Jubilee Requiem - Saturday October 25th

Probably preferable to 7 hours in Newcastle, though ...

Tom (hat, t-shirt etc)

 

Wye aye man!

 

Yes Spencer was his brilliant technical assistant but one OVS Bulleid was his first in line Assistant from 1907 until 1937 and OVS was his ideas man though both were greatly influenced by Andre Chapelon the giant of French steam. This combination produced the P2s.

Gresley had a lot of time for Bulleid and Bulleid's hard work and innovations should not be discounted when enjoying A4

 

I dunno, depends how many pints you have.............

Seriously though, the place isn't that bad - yes its full of industrial architecture, but I like that!

But s_d getting up at the crack of sparrow for a trip Ooop North.

 

93 minutes of stops so some of the intermediate times not that bad. Mike Notley would certainly have been on it.

Don

 

Chief Draughtsman, not particularly impressed by the GW Castle in the Interchange Trials, he went on to design the long travel valve gear fitted to the A1, A3 and A4 classes. Optimised for short cut-off working without this gear the A4s as we know them would not exist. No doubt Bulleid had some talent, but he needed a grounding influence. Yes, he did once raise the question as to whether the wheels on opposite sides of a locomotive were of the same size.

There is a story that Bert Spencer was asked to draw up the original Pacifics from a G.A. that HNG had sketched out on the back of an envelope. Wish I owned that piece of stationery.

 

Don't we all!

As for OVB, he was the "Sorcerers Apprentice"!

Hence my soft spot for his endeavours......

 

Yes I am aware of test story. Gresley was very clever and chose the right people to work with him. The Bulleids were always best worked on full reg and cut off adjusted to conditions but both them and the Gresley pacifics would thrive by being worked hard. Bulleids boiler was unrivalled.

Don

 

Had he not put forward proposals for the long travel vale gear before the Interchange Trials? I'm sure I've read that he did.

 

I booked on this early in the year with her ladyship and will be partaking in full nosh. An A4 out of the Cross will be a first for me and much anticipated. Immediately after booking the tour and knowing that steam KX to Newcastle would mean a silly o'clock start, I booked a mega cheap Travelodge around the corner in order to be in position.
Shame about the lack of a Deltic though.

Paul

 

Return now on RTT:
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/U55408/2014/10/25/advanced

 

Got our e-tickets this morning and we will be boarding at Potters Bar.

The return from York is shown to be an 86, but not specifically 86.259. If it's not then I suspect we will have a 47 on the back all the way from KX to York going down. Hope not though.

Don

 

Bert Spencer was considering long travel valve gear before the A1/Castle trials. But one of the big questions of the time was how to deal with the wear issue with respect to the broad ring valves then in use and it was felt that a longer valve travel would just make this issue worse. Actually this was not strictly true, the longer lap included in the long travel design could make the actual valve travel shorter when working at short cut-offs. These broad rings were 2 7/8" long, in 1926 Knorr type valves were fitted, 4 per valve head 5/16" wide. In March 1927 2555 left Doncaster works fitted with Spencer's optimised long travel gear - the rest is an ongoing story, but I would like to fit Porta type multi-ring valves for the next step in the Gresley Pacific adventure.

 

As it happens, I am in Newcastle on Saturday and hope to arrange timings to get a view of the arrival over the King Edward VII Bridge - if there are no delays. And by the way, Newcastle is a fine modern city with much to recommend it. Not least the wonderful and relatively recent re-generation of the Newcastle / Gateshead quayside, including The Sage, The Baltic and the Millennium (Blinking Eye) Bridge.

 

RTT showing ecs 2 late at Hornsey but 34 late at KGX. a minute after it's booked departure. It's going to be late but how late?

 

6 late over Digswell viaduct at sunrise. Rather nice!

 

Late? Does it matter - it's made it all up by Arlesey just rocketed through with no diesel in tow

 

Got away around 9 late but was right time at Sandy. Magnificent light - picture to follow.

 

60009 in gorgeous early morning light at New Zealand Bridge, Sandy.
Jubilee Requiem by KING COBRA 92, on Flickr