Aisgill Accident 1913

[Morello Cherry]

All the reports and most of the articles about the accident make mention that Driver Caudle left his engine while in motion to oil around the engine. Much is made that this was something didn't need to be done due to the fact that the engine had lubricators but it was tradition for drivers to do this. He goes out on the left hand side, works his way round the framing and ends up back in the cab on the fireman's side. It is said that the weather meant he was away from his cab for longer than expected and when he came back the fireman was struggling with injector and he was distracted by this. The combination of the two actions meant he missed the signals and the signalman waving a red lamp.

Now what puzzles me is how did the 59 year old Caudle leave the cab while the train was in motion, climbing and in Birkett tunnel  and at 2.51am? How would you get out and how and what would you be oiling? When the accident happens the train is estimated to be going about 30mph?

 

I am unclear if 446 had been rebuilt or not but the images of the MR class 2 show it as this:

 

 

Given the splashers - how the hell do you get round the framing at 30mph?

 

The second thing is if the fireman is firing and dealing with the injector what is happening with the regulator/cut off. Would he just have it full fwd or near enough and left the regulator wide open?

 

 

 

 

[LMS2968]

In those days the running plate was quite a bit wider than the cab and splashers and getting around them from the cab gangway would not have been difficult. I imaging he took the gauge lamp with him to see the way and the oil levels in the oil boxes. By the way, on the Midland the driver stood on the right hand side, not the left. The 'lubtricators' here would have been drip-feed through a syphon and not mechanical; these really arrived only with superheating and not at this date with these engines.  The reverser and regulator would have been set to allow the best performance, in this case with the low steam pressure in mind, and would have been left at that. Injectors could be fussy things and the Midland's were poor; the shame is that they were carried on into LMS days. What driver Caudle did was common practice in those days, and not just on the Midland.

[pH]

44 minutes ago, LMS2968 said:

… The 'lubtricators' here would have been drip-feed through a syphon and not mechanical …

… What driver Caudle did was common practice in those days, and not just on the Midland.

David L. Smith writes a bit about drivers dealing with lubrication while the engine was in motion in “Tales of the Glasgow and South Western Railway”. 
 

He says it was common for drivers to leave the cab to oil slidebars as engines were climbing long hills. They could still be out of the cab as the train topped the hill and accelerated down the other side.

 

And drivers would take the syphons out of the oil boxes to avoid wastage if the engine was going to stand for any length of time. One crew were caught out when the Midland brought an express into Carlisle, having made up much of the lateness reported at Hellifield. The fireman had to take the train out of Citadel, in control as far as Kingmoor, because the driver was out on the footplating, putting the syphons back into the oil boxes.

Edited April 21 by pH

[Jeremy Cumberland]

Here's a useful view of the Johnson "spinner" No. 673. I know it's a different class of locomotive, but the widths are probably similar. Note the step on the curved running plate over the driver axlebox (which of course the 4-4-0 didn't have), specifically for getting round the engine.

 

Photograph by "locoyard": https://locoyard.com/2013/09/03/both-red-beauties/

Edited April 21 by Jeremy Cumberland

[Morello Cherry]

2 hours ago, LMS2968 said:

In those days the running plate was quite a bit wider than the cab and splashers and getting around them from the cab gangway would not have been difficult. I imaging he took the gauge lamp with him to see the way and the oil levels in the oil boxes. By the way, on the Midland the driver stood on the right hand side, not the left. The 'lubtricators' here would have been drip-feed through a syphon and not mechanical; these really arrived only with superheating and not at this date with these engines.  The reverser and regulator would have been set to allow the best performance, in this case with the low steam pressure in mind, and would have been left at that. Injectors could be fussy things and the Midland's were poor; the shame is that they were carried on into LMS days. What driver Caudle did was common practice in those days, and not just on the Midland.

 

The report says he got out on the 'near side to oil the left auxiliary box' working his way round to the off-side. p.6 of the report.

 

I guess it all boils down to how big the running place is. I don't know what form 446 was in in 1913. In the images of the class 2's I've seen there really doesn't look to be much room around the cab side plates or the splashers. 

 

 

On the 156 you can see clearly how they would get to the front, the running plate is right back to the cab steps but I'm struggling to see for the class 2. 

 

 

 

FYI - The report also dismisses low steam pressure for the second express highlighting that it had run to scheduled time p.9.

