‘SUTHERLAND’ NEARLY THERE

As I write, the main line’s biggest beast of all is “not there yet” – but it’s not far off. I mean of course Duchess of Sutherland, which some nine months and around £150,000 after being pulled from the main line in green, is about to return in Crimson Lake. “We’re not talking months, we think we are talking weeks,” said Graham Oulsnam about the Stanier ‘Pacific’ when I asked him at the end of July. The Princess Royal Class Locomotive Trust chairman concedes though that the ‘8P’ is “touch and go for Severn Valley’s gala” on September 20-23. When Graham and I spoke, outstanding jobs could be categorised pretty much as those fiddly little (but maybe deceptively time-consuming) bits at the end of any overhaul; things like electrics, calibration of gauges, and painting (the engine itself at that point so far only being in undercoat). The 1938-built ‘Pacific’ was, however, still to be lifted from its wheels for axleboxes to be checked over, and for a new eccentric strap to be fitted.

One element of sadness in ‘Sutherland’s’ absence so far this season for its early ‘ten-yearly’ – it was pulled from traffic after discovery of a cracked flue tube in November (SR474) – was that its 80th anniversary in July was a pretty quiet affair. Rather than having No. 6233 out on the main line, an event was held for supporters at the PRCLT’s Butterley West Shed HQ. Even so, the LMS machine has been overhauled in pretty whirlwind fashion; and hopefully once it steams it’ll be another decade before the time comes again…