STEAM TRAIN RECORD
Trying not to go off the rails at 100mph
Depending on who you talk to, the last time a steam locomotive travelled at 100mph on a UK mainline was mid-1968. ‘There might have been a few after that,’ says Brian Sharpe, deputy editor of Heritage Railway magazine, ‘when drivers didn’t care, they knew they’d lost their jobs and the engines were headed for the scrapyard, so they just opened them up on the long runs without heed of potential damage.’
There are also dark mutterings about the bonanza early days of steam preservation, when speed checks weren’t quite as thorough.
‘They had no data-loggers,’ says fireman Tony Jones, ‘and a fairly “full” view of what constituted the 60mph speed limit. These days everything is by the book.’ That’s particularly so after a near-miss between a steam locomotive and a scheduled mainline express train in Wiltshire in 2015. Preservation steam locos are closely monitored on the mainline and the 75mph speed limit is tightly enforced.
Which is why the night of 12 April 2017 at the Doncaster maintenance depot feels like
Back to the Future, as No 60163 Tornado ,a £3-million, built-from-scratch evolution of an Arthur Peppercorn-designed A1 4-6-2 locomotive, pulls stealthily out with the aim of being the first steam engine to do 100mph on a mainline track for more than 50 years.
Actually, not that stealthily. She’s pulling eight carriages full of engineers, family and friends, and observers from Network Rail and DB Cargo, which provided the experienced crew – driver Stevie Hanczar and firemen Jones and Dave Proctor – plus a 90-ton diesel engine hitched on the back (just in case). And, after all,
Tornado is a 166-ton, 2663 horsepower, 72ft 11¾in-long steam engine; a Miltonian view of Hell on 12 wheels, whistling, panting, clanking, steaming, shrieking and smoking. It simply doesn’t do stealthy.
The wee-small-hours scheduling of this secret test run is an attempt to avoid the public track invasions that attended runs of Flying
Scotsman last year. Black coal, black smoke, and a cloudy black sky: this is black ops indeed. Even so, word has got out and a small posse of steam enthusiasts is gathering at Doncaster, more at York, and you can see the flash of cameras on roads alongside the high-speed track and on bridges. The other reason is that high-speed rail lines are quieter at night, though they’re not deserted, and a 40-minute wait at York is to allow Tornado to get into her stride between two scheduled express trains.
The idea of this run is to provide test data to back up a call for Network Rail to lift the 75mph limit and allow qualifying steam locos to travel up to 90mph where the track allows. Since a 10% over-speed is also required, it’s enough for the team of volunteers and professionals who run the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust to reasonably claim that, if all goes to plan, this will be a genuine 100mph steam loco.
Clearly the kudos of attaining the magic ton is part of the night’s prize for Tornado but, as David Elliott, the A1 Trust’s director of engineering, explains: ‘There’s also the chance to convince Network Rail to allow certain engines to travel at up to 90mph in normal use, which will help us to continue to run with highspeed machines on the mainlines, where the extra demands on the network mean the paths we can use are becoming fewer.’
Tornado’s extraordinary status as a new/old loco helps in this respect. It was built by the A1 Trust and finished in 2008 with donations from individuals and companies, plus a lot of volunteer help. Being new, Tornado couldn’t rely on grandfather rights to comply with engineering and safety standards set by, among others, the Railway Safety and Standards Board (RSSB). It had to prove fitness for purpose, compliance and a scientific basis for its construction, including, as Elliott says: ‘aerospace levels of component traceability. If you look back at the steam performance records, it’s surprising just how few design calculations there are.’
Elliott’s work provides the reassurance that underpins modern engineering standards and gives organisations such as National Rail more confidence – as W Edwards Deming, the originator of modern quality control, put it: ‘In God we trust, everyone else brings data.’
There’s a financial imperative, too. Charter income from paying passengers just about covers Tornado’s operating requirements, and attracting new customers to steam excursions is important. While 90mph running means
Tornado will still have to give way to 125mph mainline trains, it is hoped that paying customers will spend less time holed up next to Midlands lightbulb factories and more time supping Champagne amid the Highlands.
‘This is about as important as it gets,’ said Graeme Bunker, A1 Trust’s operations manager at the pre-run briefing. ‘Pulling the overnight Royal Train was pretty big, especially if we’d mucked it up, but this is still probably the biggest thing we’ve done.’
Ah, the romance of steam. Romance of smuts is more like it. At 22.30hrs, Tornado blows condensation out of her bores, which obscures most of Doncaster station. She chugs out, puffing ghostly clouds of steam, which lurk like cartoon spectres under the bridges. Up to York she’s running hard and fast. You can hear the valvegear chuffing and it feels smooth and powerful as the firebox sucks greedily on the cool night air. The rails sing…
Towards Darlington she’s cantering but not galloping. There’s a headwind, most places where the crew want to go fast have a speed order on them and there’s that diesel donkey clanging around on the back, blunting the effort. The engine’s being worked harder than they want, yet the magic ton looks possible.
We pull into a set of sidings just south of Newcastle upon Tyne and the firebox is raked and clinker removed. Driver Stevie Hanczar gets a well-deserved brew and 40 winks. Fireman Jones looks like a sooty, exhausted pirate. He’s shifted a lot of coal this evening and he’s on duty tomorrow, driving freight trains; these guys have two jobs.
Elliott takes time to explain how Tornado is a missing link in railway history. All 49 examples of Peppercorn’s A1 were scrapped, yet the youngest – No 60145 Saint Mungo, just 17 years old – was almost saved, but the copper in its boiler became too valuable as scrap in the midst of the supply concerns during the late-1960s nationalisation of Zambia’s copper mines by President Kenneth Kaunda.
