Royal Duchy 2015

Bluntly I just don't want 35018 to follow in the footsteps of Tangmere if she is maintained by the same people. I hope that doesn't sound too crazy.

I want these tours to run just as much anybody else without major incident. Although, I hope that should the royal Duchy tours run next year that 1 or 2 of the locos are Great Western locos (4079,6023,6024) a brittania (70000,70013) , Braunton

 

Looking forward to no.9's run this weekend.

 

What i think Mike is getting to is that in tangmeres case there is no back up engine so if she needed attension, being as lets face it a BB is a very complicated beast, and harder to maintain,than say a std 5, i am sure that there are steam engines out there running with known defects that do not pose any problem , until some scheduled down time when they can be done, Actually i thing if 35018 was to be maintained by the same group, it would improve both engines state of repair because if 35018 was ok, and Tangmere needed work, then Tangmere could be stopped for that work to be done, in many ways had 73096 been available, that would have substituted for Tangmere on several occasions, because look how often Tangmere has been out and about in the last few years, it does not give much time for anything but routine maintenance.

 

Certainly,73096 was a wonderfully reliable performer on the late lamented Daylight Railtours from the MHR. Those trips very rarely had a diesel on the back,and then only if needed for shunting purposes. Happy memories!

 

73096 in her pomp.

 

A proper railtour. None of this diesel assistance nonsense.

 

Yes, have to agree. As I have said before on here I went on a few of these behind 34016, 35005 & 73096.
All wonderful days out without all this namby pamby nonsense we have these days. Everybody looking over their shoulder & blaming each other if anything goes wrong.
Who crewed these tours? Not sure if West Coast were in operation back then.

Edit, some nice footage of Daylight Railtours here including 31625.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=3730&v=J_xv8mCxMlU
About 10 mins in.

 

This really has to be the worst thread drift by far. Any chance of getting back on thread anytime soon? Is No9 going to be on the train? It's not run at 75 since the hot box issues. So do we think they'll risk it?

 

I wish I had waited before I booked my first ever main line steam tour - I'm on the duchy 6th sept and I booked that, to get 70000, and then no. 9 was announced for this one!

I'm sure she will be fine for sunday...Well I hope so anyway, i've never seen an A4 at speed and on my doorstep will be a treat.

 

There was mention of EWS in the commentary I think.

 

On NP? I find that very hard to believe

 

Perhaps we should discuss thread drift for a couple of pages before a chat about the sad demise of The Daylight.

 

At least the thread drift has stopped the froth about 34067

 

73096's video, I think they were classed as Merlin then, if not FM Rail will be the answer.

The Daylight Railtours link Buseng posted has EWS crews in all of them, bloody good DVD's they are too and a fine tribute to the crews on them as a fair few of them are sadly no longer with us!

 

As I recall, Daylight Railtours (and Steam Dreams in the early days) were initially crewed by EWS, and they later switched to Merlin. West Coast were around in those days but only operated out of Carnforth so were hardly ever seen in the South.

 

Why? What's happened to 34067? <BJ>

 

What rubbish timings they've got for Sunday. Instead of an hour's leg stretch in Exeter (and a pint or two in the Great Western) we'll now be sitting in Tiverton Loop for an hour and ten minutes. Seriously? Surely they could have done better than that. Wonder why we can't use P6 in Exeter. Don't seem to be any extra trains in Exeter from a fortnight ago.

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/U50695/2015/08/16/advanced

 

because No. 9 is out of gauge to fit in platform 6, it appears there have been some alterations to the platform/track since she was there a couple of years ago.