Flying Scotsman

You don't want it to work properly then Tom?

 

If the bookings so far are an indicator, all tours this YEAR are FULLY BOOKED, I suspect lost revenue will be close to nil. She will fill all booked tours until such time as the novelty has worn off, much the same as when she was apple green with single chimney...

 

Don't think that's much of a guide. The mainstream press seem to be mainly using stock photos of the loco in apple green, with or without blinkers. It will be the level of complaints afterwards when it turns out you can't take the photos of granddad or the kids standing in front of the iconic image familiar from the last 40 odd years, but instead some dull thing they don't recognise.

Even Steam Dreams are using an Apple Green photo on their bookings page.

 

We shall see....

 

I don’t think she didn't work properly as originally built (in the sense of being unable to pull heavy trains at speed), she simply used more coal than she should have done. That characteristic alone does not seem to have been a bar to at least one other locomotive having made a successful career on the 21st century mainline!

There is something incredibly beautiful about FS as originally built, and every change in her long life since seems somehow, incrementally, to have made her just a bit more ugly, of which the smoke deflectors are only the latest chapter. I was trying to think what it is about the early form, and I think @Spamcan81 has probably clarified it with his comment about the GNR loading gauge: the higher cab and boiler fittings (and smaller tender) as originally built give her, in my eyes, a grace that seems to have been lost since: the current appearance feels more hunkered down, as if a small cab is hiding behind a large boiler. As built, she was a modern engine but also recognisably a product of the finest of pre-grouping traditions. As she is today, that graceful elegance seems in my eyes to have been mostly lost.

I realise my judgement is an entirely aesthetic one, not based at all on engineering practice.

Tom

 

Interestingly, the model doesn't have smoke deflectors

 

And because aesthetics is so completely in the eye of the beholder, I can have almost completely the opposite view while in no way claiming that I am right and you are wrong.

To my eyes, the later A3 form has more grace and cleaner lines, the relatively small dome and chimney (compared to the barrel) seem more in proportion when shorter, and the later tender follows the profile of the cut down cab. It's like a sense of power built out to the limits of the loading gauge just enough that you're aware of a constraint, without the sense that you could run a gauge profile over the top of them and see little gap along the whole length (unlike some later designs that a lack of desire to start a fight prevents me from naming). However, I was raised in a household where 2750 (built as an A3) was the Platonic ideal of the Gresley Pacific, and indeed the steam engine.

I first saw FS as 60103 at Paignton, a good few years ago when I was at an impressionable age, so personally I like the German smoke deflectors and BR green. Oddly enough, I also think the coal rail tender looks good when they're in that form, whereas in LNER livery the corridor tender is non-negotiable. I'm sure the NRM will change her appearance at some point. Some people will be happy now, others will be happy later, but I fear poor Tom will never see his ideal A1.

 

That's the bit that doesn't make sense to me. You pay 2 million pounds, essentially for the "brand", because the loco isn't much more than a worn out pile of scrap. Pay out another few million quid to overhaul it and then before it launches decide to rebrand it from what the majority of people know and love. You are then faced with a whole load of additional "marketing" to explain to people why you've rebranded it. What next, the NRM go the whole hog and decide to run it in the guise of a sister A3, just to make it even more challenging?

Don't get me wrong, as an enthusiast, I'm delighted to see the A3 overhauled and coming back out in BR livery, but from the standpoint of the NRM making the most out of FS, it doesn't make sense to me.

 

Of course. Manchester United pretty much sell out Old Trafford for every match, but ticket sales aren't where the majority of the income comes from, it's all the associated merchandise where the money is to be made. That's what sets FS apart from most other locos, you have the potential to sell an awful lot of additional merchandise. If you make a pigs ear of the branding, then you will sell less. People are less likely to buy models, posters and calendars depicting a loco that looks nothing like what they've just seen in the flesh. Similarly, I suspect Manchester United sell far more red shirts / scarves etc. than they do away shirts / merchandise because that's the colour people associate with them.

 

do we know what state mallards tender is in?

 

Flying scotsman is going to be in its last BR guise because thats the only historic livery it can carry in its present condition wih double chimney and smoke deflectors, Now concider this, had the single chimney casting and blastpipe been availible and in a usable condition, i would say that the NRM would have prefered to have had her in the condition she was first preservd in, and in LNER Apple green as 4472 because that is her brand, and how many people know her.

 

Increased sales of merchandise then, all showing her new appearence ! little Johnny or indeed his Dad, will not have have a previous purchase like this one, but they will be buying what they have just seen in the flesh...

 

The problem is they are a museum and doing what museums do conserving artefacts from the past and in its current configuration it can only be BR green otherwise you've got something that's not illustrating a bygone age which is what museums are for.

 

Does it matter it's stuffed and mounted and is going to stay that way

 

Even the double chimney adds to the look in my view - both aesthetically and because I know how much the Kylchap reduces the exhaust losses and improves the steaming. And as a corollary, the dome on the A4 boiler is slightly farther forward, balancing out the double chimney much better. Even the german deflectors are less obvious than the ones fitted to Humourist, so if deflectors there must be, them's the ones. As to paint - I like the BR greeen, but there's nothing wrong with Apple green on an A4 boilered double kylchap A3. I just tell myself that Gresley would have ended up with that as the final development of the A3.

I also have a model of FS from when the NRM first bought it - A4 boiler, double chimney, german deflectors, and Apple Green.

 

I could of sworn that on its first trip out of the X, under Alan Peglar's ownership, it was wearing blinkers, painted in BR green and was 60103.

 

This seems a lame reason to me. As a proportion of the overhaul cost, it would've been a minimal addition to manufacture a single chimney casting / blastpipe, if that's what the NRM had preferred. There would have been no issue doing this if the overhaul had been managed properly and so much money hadn't been wasted.

 

Good luck with stocking your shop full of 'away kits'! There will be some takers for sure, but it isn't what the majority want to buy.