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Tornado

Discussion in 'Steam Traction' started by Leander's Shovel, Oct 20, 2007.

  1. Bikermike

    Bikermike Well-Known Member

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    Was this in an official capacity of the trust? Again, point to the place where it was explained?
    Why is the fact its been finally made good after much wasted time and money the end of it? What is being learned
    Welding is not new technology? The P2 shows they can go properly out to skilled people and get it right. So why did it go wrong here?

    Is this a serious answer? The boiler design is known, how boilers work is known, but the design was seemingly changed, why was it changed? Who validated it?
    The boiler was subbed out to one of the largest steam boiler-makers in Europe, they don't get the "old men in sheds" let-off. What happened to quality control? Who was inspecting it? When? What expertise did they have?
    Equally, the engine is virtually new. The layers of making good on engines that have been flogged for 50 years before preservation might give rise to unexpected issues, but here there is none of that, the drawings are all present and ordered. You can even ask most of the original designers what was done.

    poor project management and inability to know limitations usually. Or the ones that come across my desk usually are. I think one of the biggest issues here is the refusal to (publicly) admit there was a problem, and the engineering "solutions" that were tried and failed sound like there was an internal fail as well.

    This isn't modern engineering. This is (as you say above) 1930s engineering. Old men in sheds with half the tornado budget are getting it right.
    P.s. lets see you make an egg...

    How is properly setting up a contract and managing it being held to a higher standard?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 18, 2025 at 5:14 PM
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  2. class8mikado

    class8mikado Part of the furniture

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    P2 Perhaps ?
     
  3. Bikermike

    Bikermike Well-Known Member

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    Apologies, edited
     
  4. guycarr360

    guycarr360 Part of the furniture

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    That may be your view, she certainly is putting in the miles.

    Going to be quite honest, and say the most recent ascent of Shap from the South, gave the impression of very little work being done by her.
    A soft drifting almost silent exhaust, and the rear gunner shoving for all its worth.

    Contrast it against 60532 previous ascent, and the difference is marked.
     
  5. Victor

    Victor Nat Pres stalwart Friend

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    Running in ? Get everything well bedded in, Pile the miles on nice and steady to build up gradually to 100%
     
  6. martin1656

    martin1656 Nat Pres stalwart Friend

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    I am one of those who expressed concerns about the longevity of the work done, especially as regards the boiler, so far, though it seems like no problems have surfaced, which is good, every engine will have teething problems, no matter how thorough the overhaul, but praise where its due, its done what's been asked of it, and has not missed any of its booked duties so far, Longer term, though, we will have to wait and see, At the moment the engines still not that long out of overhaul, so everything's tight, once parts begin to wear in, and loosen up, then vibration will affect clearances, thats when we might see boiler issues, as its the vibration that caused problems, such as tube leaking, or fractured stays, coupled with the cooling, and heating cycles.
     
  7. class8mikado

    class8mikado Part of the furniture

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    Latest communique concerns final push to connect DLW and promoting it as a home depot/ servicing / engineering work destination.
    As it stands i dont know that DLW has the staff /facilities/ to offer much ?, but that could be worked up towards finishing P2 and receiving Tornado after the WCR agreement finishes
     
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  8. martin1656

    martin1656 Nat Pres stalwart Friend

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    I wonder if they might offer the patriot a home, after all it has a military connection, so that's one box ticked,
     
  9. guycarr360

    guycarr360 Part of the furniture

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    And winner of the world "hide and seek" champion must be the 2nd boiler, destined for the P2.
    Due in April, from an official communication...............
     
  10. Gladiator 5076

    Gladiator 5076 Resident of Nat Pres

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    Surely an open HS2 wins that award.;)
     
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  11. The Green Howards

    The Green Howards Nat Pres stalwart

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    Well, it's only two months late...
     
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  12. osprey

    osprey Resident of Nat Pres

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    As a life long chartered engineer I find your statement "modern engineering is very, very difficult", hard to understand.... I still keep my hand in the industry and marvel at modern engineering. It frequently passes my mind...."if only we'd had that in my day". CAD for example...you don't have vast drawing offices these days...FEA....you don't have reams of calculations... I could go on. The tools available to engineers these days are fantastic and makes life a lot easier not difficult...
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2025 at 10:45 AM
  13. NathanP

    NathanP Member

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    True, but the downside is that engineers have lost some of the skills they once had. For example, if the CAD software breaks there will be no one with the knowledge or experience in how to create the drawings by hand. Same in any industry really. The rise of technology has caused people to forget the skills they once needed and when the time comes that the technology fails then there is a lack of skills.
     
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  14. osprey

    osprey Resident of Nat Pres

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    Agree entirely and basic skills in engineering are lacking too. I still have scrapers from my apprenticeship days and can still scrape a surface flat....and slide rules... I'm ancient...Grade 2 listed..
     
  15. std tank

    std tank Part of the furniture

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    Fully agree with you. Even the introduction of the calculator dulled my brain.
     
  16. DismalChips

    DismalChips Member

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    It'll be fine, just get Chat GPT to do it. What could go wrong?
     
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  17. Enterprise

    Enterprise Part of the furniture

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    That's why catastrophists believe that when contemporary key technologies inevitably fail widely, our society will regress to a pre-industrial state.
     
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  18. NathanP

    NathanP Member

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    I believe that will definitely happen. Maybe not within my lifetime, but certainly within the lifetimes of some people alive today. Only takes one massive solar flare and we're screwed. Never heard the word "catastrophists" before though!
     
  19. Enterprise

    Enterprise Part of the furniture

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    New meaning for an old word, but not my invention.
     
  20. Musket The Dog

    Musket The Dog Member

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    I would agree that there are tools that make certain aspects of the job easier, but I would go further and say that because of those tools an engineer in the 21st century is expected to do more of the individual tasks. Your drawing office might only be a quarter of the size, but those engineers need to do the work of the missing 75%, regardless of the discipline. Having a smaller workforce can often mean that you remove the luxury of having teams of engineers that can devote themselves to getting good at one thing. FEA allows you to automate certain parts of structural analysis, but the level of detail required is magnitudes higher than 50/60 years ago when you would have just over engineered the part to be sure of it. In my corner of engineering, FEA is often a tool you use to prove you can take more mass out of a structure.

    The most difficult part of my job? Regulation. I'm not against it, I genuinely believe that we have a good health and safety culture and I'm happy to work in an environment where 99.9999999999999999...% of the workforce go home every day. Designing a machine is the easy part. Designing it in such a way it will get regulatory approval is difficult. Many of the rules and regulations a 21st century steam engine (or any machine) has to meet just did not exist 100 years ago.

    Despite the rumours, I've never met a modern engineer in my line of work that could not do a paper drawing. I've not met anyone who has come through college or university and not done some form of training in it. To put it another way, it's not like you can click one button and have a PC magically populate a full engineering drawing for you.

    Historic engineering was hard work, modern engineering is hard work, both for different and the same reasons.
     

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