Steam hauled footex - 15/05/16

Possibly, but I am reliably informed one of them only left the paintshop on Thursday morning, which suggests to me that those were the carriages that were ready at that time...

 

Wayne could tell us but it may have been limited by the route. The Portsmouth Direct is a hard road, 1 in 80 fromWhitley to Haslemere, 1in100 from the Petersfield slack to Buriton Tunnel. Coming back 1 in 80 Rowlands Castle to Buriton Tunnel and a continuous climb from Liss to Haslemere, the first few miles at 1 in 80. There are also some short but steep bits on the exit from London to Leatherhead.

 

We could have taken more if required. When I was first made aware of this trip, it was shown as seven vehicles, it ended with eight.
Although with a 67 on the back I would not have wished for too many more vehicles.
What must be remembered is for every extra coach the performance of the train, time wise, is compromised.
An individual loco can haul heavier trains but at a cost of point to point timings. On busy routes this can impact on other traffic.

 

As an aside to the general conversation about this trip a potentially dangerous situation manifested itself on the return trip, one which I've not come across before.

I was on the support crew and during the stop at Haslemere when the players were doing their thing with the fanswe were on the other side of the engine at track level doing the watering. Some knob decided he would use his drone to get some close ups of this flying the thing to within, I would estimate, fifteen feet of us at around fifteen feet height. This we found to be very distracting and intrusive...poor old us, you might say, get over it. Oh, I forgot to say we were carrying out this activity directly over the third rail!

It can be seen that we needed to concentrate 100% on this and to have this thing hovering and darting about so close to us was very distracting and annoying. I understood that it was illegal anyway to fly the things so close to people etc., but moreover if one of us had lost our concentration it could have had disastrous results.

As I said a knob, selfish and without any thought for others. These things in the hands of idiots like this are going to have serious consequences one day.

BTW apologies if this post is a bit rambling...I'm now in Oz wide awake when I should be sleeping suffering from jet lag or something!

 

It's not poor old you these damn things need regulating, should have got up on the tender and swatted it! Seriously I think there are regulations about flying them near rail lines and it's a shame he wasn't caught.

 

They are regulated John but that doesn't mean everyone takes notice of the regulations.

 

Here's the video !

 

For all the huffing and puffing on here, going by what he's uploaded it seems the drone never once overflew the train while it was in the station and stayed the right side of the fence during that time. Was a bit naughty at the end though. Needs to learn the art of editing. 7 minutes of the train standing still!

 

Looks like the pilot is in shot from about 8:40 onwards.

Wonder if he will get his pilots licence revoked for low flying

 

There are 2 uploads from the guy, this one does overfly the train in the station.


Dave B

 

Don't really see the point of these things in a railway context. OK you may get good aerial shots but there is no sound!
Steam is all about vision and audio as far as I'm concerned.
Dave.

 

There is a simply stunning drone footage of FS going over the Forth Bridge, OK no sound but a shot that could never be taken in any other way than from a drone. They have a place but its pretty limited without sound. I dont know why the people that employ these things dont make the effort to record a sound track on ground and dub it on later. Its not technically difficult or expensive.

 

I seriously thought about buying one of these things MrK but thought better of it, and neither should you. You and I should stick to filming videos with our feet planted firmly on the ground!
Dave

 

But Dave, with your record of tumbling down Denbies Hillside, you can't even plant your feet firmly!


And I still have the scar on my knee from my tumble down Sapperton.

 

Hehe. You're right! Me and Denbies don't seem to get on. Still ain't going to buy a drone though.
Dave

 

Oh please don't tell me you got that scar filming Mayflower's pathetic performance on Sapperton.

 

Now some of that footage is naughty.

 

No, Its a proud war wound acquired at the very noisy and very violent 2013 assault by the unassisted 5043.