 

I am trying to workout how you would get out of a hardworking 4-4-0 at 30mph at 3am in the pitch dark with an oil can and lamp.

 

The men claim it would normally only take them 2 or 3 minutes to do this which seems very fast considering what they were doing. p.10 

 

 

 

Edited April 21 by Morello Cherry

[Wheatley]

4 hours ago, Morello Cherry said:

 I am trying to workout how you would get out of a hardworking 4-4-0 at 30mph at 3am in the pitch dark with an oil can and lamp. 

As previously advised - out through the gap between the cab sidesheets and tender then round via the footplating provided for the purpose. Either lamp and oil can in one hand and the other on the handrail, or arm hooked over the handrail and one in each hand. The fireman would be more than capable of minding things on the footplate for the period the driver was away. 

 

Just because we've gone soft in the meantime unnecessary risks are no longer tolerated doesn't mean it can't be done. 

 

There is an Ivo Peters cine film of a Caley 0-6-0 on a railtour in 1963, the fireman is out on the footplate braying the Westinghouse pump with the coal hammer as the train approaches Whithorn, so it wasn't just a pre-grouping practice. 

 

 

[LMS2968]

9 hours ago, Morello Cherry said:

 

The report says he got out on the 'near side to oil the left auxiliary box' working his way round to the off-side. p.6 of the report.

 

I guess it all boils down to how big the running place is. I don't know what form 446 was in in 1913. In the images of the class 2's I've seen there really doesn't look to be much room around the cab side plates or the splashers. 

Offside and nearside have nothing to do with the driver's position: nearside is the left and adjacent to (most) platform faces; offside is to the right, both as viewed in the direction of running.

 

There is sufficient room on the running plate for the driver to pass, as happened thousands of times and related on this thread by several contributors, although modern H&S people might quibble. I can't see how Einstein's Theory of Relativity works either but don't doubt that it does.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

15 minutes ago, LMS2968 said:

both as viewed in the direction of running.

I don't think the direction of running has anything to do with it, and a locomotive running tender or bunker first wuould still have the nearside on the left for someone in the cab facing the chimney.

 

However, reading through entries in OED, it seems that use of the term in relation to motor vehicles does sometimes change according to the side of the road being driven on. In relation to horses and other animals, it is always the left (even in places where they drive on the right).

 

I think what isn't apparent in @Morello Cherry's photograph is how much running plate the is outside the splashers.

[LMS2968]

Directions are usually given in travelling direction of the TRAIN rather than the engine, so which way it's pointing doesn't come into it. If the engine is stationary in a yard, though, you would refer to left and right when looking towards the chimney.

[Morello Cherry]

7 hours ago, Wheatley said:

As previously advised - out through the gap between the cab sidesheets and tender then round via the footplating provided for the purpose. Either lamp and oil can in one hand and the other on the handrail, or arm hooked over the handrail and one in each hand. The fireman would be more than capable of minding things on the footplate for the period the driver was away. 

 

 

 

 

 

Although in this case the fireman wasn't because of the injector issue.

 

The estimate of 2-3 minutes to make your way all the way  around in the dark and stopping to oil twice seems a bit optimistic to me.

 

1 hour ago, LMS2968 said:

Directions are usually given in travelling direction of the TRAIN rather than the engine, so which way it's pointing doesn't come into it. If the engine is stationary in a yard, though, you would refer to left and right when looking towards the chimney.

 

Here is the full quote:

 

Quote

Driver Caudle gives the following account of his journey after passing Kirkby Stephen he left the footplate when approaching Birkett Tunnel, on the near side, to oil the left [emphasis mine MC] driving auxiliary box, and was on the framing of the locomotive when the train passed through the tunnel. He then went around the smokebox on to the off side, oiled the corresponding box, and got back to his place at the "front." pp.9-10

 

That reads to me to as left hand side in direction of travel to right hand side round the front.

 

It says 'He kept the regulator and reversing lever in the same position and continued to-run forward"

 

He gets back into the cab and he set to work on the injector and then he watched Fellows putting some coal on the fire, then finally Fellows saw the red tail lights.

 

It reads to me like a driver who was so focused on the little tasks (oiling, getting the injector working and watching his fireman rather than paying attention to the signals).

