Flying Scotsman return
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The Flying Scotsman has been making its rounds last night. Caught it passing through Leeds but didn't get a video, but here's one from Lancaster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWiRTvALO3M
The Flying Scotsman has been making its rounds last night. Caught it passing through Leeds but didn't get a video, but here's one from Lancaster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWiRTvALO3M
Wandering off on a tangent, when the 150th anniversary of the Metropolitan Railway was being planned the year before last, they brought in a Beattie Well Tank to run clearance tests between Kensington Olympia and Moorgate. The tests were carried out overnight, but ran late and the engine was still down there when the service trains started early the following morning.
I have read reports that early risers were scrabbling for their camera phones as a steam locomotive of 1870s vintage suddenly appeared out of the tunnel and on the tracks in front of them
I have read reports that early risers were scrabbling for their camera phones as a steam locomotive of 1870s vintage suddenly appeared out of the tunnel and on the tracks in front of them
I know it's been said a million times before but why have they painted it black with the 103 number? It should be apple green and 4472 - those elements are very much core to the Flying Scotsman brand and to have deviated from that is pretty dumb thing to have done, especially at 'relaunch'.
Black is the undercoat. It is being painted green pretty much as I type. I gather they gave it this number as it was restored to the specification it ran at the end of it's career, where it carried the number 60103. I agree though, it needs to be 4472, however correct or incorrect this is.
Zad said:
Black is the undercoat. It is being painted green pretty much as I type. I gather they gave it this number as it was restored to the specification it ran at the end of it's career, where it carried the number 60103. I agree though, it needs to be 4472, however correct or incorrect this is.
Thanks for that – I'll relax. 
In the light of trackside fires (both real and perceived) caused by steam locos I suspect smoke deflectors are a practical addition to a loco that will be expected to work pretty hard, running all over the country throughout the year. That and all those rich families taking the kids out for the day, who don't realise that burning lumps of rock might generate a strange thing called soot, which has a habit of flying through open windows and ruining your shirt / getting in your eye / setting fire to darling little Jemimah's hairdo.
Zad said:
In the light of trackside fires (both real and perceived) caused by steam locos I suspect smoke deflectors are a practical addition to a loco that will be expected to work pretty hard, running all over the country throughout the year. That and all those rich families taking the kids out for the day, who don't realise that burning lumps of rock might generate a strange thing called soot, which has a habit of flying through open windows and ruining your shirt / getting in your eye / setting fire to darling little Jemimah's hairdo.
Do smoke deflectors have much impact on either of those problems? 4472 looks like it's on its way to the eastern front with those things bolted on the smokebox.Still, I didn't donate so I can't comment. I put my money into 71000.
Zad said:
In the light of trackside fires (both real and perceived) caused by steam locos I suspect smoke deflectors are a practical addition to a loco that will be expected to work pretty hard, running all over the country throughout the year. That and all those rich families taking the kids out for the day, who don't realise that burning lumps of rock might generate a strange thing called soot, which has a habit of flying through open windows and ruining your shirt / getting in your eye / setting fire to darling little Jemimah's hairdo.
Smoke deflectors are designed to exactly what it says on the tin - deflect smoke away from what little forward vision the footplate crew has, seeing as there is a bloody great boiler in the way anyway.Any sparks/ grit/ sundry particles that get thrown out of the chimney are going to get thrown out anyway and, being generally heavier than air, are going to come back down again rather faster. Smoke deflectors make little difference to the laws of gravity.
There are such things as spark arrestors which are essentially similar to a piece of gauze over the chimney, but they do tend to play havoc wth a locomotive's efficiency as they can affect the draw on the fire. In the UK these were generally only used on shunting engines, when where they were shunting there were large amounts of combustible material about the place (eg paper mills)
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