Your greatest ever steam locomotive spectacle

:confused1:

 

I was just a trainspotting kid when steam was in its heyday, but in preservation, 6201 Princess Elizabeth on the approach to Ash last March, you could hear her 2 miles away pulling away from a signal stop, and when she came past the ground shook and it was a noise like thunder. Plus, it was one of those great days for huge plumes of steam.

That bit's from 2.45 in my video of the day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOvaAdn1i4E

 

About 1956, when I was 12, standing with my bike on Netley station on the Southampton - Portsmouth line. A Bulleid light pacific was approaching from the Portsmouth direction, rounding the right hand curve at speed and swaying mightily. I was convinced that she was going to come off the road and up the platform ramp at me.

 

Didcot 1975/6? Having breakfast on the patio outside the catering building 9 am on a sunny summer Sunday. BBC Radio Oxford playing Neil Diamond "What a beautiful noise" and 5900 Hinderton Hall slowly going past towards the coaling stage.

 

About 1961 my dad and uncle had some business at a farm in Hadleigh, Essex, and I wandered down to the railway, LTS of course. I had never seen tank engines going so fast, fantastic!

Dave

 

48773 Entwtistle circa 1991
3822 Bury August 1993 23 coaches, 6998 hauled it back.
Austerities Bickershaw and Bold collieries.
Polkemmet Colliery late 70s, early 80s

 

The highlight of a summer afternoon in 63 or 64 spent with my late dad in the quiet of the Perthshire countryside at Gleneagles.
The growing noise of something climbing hard from Auchterarder revealed 60037 'Hyperion'; there and gone in a flash of green and maroon but leaving a lasting impression, not matched until 46115 came the same way with GB IV. Would love to see 60103 do it !

 

Easy. Being on the footplate of 60163 when she first moved in steam at Hopetown Works sidings.

 

Anyone seen any videos of 3822 with 23 coaches behind it?

 

Mine was a visit to Donny Plant, early '60's. Jaw dropping for a young kid seeing Gresley's finest at close quarters for the first time.

 

I did not get to see any mainline BR steam but being born and raised in Horsted Keynes, from about 10 yo I was at the Bluebell almost every weekend. Fast forward 25 plus years, different world, chance visit to Havenstreet who's on the main service..... Birch Grove*. Sorry guys but it was lumpy throat time, she was/is my favourite BB loco. She was the first 'live' engine I ever saw, we met every weekend, in steam or not for 5-6 years rekindled my interest in the preservation scene.
* Birch Grove is a small hamlet situated some 2 an a bit miles NE of HK where once resided, in a pink cottage, my first love Sally B.......................I think we were 4

 

My memories of BR working steam are very hazy as I was only nine years old when the last Bulleids were withdrawn. I've been on some great preservation-era main line runs and it's hard to single just one out. Overall, the "Cheltenham Flyer" with 5043 has to be one of the best I have been on, with UKRT's "Devon Belle" in August 2014 also very memorable - the sure-footed ascent of Honiton by 60163 in the drizzle and a belter of a run between Taunton and Newbury (where I got out) on the return journey will linger in my memoery for years to come.

Other memorable moments:- I treated my fiancée (now wife) to a trip on the British Pullman in 1997 - Clan Line to Canterbury. It was a fantastic day from start to finish and the highlight was when 35028 seemed to forget that after Herne Bay there is a 1 in 93 incline called Blacksole Bank - we just flew up it! I also remember a rather special moment 13 years later when, after stopping at Basingstoke on a Swanage-Waterloo run, watching a SW Trains EMU pulling out and anticiapting being stuck behind it on the slow line as we were running late, we were put on the fast line and passed the said EMU at Farnborough Main - sheer exhilaration! Amazingly, the loco in question was 44932 and the driver assured me that the top speed on the entire trip was only 61mph. We seemed to be going much faster when we passed the EMU, but I'll trust the word of the driver!

