Engine punking on the daily commute
A refurbished 150 Sprinter class (Photo : Peter Skuse) The other day, I started to wonder about what engines powered my commuter train. A hundred years ago they would have been steam engines, maybe a steam rail motor but more likely powered coaches with a cheeky tank engine. Nowadays they are powered carriages that divide and multiply - as one literary person once complained - like worms. If anyone knows who said this let me know. I think it's a great quote. The worms I ride on are usually Class 158 or 150s Sprinter units but sometimes we get 155 or 153 Class units, either singly in pairs. Class 150s and 158s all have a single Cummins NT355 or NTA355 water-cooled six cylinder diesel engine to each unit. Mounted on their sides under the floors of the passenger saloons, these drive the bogies through a hydraulic final drive. These put out either 325 or 400 bhp at 1800rpm. Bore and stroke is 140 x 152mm (5.5 x 6 inches!) for a capacity of 14 litres (I make it 1403...