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Seeing the loco running light at New Street brings back memories of trainspotting days there in the early/mid 1970s, hoping the lunchtime arrival from Paddington was Western-hauled and (if pocket money allowed), buying a ticket to Solihull to enjoy the noise of a pair of Maybach V12s (and the...

This has a section about distributor valves - https://www.advanced-steam.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Dominic-Wells-Brakes-presentation-Part-2-Air-Brakes.pdf

Nice photo 8-) There is an existing thread about these locos - https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/db-hte-class-66s.262127/

It's part of the life cycle of large mature industries, really, not least because the performance of the economy (of the country) also tends to be cyclical. When the economy does badly railway customers spend less if they can, so budgets for new rolling stock, maintenance and investment get...

I agree. I suspect if you are trying to raise private investment on the scale needed to build the GC London Extension, I think 'talking it up' by promoting it as part of a future link to the Continent (rather than just a link between cities with already very well established railway services)...

I've been a fairly regular visitor to the EOR events/galas for some years. I think it's a great railway, with a different atmosphere due to it having been originally built as a GER country branch line then it becoming an LU branch line, so you have structures and lineside artefacts from both...

Yes, it was - I grew up about 2 miles from it, and watching the banking of oil trains between Cradley Heath and Rowley Regis up the 1 in 50 'Old Hill bank' was partly what first got me interested in railways 52 years ago... (A Peak or 47 stabled at Stourbridge was the usual banker back then...

Peterborough, Ely, Ipswich and anywhere along the Felixstowe branch (my favourites are Westerfield and Trimley).

That looks stunning - well done to all concerned with the restoration!

Video from a visit to the UK Bluebell Railway 'Giants of Steam' event nine years ago in October 2015. It was a very popular event, with an intensive steam service involving five (immaculate) mainline locomotives on the day I visited, two of them visitors to the railway (4464 and 925), all...

Yes, I agree. I think banking trains (especially long and heavy freights) is one of those things that looks relatively easy but actually needs a lot of skill and experience to do safely and efficiently, especially on a climb with varying gradients and curvature (and bad weather/wet leaves etc.)...

In terms of right versus left, equally interesting is lines where in steam days the locos were driven from the opposite side of the cab to the 'running side' e.g. a significant number of the pre-grouping railways in the UK were left-hand running but used right-hand drive steam locos. The GWR...

In the USA, various companies including McKeen, GE, Brill and EMC (which became EMD after GM bought it in 1930) produced petrol and/or diesel powered railcars from early in the 20th century (McKeen from 1907, GE 1910, EMC 1923 and Brill 1924). Brill alone built almost 300, with some exported to...

It's also possible the loco had run out of sand (or the depot had!). I grew up not too far away from Bromsgrove, and occasionally visited the station in the 1970s (post-Hymek). There was often a banking loco/locos parked there, so I suspect (even if they were not crewed all the time) that they...

Yes, whistle/horn codes would be the normal method. The distance between the front and back of a long freight train (and that the two crews might be out-of-sight of each other) probably made it the only practical form of instant communication before radio comms became commonplace. Don't forget...

Also in North America: I'll quote a short passage from the April 2004 'Mountain Railroads' issue of Trains magazine, from the 'Old Men of the Mountain' article by Blair E. Kooistra. It's about taking a westbound 14,000+ ton coal train up the twisty 2.2% gradient to the summit of Rogers Pass in...

Also of course Thameslink running Cambridge - Brighton every 30 minutes (hourly late evening), with easy interchange at Farringdon to Heathrow, from around 0500 to 2200, plus the GA Norwich - Stansted services has rather changed the competitive landscape in terms of airport services from...

AFAIK - not very common in the UK nowadays, even the Lickey banking is now done on an 'as required' basis rather than a banker being stationed there full time. I think the heavy biomass trains to Drax are banked out of the port (Seaforth?) due to the combination of gradient and curvature (which...

In the US, but I think this might be almost the ultimate in banking and steam-age 'distributed power': The photo is from the early 1920s, linked from an article in the US Saturday Evening Post about Rollins Pass in Colorado (photo courtesy of B. Travis Wright). A 'temporary' standard gauge...

It's called 'Frost' on the railroad, and is about 15 miles northeast of Cajon summit (near Victorville). Frame grab from some 16 year old video of mine below. The upper train is heading west towards Cajon and LA, the lower one east towards Barstow (with three different loco liveries, including...