Despite calls for Tornado to be radically different in line with some of the elements of the ‘Modern Steam’ movement, even to the extent of light-oil fired boilers, she turned out fairly faithful to Peppercorn’s design. In the interests of operating efficiency and safety she sports a welded German boiler and a bigger water tender. She also runs on roller bearings, is of lighter construction and has modern electrics and automatic train protection systems.
‘The current limit of 75mph is arbitrary,’ says Elliott, ‘and it’s pleasing that the RSSB has started to incorporate rules with a scientific basis.’ Part of that process has involved the A1 Trust spending £30,000 on a couple of big surveys, including one for the bridges on the proposed routes. This is because Tornado’s six 6ft 8in driving wheels, together with the
huge pistons and connecting rods, impart an additional loading on the track surfaces beyond the axle weight, which is known as the ‘hammer blow’.
By this time we’re really hammering down past Durham and onto Langley Moor. Hanczar and replacement fireman Proctor are going at it like gangbusters. The carriages are yawing and starting to bounce slightly, and my GPS is showing a solid 90mph, 93mph, even 96mph.
Tornado slows into Darlington and the piercing twin whistles sound off as the crew draught the big loco through the elegant porticos of the station; well you would, wouldn’t you? How eerie and beautiful stations are at 3am with their deserted platforms and blinking ticket machines. But almost immediately the welded steel rails sing again; out of Thirsk and on to Pilmoor. Onward, ever onward, and it feels fast. It is fast...
We steam into York station, a glowing nimbus round each globular platform lamp. Rumour is that we hit 100mph, so we all bundle off and mob the dusty crew, who are enjoying another brew. ‘We’re not absolutely sure about the top speed,’ says Bunker. ‘We had 100mph on the footplate, and 101.6mph on the gauge, with a [GPS] tracker showing over 100mph for 48 seconds, so we’re sure it’s over the ton. The only way to be sure of getting a steam train to do 100mph is with favourable gradients, and we didn’t have one today, so we had to work very, very hard to get the ton. When we get [Tornado] home and see if it’s in one piece, then we can be proud. Until then, our jobs aren’t done.’
‘I’m delighted,’ says Elliott. ‘We’ve achieved exactly what we set out to do: proof of concept.’
Driver Hanczar doesn’t waste words, but at the outset he’d admitted that he felt the weight of responsibility, so he was particularly happy. After minor setbacks with signals set against and track-speed restrictions, the Pilmoor stretch was the last possible place to go for the much-anticipated record. ‘It ran well, I’m very pleased,’ he says, ‘and yes, I would do it again.’
The absolute steam-loco speed record is held by the Sir Nigel Gresley-designed Mallard, which attained 126mph in July 1938 on the downhill section of Stoke Bank near Grantham, Lincolnshire. Few locos have achieved 100mph on the flat, but that’s exactly what Tornado has now done. ‘What it does,’ says Bunker, ‘is further our claim to be allowed to run at 90mph when we can and the track allows it.’
Better ask Proctor and Jones about that first, though. In the process of turning 45,461 litres of water into steam on the 225-mile round trip between Doncaster and Newcastle, Tornado burned through six tonnes of best steam coal, every lump shovelled into the 1370ºC white heat of the firebox at the end of an unwieldy long-bladed shovel.
The DB Cargo firemen are all qualified drivers as well, but Jones admits he prefers ‘firing’ – ‘a black art, and it doesn’t always go to plan. Most of the worst experiences are down to poor coal.’ Clinker (the fused, non-combustible elements of coal) is a big problem with poor coal and inhibits the passage of oxygen to the centre of the fire, hindering combustion. Imperfect combustion also produces carbon monoxide – inefficient and also dangerous.
Other dangers include the sheer heat from the firebox. ‘I tend to swap sides to ease the heat on my hands, and your legs get quite hot,’ says Jones. And then there’s blow-back, where the passage of super-heated air is reversed and the fire’s heat comes out through the fire door and into the cab. This is a particular problem in tunnels, where the train pushes a slug of highpressure air in front of it.
Proctor, who has fired Flying Scotsman, was firing Tornado on the 100mph stretch. ‘I’ve been firing for ten years, but I’ve never worked so hard on a steam engine. I had no idea where we were and we weren’t helped by the rake snapping, so I had to climb into the tender to get at the coal. The fuel was going up virtually as we shovelled it into the firebox; it would land on the fire and – poof! – it was gone.’
And the secret to getting the record? ‘I think the inspector [traction inspector Jim Smith is the fourth man on the footplate] had a word and Davie wound her back a bit,’ says Proctor. This refers to the reverser/cut-off, which not only determines the direction of the train, but also how long you let steam into the cylinders during the piston’s stroke; a sort of torque and efficiency control. At the record speed, Tornado would have been injecting steam for about 40% of the piston’s travel.
Both men said having a part in the 100mph record was incredibly moving, but doubt it’ll be done again soon. ‘I’ll probably never do 100mph in a steam loco,’ says Jones, ‘but being part of it was a great privilege.’
Steam trains won’t operate at 90mph every day and everywhere. The main advantage of a raised speed limit will be the ability to overspeed on down-slopes, so there’s less shovelling to do to get up the other side. But, for all the plaudits, the proof of design, and the romance of a steam loco charging through the night at the magic ton, you need to remember that a train travels only as fast as its firemen.