Kent & East Sussex Railway

Nah - it'll either be a fake-J94 or another which isn't a J94 either.

 

Having looked up the details on the working timetable, it looks like it is both Austerities/Buckets/(look, they're steam engines, ok?)

Saturday and Sunday also sees both out, but only one on public services.

Monday is one of them, plus the Thumper, as previously stated.

 

'Bucket' - a childish expression adopted by kids down south to describe locos that they couldn't find to underline in their ABC's.

 

Oh come on @Steve , next you’ll be telling us to call a spade a spade.

 

You may call them spades to go with your so-called buckets. We call them shovels on our locomotives.

 

Never heard of it in all my 70 years, and I’ve worked my share of them in the past.

 

It's actually pronounced 'Bouquet'...

 

I see Hastings was out over the weekend, annoyingly I was at the West Somerset gala so I missed her. Does anyone know if she’s due to be out again this coming weekend? Would like to have a ride behind her at some point

 

Not this weekend. Looks like the 108 on Saturday, and the Thumper on Sunday, but don't quote me on that....

 

Any ideas what is due to run for 1940s next weekend please?

 

Should be the Austerity tanks, I believe. No guarantees, though. The timetable also calls for one smaller engine, which may well be Hastings, but again, no definite knowledge.

 

Deleted

 

It was a Mess Room invention on the Kent and East Sussex Railway, which then spread elsewhere. The term was used partly as a mildly derogatory observation on the seemingly endless appearance of these engines on the weekly roster.

However, beyond the KESR, people somehow managed to convince themselves it was a “proper” historical nickname, and would then lecture others with extraordinary self importance on the exact technical conditions required for something to qualify as a Bucket. Unless it was all an exquisitely executed double bluff, I distinctly recall one sage on the National Preservation forum solemnly pronouncing something along the lines of: “I think you will find that the term Bucket was only ever applied to NCB Hunslet Austerities and was never used to describe Hunslet J94s.”

Reading it, I could practically hear the ghastly nasal whine of a self appointed railway authority, the sort of man who regards himself as the last line of defence between civilisation and total terminological collapse, trapping a carriage full of unwilling victims in an unsolicited lecture on industrial saddle tanks while everyone else stared fixedly out of the window, silently praying for either their station stop or a signal failure severe enough to interrupt him.

 

I thought the term originated at Sheffield Park as a derogatory comment on other early heritage railways motive power which, unlike the BB, were collecting industrial locos. KWVR, KESR, NNR come to mind.

 

I'm not sure - maybe, but I don't recall ever hearing the term from older volunteers as you might expect if it were coined there some decades ago. The first time I heard it was from some young (mid-twenties ish) Bluebell volunteers a year or so ago when the GCR Austerity visited (but didn't run). I can't recall anyone other than that using the name.

Tom