Always loved the big iconic locos, but these little ones have a particular place in my heart:
When I was at school, Chippenham still had a marshalling yard, with one or two little Pannier Tank locos. A class-mate, Steven Light, was lucky enough to have a dad who drove it, so we’d often be found up the station train-spotting, and if he was up there, we’d get up onto the footplate, and spend a happy hour or two trundling around the station! Brilliant fun, and back then there was a spur that went to the middle of the Western Arches, Brunel’s bridge over the main road, and occasionally we’d sit on the bridge watching people and traffic below.
Was most disappointed when the little tanky was replaced with a diesels shunter. Almost antiseptically clean by comparison.
High performance steam power in 1903 – 0 to 30mph in 30 seconds, Great Eastern Railway’s ‘Decapod’ built to prove steam could be as fast as electrics but sadly remained an experimental oddity
Turbinia’s in Newcastle, isn’t it? I love the story of the demonstration too, Charles Parsons was being ignored by the Admiralty so he turned up uninvited at Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee navy review, and charged about at high speed showing off, with a Navy boat trying and failing to catch him 😉
bencooper – Member
Turbinia’s in Newcastle, isn’t it? I love the story of the demonstration too, Charles Parsons was being ignored by the Admiralty so he turned up uninvited at Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee navy review, and charged about at high speed showing off, with a Navy boat trying and failing to catch him
I loved that tale too.
Imagine the greatest and most powerful fleet the world had ever known, and this mosquito buzzing through them and they couldn’t do a thing. 🙂
Southern Pacific AC-12 Cab Forward for me. Built in response to drivers suffocating in the huge snow sheds over California’s Donner Pass. Oil fired, so they could rotate the front part of the loco and put the crew in front of the funnel, and give them far better visibility. They’re massive too.
They scrapped 19 of the 20 of them, with one preserved in non-working order in Sacremento. Travesty.