Flying Scotsman

Here is my video from Worplesdon last night. Turn up the volume and enjoy the superb sound of 60103 accelerating hard away from the gauging slack and on to Guildford:

 

Nice!

There really is something about moving steam at night.

Can not wait to see her pounding up the Alps!

 

The Gresley Beat. You can't beat it.

 

Thank you. I guess it will be a while before she heads for the MHR.

Sent from my D6603 using Tapatalk

 

Who knows?........ guess that depends when we're drawn out the hat.... can see us having to do exactly like the other lines she's visited - ticket only, special timetable etc!

 

Something similar to when Clan Line visited?

 

I doubt it given what has gone before on other lines.

Though having Clan Line was a coup, but without the madness!

 

I was sitting on a bus in York. There where two grand mothers talking about Flying Scotsman, there youth and going to see her in NRM with the grand children multiple times. The appeal to the general public always surprises me. This one loco does more for preserved steam than any one can comprehend. Scotsman deserves every penny spent on it for what it does for steam's survival. Sir Nigel would be delighted that Scotsman does so much good. A credit to all that has made her run again.

 

To corroborate that, I went to see Flying Scotsman at Bury in January. My girlfriend bought the tickets secretly, after I'd been reminiscing once about how much I'd loved steam engines as a boy and hadn't really followed that interest as I got older.

While we were there, I picked up a flyer for the restoration of 80097, which mentioned Barry scrapyard, which triggered a vague memory of being horrified by a photo of dozens of rusting engines as a kid, and led me to look it up. Combined with seeing a Bulleid pacific on another platform, and wondering what on earth that fantastic engine was, it's reawkened my interest, led me to the preservation movement and got me planning to get out and see more locomotives.

I'd be surprised if I was the only one.

Obviously my girlfriend is probably feeling that a nice gesture might have backfired a bit.

 

The need to minimise gaps between stock and platform edge, means more than ever the need to maintain the railway to gauge and at the very least know what that gauge is ALL THE TIME. You don't go round shifting the 6 foot to meet the stock, you make the stock to fit the gauge. Fundamental rules of building and maintaining a railway. Its not a ruddy tramway or light railway, permanent way means just that. (till you rip it all up and turn it into a cycleway)

 

Apart from overhang on curves, it's possible the kinetic envelope for a steam loco is relatively large compared to the actual dimensions. Not so much for bogie passenger vehicles.

 

At the moment, its as new, and so is fairly "tight" As it piles on the miles, it will get sloppier and its kinetic envelope will increase. I guess NR is currently working on that worse case scenario.

 

Listening to the videos of today's trip, the exhaust beats sound somewhat less even than in the videos of the early runs. Has a valve setting perhaps changed already or is there a slight leak somewhere?

 

Funny, I was thinking this too, she does sound different. However, performance still looks very healthy so...??

 

It has been reported elsewhere that the main problem is the cab dimensions which have been identified as being slightly larger although in which direction has not been identified. Suffice to say that when it worked the Steam Dreams "Fife Circle" it needed to work wrong line at Dalmeny on the outward journey in order to clear the road bridge south of the station by the junction.

 

Strange, Fred. I am sure I mentioned the word "wide".

 

Given the policy of restoring FS as close as possible to its condition during the last part of its BR service, presumably there would be great reluctance to cut down its cab as with 6023 (though for width in FS's case rather than height).

 

It is not the cab that is the problem. It is the width across the running boards at the bottom of the cab that is bigger than on most locos.