FR & WHR & WHHR News

Someone went to a 1940s weekend at the ELR and asked the driver of a class 40 where the other 18 were...

 

No-one is objecting to engines having names. I am objecting to the notion that all engines should have names. I also object to long names.

 

Errm, 590? Also, hate to a pedant but Beddgelert was scrapped by the NWNGR in 1906 so never became a WHR engine.

Personally, I think the current WHR locos should continue to acknowledge their SAR history by retaining their historic numbers.

 

So we won't be having another The Green Howard Alexandra, Princess of Wales' Own Yorkshire Regiment then? (I know that it was Wales's but I'm keen on grammar)

 

Is there a locomotive long enough for the nameplate?

 

Yes, an NGG16, but the name plate would have to be flexible to go round corners...

Steve B

 

From recollection is was a three-storey nameplate.

 

Easy, make it this small (the suffix from 45156's plate, 14 3/4" long), and stick it in the cab. Problem solved, the loco has a name but it does not detract visually.

 

Sounds horribly vulgar

 

Names like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu spring to mind?

 

How about this for a name plate of the side of a FR/WHR engine.... "H.R.H Andrew T"...

**ducts below the parapit**

Haha

 

Reminds me of a 1980 visit to Voorbai shed in South Africa. I asked the shed foreman why they'd named one of their GMAM's "Amin". The reply was "It's big black ugly and covered in brass - what else would you call it!" Speechless! Ray.

 

They didn't do P.C. in South Africa in those days! But at least it shows that they were starting to become more inclusive.

John

 

How about 'Top of the Pops' if you really want a vulgar nameplate?

John

 

Personally I woulden't object too much to the Garratts being named (South Afican loco's in North Wales so authenticity is non existent in this case), just pick something decent if you do, leave the speciality of crap names to NR TOC's.

 

And "Sir Jimmy Savile" on the other side.

 

What is wrong with long names?

 

Nothing wrong with long names. They just don't look good on locomotives. Either the plate is too long for the space available or the lettering is too small. Or, even worse, it takes up more than one line. Has anyone ever resorted to naming the tender? That would be the pits.

The FR and WHR have a fine tradition of, mostly, short snappy loco names. Prince & Princess even had their names shortened from The Prince and The Princess presumably because someone realised it would look better.

Finally when the time comes, as it surely must, to name a loco after me I hope my descendants will have the good sense not to use my full name which is reserved for my passport, my headstone, election nights and in the dock at the Old Bailey. MIFF is fine; CLICHELMORE is good; M.A. CLICHELMORE is ok. But MIFF ALOYSIUS ST-BERNARD XAVIER FITZ-CLICHELMORE - on a locomotive? No no no!

 

I really hope that is actually your name...

 

You could try acronyms for long names, but this doesn't seem to have had much success on Welsh narrow gauge. SMR No.1 was named L.A.D.A.S for only a year before it mysteriously fell off the mountain.