BR 9F 92203 'Black Prince' pulls a 1000 tonne ballast train solo. Just listen to her RAWR! Taken at the East Somerset Railway's Quarry Gala at Merehead Quarry. Filmed 22nd June 2008.
Im no expert but they were designed to pull extremely heavy loads. i think Tyne Dock iron ore trains were some of the heaviest they pulled but i have no doubt they might have pulled this sort of load once or twice! hope this helps.
Nothing beats that bark. I’ve ridden behind black prince and even heading a long passenger train on the steep gradients of the Poppy line where she can be seen in action regularly, nothing seems to be too heavy for her. A superb locomotive.
Kenneth Craig: It is 'Black Prince' that is the record holder. 2158 tons from a standing start. This meant filling the firebox with 1/3 of a ton of coal, which was white-hot all the way through with the draught. The fireman was taken to hospital for treatment of burns caused by the radiant heat from the firehole door. The diesel on the back is there for braking purposes only.
The fireman was Pat Goodfellow. He never actually went to hospital. His elbow was burned through to the bone and he just went home and was tended by his wife. I only know this because he was my dad and I remember that day. Always an amazing story to hear it first hand. Black Prince was his favorite loco to fire
Saw these locos many times at Leicester on the Corby Freight Tipplers, including the 92020-92029 'Crosti' Boiler engines in the mid 50's - Great sight I still remember.
Although built as a goods engine, the 9F is a very handsome engine. They also performed perfectly as a passenger engine as well. The British load record of over 2100 tons was achieved by a 9F. Many thanks.
The zenith of steam traction. These beauties could haul heavy mineral to express passenger trains. With 5 foot drivers any one of the 9F's could top 90 mph and at that speed the piston and rotational speeds were equivalent to that of the Mallard on her record breaking run of 126mph. Yet Mallard only did that speed once - any one of the 250 9F's could do 90 on any given day.
@justandy333 A 9F is on record for producing 2400 drawbar horsepower at 40 mph & 55% cut off with full regulator. To put that into perspective, a class 47 diesel produces 2080 DBHP all out. A Western diesel hydraulic, 2000 DBHP, & a class 60 freight diesel rated at 3100 hp, with a design top speed of 62 mph, has a DBHP of 2415.
I fixed the leaky superheater on the prince ! And a load of stays. It's going to need re staying in a few years time , they are down to the smallest size that they can be re died.
great,i can remember haig colliery,near me,before it closed in 1986,with its steam winding engine,sounding like this,(ov without thd slip),when it was under load winding coal in skip winders to surface,i used to sit & listen to them for hour,s,then boiler,s would let steam off,when they made to much,engine,s are still there but they sit dormant now,happy memories,
Wow goes to show how much power a 9f has just fantastic all them trucks n a dead diesel on that probably there for keeping breaks off and for pulling it back to other end long live steam 😁😁😁
Lovely, I saw her many times when she was at the GWR, but pulling half a dozen BR1s at 25 mph was like putting a Lion in cage. Sadly we will never see them run on mainline again. I do wonder if we would be allowed to run one in Eastern Europe or South Africa, would love to see and travel on one at 90 mph with full rake of carriages.
I wonder what the average freight train tonnage was back in steam days. We used to ask for 1000 tons for braking and giving 1522 something to do. I think our biggest train was 2200 tons up the 1.5% Rolla Hill on an excursion.
@WatchdogDisciple Because no cows! British lines are fenced throughout. Some tramway engines, running partly on roads, had cowcatchers, but they were the exception.
BRILLIANT! I used to watch these in my teens hammering through Roade Cutting....NOTHING was like that sound,magic to your ears. P.S. A bipod would be better.
It thought for a moment this was the video from about 25(?) years ago when BP pulled over 2100 tons here at the quarry. We viewed if from the other side of the line then. The driver for that day was Dave Massey, an ex-S&D man himself who sadly departed some years ago for the great engine shed in the sky. I'm sorry to say that Pat Goodfellow, the fireman that day only recently joined him. Pat had lived in Canada for some years although would come back for a week at the ESR each year.
Where exactly ARE the "cylinder pressure relief valves" located and why do you need them when there's already pressure relief valves where the "cylinder pressure" is highest. Which is inside the boiler? Pressure drops any time a fluid moves through tubing. There's no way around it. That's caused by friction and in the case of steam, lost heat just adds to the loss. Those "pressure relief valves are water drains and they're often opened when shitty locomotive designs are struggling to start loads and the slow cylinder strokes and poor valve gear timing cause a lot of the steam to condense while its in the cylinder. You either open the valves to drain that water out or at some point you're going to break the engine. Period.
well, to be honest, in countries where they actually worked their steam engines hard, In blighty, given how powerful those are, they worked remarkably light trains most of the time
It wasn't designed to haul 1000 tons trains around, in fact it was only designed to pull 900 tonne trains but in practicality some 9f's could pull trains of 1300 tonnes. So to answer your question, yes it would have been seen as an excessive load in it's day.
Officially, but I think it was likey the builders already knew that they were going to be the last engines they'd ever build so I think the builders pulled out all stops with the result being the 9f's
It's funny how the more wasted energy there is (heat and noise) the better it seems. An electric will do the job using far less energy, and far more efficiently. But nowhere near as impressively.
This isn't correct. Whatever the history and reason for cowcatchers the fact is that they were very rarely used in Britain, so few as to be almost non-existent.
@Nigel16032009 i have one now but i had forgotten it that day! So unfortunately that's all i have cause i don't think there's any software available to add a tripod in!
That's some interesting ballast and even more interesting ballast cars you use over there. Hell, the ballast appears to be invisible and the cars are standard coal hoppers. Ballast cars are designed to drop the ballast OUTSIDE the rails for obvious reasons. Amazing how fast that thing takes off with 1000 tons all of a sudden when it slipped almost immediately when first starting that EMPTY "1000-ton" train. Oh wait, having a diesel-electric locomotive on the back helps.
Well up to the task it was designed to perform. It's good to see and hear an engine working hard and getting on with the job. I'll bet the fire was jumping on the grate!
These locos were regulalry hauling loads way in excess of 1,000 tons in BR steam days. The iron ore trains were just one example, the Stanlow oil trains another. Back in the early 80's Black Prince recorded the heaviest load ever hauled by any BR steam loco with over 2,000 tons.
Excellent demonstration of the traction issues encountered with design-max payloads; sanding consistent with that required in the United States might have helped. American Locomotive Company put two sand domes on each of their 2-8-2 Mohawks (much larger than Baldwin Mikados), 4-6-4 Hudsons and 4-8-4 Northerns for several major roads in the U. S. (e.g., Union Pacific, New York Central).
Because unlike your clumsy American locomotives, we don't need them. Also, as we don't operate through prairies, there is little chance of wildlife hitting the track. And cow catchers are ugly.
Because we don't need them railway lines are fenced throughout unless it's a Dock railway or rare branch line that goes along the road only then do they have cow catches
"Although it is stated that the UP FEF series were designed to safely operate at 120 mph (190 km/h), no one really knows how fast the final 4-8-4 could go" (Steve A. Lee). The Corn Belt Rocket program tested FEF 3s to near failure, the 150 express followed. These were USRA wartime austerity engines. Still like the UK fast locos better than the USA dragons. They they look better, more natural at speed they just... should be fast. The UP monsters were exactly that.
@sherbydip The very last load to be pulled by a 9F before they were taken out of service was about 400 tonnes. If thats 1000 tonnes, then thats the heaviest train a 9F has pulled to date O.O But i highly doubt that it is pulling that much. Way too heavy
