Problems
Beside the frequent expresses, it was heavily used by goods trains. As has been mentioned, there was a considerable uphill gradient in the southbound direction. Moreover, several trains may have been held in the loop before it, to allow an express to pass. By the time two or three had gone through, all accelerating hard, one could cut the smoke with a knife. The crew of a following goods train at around 10 mph (16 km/h), would have to crouch down with handkerchiefs over their faces. Meanwhile they had to hold the speed steady enough not to cause wheelslip, and not to snatch the train, causing a coupling to break, which would strand them in the fume-laden darkness.
Apart from damp rails, it was extremely hot in summer, while, in winter, long icicles would form from the roof. The first engine through in the morning would break them off (the crews staying well inside the cab), but when diesels came into use there were a number of broken windscreens. After one driver suffered serious injury the Buxton snowplough was fitted with ice clearing equipment. The heavy traffic took its toll on the tunnel lining. On one occasion a locomotive emerged with a pile of bricks on top of its firebox.
Read more about this topic: Dove Holes Tunnel
Famous quotes containing the word problems:
“Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion, or some other inward emotion than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“The mother’s and father’s attitudes toward the child correspond to the child’s own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“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)