[PRCo] The Tornado is back.....

[Fred Schneider]

A cloud of dust and a hearty Hi Yo Silver and the [Tornado] Rides Again!

Sorry, Herb, but it hurt to watch that Nickel Plate Berkshire plodding along at 30 miles per hour.   Then Dwight Long inadvertently alerted me to the fact that 60163 had returned from having its firebox / boiler rebuilt.   

So here, on August 6 we are standing on the platforms at Cheddington at dusk.   A light appears in the distance.   We hear the relentless exhaust.   I ask you, when's the last time you saw a passenger train doing a mile a minute behind steam?   By God it's worth taking a trip to England to ride behind that critter.   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofhhkPZVnKU&feature=related

And if you are impressed, then how about a few in daylight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=sURKU8UYIT8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z-8BPblI_A&feature=related

The British also know how to run some of the older critters at speed on mainline metals....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=75zCi-0OM9U

http://www.youtube.com/user/BritishTrainVideos?blend=23&ob=5#p/u/3/qRDiM5im66I
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The next one was titled Sarah Siddons visits Rickmansworth 11.09.11 (11 September 2011).   Until 1961, the London Underground's Metropolitan line used compartmented coaching stock from Baker Street to Rickmansworth pulled by these charming direct current electric locomotives.   In keeping with the British tradition of naming locomotives, this one commemorated a stage actress.   

Beyond Rickmansworth the line was not electrified until 1961.   It had two charming rural branches to Chesham and Amersham with trains pulled by steam tank engines dating back to 1896.  

My first visit was in 1959 when I bought a tour of London in order to escape from the Military Sea Transport Service vessel docked at Southampton and then vanished into the woodwork when the boat train arrived at Waterloo Station in London.  I spent the day riding those quaint coaches on the Metropolitan behind steam.   No, I didn't miss the normal tourist attractions ... been in London a total of 18 times ... I've seen them all.   

Then in 1960 I was on the platform at Baker Street when the guard on a train to Rickmansworth engaged me in a conversation.   It came time to go and he said, "You want to ride with us?" and pushed me up in the cab of one of those locomotives like Sarah Siddons.   I made the trip standing behind the driver.   And then spent the evening trying to make like I enjoyed warm beer with my 
host.   That guard wrote me a few months later that they were beginning the conversion process to run normal underground stock all the way out.    But isn't nice that London Transport has a soul?       

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3sAOzxDSKc

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As an aside to your comments about how nice it is when you have to make up time with that Berkshire, Herb, I can reminisce about a day in the middle 1960s when our boss at Strasburg came out and announced that the Venezuelan ambassador to Washington was on the train and he would like a little more than the normal speed.  Well, you didn't have to tell Johnny Bowman twice.  He got the message.   The fact that the ICC had cleared it for 25 mph meant nothing to him.  The boss had told him to ignore it.  

We were running that former Pennsy D16sb 1223.   He pulled out of the picnic grove and started up the hill.   I think he had that throttle back about as far as it would go and he just the reverse bar.   It would only unlimber so much on a 1.6% grade ... that's the same as the the ascent out of Altoona.   I think we had 12 coaches behind us.   But once he got to the top the hill and started working that reverse bar up ...  My God, Herb, that was the first time I ever had to fire after I got to the top of the hill.   I still bailing lumps through the fire door and I was have increasing difficult finding the firedoor because I was sliding around the deck like it was greased.
I think he had that sucker up to between 45 and 50 when he shut off and made a brake reduction going through Fairview Crossing.

There is probably no one left who remembers but me.  The boss is dead.   Johnny's dead.  If any of the train crew are still alive, they would be in their high 70s or 80s.    But it was a nice memory. 

And I guess the verbiage that Don Hallock wrote into the speech for the conductors still applied.  "You want to know how fast we are going?   Something less than 60 miles an hour."   But it would not gotten the same laugh then.