Similar to an old aircraft radial engine: The individual cylinders all have a committee meeting to decide if they want to actually get up and do something. If this first stage is agreed then they have another meeting to decide who should be the first to fire, and a further meeting to decide in what order the other cylinders will join in! :P

That starter motor deserves a raise

Reminds me of my neighbours old Vauxhall Viva on cold mornings back in the early 70's, the only difference being the loco eventually started!

By the time this 50 got started, winter was almost over.

No no she’s good honest governor certified for emissions by Volkswagen and everything

Rudolf Diesel is my favorite composer.

I always loved the choice of bright colours on these trains. So Seventies that no one notices how striking it looks ! Nearly as good as the Gulf colours in Le Mans racing team. But these can blow big smoke rings so are cooler. Awesome.

I imagine the exhaust smell is magnificent!

Meanwhile at Schiphol Airport Amsterdam, extremely low visibility is announced. 🤣

It's 3 am and I am watching a locomotive starting

This reminds me of my ex waking up in the morning, eventually started late afternoon.

Oh nice one. One of these mighty engines led our train from Paddington London to Plymouth Devon back in 1980. 5 yrs later it was the Intercity 125 engin. Thank you for sharing you have brought back some good memories. My dad just loved all of this. P.S have you ever witnessed one of these fireing up in a station like Paddington Absolutely 💯Amazing it was

always nice to hear a diesel clearing it's throat before singing

That 50033 has some awesome starting batteries.

I'm fairly certain that if HMS Glorious had 50033 Glorious starting up on her deck then Scharnhorst an Gneisenau would never have seen her. :P Absolutely mesmerizing watching her start up and a 50 in large logo, there are few things more beautiful. Thanks for the capture and upload.

Global warmer, right there! Exhaust cleaned up well, once the engine had reached operating temperature.

The old cliched sayings were... "modern diesel's are boring... you just switch them on and off they go... not like the romance and drama of a steam loco...." etc etc..... Meanwhile 50033 simply says "hold my beer..."

Started on World Environment Day

4:46 look at that flame!

That is a soundtrack I will never get bored of hearing! I do love the sound of the deltics, raw power with a turbo whistle, perfect!

Lovely! Reminds me of a ship I used to work on - very much the same performance with a cold start. Several times we had people call the fire brigade thinking there was a fire.

My dad if he was alive would have liked this video. He was based in a Wigan locomotive shed Springs Branch. And during his career, he trained to drive 28 differing types of locomotives. This over a 44-year career training from basics to coast-to-coast advanced locomotives.

Almost as long as it takes to get me going! Great stuff!

Beautiful. Who doesn't love a good 50 Hoover 👍

You can leave school and start a career starting this and retire when it fires up.

Glorious by name...glorious by nature. Pops more smoke rings than Gandalf.

Looking at how difficult it was to cold-start this thing - I'm surprised they didn't have an auxiliary hydronic block heater similar to how some work trucks/vans have an auxiliary diesel heater that's designed solely to heat up the block and coolant/heater core loops. (Something like an Eberspacher D12 or a bigger brother of that)

Reminds me of when I worked at a bus yard; we came in early the first day after Christmas break and started every bus in the fleet. Generated about that much smoke.

I'd say this was a Diesel loco doing an impression of a steam engine!!!

I worked at a small sawmill in N. California. The snow would pile up, and the only thing we had was a very old road grader that took 3 dedicated people to get it started. One pulling it with a large forklift inside a large shed, one in the drivers seat, and one hanging on for dear life spraying two full cans of ether into the intake. This was after two of us crawled under it with torches to thaw out the differentials and brake drums for a half hour. Once it was running good, it was left running the entire day.

One word to describe this, magnificent!

Sweeeeeeeeet! I tried to recreate this on my OO layout…but all that happened is the smoke alarms went off, the spare room looked like stars in there eyes and the wife didn’t speak to me for a week!

