Discover the story behind BR's heavy freight steam locomotives, the 9F. With a brand new OO gauge model recently announced, join us to learn about the history of the real-life locomotives : bit.ly/3hOFaB3
I remember reading somewhere that a 9f held the record for moving the heaviest train in the uk for a while back in the sixties,2000 tons plus. We have one at the nymr it storms up the 1 in 49 like it’s nothing. Superb machine.
Sorry, but you've conflated a couple of events in your intro to the Class, but it's not surprising as things happened quickly. In 1951 the Railway Executive (RE) of the BTC approved the construction of the Standard steam locomotives, coaches (what later became known as the Mark 1 coaches, when the first coaches of integral construction came along, aka the Mark 2 coaches) and wagons, prior to this the regions were allowed to build coaches, wagons and locomotives based on existing design from the big 4 companies that the regions had replaced (the ER built J17s, a design that dated from 1898). The RE wanted electrification, but this was overly expensive in the post-war environment although they did allow the completion of the electrified route out of Liverpool Street and the Woodhead route that the LNER had started before the war. The RE had little interest in dieselisation on the mainline, but were happy for it to go ahead in the yards. The RE expected that the existing steam locomotives would be phased out in favour of the Standard designs which after 30 or more years would be phased out in favour of electrification, as had been done on the SR before the war with its electrification process. One of the major reasons for the decision to continue to build steam locomotive was that we didn't have our own oil reserves but did have plenty of coal. We would have to buy on the open market the oil requirex for diesel locomotives, but we could control, our own coal prices with the nationalised NCB; electrification was fine as the electricity would come from the burning of British coal. The 1955 Modernisation Plan messed up Riddles careful plans with the decision to electrify vast swathes of lines and dieselize the rest. The big problem for the BTC was that the government took off the spending brakes around the time the plan was published and BR ended up with lots of new steam locomotives and a lot of rubbish diesel types, like the Classes 17 and 28 or ones that had no purpose like the Class 14 (its role was being lost before authorisation to build was given.
I'd love to see a loco profile on the BRCW Lion. It looks very unusual for a British loco, with much more of a continental style. And the white livery is also quite unique, similar to the DP1's blue. There's almost nothing about the loco's history on RU-vid, so it seems like it'd be a good one to cover in this series.
Thanks for some more background on these models. I understand a lot more of the standard classes were planned to be built than the 999 that were. However the 1955 modernisation plan cut back the numbers for many classes to those already committed. Looking forward to the new tooling Hornby versions. The Tri-Ang Hornby Evening Star model was released in 1971, not the sixties, and was also the last new loco tooling under the Tri-Ang Hornby company name and impressed everyone being quite a step up in models then. So another "last" connection of the Evening Star. This contributed to Hornby choosing it to represent the seventies in the Centennial range releases. Around the same time the N scale Hornby Minitrix version was popular also.
Hi John, thats correct. A number of the later orders for some of the Standard locomotives were cut back, including additional 'Clan' class 6MTs. Its interesting to imagine how many would have been seen if all intended locos were constructed.
The driver was on the other side to the steam exhaust on the Crosti boilered 9F's - they originally came out without the smoke deflector and this caused the steam to obscure the driver's view.
I love 9F for many years. I observe copper colored pipes under the right side of the driver cabin. Could you tell me what is the function of these pipes?
Evening Star should be restored to Running order, and used on preserved railways. As it was build for a sum of £33,497. Its a bit of a waste of it sitting idal gavering Dust.
