rodent279

So a 10 car IET is about 13 runs. 3 fours and a single should do it.

I think they look best in GFYE, with TOPS numbers and arrows.

And I don't think we can down play too much the "dead hand" of the DfT in much of the IET/IEP specs. I suspect if GWR & LNER (and it's predecessors) and other interested parties had been left to their own devices, and maybe collaborated, on the IEP, the rolling stock may have turned out differently.

I guess we forget that the HST's didn't have a trouble free entry into service. It was some years before they had all bugs fixed, defects ironed out, and were really settled down into reliable service.

I could do with a few of those!

Ah, of course, should have known that!

Go-what is BSP-F, do tell!

That's actually quite a handsome beast.

Good point, well made.

Nice one! I suppose you'd still be able to have the deeper ashpan and larger diameter boiler of the Brit with that configuration. Are you not tempted to use the larger tender with full height sides?

Now how about a Beyer-Garrett 9F? Brit boiler, 2-6-0+0-6-2, maybe oil fired? 4x16" cyls.

All currency is imaginary.

Why are jigs destroyed, and what makes them so expensive to recreate? I thought these things would be modular anyway.

It was very quaffable actually. Derail Ale tonight, from the same outfit. Described as a heroic refreshing IPA.

This is what I can't understand. Metric wasn't exactly new in the 1950's-it has been fully legal in the UK since about 1897. Surely taps, dies, drill bits etc are consumables anyway, I can't believe they were never replaced. Would it really have been beyond the wit of NBL to have made their own, or contracted Moore & Wright to make metric tools? I can't help thinking the whole metric/Imperial thing is a red herring as regards the build quality of the NBL built MAN engines. I'm sure I've seen somewhere that it was thought that inferior quality metals were used in construction of the engines.

Would you actually need to re-tool to build engines to a metric design? Assuming the machine tools weren't actually worn out, is it not the measuring instruments that need to be metric? Vernier calipers, micrometers, slip gauges, drill bits, taps, dies etc?

I thought the problem with the NBL manufactured MAN engines wasn't so much the tolerances in the engines, as inferior quality materials used?

Well, there was only one thing I could drink, after yesterday's Two Tunnels 5K run along the SDJR, from not far off Oldfield Park station, through Devonshire Tunnel, to just short of Combe Down Tunnel. Banging headache prevented me from necking this last night.

Wasn't the Gresley 2-8-2 defeated as much as anything by the colliery's rigid adherence to small, non-fitted coal wagons?

For Mallard on 03.07.1938? Assuming 7 coaches @ ~ 19m, that's 133m, plus loco, 21m, that's 154m.

Was the RR an air brake railway?

Oh I don't know..... Maybe quasi-Coronation maroon livery, with gold stripes.... Might just work.

Thanks, that was my next step! So you can easily see that Shap with 11 on is going to need 2,500hp +, and also why electrics, with 4000+ hp available at the rail at 50-odd mph, could sail over with speeds in the 80's.

I make 2 tons at 70mph equal to 624kW, or 836hp. Still not an enormous amount though.

I'm sure there's probably a dozen perfectly good, valid reasons why a Princess was chosen as the basis for a turbine loco, and not an 8F, but it's an interesting thought, worthy of a bit of daydreaming, give me that at least!