The Golden Arrow, 9th-11th October.

Good one! Nice walk down to the shore and back from there. Easy parking too in the road opposite.

Have enjoyed nice coffee and cake in the café after a walk down to and along with shore with a nice young lady more than once. Different young ladies too! They both made the climb back up a lot faster than me!

 

I was on the bridge just by the tunnel mouth. Anywhere from Folkestone Junction is pretty classic. With such beautiful lighting, it was well worth the 6.55am departure from home (And the long wait when I got there - for once I overestimated the traffic problems and was in situ an hour early!)

Sorry can't share the picture with all and sundry as I still use film.

 

Filmed at Charing and Shepherds Well:

 

Great opening shot Dave. Some lovely morning light ! A pathetic show from the diesel at Shepherds Well. I Suppose that thrash was for operational reasons ? Load of ******** !

 

Thanks Liam. No punters to impress on the train at Shepherds Well so guess it was trying to get home as quickly as possible. It was even worse at Sole Street, it was running so early I didn't get chance to set up the camera but the diesel was doing all the work. Does anyone know the why the station is called Shepherds Well when it serves a village called Shepherdswell?
At least I got a nice whistle at Shepherds Well (Shepherdswell!).

 

The very unwell head local shepherd was carried to and drank the water at the local well used by the shepherds when working with their sheep, the well named appropriately Shepherdswell after which the local village had been named in the dim and distant past. He made a miraculous recovery which set off great celebrations and as they couldn't name the village after that event, they did name the station at the new fangled railway that was being built past the village, after how the shepherd now felt after his water cure, ie. Shepherds Well?

 

Dim and distant past it was Sibertswold as I well remember the Sibertswold Archery Club that used to meet in the Whitehall pub now long gone!

 

The ECS ran up the West London Line steam on the front, but ran into the Loop at West Ealing and held until time with the train already turned around, steam tender first at the rear!! So right time past me at Hanwell diesel leading , bonus was 61306 turning on the Greenford loop 40 minutes later, now facing west.
The B1 shown on RTT as "Timed for 168mph max"

 

deleted

 

not impressed today, called into swanley on the way to gravesend to see paddle steamer waverley
found a place to park at 11:30 got to station at 11:50 only to find britannia had gone through at 11:34
when it was due at 12:05 and it was on the front, not the diesel as i'd feared, oh well can't win em all.

 

ECS to Dover is odd, wonder why it's going from Canterbury West past Minster junction all the way to Ramsgate and then presumably reversing back to Minster junction again and on to Dover.

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/U63902/2015/10/11/advanced

Corrected link (now corrected above)

 

Just RTT following precedent re over estimating speeds of LNER steam locomotives!

 

Helping 47832 with the ECS, at Hanwell.

 

Just trying to translate a Facebook page, but it sounds like it dropped a fusible plug. There's a photo of it on the site looking out of steam at Abbeville today.

 

Simple enough job Let the engine cool down ,let the water out ,take the offending plug out ,put the plug into a blacksmiths forge ,heat up to remove any lead left in ,tap out with a thread taper, heat some lead up in a ladle to melting point ,pour in-to the plug ,replace the plug into the loco ,fill up with water and raise steam. If everything was at hand may -be a 48 hour job.
I dare say nowadays a boiler inspector would have to have a look to see if any damage had been done. Can't see the loco running for some time.