2999: Lady of Legend

From the photo, although it's both too tall and too long, it looks as though it's narrow enough to run on the RHDR, let alone one of Brunel's wide loads… (presumably the removal of the background from the photo has removed a touch too much somewhere along the line)

Simon

 

Broad gauge loco, monorail tender...

 

Surely 2 monorail tenders .... arranged abreast.

From what I've seen of BG kit, you'd be hard pushed to come up with anything much stranger than the stuff which did exist!

 

I’d like to see the dual monorail tender solution operate across the crossover between platform lines in the foreground …



Tom

 

If ever there was a symbol of a nation rich beyond the dreams of avarice it's this lunacy. My only sadness, and the only way the whole thing could have been nuttier, is that no one had the ambition to run a third set narrow gauge trains between the outer rails of the standard and broad gauge track…

Simon

 

The downside of any democratic solution is that we get what the majority believe is best rather than what actually is ...

 

Even leaving aside it's painfully obvious point that the GPB are only occasionally provided with sufficient verifiable information on which to base any 'democratic decision', I'm not too sure there's remotely sufficient evidence to support such a contention.

 

A picture of the beast passing Eardington on Saturday

 

Can Beauty also be the Beast then ?

 

7' - 4'8" is 2'4"

Is 1" a decent allowance for railhead?
Maybe we've found out where the Tallyllyn got their gauge from.

Imagine a B&ER 8' single tank with a line of slate wagons behind it...?

 

However you posted it on 24th. What are we to make of that?

 

The conversation flowed that way! I kind of thought it was an obvious fake but worth the joke ... (No. 36, OTOH, is 100% genuine).

Tom

 

The thing about GW locos all looking the same is really a rather silly saying, if you consider say a 15xx pannier, a Dukedog 4-4-0, a 14/48xx 0-4-2T and a Saint standing next to each other. But what I want to know is why no-one ever complains that all BR standards look the same?

 

I take it you mean the official TR gauge, rather than the actual gauge employed for much of the line's pre-preservation existence and which, according to John Bate, by 1951 was largely kept in place with turf and luck.

 

It does look unlikely, but then so do some real locos, especially from that era.
Where did the picture come from?

 

It was taking away that third rail that made it go all wobbly...

 

It first popped up for me on the “Everything Great Western” Facebook group. The date was April 1st…

 

Various Facebook groups, I think it originated on the Broad Gauge Society Facebook page.

It’s a fairly obvious fake (but quite a funny one). Going even further off topic, what concerns me more in “fakes” are the very rapid blossoming of colourised images (and even films). It seems that the software has got to a point where it is well within the range of large numbers of people. Most of the images I have seen the author has had the courtesy to say “colourised” and often link to the original; however, very soon such images will be in general circulation and people might start taking them as authentic. A colourised Victorian photo is pretty obviously not all it seems, but, say, a World War 2 photo could be genuine colour or colourised, and in time it won’t be obvious which.

Tom

 

Superficially, I suppose, the intelligent observer is aware that colour reproduction of 50 and 75 year old images is so unreliable as to be pretty much worthless, but there's also the problem of "Here it is painted green" when it wasn't.

 

Video focusing on 2999 at Didcot, NYMR and during both its 2021 and 2022 visits to the Severn Valley