Talk:Slam-door train

A couple of notes
I don't profess to know much if anything about trains. However:

1. I thought "Mark IV" was used exclusively for the InterCity 225 units operated on the East Coast Main line. These have been in service since around 1989.

2. The article talks as if slam door services are no longer used. However, if i understand the terminology correctly, InterCity 125 units are slam door. As far as I know, the Intercity 125 is still the workhorse of the Great Western mainline and still in heavy use on others such as the East coast Pit-yacker (talk) 00:30, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Good points!

1. Yes, you are right, "Mark IV" does refer to the InterCity 225 trains, I forgot about those. The new generation of trains cannot really be classifed as "Mark" anything as they are not BR designs.

2. Yes, again a good point, technically, the Intercity 125 coaches are 'slam door', although the term most commomnly refers to Mark I EMUs and DMUs.

I will amend the article accordingly in a moment. GaryReggae (talk) 11:33, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Construction
"the body was usually just a wooden framework covered with thin steel panelling" - on what, exactly? The last SR units built with wood-frame bodies were the initial batch of 4-SUB (units 4101-4110, entered service September 1941-March 1945), and those were all withdrawn by June 1972. Wood-frame coach bodies were not built at all after about 1951, most were withdrawn by the early 1970s, and had entirely disappeared by the time of the Clapham Junction accident, which involved EMUs built to the BR Mark 1 pattern, a deliberate design feature of which was the all-steel bodywork. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

How about simply removing the word "wooden" from the sentence?Patrick lovell (talk) 15:40, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Done that. Still think the section is rather WP:POV though. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:36, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Chronology
The article seems to imply that slam-doors are primarily a feature of multiple-unit stock. With the exception of Mark IV stock (plug doors), and the XP64 stock (folding doors as built), slam doors were pretty much universal on loco-hauled coaches. Multiple-units, other than some built for high-density urban use, tended to follow loco-hauled pattern until the 1970s. Since loco-hauled coaches had slam doors, it was natural to fit them to multiple-units too, in the interests of standardisation. Indeed, O.V. Bulleid of the Southern Railway carefully made all his coach passenger doors interchangeable, whether for his 4-SUB stock or the Atlantic Coast Express.

Also, timescales seem a bit out - "The development of a new generation of multiple units in the early 2000s enabled ..."; well, it was normal for EMUs to be designed for a 30 year life; and since the last slam-door EMUs in service on the Southern Region were 4-CIG and 4-VEP, which were built down to 1974, their natural lifetimes would have ended in the early 2000s in any case. Hardly a "new generation": the last EMUs built with slam doors were Class 312 in 1978, but sliding-door EMUs were already on the scene by then - apart from classes 303, 306, 311, 502, 503 and 506, their widespread use began with classes 313, 314, 315, 507 and 509 from 1976 onward. For DMUs there was a clear gap: the last DMUs built with slam doors were Class 123 in 1963; prototype sliding-door DMUs arrived in 1982 (Class 210), whilst production versions arrived en masse from 1985 (classes 150, etc.). --Redrose64 (talk) 21:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * do the class-43 HSTs not count as slam-door trains? That being the case, I'd have thought the statement that they went out in 2005 is false. The last slam-door HSTs were only withdrawn this year. (Unless there are any left, I believe the Crosscountry have modified their door arrangement on their HSTs) &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 19:13, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Please observe my second sentence. The HSTs are pairs of locomotives (Class 43) at each end of a rake of Mark 3 coaches. Of course these coaches are slam-door, and they weren't the last either - the last Mark 3-series coaches were built in 1986, being the three Mark 3B open brake firsts for the WCML. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 23:02, 4 June 2021 (UTC)

Scope and inaccuracies
I don't think I am particularly qualified to amend the main page but I do wonder very much about its scope. I can appreciate the difference between local and commuter trains with many doors per side and long distance trains with only two or three but this in itself is hardly important. 4-REP and 4-TC multiple units are clearly within the scope of the article (the mention of Clapham reinforces this) and there is no important difference between these and loco-hauled Mark 1 coaches.

I have no idea whether there are any Mark 1s left in service. Mark 3s most certainly are and these too have slam doors, but there is an important difference in their construction. The entire body provides structural integrity whereas Mark 1s like almost all earlier coaching stock rely on a heavy underframe to provide all the strength and stiffness with the body being relatively lightweight. Such coaches are at risk of telescoping. Although this is mentioned in the article, it really has nothing to do with slam doors, and very little to do with the number of doors.

A far more glaring omission is any mention of traditional loco-hauled stock, practically every coach buit in Britain up to the 1970s. These were slam door, most had many doors per side and almost all had lightweight bodies on heavy underframes. If an article is really needed specifically for slam door multiple units surely it should say so in the title. It would never have occurred to me that to equate slam door stock with multiple units and I would contest the statement "The term Slam-door trains or 'slammers' generally refers to diesel multiple units (DMUs) and electric multiple units (EMUs) ...". I am old enough to remember loco-hauled slam door compartment stock working out of Moorgate and King's Cross. The difference between these and contemporary EMUs, in particular AM2s working out of Fenchurch Street and AM7s out of Liverpool Street, were negiligable as I recall.

Or is the page really just meant to be about EMUs? How else would the sentence '"Slam-door" EMU and DMU trains were commonplace ever since the introduction of electrification' make sense?

Then there is 'AC units were built for the newly-electrified routes ... for the Glasgow area'. When did Glasgow ever have slam door AC EMUs? I don't recall AM4s or AM10s ever being used there. Glasgow used sliding door AM3 / AM11s. I dare say the construction of these were similar to slam door EMUs, but they most certainly were not slam door trains in any sense of the term.

As I say, I don't feel qualified to update the article, not least because I fail to understand the scope. It reads to me very much as being the original author's PoV and I might be inclined to mark it for deletion, but it does contain some useful information - and given a few good editors might even make something worthwhile with perhaps greater emphasis on the reasons for moving to sliding / automatic door stock. No mention of driver only operation, for example, something that is impossible with slam door stock. Good luck to anyone willing to take on the task. --Zipperdeedoodah (talk) 20:28, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Asbestos
This was removed from some when they were refurbished in the 1980s, but many slam-door trains were incinerated to destroy the asbestos.

How can this be? Asbestos is a fireproof material that does not burn and is released in the air by burning.Smiley.toerist (talk) 15:09, 24 November 2023 (UTC)
 * See asbestos recycling. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 13:38, 26 November 2023 (UTC)