35006

First public running during the May Gala, private official ceremony on Monday 16th, I shall take some pictures at Cheltenham hopefully if the weather's nice.

 

Some loaded test runs took place last night, a couple of photos on the GWSR twitter account if you scroll down - no need for an account to view.

 

And just spotted a few on the CRC website too, under "blog".

 

Excellent report from a fireman's perspective here on the loco blog.

 

A few photos from the launch ceremony yesterday from me:

 

Great photos Alex, good to see you enjoyed yourself... will have to invite you to CanPacs renaming ceremony ;-)

 

Well done everyone. It's been a long haul and I know what it feels like to be involved in a project like that. Looks like Bank Holiday Sunday is now sorted.

 

Haha, brilliant!

 

Its good to see that one person seems to have seen the light in GW land, that the merchant navy class is the top dog class 8 engine other wise Alex would have had to attended a " reeducation session" to teach him the error of his ways ,

 

Hmm, I'm not sure about that! To be honest, I think any class 8 pacific returning to steam after 50 years and a 30 year long restoration on our line would have me just as excited. It will be certainly nice for some variation, not that I don't like what we've already got, but as our roster doesn't require more than 3-4 engines operational things can get a bit repetitive. Will make a change from GWR 2-8-0s and 4-6-0s!

 

This could simply be my imagination, but I thought that MN nameplates were 'handed' in that the flag was depicted as flying towards the rear of the locomotive. Obviously not.

Great work to the team - 35006 looks superb.

 

Ditto Monday, it'll help pass the time between the procession of proper loco's

 

And here's me thinking it would break the boredom of a procession of brass and copper things but this puts a different slant on things. A procession of proper locos will be nice, just how may Spam Cans are attending?

 

Think was answered somewhere else, generally you are right but the p&o flag has very set ways it can be depicted. Also we have to be careful how we describe the name in written reports to make sure everyone knows we're talking about the engine and not the shipping company!

 

Come and see 35006 at the Gwsr gala, I've arranged the loan from the mid Hants of the 'Oriana' boat train headboard and this will join the 'Canberra' headboard in bringing the p&o boat trains back to life. The evening 14 coach train should be worth it alone.

 

I see an Atlantic coast express hiding here too:



Plenty of headboards to play with!

 

When we launched the society to support GSN we had to come to a similar arrangment with P&O. They were fine with us using the name General Steam Navigation and the flag for publicity (They own the copyright from when they absored the company) as long as we made it clear we were working on the locomotive which is how we ended up with General Steam Navigation Locomotive Restoration Society as a name.

 

Very interesting and enlightening for me as I've often wondered how many of the surviving "merchant navies" have a surviving shipping or cruise liner company still extant. I'm well aware of P&O of course "This is the life"! but I did not know that the company absorbed GSN. Cunard Line is one that springs immediately to mind but the loco didn't survive of course. Holland Amerika perhaps?

 

P&O have a heritage archive website which shows all you the company that they aquired over the years.

http://www.poheritage.com/our-history/company-guides

They sent me a photo of GSNs nameplate they have in there collection plus this one which I am not sure its been shared on here already but its relvant for this thread. Its the original third plate that was presented to the company when 21c6 was named all those years ago.