Sandringham New Build

Are you suggesting the B17 team organise a Rod Stewart gig?

 

Or that Rod organises a Sandringham gig? ( ps. Clan Stewart Plates are in the NRM Collection)

 

An interesting coincidence Clan Stewart 72009 was allocated to 30A for a short while in late 1958 trialled as a replacement fot Brits on Clacton and presumably other servives.

 

Would that have been one of those issues mentioned in more recent appraisals, concerning the "bad rep" of 6MTs, when crewed by folks with little experience of an apparently substantially different firing technique, on an unfamiliar design being overloaded with loads properly up in Class 7 territory?

72010 certainly has a lot of outstanding historic baggage to untangle, in terms of separating fact from fiction. I'd bet I'm not the only one who can't wait to find out!

 

Correct!

Richard.

 

If we are fortunate there will be some interesting times ahead in the class 5-6 ish arena with Sandringham/ Clan/Patriot/ County hopefully in the next decade all joining Sir Lamiel and, at an outside chance Bantam-thing. Wonder if there will be anything left Mainline for Black 5's to do

 

Fear ye not. So long as the West Highland, Dingwall & Skye and Far North lines can't cope with higher axle loads, rest assured, the answer will remain 'plenty'.

 

I believe the GE liked the Clan, as they did the V4. Maybe the (relative) shortness of runs on the GE didn't require the big boilers of say a (Gresley) A1.

 

Liked them until they realised they were instead of not as well as their Brits...

 

Thanks to the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust for the loan of their patterns from Tornado, William Cook Cast Products have now cast the Cannonbox and Coupled Axlebox fittings for B17 Spirit of Sandringham. Once checked, these will be moved to CTL Seal's premises in Sheffield for machining and fitting along with the hornblocks which were delivered a few months back.
The next parts to be cast in order to complete the rolling chassis are the wheels and the order for these will be placed in next few months.

 

72009 Allocated to Stratford August 58, returned to Carlisle Kingmoor October.

On Sunday 28/9 hauled 6.20 pm out of Liverpool St. With typical Clacton loading ( 7 for 232/245 tons gross)
badly checked out to Shenfield, maintained 36 up to Brentwood after check at bottom of bank. Ran to next stop
at Chelmsford in the quick time of 11 minutes 11 seconds with 78mph max.

There is a record of 72009, unusual for the Class, working into London later, on 31/8/63 (1A35 ex
Blackpool ) Ran up from Rugby to Euston in 109 - 58 ( this included five pws checks to below 20mph
for electrification works ) with a ten coach train 10/322/345. In between checks apparently competent
running, probably c. 86minutes net.

Off subject I know, but perhaps of interest

Michael Rowe

 

In addition to the good news on the castings above, the Trust have also announced their appeal for the 6 main driving wheel springs. So for just £10 you can sponsor an inch of one of the leaves and help this project continue to move forward!

 

Shown here are some photos of the arrival and the unloading of the 3rd tender at CTL Seal in Sheffield yesterday (1st December). On the third photo, from right to left are the GER. tender chassis, our original LNER tender and the latest addition - this is the ex B1 tender formerly attached to the B17 mock up of Manchester United in Woking . The plans will be to dismantle both LNER tenders, clean up the components and create a single restored LNER tender suitable for main line use by 'Spirit of Sandringham'. The GER tender chassis will be used for display purposes only.

An order is about to be placed with William Cook Cast Products for the 6 main locomotive driving wheels using patterns kindly loaned by the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, as they are of the same diameter.

 

Good stuff.
Does anyone know if it was coincidence or design that made the wheels similar (did the patterns need amending?).

Is it the V4 that shares a wheel with the N2?

 

The same size wheels was the standard at the time for LNER express locomotives I think. The castings are the same hence the sharing of the patterns, but the machining will be different fro a different profile. If you view the B17 SLT website, the CAD drawings (by David Elliott) show Green, Yellow and Red on the rolling chassis. Green is as the Tornado pattern, Yellow means it uses the same pattern but has different machining and red is unique to the B17, I believe - that's what was said on a recent Zoom talk.

 

Further progress on Spirit of Sandringham this week. Manufacturing orders have been placed with William Cook Cast Products Ltd (WCCP) for the six 6'8" Driving Wheels. These castings will be using the same wheel pattern as used for Tornado's wheels, the patterns having been loaned by the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust. The wheel pattern is being prepared in the Pattern Shop at WCCP. Each wheel will be subject to additional Non Destructive Testing (NDT) using a combination of Radiographic (X-ray) and Ultrasound Tests to provide greater assurance and integrity in the product.

 

Here is a photo showing the final preparation of the wheel pattern (ex Tornado) prior to release to the moulding shop at William Cook Cast Products. Also a screen shot of just one of the many computer simulations used to assess/optimise the casting process.
Patterns will be released to the moulding shop by the end of the first week of January with actual casting hopefully starting by the end of the following week.

 

The first of 61673's Driving Wheels have been cast at William Cook Castings. The pictures show the two sand moulds of the 6'8" driving wheels (front face at the top half, rear face at the bottom half), the ladle being filled with molten steel at a temperature of 1630 degrees C and with the two halves of the moulding box secured together, the steel is poured in. It will be 5 days before the wheel has cooled sufficiently to extract it for checking. The second wheel of this first pair will be cast tomorrow.

 

In case you wondered what a 6' 8" driving wheel looks like when it it is knocked out of the mould. This first wheel will then be subject to normalising, shot blasting, mechanical testing, dimensional and visual inspection, magnetic particle inspection, radiographic examination, ultrasound testing, stress relief and finally proof machining!

 

Wow! That is a sight for sore eyes!
Excellent stuff