Ebor Flyer - A1ST and Tornado: 14/04/18

If only it were so simple. I was on a main line loco yesterday in the North East. Said loco is booked to work in Scotland next weekend. How is it getting there.....? You guessed right - it is going by road because Network Rail say that it is not gauged between Darlington and Edinburgh.
I know of another main line that is shortly to go to Tyseley for tyre turning - it too has to go by road because it is not gauged in the Birmingham area. All very frustrating (and costly) but such is the reality of 2018 operation on the network.

Peter

 

I know that NP is a prime source of utter tosh much of the time and obviously I have contributed to this over the years. But I have just read the froth generated after yesterday's misfortune and thought **%%$""!!

I am just going to remember cruising north from KX, enjoying a glass of fizz, getting fidgety at the long pathing stop at Digswell Jn, tucking into my breakfast as we got going again, and most of all the effortless acceleration to 90 mph. The rest of the day is unimportant as is the pointless speculation. The cause of the failure will be identified. Tornado will be fixed, and I am looking forward to the next trip.

 

Well said Knut!

 

Yes I might be wrong there, I`m apologies. I was mainly thinking of facebook so I have edit my post a bit. I hope you can forgive a norwegians bad english and a bit given up.

Kind regards
Knut

 

Thank you very much my friend, but I might be a bit given up..

 

Some of the utter tripe being put on here is quite extraordinary, even by NP standard! I have said before that the greatest danger for mainline steam could come from within...with some of the doomsayers and pessimism on display I am sure some think it is 1968 all over again.

Yes it is Tornado, but our great 'new' loco is now 10 years old and has just clocked 100,000 miles, it is not immune to failure just like any other mechanical item, thankfully such dramatic events are rare - but do happen. Can I also point out that the A1 trust also said as early as yesterday that speed was not thought to be a contributing factor, but how many have actually bothered to read that statement? I am just grateful that clearly professionals and experts were in charge yesterday, rather than some of the muppets on here!

 

torgormaig,
Well I hope you have a trouble free trip and you get back safely.
I had a really good trip on yours from Cleethorpes to KX a few years back and will not forget it getting to 75mph in a hurry.
Good luck.

 

Can you please state where locos travelling by road transport has any link to this event? As far as I am aware only one short statement has been issued by the A1 trust, which has as yet drawn no conclusions other than it is component failure.

Until an investigation has been completed (which won't have happened inside 24 hours) it is dangerous and foolish to draw any conclusions as to what has caused such a failure. I will be waiting for an official update from the trust once they have completed their assessments.

 

Mandy Rice-Davies rules obviously don’t apply......

 

Hear Hear.

 

Very well spoken!

 

Just to clear up a few points from a purely historical perspective.

Tornado is a Peppercorn A1 with three sets of walschaerts valve gear. It is NOT fitted with conjugated motion, it has a full third set of Walschaerts between the frames driving the centre cylinder.

Edward Thompson stopped the building of new designs of conjugated motion locomotives on the LNER in 1941 and changed the design brief to walschaerts valve gear in two and three cylinder formats.

The LNER (later BR Eastern Region) then went on to build 49 Peppercorn A1s, 15 Peppercorn A2s, 25 Thompson A2s and the Thompson A1/1.

All of these locomotive classes had this same arrangement. This arrangement is called "divided drive". The two outside cylinders drive onto the centre axle, the inside cylinder drives the front axle.

The only major differences between these 90 locomotives in terms of their overall layout was the length of the connecting rod to the centre cylinder, and the placement of the front bogie astride or in front of the cylinders. All other things taken in the round, they are very similar locomotive classes designed specifically to pull heavy trains very quickly.

All of these classes regularly attained 75-90mph in daily service on passenger trains and in the case of the A1s it was not unheard of to hit the ton in regular service.

In nearly twenty years of the LNER and BR Eastern Region operating these LNER designed locomotives, failures of the middle cylinder valve gear are virtually nil. Literally millions of journeys undertaken and the likelihood of one of the above classes failing with centre valve gear failure is virtually zero. To say there are no incidents recorded would be wrong, but they form a negligible part of the classes' history.

To anyone who has somehow claimed that Tornado's class were not designed for high speed (yes I have seen this said today!) please go back and have a look at the history books, because the LNER and later BR Eastern Region were masters in sustained high speed running with their Pacifics, and arguably it was not the Gresley Pacifics that paid the railways way but the later Thompson and Peppercorn locomotives which were both more powerful, freer steaming, more economic and more reliable (until a few accepted changes such as using optical equipment in overhauls and the Kylchaps were fitted).

 

Whilst I understand that steam locos have done good for the railway (and also that the internet is fast becoming a fact-free zone), it's worth clarifying that the locomotive used for the official opening of the Borders line was 60009 'Union of South Africa'. 60163 'Tornado' was standby loco on that occasion and was used on one of the public trips in the following week as I recall.

 

I read it, and I thought it quite silly really. They have a broken part, they don't know why it broke but they know it wasnt speed related? I dont think crystal ball engineering diagnosis is an established science. If you don't know why it broke, you can't rule out how it was being used at the time. Fundamental really.

 

Your bad english is a shed load better than my non existent Norwegian!

 

I think we've worked out a suitable scapegoat

 

If we know what the part is, we can deduce what the factors are that may lead to it's breaking - and which are not.

 

"Not thought to be speed related" reads to me as that it isn't ruled out but isn't considered to be the most likely cause before the failure is investigated thoroughly.

Sawdust.

 

Well we know 100% that it broke, we can safely deduce that if it wasn't used it wouldn't break, we would be on fairly safe ground to say its less likely to have broken if used gently, but it takes a brave man to say, just from looking at it, that speed wasn't a factor. Maybe it wasn't, maybe getting to that speed quickly was, who knows at the moment. I think what they are trying to say is that its designed to run at that speed, and if it didn't there is another root cause. If I was a betting man my money would be going on metal fatigue or material defect. And yes, its true that fatigue can be induced by unforeseen design issues, some of which may only be present at speed.

At the end of the day, it broke, if you can work out why you can fix it so it won't break again. Its not the end of the world.

 

Yes it was. After the 49 tsr before Hitchin I didn't think we would do it, See the next Heritage Railway Mag for details and comparisons with similar 90 mph runs on the SR