Brighton Atlantic: 32424 Beachy Head

Given the more than ever-so-slight difference in size between boilers on a Mickey Mouse and a Flat Top, you're not the only one!

 

Paul - a perusal of this thread will show that “rubbing the lamp” actually consists of posting a very anodyne “here is an update” post (#725) at which point you come trolling in with all your usual negativity (#728). So perhaps the genie needs less of a hair trigger - otherwise the prime use of the forum - to keep us all abreast of developments across the heritage railway world -will become unworkable. Essentially this project and the 82045 project posted almost simultaneous updates on Thursday, but only one thread has filled up with pages of froth. You might wish to consider why that is so.

The bottom line is that the heritage preservation world is a broad church: we won’t all find equal enjoyment from every project, but that shouldn’t automatically cause us to start criticising every project we happen not to favour - least of all if we have no financial or democratic stake in its progress. Maybe just let it pass, allow those who wish to progress it to do so and gain the enjoyment from doing so, and instead just follow the projects you prefer.

The alternative of course is to wait for the next update and then start all over, at which point I and maybe others would have to question the value of keeping this forum updated. You may also wish to reflect on how your general aggressiveness might begin to affect how others percieve those railways that you do favour - which personally I would find a shame being that I am a member of one, but I am not sure the stridency of your views is doing it many favours.

Anyway, I’m off to bed: 6 am start tomorrow to fire a pre-grouping class 1, having had a day on it today as well.

Tom

 

As an aside when I went into Atlantic House during the shareholders weekend the smokebox number plate had been fitted to the door.

Regards,

Dan

 

Here, here.
My viewpoint is it's another steam loco so what's not to like?

 

@paulhitch Think you’ll find Tom posted an update, and you made a comment about the loco apart from the boiler not being kosher... Don’t think there was any specific reference to you at all, old boy...


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you will get funny looks if you take your bucket and spade there

 

Thank you very much indeed for your generous offer. It'll probably be next spring now, but it is something I would greatly appreciate.

AND I'll get to see Beachy Head - I hope!

 

I feel like at the heart of this whole "debate" there is a severe lack of research on one side. A quick google search reveals several photographs of LBSCR Atlantics working on the Bluebell Railway, albeit pre-preservation and one photograph in particular strikes me because it is not just any Atlantic, but it is in fact Beachy Head:



The very engine, working out of Horsted Keynes station. I had a chat with a member of the Atlantic Project and it was photographs that last one which spurred a few people to donating to the project.

There are other photographs - the one which strikes me is one which shows this very same locomotive on a set of Pullmans, which will make its use on our Golden Arrow service very appropriate, when it is complete and running. Given the schedules we employ with the train, I am very much looking forward to having some Atlantic muscle on the front!

People from the local area of a certain age do also still remember the Brighton Atlantics and have donated.

There's preservationists and supporters from all over the country who have put their hands in their pockets, put pennies into the bucket, because at its heart, there is real railway recreation at work here.

Building a locomotive to run specifically on a line that the original locomotives worked on? I am struggling to think of any other new build standard gauge group that is producing something more appropriate than that - Lyn, of course, is the other new build that has also been built to run on a specific line.

Someone earlier in the thread commented that they felt this was possibly the most important new build of recent times. We could have a debate on that - I'd rather we didn't. Alternatively we could appreciate that a lot of railway preservation has an emotional attachment and it is because many people want to recreate those feelings.

And there is nowt wrong with that.

 

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, whether their opinions are right or wrong is a different matter.

 

And of course, Beachy Head will be doing the Gala circuit after the Bluebell runs it in (And runs several Atlantic themed events designed to part cash from it's owners!) , so it will still make new ground for Brighton Altantics - the only other Preserved line it might have ran on is the MHR (And even that is a longshot.)

 

Imagine it at GCR at full line speed.... Beautiful

 

How about a New build Gala, Hopefully in a few years the 3mt tank, Patriot Tornado, or Prince of wales, and of course, Beachy Head and if you want to add that special touch, how about the Brighton Belle unit from London, to East grinstead, then steam haul it with an Air braked loco to Sheffield park and back then propel it onto NR so it can return to london .

 

Having a different opinion was not the issue.

It was the manner of expressing that opinion; it was the snide asides and the outright inflammatory comments.

It was the denigration of a groups work, the thinly veiled criticisms of the history of said work and the timing.

No, having a different opinion was not the issue.

One who talks about manners when he is being challenged by others but in a few carefully chosen posts upsets many people and does so knowingly.

What has angered me and precipitated my (at times, accusatory) tone was the language used.

The idea that only the boiler of the Atlantic is “kosher”.

Think about that. We’re talking about the hard, difficult work of around twenty years of some very talented individuals.

Some heavy engineering. Some incredible research. Careful decision making. Use of new techniques and old. Recycling in the best possible way.

Not kosher. Think on the use of that word. That, amongst other language choices was out of order. Entirely out of order.

I refuse to sugarcoat it and I refuse to excuse it.

Quite frankly, no one should. We’re all in railway preservation for different reasons. All have different goals and ways of doing things. There will be times we disagree. That’s a given.

But I will never denigrate people working hard for a common cause.

I think an actual, genuine apology to the Atlantic Project is in order. It will not be forthcoming, I suspect, but it is in order.

In the meantime I worked at the Bluebell Railway today and in a quiet moment went round to the shed and paused to look at the hand painted sign made to advertise the project many years ago. We are so close to seeing it and that is wonderful.

 

Further to the quibbles about using a Doncaster built Ivatt Atlantic boiler, it appears that in the time of both Douglas Earle Marsh and Lawson Billinton on the LB&SCR, that due to lack of capacity in Brighton Works orders for some boilers were sub-contracted out to Kitson & Co, Vickers, and would you believe, both the North British and Midland Railways.

 

i'm not saying that is untrue - just a bit strange .

at one time , up to around 1865 ish I believe , Crewe would submit tenders (quotes, not the other sort ) for locos on other railways . this was stopped - I always thought , by law .
subsequently railway companies were prevented from carrying out this practise .

as I say , it's a bit strange

 

So 25mph then.......

 

Not at all. Many railway companies did outsource certain component manufacturing to other workshops. Albeit it's not always a railway company owned workshop. Vulcan, North British, etc, all built locomotives for a variety of the home grouping railways. Pannier Tanks built by North British ironically finding their way to Scotland later in life, for example.

Then you have to remember that companies like Stephenson's, Hawthorn, Sharp Stewart, Hunslet, etc etc, all built a range of standard designs for railway companies with slightly varying specifications. The number of identical 4-4-0s throughout Europe, in fact, is astonishing. So much so that there is a locomotive that is the literal twin of a Furness Railway 4-4-0 in Mainland Europe. There are Macintosh 0-6-0s too in Belgium. The FR no.20 has a tender taken from a scrapped locomotive in Egypt from the same manufacturer.

The Ivatt Atlantics and the Marsh Atlantics are very similar machines. The boilers had a few differences but no so much to be insurmountable for the GNR boiler to be used on an LBSCR machine.

The Atlantic Project have covered this very well on their website - it really is worth reading if you want to learn more about design development, because Ivatt > Marsh allowed for some very sensible modifications in the H1 then H2 locomotives.

Line speed is 25mph for normal events, 45mph special derogations for specific trains, 60mph for testing during contained and controlled events. So you have a choice of three speeds, all of these being comfortable for the Atlantic.

A number of people questioned the idea of Tornado doing 90mph on the main line regularly due to wear and tear. Now people are criticising the lower speeds for the Atlantic on a preserved railway. There's a lack of consistency somewhere in the debate...