1948: New LOCOMOTIVE TESTING Facility | Newsreel | Retro Transport | BBC Archive 

do you know if the building and testing station have survived? its beautiful.

sadly, no it's not there anymore. It was demolished in 1984, excatly 40 years ago, but its final test​ took place in 1965 when it was closed in 1970. @@Cam.Klingon

In steam? IN IT? How is it IN steam? No train that is steam, has ever become not steam. So what are you talking about?

@@OregonCrow It's just a term people use when a steam engine is in operation.

@@OregonCrow He means its still in use and runs regularly. Not just a static exhibit

And hasn't aged either.

definitely louder than a race yoshimura end can on a gsxr1000!

@@fidelcatsro6948 or an Akroprovic 😉

…and even then it was second to some!

@@markiliff Even coming last would be better than no longer trying

Because the British government destroyed it.

I think this is due to the decision the Govt made to keep our thinner track as so much of it was built and laid up north by the time they had to make a decision it would cost too much to replace, stopping us having larger better designed trains.

How miserable! The people in this video would certainly be impressed with achievements of our time

And you cannot possibly think that the people of the LATE 40s weren't especially familiar with international tragedy?

the water level in the boiler:

HS2 was doomed from the start.

@@carlbirtles4518 - What's that got to do with the price of fish?

10000 was released to traffic just months earlier. The LMR wanted a large fleet of them immediately but the BRB said no.

Not so. Steam engines continued to be built in the UK for another 12 years, and were not eliminated until 20 years after the testing plant opened.

Same locomotive, different number depending if it was in LNER or BR days. And yes, it's the same class of locomotive as Mallard.

A rather young Richard Baker I think.

it does. you can see it at the beginning of the video. But for the testing, the loco is uncoupled from the tender, and coupled to the back the of the testing rig which has access to coal and water. There are very similar testing rigs for model locomotives today.

No idea ! And there was a dynamometer at Swindon works too - Dad said he watched a GWR 'Castle' class being tested on it in the late 1940s.

Bugatti

First twit?

Did the job at the time, still less polluting than petrol and diesel cars.

The thing we call modern society would't exist without steam...

​@@Frserthegreenengine Err, no!! Coal is a filthy burning fuel and produces sulphur and other nasty gases. Also, steam engines are less than 10% efficient so produce far more pollution per horse power than internal combustion engines. Until diesel engines reached a high enough specific output though, steam was the only viable power source for rail locos.

Yeah! How dumb and stupid of them to harness steam power, kick-start the industrial revolution and give birth to society as we know it! Bunch of thickos! You are way smarter.

The steam part is not so bad, just very inefficient, but burning coal is the worst thing environmentally there is. More importantly from a railroad point of view is that steam locos are very labour intensive - burning coal is very dirty and steam locos needed more hours having their internals cleaned by teams of men than they spend hauling passengers or freight. Until the development of diesel electric locos, most railway companies, especially government owned ones, designed their locos in-house and either built them in-house or contracted the construction out. They could do that because steam technology is simple to engineer. Diesel engine design is highly specialised, and only major manufacturers could handle it. This led railways to hang on to steam because their in-house engineers could handle it. And if those engineers were honest, and told management to buy diesel, they would loose their jobs.

Which communists and when?

@@robinfoster7597 Nationalization killed competition and innovation,.....................as it does.

We've never had communists ruling our country.

@@robinfoster7597 Tony Blair, Obama, Gordon Brown, Arch Bishop, David Cameron, the Pope and now Keir Starmer. The list is large. And before you say "they aren't communist", yes they are, go research their ideology, it's hard to find, as communists go by the fabian approach, (Labour's gathering is even called the Fabian Society, look it up), the art of changing things an inch at a time for communist revolutionary goals. They are surreptitious, sneaky, and lie about their ideology in order to win.

Like the communists who nationalised the railways, you mean?

What?

Misandrist, Racist, Ageist.

@@oylumo It's a racist and sexist slogan the left uses to infer a lack of diversity and inclusion... i.e. Basically too many white men. The stale part doesn't because this was peak inervation.