Top Gear and The power of Clarkson

Excellent advert for Tornado and steam in general. Although the repeated references to "train" made me cringe, I'm sure Joe Public thought it was fine, and that's all that counts.

As for the coal debate, A1's were shown to be more economical than their older cousins under test conditions IIRC. The difference is in the tender design of the original A1's and Tornado. ....

Original A1: 9 tons and 5000 gals. Tornado: 7.5 tons and 6000 gals. A significant difference in coal capacity.

As for Clarkson's firing, there's no chance he could fire 50 sq ft under those conditions without considerable training. It was noticeable how dull the fire was when he was on the shovel, so I guess they filmed those shots in the loop during water stops? But hey, again the public would't know and it added to the drama.

Just pity there wasn't more time. It would have been good to have had a "look under the bonnet" first for instance, so people understood what the "RSJ" does.

B-T-W - anyone know what's happening with regard to the 90 mph limit bid?

 

A small point wasn't there two people shovelling at certain stages on each side of the cab, therefore if Clarkson was shovelling then the other guy could have been fixing what he didn't do, its difficult to tell though in a few seconds of film.

 

Excellent programme. Very good publicity for steam, and mainline steam in particular. As has been said, many have only ever seen a steam train puffing along a preserved railway. This sheds a whole new light on it for them, and well done Top Gear/Clarkson for showing admiration for the engineering of 60163 during one of the stops - much improvement on the double safety-hatted level crossing stunt.

 

told you it was gonna be good, \/

the chopper shots are amazing !
we saw the chopper at 50' above, alongside and all the way!

only one glaring error
he said the loco was 3 years old,
shes not
shes not even 1!

btw we had a fantastic run last night back from folkestone on tornado!
we tore up the ashford-tonbridge straight stretch !

my family were on tonbridge platform
they said they have never seen anything like it, going through at such speed ! lol
we had to brake for the curve there 50mph restrctn. #-o #-o
was lotsa fun lol :smt038

 

I can only agree. What a coup for our hobby. After years of endless mick taking we can at last hold our heads high. My wife thought it was an excellent piece of filming. High praise from a woman who after watching the film of my days steam activity would smile and add ''seen one steam train, seen 'em all''. Oh how that makes me smile [-( . <BJ>

 

Exactly.. I took a friend with me to KX that saturday morning..that was the first time he had ever seen a steam locomotive in steam.

 

Yes. I remember JC quoting 33 lb/mile but I don't know where he got that figure from.

It is on record that it was not unknown for the up non-stop Capitals Limited/Elizabethan to have to take a pilot from Hitchin to KX because the A4's coal supply had run out. That was necessary (on more than one occasion I believe) even with the benefit of the extra coal loaded over and above the official capacity of the corridor tender before coming off shed to work the duty. The coal on the Top Gear run may not have been of as good quality as that available in the 1950s and I suspect that JC's figure is far too low. The true figure was probably at least half as much again.

I doubt if an A1 with its 50 sq.ft grate compared to the 41.25 sq.ft. of an A4 could ever have worked through to Edinburgh non-stop, even if it had been able to run with an A4 corridor tender. There were 19 corridor-tendered A4s in service, of which say 3 might have been in works for overhauls. That leaves 16 available in any one year. Would even half that number be needed for a non-stop train which ran summer only for 4 months of the year?

 

I thought he mean't it as in 3 years old in 1949?? Great Northern was rebuilt as A1/1 in 1945, so sort of close?

 

Initial viewing figures of 7.5m for Top Gear last night, and going by all the comments and reviews i've seen on the net, there was almost universal praise for Tornado - now that is impressive, especially from car enthusiasts. Hopefully Steam Dreams, Pathfinder etc are going to make full use of this new publicity.

Chris

 

Exactly, they only ever showed him fire into the middle of the box. It takes abit of practice to be able to get it in those back corners and down the sides of a wide box, especially when the fires white hot and the engines moving at 75!

Thoroughly enjoyable program though.

 

lol noooo
the peppercorn a1's were new, 1948/9 in service

Big T is not even a year old
the beeb fluffed the lines abit,
hey ho lol

i wished they had taken off our water stops in the timings,
as troughs were in-situ in 1949 and then we would have beaten capt slow hands down,
also likewise,
james should have taken the original 'old roads' and not the slightly re-routed dual's and probably as we now have, town 'by-passes'...

 

I'm normally more of a silent forum member but felt I would throw in a womans point of view (yes, a woman commenting on a program involving steam and cars) but I thought it was a great program and absolutely wonderful for the steam movement. Someone made reference to errors like calling a loco a train causing confusion etc but surely the interest caused by these will get more people involved at which point they can be 'trained' properly and that's the whole point.
Obviously the 'dramas' were over played but that is the way of TV, but at the same time does us a favour in showing to Joe Public just how hard we do work and how it's not just a case of throwing a few bits of coal in.
I think due respect was given by Clarkson and co to the Steam movement and nothing but good can come of this (except having to compete with more people to get a go)
And here's hoping those railways that suffer from vanalism and such will get a break as if Clarkson thinks 'Trains are cool' then perhaps more youth will!

 

Fantastic television - well done to all involved in getting this to the wide audience of the small screen.

Remember- it's entertainment and nothing more. It is not a serious race and not a level playing field. It's not possible to replicate 1951 with 2009 on either front for several reasons. In 1951 there would be water troughs available and the loco would not have been limited to 75 m.p.h. If B.R. were entering a loco with the intention of racing a motor car they would have prepared an A3 or A4 with corridor tender and had a fresh loco, fully coaled, available enroute. Similarly whilst there were few dual carriageway stretches on the A1 in 1951, there was a lot less traffic on the road, and similarly there were only speed limits in towns and some villages. All 3 contenders would have been fairly evenly matched, and so the "race" would have been quite interesting.

All said, it was good to see and I have heard nothing detrimental about the show from anyone. Well done again!

 

interesting mr pot, yer i agree, its 1949 btw not 1951 lol.

 

Clarkson slacking then???

 

porous pot: I agree with your comments re the A1 in days gone by. My father tells the story of driving back from Scotland in the 1930's in his employer's large Bentley, with what we would consider quite rudimentary brakes, and being able to "cruise" on the A1 down from Scotch Corner at 100 mph for long stretches, simply because there was so little other traffic on the roads then, and as you say, no national speed limits.

I guess some would say we havn't actually progressed that much.... :-k

46118

 

Would have made a very interesting race with the pre-war 6hr 'Coronation'!

Incidentally, what is the fastest Kings X - Edinburgh time for steam?

 

Bitterfeld incident at around 16.10 hrs on Sunday, November 27th, 1977. Leipzig crew with 03 2121 arrived in Berlin and loco declared a failure there. For the return working they were given 01 1516 (of Berlin Ostbahnhof shed) which the crew ran short of water at Bitterfeld, a station the train was due to stop at. Presumably as a result of this water shortage the firebox collapsed, the force of the explosion catapulted the boiler some 80 meters ahead of the now stopped train. A total of 8 people (including the loco crew) killed and 45 injured.

 

Anyone else notice the continuity error at about 9 mins 20 secs?

 

Great race and Tornado was staggering. Anyone know where I can get some screencaps from the race can't seem to find any.