Epic Steam train fail at Exeter: 80080 (& 80079) cannot make the grade - 1st May 1994.  

Sky go

Had to stop" Fail. Lost momentum, fail. 100% stall at the lights, worthy of the lols he got.

Tooright Graeme, they succeeded in the task presented to them

Throttle man asleep at the wheel. Way too much over rev.

That's just bad driving - lack of experience.

Absolutely, but epic fail videos likely get more views than magnificent triumph. Fantastic video though.

nah mate, they failed

Nah mate, he left it laying sparks for too long and failed to bring it up to speed under the bridge while the engine was attempting 60. On top of that, smoke was allowed to billow in excess of safe limits while under the bridge, creating a hazard of carbon monoxide. An experienced engineer would bring it a little bit over the speed limit before reaching the bridge to combat the upcoming grade and make it through in 30-60 flat

I'm not sure that they were whistling for assistance - just as an indication they were coming. An assistance call is a "crow". Both engines can be heard working hard up the bank at the start (exhaust sounds out of sync, the unique sound of two engines) and it's a frustrating case of so near and yet so far. They are right at the top of the bank and if the lead engine hadn't slipped they would have made it fine. Looking hard at the track there seems to be an undulation and the middle driving wheels may have lost contact with the track. With adhesion close to the limit that may have started the slip. They did well to get restarted. I still wonder why the driver (who would be out of sight on the left hand side) couldn't stop the slipping quicker - regulator difficult to control at full steam pressure? I have a feeling there was an actual case of a train getting stuck on the bank around that time which made the authorities very wary of scheduling repeats.

@@iankemp1131 reference Epic Steam train fail at Exeter., thank you for your very illuminating comment., Acknowledging wheel slippage is an ancient problem as far as steam trains are concerned; I didn't know there was a protocol for overcoming the difficulty if two locomotives were employed on a single train. Thank you. John, Perth, Western Australia,.

@@iankemp1131 If he's on the second regulator they can be hard to shut off ,often have to giver her bit more before you can shut off , heard this from my dad and grandad , both mainline steam drivers , it did run away a few times though

@@nounoufriend1442 Very interesting point. I believe this was true of Stanier regulators on the LMS in particular, it was implicated in the Chapel-en-le-Frith runaway in 1957 when a driver couldn't shut the regulator after a steam pipe blew. The BR 80xxx class were very similar to LMS 2-6-4s but I don't know if the regulator was of a different design.

@@iankemp1131 Remember my dad saying some drivers were frightened to use second regulator .My dad was was Immingham Louth Grimsby driver on BR so be 8F 9F Britannia's , grandad was GC Grimsby. Runaway on steam loco must be scary , even if you drop the fire there is still lot of steam . Think best thing would be to set reverser back to centre , apparently some drivers opened reg with reverser centred then wound it into forward gear to pull away. If fireman had injectors open to long , could wet seam cause regulator problems ? . But surly fireman wouldn't be filling boiler just before such an incline , should have sorted boiler and fire way before incline

Fat controller would have hauled the engineers over the coals for all that excessive wheel spin. A bit slow on the throttle I feel. The sparks were terrifying.

It doesn't :-) that's the problem.

@@mpellatt Well it does when you consider the amount its pulling and the incline

New tyres, please.

Of course the loco on the back was providing assistance. It wouldn't have made it through the tunnel with just one loco powering 🤦‍♂️

@@04clemea fat lot of help it was later on though wasn't it. Didn't they notice that they'd stopped?

​@@AndreiTupolev what are you on about? The rear loco will push as much as it can. But once the front one lost grip, the whole train lost momentum. The train would not have restarted, if the rear loco wasn't helping.

@@04clemea 🤨 OK then.

@@AndreiTupolev Referred to as 'banked', ie one loco at the front and one at the rear. A double header (ie two locos at the front) would have had even more trouble- i don't think they would have got going again pounding away on the same bit of greasy track. I think the lead loco had rather a vicious regulator- no engine driver would deliberately wheelslip to the extent where showers of sparks were pouring out. Or maybe Boris Johnson was on the regulator....he can bugger most things up..

