'The Capital Christmas Express'. 23rd November

What time is the last service train? If they have to lay buses/coaches on, yes god knows what time they will get home. The only "good" thing is that it is a Saturday night so no work/school tomorrow. For most anyway.

 

is there a road loading point at Basingstoke, ? i should imagine she wont be running anywhere by rail until its had a full inspection by West Coast. unless they can remove the other conecting rods to free up the motion then tow her back to Southall, do West Coast have any stabling agreement at Eastleigh?

 

Make no mistake, a coupling rod failure like this is a very serious issue (not just in 3rd rail territory). Back in steam days motion failures such as this sometimes caused serious accidents and derailments when the flailing rods dug into the ballast or struck other trains. But I have every confidence that a careful analysis of the cause of this incident along with the relevant maintenance, inspection and operating procedures will be carried out. No doubt appropriate measures will be taken to avoid any possible reoccurrence.

I don' think it is at all helpful to speculate on the cause and possible consequences for main line steam at this stage.

David at www.uksteam.info

 

According to rail enquiries web site.

Dep Basingstoke 00.56
Arr Southampton 1.35
Dep southampton 1.42
Arr B'mouth 2.27
Dep B'mouth 8.39
Arr Weymouth 9.35

 

Hopefully everyone will get home OK, one way or another. It will be interesting to find out the cause of what appears to be a serious failure. Failing connecting rods are no joke, if indeed that is what has happened.

 

As the train has been safely propelled to Basingstoke where it terminated, it seems most likely that it will now return direct to Southall with Tangmere on the back.

PS Now confirmed .. The train+Tangmere at the rear is now heading back to base via Woking.

 

Pardon my ignorance on the layout of the motion but 2 questions spring to mind :

1) Is the coupling rod a one-piece unit or is it in 2 portions
2) Would the coupling rod not be "locked" by the driving rod from driving wheel to piston therefore what happened to that ?

Commiserations to crew and passengers but the clanking noted in the earlier video does suggest that crew should have been more aware of a problem although, as Martin notes at posting 86, best not to speculate but await the report of examiners.

 

Already under discussion at https://www.national-preservation.c...christmas-express-23rd-november.164731/page-5

 

Picture off Railtour Info Group on Facebook..... Matt P with the shot..thanks Matt


https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...708.1073741825.328212407293605&type=1&theater

 

As this is a "community page" all should be able to see it.

Someone got it on film then.

 

Cant you see it campainr??Its just a picture,its not video , Im sure it will be posted soon
..sorry

 

No sorry Nick I can see it. What I meant was non members of facebook should also be able to see this page even if they don't have an account as it is community page as opposed to a group or profile page.

The photo is of a paused video on someone's LCD camera screen.

 

Not sure about copyright so better not put it up till im sure..its ok on Facebook to share I think,thats what you do, but taking it off to another place might be wrong..

 

Other posts say connecting rod. You're mentioning coupling rod. Who's correct?

You can lose a coupling rod if a knuckle pin drops out. It has happened to me, fortunately at only 5mph. Still did a fair bit of damage, though.

 

In this case the right hand connecting rod became detached from the crosshead.

 

What happened to the passengers?

Tom

 

A URL is not subject to copy right, so you can reference another source at will.
To copy/distribute from someone else's source is subject to copyright, unless you have permission.

In short, you can publish a link to another site's content, but you cannot copy their work into another site without permission. OLE (Object Link Embedding) is not subject to copy right if the site owner of the material provides methodology (i.e. permits you) to do it (I.e. You Tube embedding etc) as again it is a link to the content owners source, not a copy of the material.

 

why is everyone getting hysterical? This is in no way worse than, and comparable to a normal service train bringing down the OLE, and that is pretty common!