County Durham volunteers plan second new steam engine

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Volunteers who built the first steam engine to run on the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) mainline for almost 50 years, are planning to build a second locomotive.
Tornado was unveiled in 2008 after being funded and assembled by steam enthusiasts in Darlington, Co Durham, in an 18-year project costing ^3m.
The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust now wants to build one based on the Gresley class P2 engine - popular in the 1930s.
The trust said a feasibility study would examine what costs were involved.
Trust chairman Mark Allatt said: "It has long been the desire of the trust to build a second locomotive as it would be a great waste to allow the skills and experience that we have developed in the construction of Tornado to go unused. However, we first had to ensure the successful commercial introduction of Tornado into main line service and then work to secure her future financially."
He said the debt incurred in the construction of Tornado had been halved and that by the end of June all that will remain to be paid will be a ^500,000 bearer bond which is due at the end of 2016.
"In addition, we are able to predict with some confidence our future income streams and set aside funds for maintenance, overhauls and Tornado's support vehicle."
The trust plans to base the new locomotive on the first Gresley class P2 No. 2001 Cock O' the North, which was completed in 1934 by the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about)).
However, the P2s never lived up to their potential and they declined with the advent of more streamlined trains in the late 1930s.
The 72ft (22 metre) Tornado is based on the Peppercorn A1 locomotive.

[inspector_blakey]

Fantastic! Was hoping they'd be looking at a P2 after the massive success of Tornado. Won't be cancelling my standing order to the A1 trust just yet!

[eightf48544]

However, the P2s never lived up to their potential and they declined with the advent of more streamlined trains in the late 1930s.

Didn't Thompson rebuild them as not too succesful Pacifics.

I don't think i will be supporting a P2 but then again I'm not sure what class loco I would like to see built new. Maybe the De la Porta version of the A1 but like the Red Devil in South Africa it wopuld probably be too powerful at around 3500/4000 hp.   

Maybe the Metropolitan 4-4-4T  which used to run to Verney Junction. IMO^▸ (in my opinion) One of the best proportioned tank engines about.

[willc]

They certainly seem to like a challenge. Though the P2 was a somewhat chequered design, as noted above. Cock of the North had completely different valve gear from the second P2, Earl Marischal, while the final batch of four were built new with an A4 streamliner front, with the other two being rebuilt to match, before Thompson then carried out the conversions into A2/2 Pacifics during the Second World War. And not entirely sure about whether they are exactly of universal appeal, as apart from testing in England, the P2s were built to work the Edinburgh-Aberdeen expresses.

But if they really wanted to do something truly different, how about a W1? Or maybe not, as even Gresley could never get it to work that well.
http://www.lner.info/locos/W/w1.shtml

[grahame]

But if they really wanted to do something truly different, how about a W1? Or maybe not, as even Gresley could never get it to work that well.
http://www.lner.info/locos/W/w1.shtml

Nah ...try

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ermel.org%2Fleader-class%2F&sl=de&tl=en

Or ... if the preserved steam railways in the country are going to start running out of suitable equipment as the get even older, how about a batch of 80001 series 2-6-4 tanks

[inspector_blakey]

The P2s have been a bit of a controversial design for many many years...

For a bit of background, Nigel Gresley (later Sir) was the extremely popular chief mechanical engineer of the LNER^» (London North Eastern Railway - about) who died prematurely in 1941 - he produced many justifiably famous designs of steam locomotive such as the V2, A3 and A4. He was replaced by Edward Thompson, who by all accounts was a rather austere character and not apparently well liked by his staff, in contrast to the avuncular Gresley. Thompson also apparently had a somewhat irrational dislike of Gresley's designs, and committed what was considered by many an act of sacrilege when he butchered Great Northern, Gresley's original pacific locomotive, using it as a test-bed for his own not-very-successful family of locomotives. The re-building of the P2s by Thomson needs to be seen in this context - I think the jury may still be out on whether the rebuilding by Thompson was justified on the ground of poor performance of the locomotives, or whether it was part of a pattern of rather vindictive acts. Thompson retired in 1946 and was replaced by Arthur Peppercorn, said to be a much more pleasant and agreeable figure, who designed the popular and successful A1 (all of which were scrapped, hence the Tornado project) and A2 pacifics (of which 60532 Blue Peter survives, albeit not currently operational).

That said the P2s were indeed originally designed for Scottish expresses, and I think the long fixed wheelbase was less than ideal for this task. However, any rebuild today would I suspect be likely to stick to mainline routes where this was less of a problem. Remember also that some designs that were not successful during their service life (I'm thinking particularly here of 71000 Duke of Gloucester) have been transformed in preservation. The issue of non-standard locomotives clearly isn't a problem for mainline steam operations today, where by definition every locomotive is incredibly non-standard and is cossetted with its own maintenance team and regime.

Finally, the A1 project has shown a vast amount more professionalism than many such projects and I think this was key to the huge success that Tornado has become. In particular, their media-savvy has been absolutely first-rate: how many other railway preservation projects can you think of ever that have generated such enormous positive publicity but avoided being labelled with the "trainspotter" stigma? The engineering of the locomotive is top notch, for sure, but I think the A1 Trust has quite rightly given much more attention to PR^▸ (Public Relations) than nearly every other equivalent scheme, which has enabled them to raise the funds necessary for success.

Bear in mind at the moment that the P2 project is only at the feasibility study stage, again indicating this professionalism - they're not going to go off half-cocked and start building token bits of loco before they've figured out thoroughly whether the project is a winner or not. No doubt if they conclude that it isn't, they'll look elsewhere (although I think a rebuild of a Bullied Leader* is probably a little unlikely!). But if anyone can pull it off they can, and that's why my standing order is staying firmly in place!

_{*nothing to do with Gordon Brown}