I agree. Poor things had to be thrashed within an inch of their lives to make it.

That's funny. Do you know which part of the line? I know it fairly well round there.

Little monkeys😂😂

was it around 2004? About the time youtube first started? I seem to remember loads of controversy on some railway forum with a link to youtube (i'd never heard of it up to then)

@@TIMMEH19991 Yes, I remember seeing about this in railway magazines and lots of letters arguing whether to blame the driver, the load etc, rather like the range of comments here! Have now found a video reference through Google that states it was 23rd March, 2006.

Looks as if the RU-vid link is ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pOqqf-cbqQk.html, as you say - the very early days of RU-vid! Again, loads of arguments in the comments. The final slip seems to have occurred in almost exactly the same location as in 1994, implying that localised track conditions may have had a hand in both.

I was on the train no info. All our stuff was on the coaches as they told us that we would be back on soon as a diesel was on the way to bank us. Bloody cold we went home on a 125

It all seemed to be going well to me until close to the top of the bank when the slip started - so near and yet so far. What puzzled me is why it took the driver so long to close the regulator each time - then again, that can be difficult against a big steam flow in a slip, as was sadly proved by Blue Peter not long afterwards during 1994.

Throttle action on a steam locomotive is similar to a diesel locomotive only more extreme. There is a time delay from when the driver opens or closes the throttle and when the action actually happens. It is possible that the driver had closed the throttle and the response time was long. I haven’t driven steam, however, steam locomotives where very much in use when I started my driving career in 1973. So I was able to observe from the footplate what happened or sometimes didn’t happen.

Maybe it needed Lionel Magnatraction? LOL ! Actually my impression is that it had way too many cars and what they had, was too full of passengers for that grade. Fewer cars would have made to run a lot less scary for all.

@@SoCal_Jerry 1994 was relatively early days for main line steam and they sometimes loaded trains closer to the limit; there were a couple of other stalls on other trains on gradients including another one at Exeter. The snag is that every carriage less costs thousands of pounds of lost revenue, and these trains are expensive to run. They have to be commercially viable - they aren't subsidised.

Any relation to Brian (ex-TWW and Orpington)?

@@nicktuk159 Not as far as I know!

...😅 burnt some ' rubber' didn't it

I'm sure there's some dents in the rails as well...

Diesels have never had a problem up this gradient. I agree that the wheels on the loco were slipping at the top where the gradient was returning to level, and does suggest low friction. Once the driving wheels got to that point it should have been easier.

Rubbish

@@deang5622 Diesels have much lighter trains and a higher power-to-weight ratio. It's interesting to see how successive generations of trains (steam, first generation dmus, modern dmus) master steep gradients progressively more easily. Looking closely it seems there was a dip in the track on the curve entering the station and that caused the slip. So near and yet so far, they were going fine up to that point.

Absolutely, that was a lot of coaches for those locos to haul up a hill.

Maybe some are? The fact is that the driver risked serious damage to the loco, and didn’t seem in control of his stead.

I'm not a loco driver, but had a career in the railways. Enough of your sarcasm. You don't need to have footplate experience to see that this was a disgusting display of incompetence from the driver of the leading loco. Firstly why were there so many bodies in there, as can be seen. A major distraction to the crew, no doubt. The driver clearly didn't have his eye on the ball, and wasn't concentrating on the difficult job in hand. He completely failed to arrest and control the initial wheelslip, thus losing momentum of the train. Had he eased off on the regulator at the first indication of slip, and reapplied in good time, he would have maintained the movement of the train, and would have recovered from the momentary loss of traction. However, you can see that from then onwards, the way he deals with subsequent slips, he was just playing himself, with no respect for the mechanical integrity of the loco. An absolute disgrace. Other posters on this thread have expressed concern about the difficulty of preserving steam driving skills on today's railway. This video is eloquent testimony to that very lack of skills. One final comment on the clickbait title - "Epic Fail?" The locos managed to get the train restarted and over the summit. Despite being badly handled, that's not a fail in my book.