 

I guess he thought that he'd never been stopped there before so why would he be stopped there this time...

 

1 hour ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

I don't think the direction of running has anything to do with it, and a locomotive running tender or bunker first wuould still have the nearside on the left for someone in the cab facing the chimney.

 

However, reading through entries in OED, it seems that use of the term in relation to motor vehicles does sometimes change according to the side of the road being driven on. In relation to horses and other animals, it is always the left (even in places where they drive on the right).

 

I think what isn't apparent in @Morello Cherry's photograph is how much running plate the is outside the splashers.

 

Looking photos of the later 2P and the Midland Compound there is not much room around the cab - barely enough to put a foot down - but clearly a handrail along the cabside to hold onto and there is no reason for it to be there unless you needed to get out onto the front via the cab.

 

 

 

7 hours ago, Wheatley said:

 

There is an Ivo Peters cine film of a Caley 0-6-0 on a railtour in 1963, the fireman is out on the footplate braying the Westinghouse pump with the coal hammer as the train approaches Whithorn, so it wasn't just a pre-grouping practice. 

 

 

 

I might be imagining it but I think I saw someone hand sanding from the front on a welsh narrow gauge railway in the very early 1980s on a very wet trip up through some woods. But I am probably misremembering what happened.

Edited April 22 by Morello Cherry

[Wickham Green too]

8 hours ago, Wheatley said:

..., the fireman is out on the footplate braying the Westinghouse pump ...

'My' fireman had to do that when I was driving from Poznan to Wolsztyn not very many years ago.

57 minutes ago, Morello Cherry said:

...  someone hand sanding from the front on a welsh narrow gauge railway in the very early 1980s ...

Standard practice on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway - even today. 

[Jeremy Cumberland]

1 hour ago, Morello Cherry said:

I might be imagining it but I think I saw someone hand sanding from the front on a welsh narrow gauge railway in the very early 1980s on a very wet trip up through some woods. But I am probably misremembering what happened.

You're not misremembering. I am quite surprised photographs seem so hard to find - the sight of the poor fireman sitting on the front bufferbeam of Linda, Blanche or Mountaineer with a bucket of sand coming into Tanybwlch in miserable weather seemed common enough in the 80s. Later on, on the one occasion I was sent to the front myself, I rather envied those fireman with all that space in front of the smokebox - particularly on Mountaineer - for the engine I was firing was Prince, and we had a bloody great headboard on to boot, and the only place to perch was alongside the smokebox in front of the sand pot (oh the irony! I don't know if the sand pots on Englands and Fairlies were ever connected to sanders, but by the 1980s they were merely decorative). I can't remember what I held on to - the headboard, probably. I do remember that the sleeve of my jacket was wrecked by the heat. I think this was in 1991, and probably one of the last occasions this was done on the Ffestiniog.

Edited April 22 by Jeremy Cumberland

[The Stationmaster]

1 hour ago, Morello Cherry said:

 

Although in this case the fireman wasn't because of the injector issue.

 

The estimate of 2-3 minutes to make your way all the way  around in the dark and stopping to oil twice seems a bit optimistic to me.

 

 

Here is the full quote:

 

 

That reads to me to as left hand side in direction of travel to right hand side round the front.

 

It says 'He kept the regulator and reversing lever in the same position and continued to-run forward"

 

He gets back into the cab and he set to work on the injector and then he watched Fellows putting some coal on the fire, then finally Fellows saw the red tail lights.

 

It reads to me like a driver who was so focused on the little tasks (oiling, getting the injector working and watching his fireman rather than paying attention to the signals).

 

I guess he thought that he'd never been stopped there before so why would he be stopped there this time...

 

 

Looking photos of the later 2P and the Midland Compound there is not much room around the cab - barely enough to put a foot down - but clearly a handrail along the cabside to hold onto and there is no reason for it to be there unless you needed to get out onto the front via the cab.

 

 

 

 

I might be imagining it but I think I saw someone hand sanding from the front on a welsh narrow gauge railway in the very early 1980s on a very wet trip up through some woods. But I am probably misremembering what happened.

I would hardly class things such as 'oiling, getting the injector working, and watching his Fireman' as 'little things'.  The world of steam engine management changed massively in a few decades in the early to mid 20th century as technology and materials developed.  1913, especially for those who had learnt their job in even earlier times was a very different railway from just one generation later let alone the later years of steam traction.

