Hearing this locomotive and seeing the front end, I could make myself believe I was watching a Stanier Black 5 in action. The similarities are quite remarkable.
Is this a steam excursion on a major commercial railroad? In the US the only railroad that still does that is Union Pacific, and Norfolk Southern did again from Sept. 2011 to May 2017. Their old steam program ended Dec. 1994. UK has a lot of mainline steam excursions. There are some tourist railroads in the US which have all day steam excursions like the narrow gauge ones in Colorado and New Mexico, Grand Canyon Railway, Tennessee Valley when they run to Summerville, GA, Steamtown although mainline excursions are currently diesel, and Reading and Northern Railroad in eastern PA north of Reading through Jim Thorpe.
Hi Rob. In Australia the tracks are (generally) state or federal assets, with an “open access” regime whereby operators are accredited to run on them and pay an access fee - as is the case with this video, where the train (operated by Transport Heritage NSW) is running on track owned by the state of New South Wales… which was managed (at the time) by John Holland Rail as the so-called “country regional network”. NSW and Victoria have quite a lot of main line excursions. The other states have fewer. All states have a number of tourist lines - former branches leased by the heritage operators from the asset owner. Transport Heritage NSW is fairly unique in having a large static museum, a tourist line, and main line excursions.