@@boblennox9251Fully agree. Last thing you need is a cab full of experts. X is the unknown factor and spurt is a drip under pressure.

and corrugate the rails.

He probably didn't have to contend with the grease that someone had spread on the rail at the top of the bank!

Some times the regulator can get stuck open with the pressure of the steam pushing against it

@@olivercass8253 True

@@olivercass8253 That's how Lady of Lynn was reckoned to do the ton, light engine, because the pole reverser could not be pulled back.

@@ieuandavies4134 Or diesel oil spillage over the years, not a problem in steam days (although Bulleid Pacific oil baths might not have helped). It's also been suggested that track irregularities and the final curve might nit have helped.

Great memories - and 'hello' again!

It was the 90s. The local pway had probably been made redundant by railtrack

Was that grade 1 in 37?

I don't know the exact grade but probably not as steep as 1 in 37.@@A-Trainspotter-From-Berkshire

@@rodsmith2031 It looks like for Chalkwell to Southend Central max grade is 1 in 80.

So a single Class 4 2-6-4T with 8 or 11 coaches (it varied)? Not bad, day in, day out. @@A-Trainspotter-From-Berkshire

looks for me that the track was damp, just enough to one of them loss traction a little and in combination that there is a bit delay between throttle adjustment until something happens are big enough for them to lose it fully. The difference between a good and really good driver can be noticed, a really good driver, can almost predict what is coming next.

The whistle is to signal the banker for assistance

@@welsh_Witch don't they use radios to communicate?

Obviously in 1994 you did not have to be the sharpest tool in the shed to be qualified to drive a steam locomotive. Seriously, it was a very amateur effort, taking way too long to arrest the wheel slips, in fact lt appeared the driver was hoping the train would move sufficiently if he left the loco laying sparks on the tracks. That in itself can be dangerous and cause the locomotive to totally break down mechanically.

I was thinking of the line in the 'Oh, Mr Porter' film about letting all the steam out!🙂

And then that following October, 60532 "Blue Peter" would fail by doing approx 140mph and not moving..

Most likely would have been to get up from St David's to Exeter Central

​@@TheIndianChins It certainly was. The gradient of the slope from St David's up to Central I believe is the steepest in the country, for a train from a standing start.

With the stone trains (from Meldon?) and a 9F, there was always a banker, such as a class Z.

Yes it is the same incline. On an Hst trip via this steep slope, my cup of tea was at such an angle it spilled into the saucer.

​@@deang5622 Mortehoe bank up from Ilfracombe was as steep, but no trains there for over fifty years now. Lickey Incline is equally steep but not taken from a standing start at the bottom...

If I was the owner and saw this, I would NOT be happy!

i can't believe at one point, it's sitting there wheels spinning and sparking a f........... can't be good for the wheels or the rails

@@raymondo162 Trying to power up to get up gradient, but opened regulator too much , actually caused a reduction in friction effect by wheels spinning causing it to slow

Literally everything you said is wrong. The Paignton - Kingswear line is nowhere near as steep as the gradient in this video and doesn't use the same type of engine. But don't let the facts get in the way of your judgement👌

Silly comment!

RU-vid. Where all the experts live.

As others have said, that's just a stupid comment to make. How do you know there aren't some knowledgable people commenting on here? Despite this it's not exactly difficult to see the poor way the driver handled the loco.

@@jonson481 Today is Thursday.

@@Otacatapetl It will soon be Friday though

The rear loco was fighting just as hard as the front. If you look to the left and above the grey building in the background between 3.33 and 5.26, you can see the clouds of steam.

Probably for electric power for the coach lighting and heating.

Mostly the diesel is to provide air to power the air brakes on the coaches.

They can be quite prone to slipping, particularly if the tanks and bunker are getting towards empty and so are the sand boxes.

Are you an engine driver?

thank god the expert is here

The driver is a complete moron

Thank you very much!

They should have put a hydraulic on the front then this wouldn’t have happened.