 

Failed lubrication could mean stopping and have to be rescued, dodgy and troublesome injectors could mean just the same, and nursing a fire back into shape to keep steaming also took skill and experience - hence the Driver's interest.  Managing the engine is, and was very much so back then, as important as looking out for signals and it could distract an Engineman from other tasks if there were real problems to deal with simply in order to keep on the move.  Where Caudle really fell short was in his wider actions after getting back to the cab and not paying proper attention to where his train was and any signals which might have been missed.

 

The wider ramifications of the collision are interesting - Rule 217, which would have played a critical role in certainly reducing the impact and, probably averting the collision had been in the course of revision during 1913 and Ais Gill prompted a move to further revise and ensure that in these circumstances the (Rear) Guard should immediately go back to protect a train stopped in the way the first express had stopped..   The GWR of course - not unexpectedly - noted and sought to act on the comments about its audible distant signal system (later known as ATC).  

 

However it is interesting to note that the 1910 Hawes Jcn collision had a far greater impact on the GWR and in 1913 it decided to spend £30.000 on providing additional and more comprehensive track circuiting throughout its main line network.

[mcowgill]

The locomotive crew of the Talyllyn might regard the provisions for access alongside the loco provided by the Midland Railway as luxurious! 

 

Pre and early preservation photos of Dolgoch show what might seem to be an injector pipe emerging from the cab door, running alongside the bunker and then ducking down below the footplate.  In fact this was nothing of the sort and was an iron bar bent and located to provide additional footing for someone needing to get out and forward from the cab!

 

 

[Morello Cherry]

1 hour ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

You're not misremembering. I am quite surprised photographs seem so hard to find - the sight of the poor fireman sitting on the front bufferbeam of Linda, Blanche or Mountaineer with a bucket of sand coming into Tanybwlch in miserable weather seemed common enough in the 80s. Later on, on the one occasion I was sent to the front myself, I rather envied those fireman with all that space in front of the smokebox - particularly on Mountaineer - for the engine I was firing was Prince, and we had a bloody great headboard on to boot, and the only place to perch was alongside the smokebox in front of the sand pot (oh the irony! I don't know if the sand pots on Englands and Fairlies were ever connected to sanders, but by the 1980s they were merely decorative). I can't remember what I held on to - the headboard, probably. I do remember that the sleeve of my jacket was wrecked by the heat. I think this was in 1991, and probably one of the last occasions this was done on the Ffestiniog.

 

As someone who has also fired Prince (maybe there should be a Prince firemans support group?) this is part of what drives my question. My abiding memory is that even when plodding along well, it was not a very smooth ride. If Prince was like that I am struggling to think what 30 mph on a MR 4-4-0 in the middle of the night would have been like.

 

I am glad that I wasn't imagining it. It was one of those ones where I wondered if it was something I'd imagined. My guess is that on the occassions when people were handsanding when the train came into Tanybwlch the weather was so awful that the photographers decided not to waste precious film in the gloom.

 

28 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

I would hardly class things such as 'oiling, getting the injector working, and watching his Fireman' as 'little things'.  The world of steam engine management changed massively in a few decades in the early to mid 20th century as technology and materials developed.  1913, especially for those who had learnt their job in even earlier times was a very different railway from just one generation later let alone the later years of steam traction.

 

Failed lubrication could mean stopping and have to be rescued, dodgy and troublesome injectors could mean just the same, and nursing a fire back into shape to keep steaming also took skill and experience - hence the Driver's interest.  Managing the engine is, and was very much so back then, as important as looking out for signals and it could distract an Engineman from other tasks if there were real problems to deal with simply in order to keep on the move.  Where Caudle really fell short was in his wider actions after getting back to the cab and not paying proper attention to where his train was and any signals which might have been missed.

 

The wider ramifications of the collision are interesting - Rule 217, which would have played a critical role in certainly reducing the impact and, probably averting the collision had been in the course of revision during 1913 and Ais Gill prompted a move to further revise and ensure that in these circumstances the (Rear) Guard should immediately go back to protect a train stopped in the way the first express had stopped..   The GWR of course - not unexpectedly - noted and sought to act on the comments about its audible distant signal system (later known as ATC).  