I’m watching this and reminiscing about my commute from Didcot to Paddington, late 1970/1990s. The transition to HST 125 era. Wow! I never thought about how difficult it could be to start diesel locomotives. I’ve also seen a King, 6024?, whose tender was so full that if another lump of coal was put on, the lot would have gone. It was going to Bristol as a stand in for another steam locomotive that had failed. Happy days.

Never would I imagine that watching a train start would have me PINNED TO THE SCREEN! Them batteries!

The wise said 'cold start diesels sre the way forward'! However to old class 52 Westerns had a preheater boiler to heat the fuel and then away they go, trouble is you have to run the preheater for a quite a while. The good old Hoovers never disappoint!! I bet those battery leads were GLOWING....

Don’t know why, but what an awesome sound that is. One would stop and sit idle outside my flat. That sound puts me to sleep. Nice video 👍

The EE 16 cylinder makes a unique sound .it’s a different sound to v12s in the 37s. Love the turbo whistle as well.

Who else can just smell that heavy damp smoke right now eh......???? How gorgeous..... 👍👍👍👍

I'm glad we have a different understanding of a "cold" startup here in Scandinavia...

Spent my youth on Plymouth Railway Station the sound of the Hoover is ingrained into my mind lovely.

I don’t know why but this is music to my ears.

Takes me back to 1975 and the Hastings DEMU's erupting out of the Bopeep tunnel into St. Leonard's Warrior Square station.

This 50 should be called "Stoner" than "Glorious" Smoke, Sound and Flames are dope!

Me gusta la fuerza y el sonido de los motores de esta maquina. 🇨🇱

6:22 .........."Bugger it, I'll walk....."

Great video, thanks to the guys/girls around the country who maintain our heritage locos, I would love to be there. When I was 16 I was offered an apprenticeship at Gateshead TMD but I turned the job down for something else, which I regret, with rose tinted spectacles on of course!!

AWESOME! I love trains. Had several model trains as a kid. Rode a few in my life. Once rode from Chicago all the way to Texas. I even rode a steam engine a couple times. I was searching for diesel and accidentally found this. A few days ago I learned the block heater on my Jeep with diesel engine had given up the ghost. It was -10 that day and I needed to run some errands. Yikes, when she started it sounded like a metal coffee can with a bunch of ball bearings getting shook up. Made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I was about to shut it off when it quieted and revved up a bit. My dad drove delivery truck for a company back in the late 40's. It had a diesel engine. They had a small auxiliary tank with half diesel, half gasoline. They had a valve to switch to the small tank if it didn't want to start up. A guy would have his hand on the valve and switch to main tank as soon as she lit up. Not sure how that affected its longevity but it might be easier on the engine than ether.

As a young lad going on holiday to Folkestone, at Ashford our train was hitched to a diesel engine. The railway guys told my dad this was the first time a diesel loco was used to pull a passenger train. Whatever, it was exciting

What a glorious video, thanks for uploading 👏🏻

What a sight to behold that is! Very exciting stuff, defiantly need to make a trip to Kidderminster one day.

Glorious was known as ‘Smokey Joe’ when she was stabled at Laira in the Network Southeast days. Some things never change.

Come back to this One of my favourite KZfaq clips❤

Love watching English Electric cold starts. Never gets old!

That engine is making some good smoke rings that’s cool.

not "started" but rather "awakened"

Nice sounding diesel. Love to hear the turbo whine up.

Cold start indeed! Somewhere there's a switch for a set of block-heaters and glow-plugs that never gets switched on.

*sees a 13 minute cold start video* “what in the hell is even that?”

I love the sound of diesel engines starting up and running at full speed ❤❤❤❤❤

How good do the class engines sound ... heavenly music to my ears🎵🎶🎵🎶👂🏽👂🏽💕💕👌

I love when the smoke creates like smoke circles

Block heaters are a wonderful thing. A few KW of block heaters would save a lot on battery, starter and engine wear. All that unburnt fuel is washing down the cylinder walls and diluting the engine oil until the engine runs cleanly.

