If you had a 29 from Glasgow to Fort William and back, or Fort William to Mallaig and back - or even both - I shall be very, very envious! Despite several of them passing my house every day except Sundays, I only ever managed to get one of them for haulage, as they were withdrawn just before I was old enough to start travelling without a parent or guardian.
Ah fair enough, each to their own and it does sound enjoyable all the same. I was wondering whether you'd had a Deltic up the ECML, but I guess a 47 is more likely.
www.flickr.com
that class 25s even worked out that way. There’s a couple of photo of a 25 at Mallaig on the site below showing it with a pretty hefty train considering how steep the route is! About 10 photos down the page:
Back in the day, the Scottish Region regarded class 25s and 27s as a common-user pool, provide that - if double-heading - both locos had the requisite braking and train heating systems. The same applied to the slightly lower-powered 24s and 26s....although they were originally used mainly on the routes radiating from Inverness and the Waverley Route to Carlisle, whereas the 25s and 27s were mainly used on the routes from Glasgow to the West Highlands, with the 27s being more common due to their greater numbers from about 1970 onwards. The maximum permitted load for a single 25 or 27 North of Craigendoran was 8 vehicles....although I travelled on a 9 coach day excursion from Dumbarton Central to Fort William with a single 27 in May 1973, with the predictable result on a damp morning that we took nearly an hour to climb the two mile 1 in 58 gradient from Craigendoran Junction to Helensburgh Upper, including two reversals and fresh attempts! Luckily the Fort depot was able to provide a second loco for the return journey. In the photo, the 25 awaiting departure from Mallaig appears to have eight carriages in tow - which seems to be a heavy load - but bear in mind the fact that, regardless of the gradients, the maximimum permitted speed as far as Glenfinnan was only 30 mph....and then 40 on the downhill or level stretch from there to the Fort.
Yes, to Glasgow QS not King's X.
Yes, the 26s were basically more reliable.
I never saw anything other than a 27 on the West Highland in the 1970s. The 25 in the picture at Mallaig also appears to be in ex-works condition. Eastfield was not known for immaculate presentation, so I wonder if it was some special event. It was apparently common that for a St Rollox works trial, a loco would be attached to the morning train from Queen Street, double-heading it as far as Crianlarich where it was detached.
Cl 25s were not uncommon on the West Highland but as I recall fairly rare in Mallaig.
The 06.00 from Queen St also conveyed a CCT and was accordingly timed for 315 instead of 280t to take account of both the heavier weight of the sleepers and the weight of the CCT.
Out of that bunch of Lawnmowers I had 25, 42 and 49 for haulage on a Freedom of Scotland in 1986. All of them in the Central Belt, rather than in or out of Inverness. Indeed, the only 27 I had in that part of Scotland was 27007 paired with 26030 on an Aberdeen - Inverness turn back in 1983. Happy days.
Assuming I am looking at the same photos I only see six (six was the normal summer loading and the photographer's notes indicate he is on a service train) the RMB is second from rear in both photos and bear in mind having arrived on the blocks the train had to push back to run round then push back to the blocks before departure. By then the runround at Mallaig had been reduced to six coaches so anything longer would require more complicated shunts to run round.
I often wondered how the Euston fared on 12th August 1978 having gone forward from Corrour with a single 27 and load eleven after both 27s had failed on the climb up to Corrour - it became apparent one loco was effectively only able to move itself meaning the other was overworked and eventually went on fire.
I can't recall which locos, but a few times in 1985 and possibly in '86 (maybe in earlier years as well but it would have been ever more unusual by then), a pair of 27s did an Inverness-Edinburgh turn vice 47/4.
The boiler water tank on a class 27 was only 450 gallons. I think that's nowhere near enough for all day running. That would require heating the whole train with only 30 gallons of water per hour!
On the West Highland line the 27’s replenished water tanks at Crianlarich
Well, it was done differently then, each major coach yard had its own shunter (in Scotland often the less-common Class 06) to rearrange things. Even the first supposedly fixed formation sets in Scotland, the Edinburgh-Glasgow push-pulls, would get shunted around overnight, and occasionally turned up with only five coaches.
Was using a hose pipe at the platform
I have heard that while Mk 1s can be dual braked, Mk 2s can only be vacuum or air. Not sure if this is correct.
It was more sophisticated than a hosepipe. I don't know the correct name for it but at each platform end there as a structure with a thick pipe and a proper connection to fit the boiler water tank filler.
Dont know the correct name for it but it was a rubber pipe which they connected to the water tank
There were 3 parts.