 

However it is interesting to note that the 1910 Hawes Jcn collision had a far greater impact on the GWR and in 1913 it decided to spend £30.000 on providing additional and more comprehensive track circuiting throughout its main line network.

 

I don't disagree but doesn't Hawes Jnc show the same important parallels? Just as the signalman forgot that the locos were in front of the signal box and got distracted by other things, Caudle forgot where he was/to look out for the signals because he was distracted by oiling, the injectors, watching the fireman. There is also a piece in Fellows evidence that suggests they were lulled into a false sense of security that all was fine ahead of them.

 

Quote

 

His evidence also suggests a driver who was a bit distracted:

 

Quote

 

Quote

 

Caudle wasn't the first and won't be the last person to become so focussed on task A that they forget to carry out task B until they are shaken out of their tunnel vision, in this case the fireman shouting the warning.

 

Doesn't it boil down to that if he hadn't left the cab to oil around he wouldn't have missed the signals, because even if he'd still had to help with the injector and monitor the firing, there would have been plenty of opportunities to see the various signals at danger.

 

The impact of oiling around in motion does seem to be very much downplayed in the evidence in quite a concerted way - ie it was normal, it was expected, it only takes 2-3 minutes, they only do it between block posts when there are no signals to watch for.

 

Edited April 22 by Morello Cherry

[31A]

3 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

'My' fireman had to do that when I was driving from Poznan to Wolsztyn not very many years ago.

 

12 hours ago, Wheatley said:

 

There is an Ivo Peters cine film of a Caley 0-6-0 on a railtour in 1963, the fireman is out on the footplate braying the Westinghouse pump with the coal hammer as the train approaches Whithorn, so it wasn't just a pre-grouping practice. 

 

 

 

Brake pumps seem to be a recurrent cause for leaving the footplate whilst the train is in motion:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R32uVrKG2j0

 

 

[Jim Martin]

With all this clambering around on the locomotive footplate, I wonder how many enginemen ended up falling off moving trains

[Wickham Green too]

Presumably not enough for it to have troubled the railway companies ........................................................ they may not have been over concerned about the welfare of their servants - but a Scotch Express stuck at Ais Gill - or wherever - without a driver would have been problematic.

[Adam88]

On the L&Y cab doors leading onto the running boards were fitted to the fronts of the cabs of the Atlantics and some of the 0-8-0s too.

 

See for example these images from "Smugmug"'s web site:  Atlantic and 0-8-0 - neither photo showing the locos at their best - LMS non-cleaning policy in evidence.

 

Whether they were meant to be used while the locomotive was moving or not is another matter.  They didn't seem to catch on and I think Eric Mason made some adverse comments about their being drafty and rattly.

[Wheatley]

The Victorian response to staff safety concerns was to add a couple more handrails (if aesthetically appropriate), e.g. extending those on the boiler side round the corner to join up with the one over the smokebox door, and the extra cabside handrail on the Compound pictured earlier. 

 

No doubt any request for compensation would be declined as anyone daft enough to fall off a footplate was clearly not exercising sufficient care for the task in hand.   

 

Edit - Completely off topic but i'm 99% sure the gent in the yellow vest on that Compound at Hellifield is the legendary Traction Inspector Bob Phizackerly. He once derailed 'Bahamas' coming off the K&WVR and then wrote his own investigation report ! There was nothing wrong with his conclusion ("The derailment occurred because I forgot to remove the derailer") but I had to politely refer it back 'for further work' - i.e. is there any chance someone other than the person who caused the derailment could countersign the report please ?   Absolute star. 

Edited April 22 by Wheatley

[Morello Cherry]

2 hours ago, Jim Martin said:

With all this clambering around on the locomotive footplate, I wonder how many enginemen ended up falling off moving trains

 

I seem to recall a couple of accidents where there were run away engines after drivers fell off their engines.

 

TBH the expectation seems to have been that if the driver died/was injured during the journey the fireman would takeover.

 

There is one story i read of a driver being decapitated by a bridge and the fireman taking over to complete the journey.

 

I'm pretty sure I read one accident report where a driver 'went missing' over the side of an engine when in motion and the fireman didn't notice for a while. (I have in my mind it was in Ireland).

 

I suspect it happened more often than we imagine but would probably only show up as the sort of thing a fireman would have been commended for rather than the sort thing that would induce a visit from a Major.

