Titan

The parallels with this accident and the WCRC door issue are unnerving, and these were all trained personnel too. This is what happens if you wait for someone to die before admitting something is unacceptably dangerous.

TBH if it had been that it would have been all over the internet by now. Dropping a plug is a serious issue. In any case if the water level is properly managed then firebox first on a steep gradient is not a problem. You just make sure that the water level is near the top when you start. You would need a very extreme gradient to drop the water level from somewhere near the top of the glass to below the crown sheet, but if the level was near the bottom of the glass to begin with, not so much.

Yes I have heard similar, two forward compartments flooded, + the weight of the bridge weighing her down firmly grounding her by the bow. In theory once enough weight is removed she should float again.

By using that logic you could also call it one of the lightest. Class 56, 58 and 60 are also heavier. I don't think the class 13 even makes the top 5, so including it as 'one of the heaviest' is misleading.

Going to have a way out of left field guess - did Stratford have a weighbridge? Could it be used for calibrating that by adding known weights to it?

Whilst I might not always agree with Reortes opinion, (Although these days I find myself agreeing with him more than I used to!) I very much respect it due to the way it is presented.

Indeed, and Mk2/3 would undoubtably been better. However that does not mean that Mk1s are made out of tissue paper as some seem to think. You only have to read the Harrow and Wealdstone accident report when the then new Mk1's were praised for their crashworthiness compared to the older carriages, and it was considered regrettable that the trains were not formed entirely of Mk1 stock as many lives would have been saved due to the strength of the new carriages...

Indeed. However I prefer to believe the photographs, of which there are also interior shots showing minor damage rather than "mangling". Exterior, First toilet compartment damaged, Some window breakage along train where wagon landed on roof: http://www.nigeltout.com/assets/images/autogen/618_01_OldDalby_198408_s.jpg Interior shot of where wagon landed on roof: http://www.nigeltout.com/assets/images/autogen/619_03A_OldDalby_198408_s.jpg When I think of "pretty mangled" these are not the kind of images I would associate with that phrase. The security of the seats was somewhat less than I would have expected, so there would admittedly be injuries or worse from that, but mangled the bodyshells were not.

Eh? on the CEGB crash the passenger accommodation remained entirely intact apart from about two broken windows and crush damage to the leading toilet where it over rode the loco as it did not have the benefit of the buck eye couplings that the rest of the train did. Pretty far from being pretty mangled...

The propellor effect is down to the interaction of the prop wash with its surroundings. On the top side of the propellor the wash interacts with the hull, and in shallow water like this on the bottom side of the propellor it interacts with the river bed. This creates all sorts of funny pressure differentials and eddies that tend to push on the stern. This means that the torque of the propellor has little effect, it is other forces at play. As noted above, this can be particularly noticeable on narrow boats as the bottom of the canal is often only a little bit deeper than the draft of the boat! So it is no surprise that the Dali, a long ship with a flat bottom in (relatively) shallow water behaves like a scaled up narrow boat!

It would seem that there were many effects that contributed. There was a slight wind pushing it towards the bridge too. Really not much, but with something as tall and flat sided as a container ship it does not take much to have an effect. The ship was probably being steered into the wind slightly to compensate, so when steerage was lost due to crash reversing the engine, the wind added to the propellor effect to turn the ship further towards the bridge.

Pull my finger...

That could mean that the bogie frame is worn around the axles. When sufficiently worn they end up with the worm taking the weight, with the axle rocking on it. This causes the coffee grinder noise as the gears don't mesh as they should, and a wobbly body as the axles rock. Of course being Triang they still run, but in an unworn state the motors are an awful lot quieter and smoother. It also means that in a worn state they ride lower than they should which does not help your case either!

Must have been the holy hand grenade in that case.

Oh no, not again...