A2 60532 Blue Peter

Well, it is Blue Peter's 60th birthday today....

 

Probably right there Al. That said, it does have a specific advantage that has been found in LNER history and later BR - safety. Being able to get onto and off the footplate without stopping does have its advantages. Swapping crews, if someone is taken ill, getting a message through - all said, in the days before radio communication, the mobile phone, and similar.

 

As the BBC and one or two others keep telling us..........Ad nauseum!

 

To be fair I suspect that neither I nor yourself are the anywhere near the target audience for the piece.....

 

Yet the latest pieces done with the current Blue Peter presenters in the past 12 months were widely complimented on here and elsewhere! Sign of progress hopefully ! Watching the 60th programme tonight and it was quite something remembering all the presenters and seeing how they have changed (or not in the case of Konnie Huq!). It is now my 6 year old daughter's favourite programme, quite incredible really how it has not gone out of fashion when so many other things are deemed disposable these days and have a short shelf life as a result.

 

I'm surprised blue Peter is actually still going seeing as a few years ago they broadcast an episode nobody tuned into.

 

I dunno, I have an 8-year-old who is well into it, and excitedly told me about the last mention of 60532 ("Dad, there's a Blue Peter steam train. Wanna see? We can find it on the iPlayer").

Like the Beano, it's easy to compare things unfavourably to your memories of them, but you have to consider how they appear to a kid approaching them for the first time with no awareness of the history.

 

Without context that looks particularly bad. However:

 

Someone somewhere asked for a Livery Debate.
Was Blue Peter ever turned out in BR ( or any other shade of) Blue ?
Is it not a nice idea for her to be so in the future regardless of a historical precedent ?

( playing devils advocate here as i quite like the shade of Green that LSL uses...)

 

No - only 8Ps (and the A3s) got blue. No A2s of any kind got blue.

 

And let's keep it that way

 

It would be interesting to know if the double corridor tender on FS was ever used in anger.
You could have a bad dream - making your way through tender after tender and never reaching the end

 

I'm absolutely certain it was. I was on a railtour (The Moorlands- 26 October 1968) and I remember the very stern injunction in the paperwork that passengers were not to pass through the tender to the footplate.

 

Both tenders were used during the 1960s including the aforementioned Moorlander.

 

Agree. I enjoyed the apple green interlude but it should really be BR green again to be accurate.

 

Does anyone know how well her overhaul is going please? Yes, "She'll be ready when she's ready" applies, but a rough idea of progress would be nice. I believe that her tender is still outside and in the apple green which was applied at Barrow Hill.

Mark

 

Just out of interest, the new centre cylinder block has been made by adapting the A1 Steam Trust's patterns... How different will this be to Blue Peter's original casting? What will the chief differences be (I'm assuming bore / stroke differences, but are there any others which deviate from the original?)

Richard.

 

Didn't 4498's (as it was) corridor tender get used a few times for footplate rides when it was first preserved back in the 1960's? I recall the story of some of wives of The A4 Loco society having the misfortune to be passing through when 4498 dropped it's scoop to take on water on April 1st 1967...

 

It was used on NYMR for SNGLPT members to gain access to the footplate, during a 60007 weekend.
It proved to be very popular.