Cumbrian Mountain Express - Oct 4th 2014

It will be interesting to see how Bahamas with her double chimney compares won't it? Perhaps Leander just needs a Lempor ?

 

Sequence from Shap Summit now up:

 

great vid. many thanks for posting

 

Many thanks Alastair, you're welcome. Pretty quiet on Shap yesterday and a tough decision with 46115 out too - luckily Steve has covered that run very well so we get to see both. Unbelievably spoilt by steam in the Northwest these days; when I started with video in 2003, I recall that there was a total of 8 steam hauled tours over the S&C in the whole year!

 

Could the blast pipe alignment be part of Galatea's problem - as I seem to recall that it was this problem of alignment which caused the Jubilees to have a poor steaming reputation when first introduced to service ?

 

Smardale splendour

 

Recently posted somewhere that it was realigned from being 5in out !! So the answer ought to be no.

 

To those people currently having a go at Galatea's recent performances I have included photographs from the WCRC Gala of July 08 showing progress of 45699 being brought back from scrapyard condition by David Smith and his lads at 10A to mainline running condition as seen today. Surely we should be grateful to these people that after fifty odd years we are still able to witness the sight and sound of steam on the mainline instead of the criticism that seems to be regularly thrown at Carnforth

 

Look what happened to Joan of Arc lol

 

You looking for free tickets or something Shep! lol

 

Agree with Big Al. We are all full of admiration for WC getting Galatea from the kit of some parts we saw rusting away on the Severn Valley into a mainline standard working locomotive. The criticism is squarely aimed at WC's choice of the engine for an 11 coach train starting from Carnforth. Paying passengers deserve better than the incessant plods over Grayrigg and Shap. If there's no suitable engine then don't run the train or postpone it for a week if there's a clash like there was last Saturday. There's nothing on this weekend worth talking about so why wasn't it postponed for a week? It's the paying passengers who should be the one's getting the best deal here. without them there would be no steam hauled trains at all on the mainline.

 

Odd that previous trips which have run into trouble because of heavy loads seem to get the 'lessons learned' comments, but as BigAl says ' risky to carry on learning on the WCML. I used to see many many Jublilee turns through Luton as a young'un, but can't remember seeing such long trains on a regular basis and they didn't have Shap to deal with. BigAl, is the passenger loading such that they cannot just drop a coach..or is that too easy. Not being critical, but just hate to see ANY engine get into trouble which could be avoided.

 

I not aware of any other operator who routinely uses NR for "running-in" turns?

 

I don't think anyone had much to complain about when 45699 started from cold away from Carnforth towards Crewe on 27th September ... with 12-on! Although there were always 'rogue' examples that works shoppings never seemed to fully sort out, the 5Xs invariably did need careful handling anyway to produce the best results. I personally recall many a time when Bank Hall, Newton Heath and Blackpool Jubilees "incessantly plodded over Grayrigg and Shap" at a similar pace, so please don't always be so quick to criticise WCR, either for their engineering expertise or for their locomotive rostering, when you aren't (or don't seem to be) in possession of all of the facts! !

 

Obviously a WCRC mole lol

 

LMSR rated Jubs class 5. Would seem wise to expect performances accordingly when taking class 7 or 8 loadings. Also they are more racehorse than workhorse by design even in first class order.
45596 is probably closer to a 6.