever.”
—Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)
“I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!”
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)