The Valentine's White Rose, 15/02/20

Maybe the last time for me and other fellow passengers on the valentines white rose at Newark N.G. ile see U.o.S.A. in steam on the mainline its a exellent run like i say but ile cherish it as a very good memorable day out to york ret on the E.C.M.L. and to talk about it to my friends and family Davo 56F.

 

Rather a good ECML send off for 60009, all things considered. A good 72.4mph down Stoke in atrocious wind conditions. Everything running according to plan from our end, just a shame about the congestion at Peterborough.

 

Saw her through Hitchin and she was going well up the climb to Stevenage. Diesel on the rear providing zero assistance. Could be the last time i see her on my stretch of the GN.

 

46233 charging through Knebworth and 60009 drifting through Welwyn North...



https://www.flickr.com/photos/alts1985/49539182051/in/dateposted-public/

 

My latest footage , enjoy

 

My shots of both engines battling through Storm Dennis on the Valentines White Rose. Enjoy!

 

Oh, and one chance snap of both of them at York... Brings back memories of Carlisle in September 2014.

 

Wonderful sight and sound at a gusty Grantham station No 9 made a fabulous sight. Nikon D750 35mm F/2 1/640 ISO 2500

 

Sandy North, Claypole, Colton Jn, Doncaster, Grantham and Arlesey. Mick Rawling on the regulator for the Duchess, Chris Cubitt on the A4. Firemen I believe were Nigel Barber and Fraser Birrell respectively.

 

Given Bulleid Pacific’s snippet about No 9’s performance on the return run, I felt that some sort of record of this historic run – however sketchy - would be useful; and that to this end, it would be an interesting exercise to conduct some experimental armchair timing of what looks like No 9’s last southbound run over the ECML via the recently introduced Raildar web site. This offers what is in effect a more refined version of RTT, still using information sourced from Network Rail data feeds, but offering times in a h:m:s format for GMT times rather than rounded quarter minutes as per RTT (but still with limitations, of which more later). Given the somewhat inclement weather conditions inflicted by Storm Dennis on Saturday evening, anything armchair-based certainly seemed appropriate for the circumstances!!

From the Raildar data, it would appear that the initial leg of the return run from York to the Ranskill Loop witnessed some steady running with Doncaster, 32.54 miles passed in 36.53s and Loversall Carr Junction, 36.50 miles, in 40m 25s. No data is available for the times at Ranskill Loop to enable a start-to-stop time and average speed, but a highlight of this first section would have been the 17.98 miles from Hambleton North Junction to Doncaster reeled off in 16m 46s (64.3 mph pass-to-pass)

Little meaningful data is available from RTT/ Raildar for the short hop from Ranskill Loop to Newark, but from the latter calling point to Tallington Junction, the intervening 35.28 miles were consumed in 39m 54s, including the run down Stoke Bank, previously alluded to by Bulleid Pacific, which witnessed an average speed of 60.8 mph pass-to-pass for the 14.53 miles from Stoke to Tallington Junctions, covered in 14m 20s. Then followed what looks like very sporadic progress into Peterborough (8.46 miles/ 24m 24s) and indeed through the following section to the Huntingdon stop, for which the 17.5 miles took a little over 48 minutes.

But at least it had been allowed to precede the delayed 9J65 from Peterborough (to Horsham) So departing Huntingdon some 27L, there then followed a decent spell of slightly better than mile-a-minute running over the next section to the Stevenage set-down – a section that includes the generally rising tendency at 1 on 400/ 1 in 200 extending from Arlesey for eight–plus miles through to one mile north of Stevenage. Timings for the intermediate stations over this 31.3 mile section (with intermediate average speeds start-to-pass, pass-to-pass and pass-to stop in brackets) are reported via Raildar as follows……

From restart to St Neots 7.15miles/ 9m 20s (46.0), to Sandy 14.75 miles/ 16m 33s (63.2), to Biggleswade 17.71 miles/ 19m 31s (59.9), to Arlesey 21.84 miles/ 23m 31s (62.0), to Hitchin 26.95 miles 28m 39s (59.7) and finally a fairly fast run in to the Stevenage stop, 31.31 miles in 33m 19s (56.1 pass-to-stop). Overall Huntingdon to Stevenage 56.4 mph – and still 27L.

I didn’t feel that it was worth looking in any detail at the concluding slow and rather fragmented sections of the schedule to Ealing Broadway, but I hope that the foregoing gives some flavour of the journey that those on board would have experienced.

I also hope that this record will serve as a memento of an end-of-an-era/ end-of-an-epoch event that will particularly appeal to those who truly appreciate the very special association of the route with the locomotive and its class. Given the presence of a tail-gunner, the contribution of which is unknown, and given the difficult prevailing weather conditions it would be meaningless/ worthless to do anything more than to report the basic facts of 60009’s progress; but, sketchy as it may be, there you have it.

By way of a footnote, for those not familiar with Raildar, it may be worth taking a look at the website at https://raildar.co.uk/ For those wishing to track and armchair-time individual trains (and equipped with their UID), it certainly has its limitations. For example, although its coverage of principal/ trunk routes like the ECML, WCML, GEML and GWML is fine, it offers no minutes and seconds data for (most locations on) secondary routes like the S&C and Welsh Marches, so often no improvement over RTT in that respect.

Distances are given in miles and chains; there are no elapsed times, only GMT / BST h:m:s format clock times, and no average or spot speeds. So a fair amount of conversion and calculation is necessary to even get to the kind of basic information reproduced in the text above.

On the other hand, Raildar does incorporate a number of nice features like a mapping facility showing the geographic positioning and progression of trains in real time (the miniature icons even feature the livery of the TOC concerned!!). And for all its pitfalls and constraints, it’s not too difficult to visualise that this sort of facility may one day become the future of automated train timing, even if in its present form its output really doesn’t match up to that of a skilled train timer.

Oh, and although it is necessary to register to gain access, personal subscription rates are free. So at the very least, nothing lost by taking a look!!

 

I hasten to add that 72.4mph was a spot maximum, rather than the average speed down Stoke! Apologies for not making this clear in the original post.

That said, averaging the maximum speeds I have for the three timing sections I have between Newark and Tallington (Newark - Grantham - Stoke Jn - Tallington Jn), I get around 63mph, but there are inevitably inherent dangers in relying on such a limited spread of data, which again shows the superiority of quarter-mile timings.