I got a holiday job! I'm working as a maintenance technician for Train de Luxe Orient Express!
My first job is to replace roughly 160 swiss receptacles and matching plugs with Schuko...
As a nice extra they used standard Swiss 10A sockets for both 220V and 24V, unlabeled, side by side...
We're going to keep the Swiss grounded sockets for the 24V as you won't be able to plug 24V appliances into the Schuko sockets. We're also going to kill power to the 220V socket right behind the toilet bowl... though we'e going to leave the dead socket in place and put up a big warning sign to ensure better aim...
One car (restored in France(!)) even has BS 1363 sockets for the 24V... whatever. Since they cut huge holes for the UK sockets we'll probably have to leave them. I don't really care for making patches in the mahogony woodwork...
The train got it's own diesel powered gen set to ensure independent operation... and huge batteries operating at 24 and 48V. The cars are coupled with 63A CEE patch cords. I think each car has it's own battery charger.

Wow that's cool Ragnar!.
Congratulations.
You'll be rapt about that one.
BS 1363 on 24V???.
Never heard of that technique before.

quote
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Never heard of that technique before.
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Trumpy, you never heard of the legendary British Rail? I bet they had 24 volts! ANYTHING was possible!

"We apologise for the low voltage. This is due to a points failure at Surbiton."

"Due to inflation, coffee is now £1.25 a slice."

"God made things upon the earth to crawl,
And 'British Rail' employ them all."
-graffiti I saw once at Paddington.

"The trains are late because it's the wrong sort of snow on the lines."
-official spokesperson.

Ragnar,
Why do you suppose they fitted Brit units and not French ones?

Alan

Sounds like a good project Ragnar. Any chance of keeping us updated with some pictures?

Because the two-pin plugs you'd need to fit French outlets would also fit into the 220V Shucko sockets?

Alan,
You forgot "The wrong sort of leaves on the track."

Texas Ranger,
why dont you remove the BS 1363 outlets and put a blank plate over them?

If you ask Pauluk he could most probably dispatch them to you,

there is a company over here in England that will custom pint the blanking cover for you, (so you can match the woodwork).

i think it would look better than leaving the outlets in place.

britspark

As far as that's concerned I'm at a complete loss. Still i think they wanted to use an incompatible system for the LV wiring. The cars have three different kinds of plugs on the LV lighting... Swiss grounded, Swiss ungrounded (ie Euro plug *shudder*) and BS 1363...

I'll try to take lots of pics.

[quote]why dont you remove the BS 1363 outlets and put a blank plate over them?[quote]

They're dark brown outlets hidden below the tables, so I think I'll leave them in place as long as none of them break. My boss already thought of swapping them with grounded Swiss ones, but he wasn't sure himself. I think it'll be a lot of work for not much of a result.

Wouldn't you be better using non-fused BS546 for the LV ?

The BS1363 plugs' fuses could blow and be difficult to replace as they're not easy to replace outside the UK/Ireland.

There are several non-standard outlets available to fit BS boxes too which might be useful.

The "cruisers" you hire to pleasure boat on the river shannon and the inland waterways here in Ireland use BS546 5Amp plugs and sockets for their DC power outlets. Seems to work quite nicely.

Why would anyone fit a socket behind the toilet!?

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As for Irish Rail's excuses:

"Ladies and gentlemen you may have noticed that our train has been stopped for the last 22 mins. This is for technical reasons."

"... due to a signalling failure there will be no tea or coffee served on board this train"

or the classic:
"... shhhhh kshhhh kssss kreeshh – technical difficulties - kschhh"

everyone shrugs and looks at eachother and goes back to typing, playing with their mobiles or reading the newspaper.

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 06-03-2005).]

That's definitely something we'll have to take into consideration. I doubt the 13A fuses will likely blow from the low-Wattage bulbs unless there's a short. And since according to my knowledge the circuits are designed for unfused plugs I guess my bosses advice would be: "Take out the fuse and bypass it!"
Actually I have forgotten to tell you about another nice detail. The BS 1363 face plates alsom seem to contain a 6.3mm headphone jack. More info after I had a closer look.


Don't ask me... I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it.

That sounds pretty much like Vienna Tramway/Bus service... they got speakers at all stops and most of them don't work.
If they do wok you'll most likely get to hear: "Dear passengers. Due to an operation obstruction, line xx happens to have irregular train/bus intervals that result to longer waiting. Please be sympathetic!"
Or the best one: "Due to the traffic conditions on nearly all tramway and bus lines longer waiting imes occur."
Then you know enough...

Ragnar, those fuses will blow eventually, whatever the load, so I'd get a stock in. If you bypass the fuses and there's a fire, guess whose a*se gets kicked? Clue: Not your boss!

But happy news from British Rail!
The Station Announcer at Victoria got married today. Her dress was white organdie with a lovely lace bodice, and her train was twenty five minutes late.

Alan

Hmmm... I guess the fuse thing is grey area. LV stuff (below 60VAC and 120VDC) is treated pretty lax in our codes. BS 1363 plugs are in no way recognized or listed here. So if both the light fixture itself and the circuit are designed to work with unfused plugs I doubt bypassing the fuse would be a violation. Maybe we should instead replace all of the with some kind of solid dummy to simply turn them into unfused plugs instead of doing shoddy looking makeshift repairs. Or replace the with Swiss ones... we'll see.