Tornado

Look guys, whilst I appreciate that nature abhors an (information) vacuum, you must surely by now have lowered your expectations of any meaningful updates from the Trust to a continuum of nothingness?
This vacuum is, however, not an invitation to fill the void with savarn paint froth!

 

Deleted out of respect to the above post from Sheff.

 

…… but wait, what’s this? I can feel vibes filtering through …. can it be true ? …. Yes, Tornado rocks! Well at least I’m told that the grate does ….

Of course with Tornado there has to be a flip side too …. apparently due to a lack of spare fusibles, the boiler has been empty since the last washout pre Christmas. So I can only assume it’s been sat there full of moist air all this time. Not ideal for any boiler, let alone one with a steel inner box.

From memory, isn’t the normal procedure for a temporarily out of service loco to box up the boiler and fill it up to the whistle with treated water to minimise corrosion ?

 

All depends. Some places like to keep air flow through an empty boiler so will leave plugs or doors out to allow this to happen. Other places I’ve known do fill them up yes.

 

Either way, not to have spare fusibles to hand is most odd. I’d expect at carry least one set in the support coach.

 

When they laid it up for covid, they made a big song and dance about filling it up.
(This was a question I asked about the newbuild 3MT, so it's interesting to know there are different approaches. Can't you just send the skinniest apprentice in with a catering-size can of WD40...?)

 

Agreed

 

I lived at Four Oaks on the Sutton Coldfield line, and I don't think there was much steam on either the Lichfield line or the Sutton Park line by the time I was 9, and I can't recall ever having seen any on occasional trips into New Street, it seems to have been all DMUs by then - and my Dad commuted on the line and I often went to meet his train in the evenings, in the hope that the DMU had failed and a steam loco might be standing in - it never happened in my experience! My only memories of steam on BR are from earlier, at Scarborough Station when visiting Grandparents in the early 60s. I did once see a train near Burniston on the S & W line - but it must have been very close to closure by then as it was also a DMU. So I tend to think of the golden years as being pre-BR, when there was more variety in liveries!

 

Memories of when I was nine are quite vivid (and happy) for me.

(For the record, I'm sixty).

 

My memories of seeing the final Pines Express in Sept, 1962 are as clear as could be - I'm approaching seventy. Ask me what I was up to last September and I wouldn't have a clue. [BJ]

 

Not if the treated water has oxygen in it, which is very likely without an oxygen scavenger. Without risk of frost and if the boiler is to be left full, the original boiler water would probably have been as good. With the risk of frost, the boiler must be left empty with all plugs out to aid ventilation and drying out of the boiler.

About twenty years ago P36 001 was restored to working order in Roslavl and was placed on exhibition in the open air railway museum in Moscow. Some time later (a few years) it was discovered that the boiler hadn't been emptied!

 

you know who is 84, and she hasn't a clue what she was up to yesterday

 

So back to Tornado itself, what is its current status? Presumably non operational and needing a boiler lift or in-situ work?

 

As long as she hasn't a clue as to what you were up to.

 

Some good points there. In this case the boiler had been washed out so leaving the water in wouldn’t be an option. AFAIK the loco is supposed to be operational at the NVR so having the boiler full and ready to steam would make sense?

 

Are the NVR going to take advantage of having the A1, and A3 both on the railway at the same time ?

 

It's not necessarily up to us - the A1 is there to be worked on by the A1SLT - my understanding is they are chipping away at stuff and occasionally doing some testing. The pictures already published with the locos posed outside the running shed may be as good as it gets...but I'm a mere wagon volunteer, so none of that comes with any official insight.

You never know, it did happen before that one was out on light engine test runs while the other was on service trains...

 

The other commercial reality is that Scotsman has sold out approximately 10,000 return tickets and 3 fish and chips trains over 3 weekends, without adding anything more into the mix.

The railway will already be at capacity both in terms of car parking at Wansford, people on site and volunteer resources, just flogging single return tickets...

Combining both locos publicly would incur the extra costs of steaming up another loco, but end up with the place heavily over subscribed

 

And as I write, forty people looking at the Wansford Railcam.

(Scotsman is facing Wansford, by the way.)

 

Fingers crossed after all that, everyone gets a week of normality, then 3 weeks of Tornado, 10,000 more tickets and everything operating at full capacity again… that should top the coffers up a bit.

Good luck!

Simon