The Wandering 1500 Tour

It's a complicated issue - ballasted track is not rigidly fixed in place but can move about for various reasons including temperature and day-to-day traffic. As the track can move so clearances are assumed to degrade since they were last measured, no doubt explaining why issues often seem to be resolved through taking new measurements.

You can get an idea of how complex the issue is from this RSSB guide to gauging which even mentions steam, and the following article the The Rail Engineer: Predictive and Probalistic Gauging

Chris

 

70013 looking ready for anything Saturday morning at King's Cross at the start of an enjoyable day despite later problems.

 

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My photos from the trip can be found at http://paulsimpson.zenfolio.com/p847767793.

 

A fellow passenger, a retired Network Rail employee though it strange, and was going to speak to former colleagues. He was convinced it was a Network Rail issue.

 

A tad late, I know, but here's my effort from Saturday........................... Wandering Ollie....................................

 

A bit late in the day but here's a short clip of the train between Hitchin and Letchworth. Had hoped it would take the new flyover but no such luck.

 

I was aboard this train. Amazing. Simply amazing. The return leg down the GEL line was good at first, but the Water Problem was an issue. Over 3 quarters of the passengers left the train, me and my friend walked down the carriages and counted 96 people left including us. Meals which were half finished were still on tables, drinks nearly full, got back to Highbury 56 minutes late at 22:34. She only paused to let those less than 100 passengers get off, before continuing to Southall. All in all it was excellent. 70013 ran at speeds around 75 mph after leaving Witham by the way, since we were on the fast line all the way to Startford.

Jack.

 

Us and Ollie finally left at 22:34, took exactly 1 hour running non-stop to Startford arriving at 23:34. She still put up a good performance.