Steam speed records including City of Truro and Mallard

Give it a rest. When you’ve done your calculations come back and feel free to share what you found. Until then just stop harassing someone who has gone to great trouble to do those calculations as carefully as possible and been good enough to share them here. He deserves your respect and not this childish sniping.

 

Hermod, du hast keine Ahnung, wozu ich fahig bin. Die meiste zeit meiner teenager - und fruhen zwanzigerjahre habe ich in Wien verbracht.

I am more than capable of reading German, danke…

I have explained a number of times in this thread that this is not strictly speaking true, and also that given the dynamometer car records time and distance separately (and not speed) it actually doesn’t matter. You are welcome to go back and re-read.

No: I reached out to several museums in Germany including the one with 05 001 in it, and I have since been provided with a good copy of the officially accepted “trace” which is a contemporary and contemporarily reported interpretation of the dynamometer roll for 05 002, which no longer exists. The trace in question shows the speed against the distance, but not time stamps. I have pointed you in the direction of the only publicly available copy, currently in a German language biography of 05 002.

It is factual.

Hermod, I have been really patient with you for some years. I have offered help, sent you screenshots when you requested them, explained and showed my calculations. I think I have been more than fair.

Please do your own research and come back with your own conclusions, but please leave me out of it now.

 

I was mislead by Your post in letter 744.

 

I'm glad that Simon is still with us and hope that he is still working on his Bulleid book....and the numerous high speeds that they achieved!

 

I haven't always agreed with everything Simon has said but rational debate is rather the point of a forum such as this, and he has provided a lot of that and many good points too. It's refreshing to come across someone who understands what research is about and conducts it, then publishes the results in a seemly manner.

Stay with us, Simon!

 

I am not sure about the ins and outs rights and wrongs of all this, but I am very grateful to Mr Martin for the interesting information he has shared with us. You have my full appreciation.

 

I'm fascinated by @S.A.C. Martin 's work

It seems to me though that irrespective of top speed what was needed is locomotives capable of offering a commercially attractive service.

That means that they need to be fast enough, able to recover lost time, reliable and you need enough of them to be able to recast your timetable around them.

The 'Lord Nelsons' fail because there simply were not enough of them, 05's ditto.

 

I’m unaware of any stations needing repainting after any high speed exploits, Tom. Was this on the Southern?

 

Oops! Damn predictive text …

Tom

 

In that post I did make it quite clear that I have been speaking German since I was young. I am allowed to be rusty in my use of language, but the last few months I have become more confident again.

I am grateful to everyone for their expressions of support for my work.

• I am working on the Bulleid book, amongst other work
• I agree, rational debate is good (LMS2968, disagreeing with me is almost mandatory at this point - I welcome disagreement! Please feel free to reach out to me privately if you like)
• I must withdraw from Nat Pres for my own sake

I have provided in this thread and the Gresley thread contact details, which are also included in my signature, for anyone who does want to reach out, you are always welcome.

I am going to leave it at that, other than to say that I believe the story of the first authentication of 100mph is pretty clear cut - and the LNER have that honour, with Flying Scotsman. Regardless of that, it is pretty clear that it was later broken by 2750 Papyrus, and not just once but many times later by the esteemed A4 Pacifics.

The one thing that people should take away from the steam/speed discussion is that the ton is actually very difficult to achieve with a steam locomotive, and that’s why there are so few authenticated accounts globally compared with other industries’ speed records.

As I say, that really must be the last word for me - thank you all for reading.

 

Again due to our tiny British loading gauge Mallards dray would have been way less than the Nazi monster!

 

Not sure where the 75 mph comes from. Away from obvious restricted areas, the BR SR speed limits on much of Waterloo-Bournemouth/Exeter was 85 mph.

And no, I'm not going to get involved in the main debate going on here. It will keep going round and round covering the same ground again and again until the sun becomes a Red Giant and destroys planet earth and everything on it. Except a copy of my Short-eared Owl book and whatever I manage to put together as my BR SR steam loco memoirs which will be saved as I have/will put them in a media rated fire safe.

Bryan B

 

That seems to be a very fair and important point to make.

Prior to 1930, 90 mph seems to have been a barrier rarely broken by anything other than a GWR City class.

Post 1930, higher speeds became more common, but only a handful of the fastest British steam locomotive types were recorded topping 100 mph. In the USA, there were also a small number of very fast types such as the Milwaukee F7 4-6-4s, but the diesels would soon take over as the 1930s drew to a close.

In Continental Europe, the majority of the fastest trains were already diesel or electric powered by 1939. The German Class 05 4-6-4s were in a class of their own for fast steam locos. I think the Belgian Class 12 Atlantics were the only other Continental steam class to be recorded above 100 mph or 160 km/hr?

 

Try Henschel Wegmann train
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henschel-Wegmann_Train

 

With that leaky oil bath, Bulleids probably exceeded 126mph quite a few times - but standing stationary!