Pennine Explorer 22/05/21 60163 Tornado

Tornado's fireman did the job single handed from Carlisle to York and no, he isn't a regular WCR fireman and as I understand it, the engine wasn't being pushed as hard as she could have been and boiler pressure was kept between 225-230 PSI. The Russian coal has large cobbles that can hardly fit through the firehole and also has a tendancy to clinker so a stop at Appleby would have allowed him to clean and prep the fire (and have a short rest before the climb).

 

Absolutely, I recall an occasion in the late 1990’s with 60007’s owners requesting ‘no heroics’ from its footplate crew following a valve and piston exam before an outing.

 

the last minute of footage .. in the words of Pantera ' a vulgar display of raw power'. Cant wait to see that again with an A2 on the front...

 

Gosh! That didn't take long did it! Two tours over the same route; with a similar load has resulted in many picking the bones/merits of the two runs
I'm just thankful that we are seeing a return of steam (and a return of some normalcy) and it is good to see such a number of video clips and Photo's of the tours - fingers crossed that it remains that way.
Also great to see a return many of the regular contributors that make this forum come to life - something that has definitely been lacking since lockdown kicked in.

 

It will be good to see the A2 return but I am looking a little further ahead because I really want to see what the P2 will achieve.

 

Me too...providing I'm still alive.....

 

It was said tongue in cheek Ralph.

 

Some of the firemen were very young but still did the job well. Dave Wilson for instance was the fireman on many of the great runs but was just 17 in 1965, from memory

 

Passed cleaners from Kettering went on loan to Nine Elms in the early/mid 60s ,as they did to Neasden and Cricklewood . I visited Nine Elms several times a year in the late 1950s early 60s, with a friend who was a passed cleaner at Kettering, we got to know the men in the foreman's office quite well , most times they would try to perswade him to transver to Nine Elms, as they were very short of staff,they said you, would be a fireman in so and so link ,plenty of overtime /mileage money, it was all about money ,nothing to do with the type of locos'. It would mean him leaving home, and the cost of accomodation would be high ,although BR had a block of flats, with cheap rates ,somewhere near Marylebone for employees. However it was said by some there was a constant stream of ladies visiting on a daily basis. So he didn't accept there offer.

 

I hope so. I can’t see that the power of a MN is any more ‘immense’ than an A1 or Duchess, and that ragged exhaust beat suggests it could well be less !


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Runs in the 1960s produced power in the same league as has been well documented. But BIL somehow doesn’t sound right and I havent had a decent run with it in preservation. It would be good to hear a drivers view. Also why is it ok to work the superb Jubs to the limit on overloaded trains but not work BIL hard on train weights well within its capacity? Tornado must have been worked very hard to produce a near record climb on Saturday. Lots there for the keyboard warriors to comment on

 

BIL is capable, I had a run over Shap with it a couple of years ago on a Santa special - load 13 and a 47. I dismissed it at the time as having must have had some assistance, but videos afterwards showed otherwise!

Saturdays run sounds like it had a lot of outside influences such as damp rail, trainee fireman and perhaps one eye on the water. It simply wasn't the time for anything strenuous. However, she certainly didn't struggle and got the job done. Tornado perhaps gave an unfair comparison and gave some of us a bit of train envy!

 

Bar the VSOE jobs are DBC really a player any more, A1ST jobs seem to be WCR in the main and I assume over time LSL will get enough drivers trained up to avoid the extra costs of having to hire in DBC crews likewise VT.

 

Didn't BIL go over and Shap and Ais Gill at 40 and 50mph a few years ago on a CME ? She was also worked well last week, granted only load 10. Both of those superb runs last week had Mick Kelly on the regulator and he likes to work his engine, plenty of video evidence over the years to back that up.

 

Yes, I was on it - BIL's first CME outing.

Last year I was talking to the fireman on a CME at Carlisle - don't know his name. I asked him what it was like to fire the Scot compared to BIL. He said the Scot was always hungry, the more coal you shovel in the more it will burn. On the other hand, you can load up the firebox on the MN and sit back. I got the impression that the Scot was harder work to fire.

 

The performance of two Class 8 Pacifics over the Settle and Carlisle line on 22 May has attracted much interest on both the relevant pages of National Preservation.

The run of Merchant Navy No 35018 British India Line has been documented in the finest detail by @1020 Shireman, and the general assessment of its performance seems to correspond with my own view that it was ‘fair to middlin’.

By contrast the performance of A1 No 60163 Tornado an hour or two later appears to have been outstanding, with its speeds and timings appearing to approximate to record levels.

It has been frustrating so far that no detailed figures at all have emerged so far about the Tornado run, making it impossible to compare the two runs in detail. This has left the field open to speculation as to the causes, not all of it well founded.

A friend who is a guru of locomotive performance has attempted to remedy the lacuna of information, by measuring from published videos the times of both trains over a measured stretch of the final climb to Ais Gill summit. With the aid of a detailed OS map and the RPS distance chart, he was able to feed the data into the Railway Performance Society website interactive calculator. This produced the following estimates of equivalent drawbar horsepower of 1450 for N0 35018 and 2600 for No 60163, subject to the accuracy of the available inputs.

He and I would both be delighted to see more details of speeds and times from No 60163’s run, so that the true measure of this remarkable run can be documented.

Peter on a sunny afternoon in Manchester
https://pjhtransportpix.zenfolio.com

 

I will be reporting on both in my column in HR 282 so any more detail on the Tornado run would be appreciated. Don