Tornado

Do you mean this post?
https://www.national-preservation.com/threads/tornado.10750/page-228#post-2141604

 

Good to see David Ward has had his say in the letters page....

In light of his comment those Castles that were running at 90+ day after day on the Bristolian and Cheltenham Flyer must have been an exceptional locomotives.

 

Who he?

 

What is it they say? A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing? I'm not a big fan of Mr Ward. Regarding who he is @The Green Howards he was the former head of BR's special trains unit.

 

Agree 100%.

 

Not sure anyone is a big fan of Mr Ward, apart from Mr Ward himself, Oh and Steam Railway who use him as their regular 'say something controversial to wind people up correspondent' gets evermore like the gutter tabloid press each month sadly.

 

Thanks for digging that up.

It does cover quite a lot of ground, though, so I'm not sure it tells us that much about the cause(s). It sounds more like 'on close examination, we found questionable things in the following areas' (a useful warning, to be sure, but...), without explicitly nailing down a cause - although it may well turn out to be a number of things interacting (common in engineering failures).

Noel

 

I guess he is a regular poster on NP. I wonder what pseudonym he uses?

 

A complete load of tosh though, A1s were rostered for some of the fastest EC Expresses and regularly deputised for A4s, the boiler, running gear is very similar. Wasn't it an A1 that Bill Hoole had when he was carpeted for running down the Talisman with the Scotch Goods?

This is the man that for years refused to le the steaming run on the Southern for fear of the local population being so overcome by the sight of a steam loco they would all commit hari kari on the third rail. He also inflicted the infamous window bars on us.

 

I read David Ward's letter and was surprised by his comments. Although he knows far more about pacifics on the ECML than I do, I was on Tornado's ill-fated run on 14th April and what struck me was the ease at which it accelerated from 75mph up to 90mph after Hitchin. OK then disaster struck and I wasn't on the footplate to know what was going on, but although I'm no expert, it didn't feel like the engine was overloaded or being pushed too hard.

 

Ahhh, Bill Hoole, the Lewis Hamilton of ECML steam footplate!!!!

 

I was on that service too. Same feelings; that the acceleration from 75 to 90 was seemingly effortless.

 

Plus of course the Bulleid pacifics running at up to 100 mph , often with little effort. Don't remember the locos or crews being stressed. And the A1s were often rostered for fast trains. Mr Ward gave a lot to the steam movement but I think his reasoning and memory maybe aren't what they were.

 

I can't help but think that Mr Ward still thinks that he's in a position to control, or at least influence, a lot of what goes on - but he's not. His time has gone.

 

Although I know Mr Ward is very knowledgable but I have always felt that on occasions although his mouth may move he is talking out of some other orifice.

 

Was always the case.

 

Indeed and I would recommend anyone to get a copy of P Semmens book Engineman Extrordinary, the story of Bill's life on the footplate.

 

For better or worse, I have written into Steam Railway to make a rebuttal.

 

Well said! Even I, who knows not a lot of detail on these matters, questioned the assertion that A1s weren't designed for those sorts of speeds, I had to reread it to check I hadn't misunderstood. A very odd letter all round I thought, one which deserves a rebuttal from someone who knows!

 

On the basis of his letter I wondered if he knew anything about Pacifics on the ECML, actually. I am alarmed by the sensationalism and misinformation he has been allowed to spread there. It’s as if forty years of locomotive development on the ECML didn’t happen if you believe Mr Ward.

That is because in reality, the design was built for high speed cruising and has been tethered somewhat in the preservation era.

Bitterns own high speed runs at 90mph are a good indication of what can be done regularly by the older LNER locomotives - with a divided drive layout as per the Thompson and Peppercorn engines, you could notch the engines up more and be confident of reliability.

The stresses inherent in the conjugated gear (wear in pins on the 2:1 gear onto a single crank axle) are not to be found on the divided drive layout, which splits the drive between two axles and uses walschaerts for all three.

Tornado was not overworked or overloaded on the Ebor Flyer. The failure will be commented on in due course, I will not second guess the report, but will read it with great interest.

I am yet to find a failure quite like Tornados in my reading. The LNER post war Pacifics were pretty bomb proof in this area...