I regret that my only experience of "real" steam abroad doesn't really come into the "spectacular" category - Agra Cantonment to Tundla behind a WG class 2-8-2 in 1987. 40 degrees centigrade, a very crowded train (like most trains in India!) and two half-hour signal stops. I doubt if we went any faster than 30mph at any point as the loco had about 18 carriages in tow, but I still enjoyed my one and only post-68 run behind "real" steam.

From the lineside, no other moment compares with the sight and sound of 71000 taking 10 coaches and a dead 47 up the 1 in 51 to Bincombe Tunnel on 11th August 2005 - blowing off as it passed a battery of photographers. There were plenty of us and I wouldn't be surprised if some other Forum members were in that number. After 71000 had passed us, no one said anything. We just looked at each other and grinned, knowing that momemnts like that don't come round very often.

 

One abiding memory is being taken by my father to stand on the end of the platform at Grove Park to watch a Maunsell L class 4-4-0 come racing down the bank at what must gave been 75 mph plus and seeing those big driving wheels whirring round. I was quite young and I think we had arrived by tram so 1952 or earlier

 

With only getting back into steam in 2011, my favourite moments are limited, but my top three moments would be

Tangmere going over Hemerdon at just under 30mph


46115 making light work of Shap (fastest run ??)


Listening to Britannia thumping it's way up Hemerdon, and then finally slipping as it passed Hemerdon Sidings !

 

Thanks for sharing. All great to listen to. I think the one of 34067 would be my favourite. Poor old Tangers didn't have a good year in 2015, to put it mildly. It's therefore good to be reminded what she is capable of at her best.

 

I think mine has to be this



44 2546 and 44 1486 departing Oberrohn with a train of logs, 27th October 2011. I'm sure @Hunslets Finest and @Spamcan81 will attest to how good conditions were that morning. Almost perfectly still and the sound of a pair of 3 cylinder 44s roaring away, superb!

 

A one off performance in today's climate, though I'm sure many will remember similar performance's in the old days.

 

I well remember that sound as a Toton- Wellingborough train stormed out of Corby Tunnel and echoed past Lloyds Sidings North and Lloyds Sidings South signal boxes (the latter location being where I was standing); it was sufficiently memorable that I dreamed of seeing them on native soil in South Africa - a feat I achieved in 1978.

The Garratts were replaced by 9Fs and my all-time memory is standing by Kettering General Hospital around 1958 and hearing a Crosti-boilered 9F climbing past Kettering South; Wicksteed Park; Kettering and climbing all the way to Glendon Junction.From first hearing to last it was a 20 minute cacophony of blast and roar as the 9F moved its Wellingborough - Toton train up the bank to Glendon. Despite many years of travel since I have yet to hear a sound even approaching the level of that Crosti - a lifetime's memory that never fades.

 

You mean this one on 9 / 11 / 2007 ?

 

I have hesitated to contribute to this revived thread because I have had no experiences to compare with some of the more spectacular ones reported here. But I have had many personally satisfying ones over many years, of which a few stand out.

18th April 1968, riding in a brake van up Miles Platting just a few feet away from the banking engine's chimney.

One of the BR Shakespeares from Marylebone, I think some time in the early 80s, when we went through Warwick at about 20 or 30 mph and accelerated up Hatton Bank as if it was level track. The loco was a Bulleid but I don't remember which one.

In 1996, a run from George over the Montagu Pass to Oudtshoorn behind a 19D 4-8-2 and a Garratt, with a combined grate area about the same as two Duchesses; though a lot of the coal placed on those grates was coming straight out of the chimneys unburnt, as black smoke.

A couple of runs up the Lickey: 11th December 1999 with 80079 banking, and GBIII.

The first of Bittern's three 90 mph runs in 2013.

And most recently the climb from Exeter St Davids to Central on 8th September 2014 with Tangmere at the front and Braunton at the back.