GOODBYE TORNADO, HELLO LIGHTNING?

Should Tornado be renamed Lightning? And does the A1 Trust’s ‘Pacific’ have a better claim to 100mph than Flying Scotsman?

Those two questions came up on January 9, as a result of the dinner held at London’s RAF Club marking 25 years of association between the engine and the air force.

The first was posed following dinner by no lesser personage than an ‘A1’ trustee – Steve Davies – pondering the reality that the final RAF Tornados flew last year. (Lightning, in this case, refers not to the magnificent 1960s English Electric interceptor or ‘Brit’ No. 70019, but today’s recently introduced F-35B Lightning II). He was not, I should emphasise, suggesting this was official trust policy…

But what about 100mph? That debate bubbled up on the train north afterwards, between three of us who had covered Tornado’s historic April 2017 run (SR466): BBC correspondent Tom Ingall, SR editor Nick Brodrick, and, er, moi.

But think about it: Tornado’s 100mph was the most monitored ‘ton’ by a steam locomotive – maybe ever. Not only through the sophisticated kit dangled all over the train, but various onboard timers with electronic gizmos too.

Whereas Flying Scotsman?

Maybe not so much.

It’s well known that O.S. Nock cast doubt on the first ‘authenticated’ 100mph, despite the dynamometer car reading as No. 4472 raced down Stoke Bank in November 1934. Indeed, Nock said in his book Gresley Pacifics that while the speed trace showed “exactly 100mph” it “leaves doubts in one’s mind, particularly as so experienced a train timer as Cecil J. Allen did not claim, from his own figures, a higher speed than 98mph.”

The celebrated performance expert also reckoned the shape of thespeed curve – which shows the engine touching 100mph – was “difficult to explain”.

Allen himself, meanwhile, in Locomotive Practice and Performance in the Twentieth Century, described the run taking place at speeds “which included, for the first time in LNER. history, a maximum of exactly 100mph, attained in the descent of Stoke bank.”

But there’s no table to back it up – and that, you might think, sounds like a man repeating the official line rather than being himself completely convinced. Particularly given Nock’s report of Allen’s timings… perhaps as the LNER’s timer Allen didn’t feel able to voice those doubts himself?

So, was the first authenticated 100mph wrong? If so, Tornado surely does have a better claim…