Tornado

Ok - I didn't post on here as at the time it would have been seen as yet more speculation, and I'm not one for that, but this was my message to a mate who is actually involved in the investigation and repairs .....

SAT 20:09
Good to see you're heading down to NVR tomo. Be interesting to find out what's what. I'm thinking lubrication - possible seized valve?

 

Which raises some interesting philosophical questions about “good” and “bad” speculation!


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Yes, and a big display board to show the readings. Less easy on a compact footplate, or even support coach.

 

Give that man a Mars bar!

I am cautiously in favour of speculation, for an eejut like me I can learn stuff from speculation from folk who actually know their little ends from their big ends, even if their conclusions on it turn out to be incorrect. It's certainly not impacting on those folk who actually have anything do to with it as I doubt they'd be interested in reading the speculation here when they could be looking at the bits of metal formerly between Tornado's frames. I'd suggest speculating that the P2 project will grind to a halt or similar is plain daft, and possibly not helpful.

I'm also in favour of banning using "tonka" in reference to the steam locomotive.

 

I can assure you the people who are busy trying to remove twisted and mangled bits of metal will be more interested in, " how the heck do I get that out," pass the big hammer! than what most of us are posting , anyone who has swung a hammer in-between the frames of a loco trying to persuade a taper pin to come out will know what I mean,

 

Absolutely, so no chance of anything happening here impacting on them as you implied earlier:

 

For my own education, could you point me to some examples?

 

Oh I dunno, it could provide them a bit of light amusement in between the hard work...

 

Nice to see that official sources actually provided as much information as they did. I don't envy them the job of dismantling and remanufacturing the necessary parts.

 

In for a penny...

Are the valves lined in Tornado? Can they just cut out the old valve liner and fit a new one using the dry ice method? Or is is cylinder out?

 

Not seen the A1's latest news item posted [apologies if I've missed it]: https://www.a1steam.com/2018/04/14/the-e...er-update/
Piece of what looks like motion in the 6 foot (circa 20" in):
Apparently an email has been sent to passengers by Graeme Bunker-James (A1's Ops Manager). Part of it mentions ....

Tornado came to a stop just south of Sandy with a broken combination lever. Investigations have so far revealed that this was due to the middle piston valve overheating and binding in the valve chest. The root cause is not yet fully clear, but it is likely that insufficient lubrication was an issue. Investigations continue to establish the cause of failure in the lubrication system and any contributing factors.

 

Good to see the owners keeping people up to date. Really feel for them as no matter what caused it it' not only expensive but a sickening feeling when something like that happens

 

On another (but related) topic, don't you despair at the absurdities of PR speak?

on this page https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2018/0...ey-cancel-steam-locomotive-tornado-visit.html we find

"The Midland Railway at Butterley has announced that they have taken the difficult decision to cancel the visit of steam locomotive No.60163 ‘Tornado’."

Of course there was nothing difficult about the decision at all!

To be fair to the Midland Railway - Butterley the phrase difficult decision doesn't seem to originate from them - or their website at least.

 

Technologically and ergonomically its pretty easy stuff to achieve, you could measure any part of the beating heart of the loco to your hearts contents. However a steam loco and sophisticated electronics are very poor bedfellows, from a reliability viewpoint its the worse environment in the world to work with.

 

I’m not so sure. Hypothetically, using instrumentation to detect a difference in, for example, normal and abnormal temperatures of a valve head within a sealed environment that in normal operation has significant temperature variation depending whether the loco has steam on or not is I would suggest a problem of considerable technical magnitude and complexity - not to mention the issue of actually being able to interpret the results reliably.

Tom

 

Exactly. Small screen that flashes up an initial warning and a button press/touch to interrogate.

 

Anyone who has looked into any form of instrumentation of plant will be aware how easy this is to achieve and for example as a simple system just look up BMS (Building Management Systems) to see examples of what's possible off the shelf. Also the environment should be no problem either as Tom has pointed out, there are many much more severe industrial environments (chemical/nuclear etc) that have utilized such sensors for many years. The problem is not a technical one it's either financial or indeed the more difficult one over people not wishing to modernize a machine made in a bygone age.