Unexpected outing for Tornado today?

Given the tales a former NR manager friend of mine tells me about how his company operated and still operates, I just put it down to incompetence.

 

Agreed nobody there bright enough to put together a conspiracy that works!

 

On the basis that the assumption above is correct, then I guess that this movement will draw the curtain down on what has been a wholly unexpected and truly quirky, off-beat episode. Considering that this thread is almost totally devoid of pictorial/ video content, and that what it really boils down to is a conversation about a frustrated positioning move, I find it remarkable that, by a handsome margin, this thread has seen more views (10,000 vs 8,200) than the combined total of all the viewings of the last four main line outings of the Blinkered One (i.e. Tynesider onwards)!! And 94 likes to boot! Remarkable!! But I don’t understand just why this is.

Anyway, to end on a suitably whimsical note, I can’t help but reflect just what an appropriate parable of our times this episode has turned out to be. I grew up in the world of the mid-twentieth century where the incarceration of main line steam locomotives would have been an act of retribution for truculent behaviour. I know this to be the case, because I read that it once happened to one “Henry the Green Engine” whose fate was to be bricked up in a tunnel.

But oh how different it is today, and what a salutary lesson for today’s generation. Instant incarceration at the drop of a software glitch, and no matter how orderly the paperwork is!!

I hope that the possibility of this kind of risk will resonate with the generations of TtTE followers from more modern times as they graduate to the heritage and main line operations of the real world. So when A1SLT announced “We are pursuing this with the RSL to ensure it doesn't happen again to ourselves and hopefully anyone else” I can only wish them every success in this endeavour.

Meanwhile thanks to everyone who has posted to make this such an engaging thread, and good luck to all involved with the LE move tomorrow

 

As I make this post 60163 is sitting at the point where the computer said no on 4th June!