Hi - I have just run a couple of delightful services on the Tees Valley Line where I drive a class 31 coupled to a 2 car 101 DMU. Was this an actual practice in real life? It seems an odd and inefficient way to run a passenger service, but was quite enjoyable. The 31 isn't so sluggish in either acceleration or braking when couple to a light train. I was just curious if this ever happened in the real.
It has happened a few times. I've even seen a 47/0 hauling a two-car 101 in passenger service somewhere.
I only down shift if I'm going to resume running at a lower speed (say going from a 60mph section to a 20mph) otherwise I just throttle back to idle and then knock it into neutral or first gear once we're at a stand.
IRL you cannot sit stationary in first gear, you'll rapidly overhead the gearbox doing that.
And of course you must coast only in fourth, otherwise you overspeed the lower gears in the gearbox and can end up with a box of loose metals bits!
It might help to think of 'Lap' as being 'Hold' as the effect is to hold whatever braking force you've applied as is (not increasing or reducing). I don't know whether it's accurate to how it's driven for real or not but I tend to drive with the brake in 'Lap' (having first been fully released) and then when needing to brake I'll put it slightly into 'Apply' until I'm braking at a rate I'm happy with and return it to 'Lap' to maintain that braking performance. If I've over-egged it then I go a bit into 'Release' to ease the brakes off a bit and back into 'Lap'. I think the 101 brakes are one of the few times that you really do need to pay attention to the brake gauges to help you work out
No, you shouldn't run with the brake handle in lap or you can deplete the vacuum reserves and end up with a very poor brake. Handle should be in release until you make a brake application.
The way a former driver told me it's best to do, is make an initial application of about 15" then what you do is slowly add a bit more to it as you get closer and closer to the stopping point.
Effectively you approach your stopping mark slightly too quick then increase the brake to fine tune your stop to the mark. You then completely release the brake as you come to a stand to eliminate the jerk from stopping and then apply the brake to about 15" to hold the train.
Ordinarily you don't really need to brake any harder than about 7-8" most of the time.