These were magnificent machines. Good to see that a few of them have been preserved. They could pull a heavy train up steep hills. Especially from a standing start. Like a 12 wheel drive with 2 sets of six wheels fixed and turning together. Good old fashioned torque converters and gear boxes and the sound of two Maybach prime movers. What clever engineering.
Remember collecting numbers with my Ian Allen book on the Lickey incline, it's a shame Big Bertha has gone now, all that puffing as it pushed passengers and freight trains up that famous incline.
Seems these might have been very frustrating to drive .here the driver.opens the throttle at Dawlish and gets pedestrian levels of acceleration, lots of thrash noise but very poor pick up......
I can still picture Westbury driver Robin Gould leaning out the window of a Western at Westbury station, long gone now but never forgotten, such a lovely man.
there is still a locomotive named after robin 56049 robin of templecombe he drove western champion in 2009. there is an awesome video when he powers away at par in Cornwall enjoy
As a naive and suggestible kid 45 years ago, a friend talked me into walking into that tunnel with him. With our bikes. We got past the bend where you lose sight of the entrance and a train came the other way. Never run so fast in my life since, we made it back to within a hundred yards of the entrance and the train was on top of us, full speed 8 car Deltic express from Exeter, we hit the deck headfirst in a tangle of spokes and sprockets and hugged the tunnel wall as it blasted by 3 feet away, horn blaring and carriage lights strobing past. I will never forget the suction trying to pick me up by the feet. We walked our bikes down onto the beach and within 15 minutes a yellow transport police engine cruised slowly along the track, presumably looking for bodies. On another occasion, the same friend made me climb along the cliff face to the right of that tunnel entrance towards the parson and clerk rocks at high tide. The memories that almost kill us are the ones that last the longest, presumably to stop us doing dumb shit again.
Good to see the Class 50s back on their original territory. I still remember them from Glasgow Central in the days when they worked the non-electrified section of the WCML between Glasgow and Crewe.
Something I forgot. Amateur vids often use zoom, like to zoom in on the engine or the view ahead. That wouldn't be appropriate for a professional video of the run - kills the sense of speed which is one of the attractions of mainline running.
They miss a trick here. Why not mount a camera looking forward and film the entire run. Then sell it as a video, including for all of us that can't for whatever reason be on that train, or as a memory for those that were. Make it copyright and enforce that so it doesn't turn up on YT as a free to view thing. If cab conversations need editing out, simply record sound from turther cab of first coach. I recon they'd sell hundreds of these videos, maybe more than the 500 people who paid to be on that train. No tour organiser has ever done this so we just get amateur filmed bits, handheld, poor sound, just the slow running cos of wind sound issues, or whatever. They'd make more money that way and why not? These preseved locos cost a fortune to maintain.
These ladies are in their late 50’s (no pun intended) are meant to be gracious and elegant!!! No ravenous beasts hammering down the mainline!!! Also loving the “lean” fortage