Great to see such a Outstanding class 50 collection at the svr, These powerful engines just can't reach max power for long on there restricted speed line and just 16mls, I guess they are lucky that they can access the main line at times for a open throttle, keep up the good work guys,.

I want one! I’d be starting it up and revving it up every day ! 😁

Amazing. I always remember spotting Swiftsure with my late father as a lad. The sound is so reminiscent

This is the cool thing about KZfaq, had never considered that watching a train cold start might be interesting, dedicated camera work

Diesel's in the air, everywhere i look around. Diesel's in the air, every sight and every sound. And i don't know if i'm be foolish. Don't know if i'm wise...

I have vivid memories of the 'Hoovers' tearing through Surbiton at 80mph and accelerating up the grade towards New Malden!!!!!

My Atkinson with 220 Cummings in the '70s winter used to fill Deptford Wharf with white smoke smoke! I still got the diesel smell with me

Those turbo's whistling, better than any band alive

I really love to see those old smoke belching diesels cranking on cold days! Really enjoy watching them snort fire and blow smoke rings!

Lovely video, thanks for sharing.

A GOOD DEMONSTRATION of Exactly WHY yard masters leave locomotives idling unused, for days at a time! I was a teenager when I first saw a locomotive shooting flames 12 or 15 feet into the air!

Wonderful! Sounded just like a steam engine at times. I'm starting to see what the diesel enthusiasts see in these dirty, noisy things!

Beautiful train !

Love the smoke rings that occasionally pop out.

this happens because the compression pressure of the cylinders is a bit low, and.of course, Compression pressure may be different in the cylinders the fuel need to burn at least 550 degree celsious. the air go to the cylinders very cold and at the PMS didnt go to the 550 degree. The starter need running a lot of time to reach this temperature and begin to run. the main engine have different compression pressure in his cylinders.The clag is fuel vaporizates as spray, very flammable. this generates the flames seen in the video. a little spark may ingnite the clag. with modern engines this is minimum. If this loco may have a preheater the start would be easy. the first minutes not all the cylinders run,start only with one, later with two and more cylinders work minutes later..

Brings back memory's starting class 37 locos during my freight driving days .

I had a Mercedes 300D with 400k+ miles on it, this is basically what winter mornings sounded like.

Love these old trains they had so much Heart ❤

About my tenth time watching........ just fantastic sight and sounds! A very "gentle" start too , the guys waited a while before giving it some rack...nice job. Gregg :-)

Got to be the best cold start ever, the sound is awesome

I was an Engineer back in the 80's and went down the Amazon River. A Dehavland Beaver seaplane brought me in and out. Took a while to warm up that engine but once it was, it purred like a litten

Amazing video

I can remember collecting all 50 Class when 50006 Neptune came through. I was 13 years old now I'm 56!

Interesting that during the design of these engines they thought this was a better way of starting from cold than adding block heaters

That could be helped by intake heaters and possibly an external blower as well since the mixtures are set to have the turbo spooling and it doesn't do that until enough cylinders get the hint.

I have developed a peculiar habit of watching these videos and then rewatching them at 2x speed....

Fantastic shine on the paintwork too, '33 looks immaculate compared to the last time I saw it in the flesh. Great video.

Any wonder why during BR days we left them running all night in the winter on frost precautions.

What a glorious machine!

Some beautiful smoke rings at 3:23! Incidentally, how big are the starter batteries on one of these? A million amp hours?

1:08 - Who ever said a Diesel couldn't look and sound like a steam engine...... :) - Excellent video, and one of the best cold start vids on YT !

EE cold starts are entertaining still after seeing them almost from the start of YT.

Always nice to build up oil pressure 264 seconds without combustion. That's mechanical empathy. Edit: Also the most adorable amount of smoke rings!

1 of the best Cold starts of all time 🇬🇧🇬🇧👍👍

Nearly as much smoke as the average diesel Range Rover, when it purges...

warning to all trains passing Kiderminster, low visibility past the class 50 just waking up. great catch tho nice to watch

Brilliant ! Remember them coming into the station at Basingstoke .

Beautiful machine.