35018 British India Line

You don't need to slavishly recreate it to know it happened though! As far as the railways were concerned, once was more than enough...

Tom

 

Quite so. I recall the final days of steam on my bit of the GN. Decrepit and run down locos - still exciting to a kid as it was steam - but it was in its death throes and I'd never want any loco I'm involved with to become so unloved.

 

On that basis why don't we recreate the East End slums* so we can appreciate 21st century Dockland?
*Other historic slums are available.

 

I've read the books Ralph and have anecdotal evidence from my forebears who were around at the time.

 

We have but not in the East End, Google the Birmingham back to backs and have you looked at the miners cottages at Beamish

 

Is this more to your liking? also in 1967

 

I take your point but this happened! You can't change the past can you?! Well unless you have a DeLorean with a flux capacitor...

 

Was just about to post a link to the back to backs.

 

Oh hell, don't get them all onto physics again, I think that one Nobel Prize winning moment is quite enough for this week on NP.

 

No idea about the Southern Region but there are certainly pictures of 45697 running with a black tender !

 

I'd love to see the east end slums!

 

And they put THAT on a passenger train, a lot of National Coal Board locos in the 1970s were cleaner (if more battered) than that!

 

Towards the end Nine Elms had no cleaners, apart from a few amateurs including me and enthusiastic off duty railwaymen so there was really no choice. I assume other sheds were in the same position although Salisbury somehow managed to keep their locos presentable. The second image I posted was taken after the first so someone had done a good job there

 

Not as if much was 'going off ' was it Ralph !

 

Well, if you could get permission to allow 35018 or 35028 to go up to at least 88 mph you could do something like this.................


It would make a change from being pushed around by a diesel.....

 

I take your point Tom, but austerity did not end in 1945 at the end of the war. Thompson is castigated for using a spare director cylinder block for rebuilding a single D49 into a D class 4-4-0, when parts for its Lentz gear were in short supply. Bulleid built 10 new engines using more expensive materials and a totally unproven valve gear design.

Consistency of criticism seems at odds with the necessities of war and the facts.

The 40 Q1s aren't controversial because they fitted the bill perfectly laid down by the war department. Rugged, simple to build and easy to maintain machines - which was exactly what all the railways should have been building. There's no criticism of Bulleid there because he hit the brief spectacularly.

You are also forgetting that Thompson, Hawksworth and Stanier/Fairburn weren't really allowed to build new either. It was certainly true of the LNER that Thompson was extremely limited in what he was allowed to do, locomotive wise. The B1 emerged only because it was a large scale composite of many standard LNER parts and Thompson's other "new" classes were also rebuilds of classes in other cases.

All four railways built Stanier 8Fs new because it had been selected by the war department as a standard class, home and abroad alongside riddles engines.

Bullied may have only built ten of the Merchant Navy's but immediately post war I would argue he was still wrong to continue building his Pacifics in the form they emerged. Thompson, Peppercorn and Riddles all built 6ft 2in Pacifics with conventional walschaerts valve gear and not a single one of those was rebuilt the way Bulleids were.

...but I'm getting off topic again. Whether you agree with the above or not, I am grateful to Mr Bulleid for one thing: that we have enough of his engines in preservation to appreciate their unique engineering and enjoy the fruits of others labours travelling behind them.

British India Line looks excellent and seeing the pictures up close today, I rather think the gloss black suits her beautifully. If it's not permanent, that's good but I wouldn't mind seeing her numbered and lettered in the southern sunshine branding - a nod to Scotsmans form in wartime black last year and to a livery I don't believe any of the MNs have carried in preservation.

Even if not authentic to her form, it is a livery classmates carried at one time.

 

The SR built 20 Merchant Navies during the war. The LMS built 18 "Coronation" pacifics over the same period - and they weren't even notionally "mixed traffic". So Bulleid wasn't alone in building Class 8 pacifics during the war.

Tom

 

Thank you. Has anyone got one they can legally post, or list a book where there is a copy printed?

And for those who might think the top of the range trains might have had clean(er) locos a link to a shot of mine of a filthy Bullied on the up Bournemouth Belle near Shawford. On the day it was taken I understood it to be the last, booked, steam hauled Belle but cannot be absolutely positive of that as a fact. I have lost any notes I took of the date/number subsequently.

http://www.island-publishing.co.uk/last steam belle.jpg

 

I like that statement.

Chris