45699 Galatea

Video (not mine) from this morning -

Warning! Video contains scenes of Pacers and 66s

 

Has 5699 hauled a public train unassisted?

 

Have just been told by someone who got on at York that 45699 has been removed from the Scarborough Spa with piston problems

 

Been told 45699 will be taken back to Carnforth by a diesel in the next day or two due to the problem she is having.

 

West Coast are not having the best of luck with their LM 3 cylinder engines. Does any one have any idea of the state of play with 5690?

 

Be fair, most mainline locos run a 1000 miles or more on a preserved line to establish reliability before going mainline.
WCRC locos hardly go to a preserved line at all.
Has Galatea reached a 1000 miles yet ?

 

I'm glad that I'm not the first one asking for a status report on Leander. I think that 45231 should be the power for the SSE's next week. The SSE's seem to haunt Mr. Smith and his locomotives.

 

To be fair it only seems to be an issue if your engine isn't painted black

It was a nice surpise to see Galatea this morning and she was working quite hard upto Bolton Percy, but clearly all is still not well

Bolton Percy

York Loco Images 290613-8021.jpg by York Loco-images, on Flickr

Copmanthorpe

York Loco Images 290613-8023.jpg by York Loco-images, on Flickr

 

Doesn't have to be black. I'm actually a fan of big red engines.

 

Probably not. According to UKsteam.info, 45231 is working The Fellsman on Wednesday. My guess is it will be 46115 as the figurehead and a class 47 doing most of the work, as on Tuesday and Wednesday, but that's only a guess.

Both WCRC's black locos have had problems, too.

 

There was oodles of doom mongers at Woking the other day proclaiming the damage to 45231 after the wheel slip at Helifield...there's now't like a bit of tabloid trackside rumour.

 

In which case maybe they should rethink their stance on it.

Last year a senior person at WCRC, took exception to a comment about reliability, coaching stock, and diesel intervention in excursions, and played the "big brother", with a threat, of prove it, or stand by your comments, which I did.

Nice to see some things don't change.....

 

48151 is moving back to York today.

 

I can't get used to seeing 8f''s on passenger stock. When I wor a lad and there was nothing else but steam, 8f's did freight, and that's how I remember them. To me they seem out of place anywhere else.
It's a decent machine, OK, but passenger workings, main line,...........nah, not for me.

 

True, except at weekends, when they were often pressed into excursion work. And then, of course, in the early to mid-sixties there were the mid-week spectacles of them deputising for failed diesels.

 

Send them all for running in on heritage lines before sending them out...a few high speed runs up and down the great central would surely bring out the problems. Or is it a case that some heritage lines just aren't long enough for things to get "hot" if you know what I mean?

 

Victor, you are right, we remember 8F's on mainly mineral trains from the coalfields, but I have a photo of an 8F leaving Sheffield Midland for the West, probably Blackpool or N.Wales, so shedmasters scraping the barrel on Summer Saturdays did turn them out on excursion work, particularly the "balanced" ones.

Having said that, at 25 mph max they are ideal for our Heritage lines. Mores the pity one of the Turkish ones found no takers in the UK.

Returning on-topic, no point speculating, we simply wont find out whats up with 45699, but it cannot have been too serious or it would have failed its FTR for the run pictured above, surely? (as an aside, didn't 46115 have a fairly disasterous mainline failure with a middle cylinder issue?--coincidental presumably?)

46118

 

I believe that this may come across as being cruel but that is not my intention here. I really think that Galatea should make a visit to Mr. Riley's shop.

Who does not want to see Galatea perform at her very best? I hope that there are many out there who share this opinion with me. A bunch of money, time and energy is put into getting these steam locomotives into top-class condition.

Once again, I'm sorry if this comes across as being cruel. However, I have been very careful here as to how I have addressed how I feel about this situation.
A bunch of empathy is needed here.