Clan Line special duty tour.

Oi oi oi, careful now, AND only pure bred fellas have A RIGHT to wear a white rose..............
And the remark by yon fella from Northwich has been noted.

 

Far better to send something from Swindon. Lots of high value copper and brass.

 

Well, they chose Clan Line. Perhaps they wanted to finish what they started when they cut huge holes out of the wheels.

 

Good on yer. Tell it like it is!

PS. Would one of those locos that are too heavy at the front with the extra cylinder, and with the unsupported cab always likely to fall onto the track, ever make it as far as Yorkshire though?

 

Such a shame that Clan Line now is more streamlined than in its streamlined form.
Would one of those engines ever make it "up" anywhere, even up north, without slipping to a stand?

 

Thats thin ice to be standing on, a GWR man criticising another regions streamlining!

 

The GWR's streamlining was just done to make fun of the others, and portray them as a joke. Collett was right in thinking that streamlining was not really needed on the Kings and Castles, as the other regions' engines were still streets behind.

 

Agreed. Kings and Castles were nowhere near fast enough to require streamlining.

 

I refer you to the locomotive exchanges in 1948 when one of Mr. Bulleid's light Pacifics flattened the climb to Druimuachdar without any real bother at all. One the other hand Mr. Collett's King was so fat it could only run on home ground and bits of the GN.

 

For anyone interested!! I've been told the load was about 450 tons yesterday up a 1 in 90 gradient.

 

The ACE on Honiton would have been harder work.

 

For those interested there's a few vidoes on youtube of her in the steelworks.

 

Been out to lunch or I would have beat you to making that comment!

 

Wow. What load for the steel works shunt. No wonder they wanted Clan Line up there for it.

 

Can only find the one video Dan and that's of 35028 stationary???

 

You didn't look very hard, did you!

Shame she wasn't really putting on a 'show'!!

There's this one



And this one



This is the one you possibly found?



Oh, and there's these!







Enjoy!

 

Watching those sequences of Clan Line hauling flat(ish) wagons reminds me of a most astonishing sight/sound from 1967. It is a true story.

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned it here but I timed a lot of the most incredible runs by MNs, (and Light pacifics indeed), in the last few years of SR main line steam? Might give a few examples some time?

But once I saw/heard something that I didn't time. I was on the platform at Basingstoke and a MN headed off on the main towards Woking with a rail train. Sort of similar to the flat wagons shown in the sequences above.

I have no idea who was driving, possibly because it was passing through Basingstoke but had almost been stopped by a Reading train coming over the junction.

But whoever was at the controls must have put her into full and 50 and left it there. I didn't see much, the train, (quite heavy I think), accelerated so fast it was gone under the bridge and out of sight. But the noise! Stupendous. And an obvious incredibly fast acceleration towards high speed as the noise went on for quite a while, diminishing of course as the train got far away very quickly.

From memory I think it might have been 35003. I do wonder if the crew kept it going and reached the ton down at Newnham Siding. If they were brave enough with flat wagons, (loaded though)!

Which, if repeated yesterday explains this:-

Clan Line was so fast the digital camera could not record it properly so was forced to convert all the frames into one frame making that fine loco look like it was not moving.

It has only ever happened once before with a steam loco that ran so fast the same thing happened in front of an old style cameras. A German 05 class loco.

 

Oh. Don't mention the 05.

I mentioned it once above, but I think I got away with it.

 

Oi. Any more of that and you will be awarded a white rose to wear at all times! LOL!