North Yorkshire Moors Railway General Discussion

I understand that it was an old repair that had given up. Not sure whether it was a BR era or NELPG era repair.

 

That’s very obvious from the video. The engine is as dry as a bone starting away, then there is an escape of steam from a new place around the cylinder followed almost immediately by a pop, and the rest is history.

 

Grosmont Shed News 1st February. Photo of 63395's RH cylinder with the cladding pulled down. "This is to monitor the crack and have a potential weld repair assessment carried out".

 

I see images circulating of the J27 and a shed door... I am told that the incident in question happened some time ago, but I also see people on the internet using the conveniently-timed emergence of these pictures to jump onto the "NYMR bad" bandwagon. Doesn't paint it in a good light...

 

To my mind there has been surprisingly little comment here, and most of it has been sympathetic. There seems to be relatively little interest in the NYMR generally, come to that, at a time when there's a lot going on which seems bizarre to me.

 

For the "leading" railway they don't have a good safety/ incident record. The Q6 incident is however unfortunate.

The repeated bumps through the shed and into coaches seems to be the norm

 

A severe financial blow for the NELPG with the K1 and J72 both undergoing work currently plus the Darlo move.

 

Not suggesting things might have played out any differently but I admit that although the loco clearly wasn't priming, I was a little surprised that the draincocks appear not to be open for what is a "cold start". (And having seen many peoples photographic efforts thwarted at that location thwarted by just that!)
Very lucky however that it happened where any ejected debris was unlikely to risk injury to bystanders (and for the same reason, that it wasn't the LH cylinder that went)

 

The engine was dry. Look at the chimney. It isn’t necessary to run around with the drain cocks open.

I’d agree about it being lick no one was in the way of the bits being ejected.

 

About 3 years ago.

 

Crews on heritage railways tend to be drain cock mad. The loco had been in service and running since 08.35 that morning and everything would be pretty warmed up by then. Yes it had been on shed for exam and sat around a wee while awaiting its train but cylinders don’t cool down that quickly. Try touching a piston rod if you don’t believe me. One or two revolutions of the wheels would have been sufficient to clear any small amount of water that may be there and that would be being cautious.

 

I did say that the loco clearly wasn't priming and no critism was intended, but having witnessed an awful lot of departures out of Grosmont over the years, on most occasions the draincocks have been used when the loco has been sitting for while, even if they get closed fairly quickly afterwards.
You can see on the video however that it is when she gets opened up that things pretty immediately go bang.

 

It would have been unlikely to fail that way when the regulator was being closed.

 

someone in a discord group says he's heard the NELPG had already started work on creating a new cylinder before this happened

 

Yes that is correct, the drawings have been started with a plan to find the pattern maker soon. Original plan was to fit the new cylinder at winter maintenance this year, but that's slightly changed now

 

Deleted, duplicate

 

If the new cylinder was to have been ready for the coming winter, why has the plan changed? -it's still needed, more so now!

 

I think that is the implication - ie the plan had been to fit it next winter, but now it is needed more quickly than that!

Tom

 

The implication from the comments on here is that NELPG bears the costs of replacing the cylinder, which presumably is what the hire agreement says(?), although it would be interesting to know how this allocation of risk is drafted. Presumably NELPG do not have to provide a replacement loco in the interim?

 

Interesting question, does something along the lines of hire car CDW exist in loco hire contracts? If it did I am sure it would seriously ramp up the loco hire rate.