1994 Blue Peter incident

Everyone who moans about how a loco is driven or operated "gently" or "wasn't like it in the day" or "they left the drains open too long" should watch this.

 

Wasn't another contributing factor the fact that the boiler had been overfilled, and when the initial slip happened, water was drawn into the steam pipe? That meant that the regulator was even more difficult to close, and, of course, that water flashing off put even more steam into the cylinders (vapour is about 200-250x volume of liquid at the same pressure), and at that point only coming back to mid-gear very quickly gave any hope of getting things under control?

It was an awful accident, and could have been even worse than it actually was.

Mark

 

One thing that isn't covered at all, of course, is the herculean effort that the NELPG team, led by he indefatigable Maurice Burns, put into getting the loco repaired and back out on the main line. Back then it was hard, but would it even be possible now? I suppose it would because even though some wheels had shifted on their axles and had to be re-quartered, people are still making axles for new-build locos that have to be quartered de novo, so it obviously can still be done - but not at the BSC works that did it back then.