Green Goddess & Flying Scotsman question

Does it get a badge?

 

From ...... http://brdatabase.info/locoqry.php?action=locodata&type=S&id=602202091&loco=4861
05/05/1962 Withdrawn Condemned as 60890 from Leicester (G.C.) (15E)
(Also 15 & 63 too as above)

 

the mileage isn't really staggering though, reflecting the downtime which was part of steam's problem.

 

..... well, once the cull of naff 1st gen diesel classes was completed at any rate!

 

Thanks for confirming my memory wasn't playing tricks; I only wish the rest of me could remain in such good order !

 

There were many ways to reduce the downtime. Designing fit for high utilisation was one and if this was done then you had to have the necessary shed facilities to allow it to be done. Then you have the manpower issues. Both retraining and job losses are rather inevitable.

 

job losses would not be a problem, they were struggling to find staff as it was. I think the problems of raising the availability to anywhere near the level of proper diesel traction and especially electric would be insurmountable.

 

What has long made me think, is that it was washed out every day when it got back to Manchester and "a barrow load of scale was taken out"
Would the benefits of being really clean inside outweigh the strain on the boiler shell, stays, etc from the heating and cooling this would entail?

It was obviously a deliberate public demonstration and quite possible an experiment to get a huge mileage as quickly as possible on a locomotive
to see how it lasted. In effect to see just what would give out first. If this was so the mileage was probably perfectly genuine which might or might no
be thought consistent were there any extra boiler changing.

 

Whatever did or didn’t happen, that mileage cannot be right for a steam locomotive of that period. The HSTs being withdrawn after 40odd years’ service are on about 10-12 million miles, doing diagrams of the thick end of 1000 miles per day at speeds and levels of utilisation the steam age railway could only dream of.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

I think the original contention of 20,000,000 miles was clearly fantasy- 2,000,000 seems to be the general number attributed.

Interestingly, there is a reference on Steam Index to the number and nameplates being switched round amongst other members of the class; hard to see otherwise how it could have run 100,000 per year non stop for 20 years as is suggested, without any downtime for overhaul. So possibly truer to consider that a collection of locos bearing the name "Charles Dickens" achieved that feat!

Rowland, D.P. Locomotive masqueraders [letter]. Railway Wld, 1960, 21, 160.
Captain Black told letter writer that as a young man at Longsight he had overseen switching of number and nameplates of Charles Dickens with other members of the class.​

From www.steamindex.com/locotype/lnwr2.htm

Tom

 

Yep, Its an order of magnitude greater than any other locomotive I am aware of. Not possible.

 

Clearly 20,000,000 is out by an order of magnitude: see earlier discussion:

Even 2,000,000 seems a stretch to me given that it was supposed to have been achieved in little over 20 years, including a ten year spell in which over a million miles was run. I'm not aware of any other steam loco managing 100,000 miles a year even for one year; much less for twenty years on end. Switching identities seems high likely.

Tom