[The Johnster]

Coming back to the habit of leaving the cab to 'oil around', I would expect drivers to wait for an opportunity to present itself just after a train had passed on the opposite line before venturing out on to the rh side, as there would at least be a few minutes before another one passed.  As this applies to the Ais Gill accident, I read it as the driver going out on to the rh side of the loco approaching Birkett Tunnel, as you wouldn't want to be on the lh side in a tunnel, just after traffic had passed on the adjoining running line, to make his way widdershins around the running plate. 

 

I once read the job of the engine driver described as 'stopping the train at the times and places specified in the working timetable', which is a somewhat different way of looking at it (can't remember where I read it, it sounds like Tuplin) .  He has to start the train and make it move at a speed consistent with the timings in order to do this of course, and his responsibility is to obey the speed limits and the signals, as well as to manage the engine.  It is not diffiuclt to imagine situations in which these responsibilities conflict with each other. 

 

The fireman's job, as I read at the same time, to ensure that there is a sufficient level of water in the boiler at all times, which is again a somewhat different perspective.  He is also of course required to provide the driver with enough steam at enough pressure to perform his function of stopping the train at the times and locations specified in the working timetable, and to assist the driver in observing signals.  But his first responsibility is to the fusible plug, and failure to discharge this particular responsibility will not only require the train to be stopped and the fire dropped as a matter of some urgency, but make him a marked man for comment and ridicule for the rest of his railway career.  Drivers will be reluctant to work with him, and the stigma will never leave him; I worked with a Canton man who had dropped a plug on a Britannia at Llanharan in 1954 who was still hearing all about it a quarter of a century later...

 

There are plenty of things that can happen in a steam loco cab that might be reasons for missing signals, and injectors were always dodgy things which sometimes required expert persuasion to work properly, which took time and sometimes the attention of both fireman and driver.  Reasons for missing signals are not excuses for missing signals, however.  One begins to see the value of the GW ATC system, when a crew might be distracted by injectors or other problems over several sections and at speed, but are re-assured by the bell that the distants are off, or alerted by the hooter to one being on, and a glance at the sunflower would confirm the situation.  This was cutting edge stuff at the time of the Ais Gill accident, but this was not to be last occasion on which crews were distracted from signal observation by problems in the cab. 

 

There is a sense in which crews were being asked the impossible, to manage the loco and to observe the signals, and getting away with it most of the time, but to absolutely guarantee successful loco managment and 100% signal observation is a very big ask.  I think most people would say that signal observation trumps loco management, but it is not such a clear-cut call aboard the loco!  The blunt fact is that, at Ais Gill, Caudle missed the signals he was responsible for observing, but one has to have some sympathy with him; he was under pressure, doing his best, and got it wrong when on a thousand other occasions he'd have got it right.  Apportioning blame in accidents was rarely as simplistic as either the BoT reports made it out to be, and never as simplistic as press reports; railway accidents seem to generate a plethora of instant experts! 

[Jeremy Cumberland]

36 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

I once read the job of the engine driver described as 'stopping the train at the times and places specified in the working timetable',

You will probably recall from the Ais Gill accident report that the first train was over the weight limit specified for the locomotive. The locomotive was 993, a Deeley 990 class, and the carriages weighed 243 tons, 13 tons over the specified maximum. The driver of 993 applied for pilot assistance, but this was declined and the driver did not insist upon it. It is made fairly clear in the report that the driver didn't really expect to be given a pilot, even though there was a locomotive available, because he knew, as did the platform inspector who refused his request, that coupling on a pilot would delay the train more than the expected late running caused by not having a pilot. However, the driver still had to ask for assistance even though he knew he wouldn't get it, because this then absolved him from any blame for subesequent late running.

[LMS2968]

You need to remember the rather strange, but logical in its way, Midland operating ethos: any engine of a given power class could work any train within that power class, whether it was nicely run in after overhaul or struggling along just prior to entering Derby works. This meant that for most of their operating lives, engines were working well within their capabilities and this gave rise to the theory that the Midland was also the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Small Engines! Realistically, and unless 993 was on its last legs, a 13 ton overload was neither here nor there.

[30851]

I assume the other thing that made climbing round on these tiny spaces a little easier is that these drivers would be underweight and a lot smaller than we are.

 

Good reason to keep on eating!

 

Rob