Restoring the balance...

After tonights (quite good) TV programme, you are asked to remember City of Truro and Pendennis Castle.

 

Maybe the comment early on about the "forty two square inch grate" explained Flying Scotsman's legendary sluggishness when first built. And for all those years it was thought to be all about a poorly designed front end

Tom

 

I caught that during the program as well, should be big enough to boil up a kettle or two for a brew though... :tea:

 

yep, picked up that one too

 

To be fair, the 42 square inch thing was really a typo in the original script that the producer and others involved weren't sharp enougfht to pick up - it's the sort of thing that just happens, especially in a programme not put together by more mathematically minded people. (Sanity check that should have happened, but evidently didn't: 42 square inches. About six inches by seven inches? In a machine more than sixty feet long? Is that sensible?) City of Truro - well, without getting into a debate, but doing 100mph is disputed. Maybe they should have said "the first loco to unequivocably do 100mph" rather than "the first loco to do 100mph".

But ... to miss the fact that FS only had its performance transformed only after the comparison with Pendennis Castle is a much more serious ommission, even though to have included it would have clouded the story they tried to paint that FS was legendary almost from day 1.

Also - what happened to Australia? Or did I miss that bit?

Tom

 

In the 'classic trains' tv series narrated by John Peel, the episode 'express' makes a rather large point of saying the A1s were poor steamers until the comparison with the castles.

 

Not so sure it was the ability to steam, more the way the steam was used.

 

No doing 102.3 mph is disputed. That it did 100 mph +- is generally accepted and it was a quarter of a century earlier from a machine half the size...

Legendary from day one Yes,perhaps, but heavily altered later which was the reason, i think, that it wasn't officially preserved first time around.

 

What the narrator actually said was a 42 inch square grate, quite different from a 42 square inch one. even so that only works out at 12.25 sq. ft so still a tad under size. But as Jamessquared says, a simple typo.

 

Correct. As built the A1's capacity to make steam was never an issue. It was how front end used the steam that was the question.

 

My mistake, was paraphrasing the late Mr Peel!

 

To be fair to the NRM guy, he did say that Scotsman was the first loco to do a VERIFIED 100mph (i.e the Dymom car) It would have bee nice if he had mentioned Truro and the year, but I have always felt the NRM to be LNER biased.

 

well they are, they grew out of the York Museum of the NER/LNER and that bias is still evident today.

Truro's 100 was verified by one of the leading timers of the day, only he made a mistake in his log (in his excitement no doubt!) .

 

Oh COME ON. The NRM biased? Give me five pieces of evidence for why you think this to be so.

 

nip round there now and I bet you a fiver that LNER constituents make up more than 25% of the display of big four group locos.

 

Maybe because the NER/LNER as foreward thinking companys preserved there locos while the GWR cut theres up it is not rocket science! Why is it the GWR lot have such large chips on there shoulders I wonder ? PS if it was not for the LNER offering it a place at the York museum City of Truro would have been cut up as well. Myself I wish it had not gone to York than we may still have an NBR Atlantic or maybe an NER one.

 

GWR locos are a bit Volvo though arent they, Good, reliable, but quintessentially samey and uninspiring...

 

That's fighting talk!

In the green corner, we give you George "the Brunswick bruiser" V, weighing in at 40,000lbs, four knockout cylinders and a reach of 6'6". Coming from the Swindon stable of trainer CB Collett, fighting in the orthodox style made famous by that great star "Churchward Lode" and Caerphilly's finest.

In the blue corner, we give you "The flying duck", weighing in at just 35,500lbs and only three cylinders, but with a greater reach of 6'8". Unbeaten for speed around the ring since 1938, and with an unorthodox shape that smooths away resistance.

Could be a close match: will the fleetness of foot, slippery body and greater reach of The Flying Duck be enough to outwit the greater punch, but more orthodox style, of the Brunswick Bruiser?

Ding ding, seconds out, round 1...

:cheer2:

Tom

 

Yea but don't they sound good - I would vote for that purposefull bark anyday over some of the alternatives!

 

That is a very good point...