Flying Scotsman

The NYMR made the local paper with the last Whitby to Pickering train from Whitby train of the season, with an all Female footplste crew, with both Driver and Fireman being women. That was before the pandemuic mayhem of the last couple of years......

 

Though it shouldn't be necessary, I applaud efforts by lines to attract female staff. We've collectively had an eye to getting younger volunteers onboard (as the nearest many of us old farts will come to admitting we're going to croak at some point!).

One group I seriously think we've overlooked are volunteers with Indian heritage in particular. Both on the sub-continent itself and formerly in East Africa, many such folk will come from families with a long and honourable tradition of railway service, often as here going back generations.

OK, so we've nowhere to run an EAR Class 59, or WL 'pacific', but I'd reckon a significant potential volunteer base has been largely overlooked. Now I'm as fond of a curry dining train as the next bloke, but shouldn't we be looking beyond a biryani and a bevvy folks?

 

Ahem!



(April 2017, Sheffield Park - not my photo).

Tom

 

To counter though Tom. The Bluebell is quite away from the North Yorkshire coast of Whitby, so wouldn't be newsworthy in the Whitby Gazette........ Good for the Bluebell none the less.

 

The grief in the world will never be over, it is always taking place somewhere. It can be on the larger scale or on the smaller scale, it also impacts on the individual scale. Sometimes we might be aware of it but most of the time people try to get on with their lives unless directly affected and even if affected they continue to try to get on with living. There is an alternative and some feel compelled to take that course of action but this is not the place to talk about it. There is a great deal of it in the world and we are blissfully ignorant of most of it.

Getting back to Flying Scotsman, the engine has been in service for several years now and it is going to go through the necessary overhaul. Alan Pegler wrote that over six years of running the engine three complete repaints were required along with several major touchings-up. So perhaps we can agree that the engine is going to need paint anyway and what will be needed will not be found at Brewers, it is a somewhat different product. It comes with a price and there is more to that than just the paint and will probably be much the same regardless of the livery chosen though the LNER livery is a little more ornate. The mechanical and boiler work will be carried out either way.

The engine could perform very well in single chimney form, there were more than 70 of these engines and they served for decades. The double Kylchap exhaust is superior to the single, it delivers a more powerful machine which is less demanding in a number of areas. It was proposed that the weight of trains to be handled by the locomotive should be reduced, similarly the number of trains worked. Weights did go down or maybe not. The introduction of a regular 37 or 47 in the consist added 100 tons and more to the trains to add to the confusion. Since the Pacifics were designed to haul 600 ton trains in original A1 condition and the engine is now considerably more capable than the originals we cannot be too sure of exactly what questions have been put to the machine. The original exhaust was rather empirical, it worked well enough but the time came when well enough was not quite good enough, a little more was wanted from the system and Chapelon's work was recognised as offering something of merit and interest. More work has been done since Chapelon's day and so it would be fair to say that a superior single exhaust could be produced today. Is it needed? With the engine in good condition, with good fuel and a first class crew, frequently not but when the need arises for that little extra to be found then you have a problem.

You would have to accept the original system and work with it or design an improved, externally identical, system which would need testing and approval. Nothing impossible maybe.

 

Whatever the livery I think we should all be grateful that it's still around. This was the last picture I thought I would get of it, waiting for the regulation brake van to be shunted on after bringing its last last railtour to Kings Cross before going to the USA, 31st August 1969. Few thought it would ever return

 

And nothing wrong with CT18 that I'm aware of. I used it more than any other film.

 

It was a bit grainy and the archival longevity is not very good. Photoshop has saved the day with a lot of mine.

 

Another belter of a shot John. I guess we will never see her running with the double tender configuration ever again. I would have loved to see her running like this. Really suits her lines in my eyes.

Sent from my XQ-BT52 using Tapatalk

 

To be honest, I'd like to see 4472 turned out in the North Road [Darlington] LNER livery applied in 1965 with the apple green North Eastern version of the LNER livery. This time with the North Eastern classification of 4.6.2 applied. North Road closed late '65 early '66 so no doubt with Alan Peglar's blessing she came out with the green cylinder patches, as a nod to the past. The North Eastern |until around 1932] kept applying North Eastern class designations to any loco passing through the works. So the North Eastertn classifiction took the lead in the form their [LNER A2] pacifics of 4.6.2............[With the Westinghouse air pump mounted half way along the right side of the boiler]

 

Thanks It’s an odd world, everyone I knew hated it. It also caused some operational problems as regulations required a brake van with lookout when it was running tenders first

 

No, it wasn’t that. I was just gobsmacked as to how your comment could be based in fact.

 

Another beautiful shot. This is the loco of legend that so many people have grown up with, though. Apple green, 4472.

It occurred to me earlier though - I’ve never seen her with a single chimney. Ever. I’m not old enough to have done so. That made me pause for thought. That means it’ll have been 30 years plus without being in single chimney form.

There’s a part of me that appreciates that - but also, Pegler went to so much effort to restore it to as close to LNER livery as possible - for the centenary - I know what would draw in the crowds most.

 

Thank you for this. On reflection, a tad grumpy from me earlier - I am just acutely aware we need to encouraging everyone into our industry.

Inclusivity is both right and will save our industry.

My apologies for being a tad defensive.

 

Sam, it’s ok to make a mistake mate, we’ve all said or done silly things at various points in our lives.
Please don’t worry Matt

 

Count everyone I knew in with them too. We saw it as a rather inelegant solution to a problem and we either liked it or lumped it. Depending on your point of view it either looked like two tenders with an A3 stuck on the front, or alternatively an A3 with a painted goods tank stuck between it and its train. I didn't know anyone who liked it.

Here are the tenders with a loco on one end and a brake van at the other at Tyne Dock on 7th September 1968. My mate and I helped coal her that day, climbing onto the top of a coal wagon and manhandling coal from the coal wagon into the tender. There was a small conveyor supposedly doing the job, but it was making heavy work of it, so when we saw some of the support staff climb up to muck in, we got up there alongside to help speed the process. If we'd been told to get the hell away we'd have done so, but as we weren't, we didn't.

As a footnote, the following February we were at The Tyneside Film Theatre to see a screening of the Burt Lancaster film 'The Train', sponsored as a fund-raiser by either the NELPG or another group that had connections to the loco (don't know which). I was as proud as punch when someone got up onto the stage to introduce the film when he added that the last time he was in these parts was on the September trip and he wanted to thank those members of the public who helped coal the loco at Tyne Dock! WOW!!!

Another footnote. The film over-ran and we realised we could either see the end of the film or catch the last bus home. We stayed to watch the film. The 16 mile walk home on a February night with inadequate clothing for not having a bus wrapped around us took some of the shine off the evening, but added to the memories.

 

Another shot from a little later that afternoon. Tyne Dock, 7 September 1968. Filling the tender tank. The elevating converor that would be helping us fill the tender in view.

 

At Evesham this morning

 

Now That's an A3. Nice.

Drives me nuts though when I see folks who have made the effort to get there holding a phone in one hand in portrait mode to photograph a laterally elongated subject like a steam engine. They just don't seem to realise that if only they turned the damned phone on its side they'd get the whole loco in, instead of just a slice of it with a vast empty expanse of sky and ground at the top and bottom. A pet hate of mine.

 

A good turnout, of all ages, on a chilly morning.