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So now we come to the high spot of our celebratory trip - travelling, steam hauled, the 205 miles from York to Edinburgh (and back, of course!).
This is something we had thought about a few times - and I decided this was the time to do it - and do it in style. So the plan was to travel on the Lothian Tornado - Tornado being a steam express engine built this century and something S2C had wanted to see ever since there were whispers that she was being built. We were saddened, then, to get word a month or two ago to say that she would not have finished her refit, and the train would be hauled by the Duke of Gloucester instead.
S2C was really upset, he remembered the DoG from his childhood and it had been slow and sluggish. And then he read up on her... And discovered that when she was first built they hadn't followed the design but, as they knew steam locomotives were being superceded by diesel, had just bunged all sorts of odds and ends in that they already had, rather than making the pieces as per the design, so that big parts of her were all wrong. This only became public knowledge in the late 1970s, when enthusiasts bought her remains from a scrap yard and set out to restore her - following the original plans. And what a very different engine she is now that she is as her designer intended!
The whole trip was excellent - I will put a cut ( for long, very picture heavy, post )
This is something we had thought about a few times - and I decided this was the time to do it - and do it in style. So the plan was to travel on the Lothian Tornado - Tornado being a steam express engine built this century and something S2C had wanted to see ever since there were whispers that she was being built. We were saddened, then, to get word a month or two ago to say that she would not have finished her refit, and the train would be hauled by the Duke of Gloucester instead.
S2C was really upset, he remembered the DoG from his childhood and it had been slow and sluggish. And then he read up on her... And discovered that when she was first built they hadn't followed the design but, as they knew steam locomotives were being superceded by diesel, had just bunged all sorts of odds and ends in that they already had, rather than making the pieces as per the design, so that big parts of her were all wrong. This only became public knowledge in the late 1970s, when enthusiasts bought her remains from a scrap yard and set out to restore her - following the original plans. And what a very different engine she is now that she is as her designer intended!
The whole trip was excellent - I will put a cut ( for long, very picture heavy, post )
