Flying Scotsman

The one I heard on it's first run wasn't a LNER standard whistle which should sound the K1 or a B1

 

Correct, Scotsman is fitted with a whistle designed for the A3s, not an LNER standard whistle. It is squat, somewhat similar to the whistles fitted to the V2s.

 

I thought that the whistle WAS an LNER standard - as fitted to the A1s, A10s, V2s, and the other Pacifics bar the A4s...?

 

I thought that too, the current whistle sounds nothing like the one it had before the recent overhaul, just listen to it on the 1968 non stop run on YouTube.

 

The whistles fitted to the A3s and V2s are similar, but definitely different. Whistles from both Classes have been up for auction, recently.
I have viewed the Doncaster Works Drawings List with regard to whistles. It appears there was a group standard whistle, of sorts. Locos allocated north of the border were fitted with a different design of whistle to take into account the Loading Gauge of North British lines. Then again, what about locos that worked in from the south!

 

I'm sure I read somewhere that all LNER designed locomotives, with the exception of the Hush Hush, A4 andP2s were fitted with the group standard high pitched whistle. The top nut was missing from the Pacifics, presumably because of loading gauge issues and that might explain the difference between the A3 and V2 whistle you mentioned.

 

A3 on the left. V2 on the right. Quite a difference.

 

That's interesting, from memory the current whistle on 60103 doesn't look like that I think it's a lot flatter than that but I stand to be corrected

 

I don't know what the particular differences are. But compared to most of the LNER high pitched whistles, which sound like somebody kicked a banshee where it hurts, Green Arrow had a comparatively mild 'peep' and the whistle currently on Flying Scotsman might as well be a child blowing across the top of a milk bottle.

 

I recognise the one on the right - been carving those off old Bachmann V2 models to fit to my resin bodied V2 models for a few weeks...!

I had no idea it wasn't the same type - definitely new information. A lot of LNER material (at least when written by historians) seems to assume they were the same type, when as you state and show, they clearly weren't. Most interesting!

 

Get one of these whistles on it, folk will hear it coming then.

 

Or was it where the engine was built, a Darlington/Doncaster thing, I know they had slightly different ideas on the standard LNER livery

 

She was fitted with something similar on Alan Peglers' ill-fated U.S./Canada tour back '69-72. Ill-fated on account that it bankrupted Mr Pegler.

 

The most obvious difference between those two is the position of the mounting flange relative to the rest of the whistle. The bit that actually makes the sound may or may not be different.

When FS reappeared, first on the ELR and then on NR, several people commented on its feeble whistle. General opinion seemed to be that it was weaker than it should be.

Personally I like a Stanier hooter (based on the Caledonian one?) better than most, but that's partly because I grew up 100 yards from the WCML.

 

I don't think you can get much better than a Bulleid whistle.

 

Personally I like her whistle...

 

That's your name in the book!

 

He is partly right the mournful sound of a Caledonian hooter (not Stanier, he pinched it from the Caly) echoing across the fells around Tebay is the right sound in the right place but then so is the wail of an A4 chime as it gets into its stride up Holloway Bank.