Tornado

Too many Azuma's on here....

 

All I know is the announcement by the Trust. I currently have no information on the source of any of the three sets of flues so far provided as part of the boiler overhaul.

Needless to say I’m desperately disappointed to learn of this latest set back in the long saga of her ‘6 month’ overhaul.

Still, you have to admire their optimism as you can still book the Aberdonian for the 20th July …..

 

Had a chance to view the new facility which is quite superb, I reckon its about 80 m from surviving fragments of North Road shops, really dwarfs the rear wall of North Road station, no tracks outside yet, obviously the actual connection isn't planned for another year. Excellent progress.

 

Our August 19th trip on Aberdonian is cancelled.

 

All of the flue tubes are now in Tornado’s boiler, and the team are grinding them down to length ready for welding.

Tornado will be back on the rails this summer. Support the locomotive at a1steam.com/donation

 

Doubt it. More like autumn.

 

Quite some while ago now, some of us reckoned she was unlikely to earn any serious revenue this year at all. AFAIK, apart from running in etc she still has to fulfil her obligations to NR et al for testing the ETMS gear at the Old Dalby test track, originally scheduled for March I believe. It would be nice to be proved wrong of course.


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I can understand welding the tubes in the firebox/combustion chamber, but at the smokebox end as well?

 

Loco owners never learn the lesson. When it comes to overhauls West Coast have the right idea, say nowt until it’s been signed of as fit to run.

 

My friends at the DTG are of the same opinion, it’s also something I do at work…

 

Nothing wrong with doing it but unnecessary IMHO. We never did it on our big 2 pass boilers that were J prep welded at the burner end. 352 x 2.25” tubes.

 

Although on the flip side, WCRC don't have an army of supporters and donors to keep informed and happy. I don't think it's really tenable for many groups in heritage rail to manage information like West Coast do.

 

I don’t think telling donors it will be back at a certain date and it’s still not ready months or years later doesn’t make them happy. The only answer should be, it will be ready when it’s finished.

 

This does tend to be the way A1SLT communications works though.

 

I disagree. Setting supporter’s expectations is a reasonable thing to do, so long as it’s clear that they are provisional.


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Suprised no-one has posted this already, but it looks like Tornado is back in steam and has had a few additional upgrades:

(photo nicked from Trackside Magazine Facebook page)

 

.....and the relevance to this thread is?......(albeit a nice picture)

 

Telling your support base that the overhaul will take 6 months (which soon came and went), followed by numerous false dawns with an assortment of excuses trotted out all blaming various suppliers in turn, cut no ice with those of us with the connections to assess the actual situation on the ground.

Back in June last year (near to the end of the 6 month period) the loco was still being dismantled, yet iirc tours were being advertised for Aug/Sept.

From where I’m standing, they need to take a long hard look at their own project planning and management to avoid any more fiascos like this one.

There were three main parts to the overhaul: a new boiler, new tyres and the fitment of ETMS. First up in 2022 the wheels were ‘late’ - yet almost a year on they’re still sat at LMS awaiting fitment to the frames.

Then the new boiler was going go be late, so it was decided to refurb the old one, and we all know how that went - by now we could have had the brand spanking new one we contributed too, if all that workshop time hadn’t been spent cocking up the old one.

Then last but not least is the ongoing saga of the ETMS installation. As I understand it this is partly a third party job, but with the Trust installing the cable runs. Somewhere in the planning stage there has been serious failure on someone’s part to grasp the complexity. Either the third party supplied incorrect wiring diagrams, or the Trust failed to correctly assess the man-hours required.

On top of all this, just to compound the problems, one has to wonder how the costs have escalated and how the fund raising is going? In the light of the current project management issues, I and others are no longer contributing to big ticket items, though we are continuing with our covenants ….. for now.


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What is it?

 

Depending on exactly how the problems with the tubes arose, the new boiler might have been equally affected. Still, from outside, it does appear that the project management has been below the standard that we might have expected.

Same here, though to be fair, having contributed once as a "founder" member for the P2, I probably wouldn't be contributing any more large sums anyway.