Trains....

Post Reply New Topic

I was never obsessed with trains but I've always liked them. I vaguely remember having a toy trainset that went in a circle around our Xmas tree and that is a very fond memory. I've always kind of wanted one of those model sets, even a model town like you see guys have in their den in movies but that might be too stereotypical (and I might get bored of it after all that work).

I am DYING to ride on a real train though. Next time I have to fly somewhere I may consider taking a train instead. I've always preferred the old school trains aesthetically, the steam locomotives. But riding on a modern train would be just as fun, I'd love to sit in a dining car and look outside the window.

A good plan.

I found after many years of working trains in the past, that I prefer watching them pass, but you do need to travel on a train if you have not. One can see countryside that one can't see if driving!

Travelling by train, you see the back yards of people who can't afford to live farther from the noise.
When I moved from Winnipeg to Toronto, the luggage rules were still set for immigrants, so I had 24 of the allowed 26 pieces of baggage. I got caught up on my sewing, and then, when we wouldn't have to spend much more time together, someone brought out a guitar and about half the car joined in singing.
On my last train trip, on Amtrak, I had a mouse visiting my seat for the crumbs.

I loved trains when I was a kid too. I was the youngest of three girls, my two older sisters being far more into dolls and dresses and ballet, so it was not a default interest for people to assume I had. Even so, my dad was really observant. He gave me this MASSIVE electric train set one year for Christmas and I LOVED it. I think I was 7 or 8. It was N scale and had all kinds of different cars that had great little details in them. The engine even had "Union Pacific" printed on the side. I took all the ornaments that looked like houses off of the tree and lined them up along the track, stopping and starting to unload dry beans or rubber bands, or whatever else I managed to fit into the freight cars that had opening doors. XD

I also really liked model planes. F-16 and F-17 were my favorites. I only had a handful of those, but I loved them so much. I wanted to keep them in my pockets when I went to school, but I wasn't allowed.

That is cool. I understand!



That brings to mind when I was in school in the 1970s & would often take a model airplane pilot or two to school with me in my pocket. Sometimes astronaut figures.

Now, these days ...

Have some pilot and astronaut figures, plus some railway figures, in a couple old prescription bottles in the bag with my laptop and old-school paper sketchbook.
They usually go to the laundromat and doctor appointments with me.

I had a toy train set with a third rail, which made wiring easy, but I didn't like the look. I switched to HO scale, and got too ambitious about the layout. I wanted to use the cheapest option and lay my own rails, but I wound up never finishing it. Then I got into slot cars, although I didn't like the slots and conductive strips being so visible.
I am often amused to see that illustrations of steam engines in children's books are more likely to get the proportions of boiler and cylinders correct than a lot of serious steam-revival projects.

I like trains as an adult. I probably would have if I road one as a kid. Mom drove everywhere. When I started traveling for studio work, I fell in love with trains and trolleys because they were for the most part, on time. Its that routine that gets me. Its dependable

I like trains as an adult. I probably would have if I road one as a kid. Mom drove everywhere. When I started traveling for studio work, I fell in love with trains and trolleys because they were for the most part, on time. Its that routine that gets me. Its dependable

i would ride trains more often if the cheap seats weren't so brutally uncomfortable. i mean, no showers for the pofolk, no reclining seats, i couldn't sleep for the 3 days i rode an amtrak up the coast. and i stank after 3 days of no washing. never again. no excuse for the sleeper car with shower costing $800!!

How about taking a seat cushion improver, such as an Obus Forme? Walking around regularly can help too, which is one of the great things about trains. You could probably do stretches as well.
For the showers, you can do sponge baths, or try a stopover. Three days without sleep would be ruinous, and a stop could fix that too. Personally, I'd only stink after three days if I was constantly sweating, angry, wearing polyester, or eating meat.

Can't say I like being a passenger in the ordinary public transport trains they have in the UK these days. The whole experience is too monotonous and cramped, at least on the routes I've used - chiefly between Leicester and London St. Pancras. But I used to love them when I was a kid. I can still remember the smell of hydrogen sulphide from the smoke of the steam engines, corridor coaches, coaches with compartments that had doors. We'd travel from Sheffield to Launceston in Cornwall for holidays. That took most of the day.

I've always liked model railways. First set was clockwork, 1950s. Track width about an inch and a half, possibly O gauge. 2 engines, "Britannia," and the "Royal Scot" I think. That one was shaped a bit like a torpedo at the front, a bit like this:

I liked that one best because it looked so modern. I was into modern stuff then. After that I moved onto OO gauge electric.

Duplicate Post.

Last edited by Mountain Goat on 03 Dec 2022, 11:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Those locomotives had the world speed record for a while at 113mph and then 118mph. They had three firemen to shovel the coal and they could not feed the fire fast enough. They said that if they could, that more speed was available from the locos.
During WW2 they were stripped of their streamlining which weighted two and a quarter tons. The locos without streamlining were known as the "Duchess" class. (A few locos like the one in the picture were painted in a very similar way but in blue with white stripes but pa nted in the same way. The one in the picture was in standard LMS livery colours).
As most of the Duchess class was built without streamlining, there were two noticable differences between the versions which used to be streamlined and those which were not. The first was a small slopy shape at the very top of the smokebox which was shaped to blend in with the streamlined cladding. Some ex. streamlined locos lost this feature when later fitted with replacement boilers.
The second feature was that the ex. streamlined versions had cut outs at the front of the footplate. The ones which never had streamlining had smooth flowing curves in this area. The ex. streamlined versions footplates were straight and had a distinct straight gap between the top section of the footplate and the lower front extension of the footplate which held the front bufferbeam. (One will see this if one studies various locos of the Duchess class as it is noticable).
The streamlined "Coronation Scots" (The name they were given while streamlined) lost the world speed record to Germany where Hitler had a steam locomotive built specifically to break the world speed record, and they were successful for a short while with 125mph until The UK govefnment had a quiet word with the LNER (Coronation/Duchess locos were owned by the LMS which was a different company) as the LNER had just come out with a new express steam loco design, and they chose a six month old loco from the class called "The Mallard" (Class A4) and hit 126.6mph.
None of the British locomotives were specifically designed to gain records as they were designed for the London to Scotland run to pull lengthy express passenger trains. The LMS having the west coast route and the LNER had the east coast route.
Despite great effort by Hitler and his staff, they tried many times to regain the world steam speed record for a locomotive without success.
What was not known about the Mallard, was after that record attempt the loco had to be withdrawn after the trip and rebuilt as it had melted its big end where the cylinders are. Very few people knew about that as the British government did not want itto be known incase Germany found out!
Britain had quite a few previous world records when it came to steam locomotives such as the first train to officially be recorded passing over 100mph in 1904. The locomotive was "The City Of Truro owned by the Great Western Railway. It was said that an American 4-4-0 locomotive beat them in 1898 but no official evidence was found to support this claim.
The Great Western Railway actually did all they could to prevent the public from hearing about the record as it was widely assumed in those days that if one travelled over 100mph one would faint out and die, and the GWR did not want passengers to think its trains would touch such speeds!
The LNER with the Flying Scotsman made a big publicity stunt in the late 1920's to the 1930's to promote its train service, and said it was the first train that had gone past 100mph which was a complete lie as many locomotives were regularly touching such speeds by then.
Incidently, the first passenger service to run at speeds over 100mph as a regular booked speed in the timerable was a service known as "The Cheltenham Flyer" which yet again the Great Western Railway held when they introduced their famous Castle Class locomotives which was an improved and updated design of their Star Class locomotives. (They later built a larger boilefversion of their famous Castle Class locos and took the boiler size to the limits of the UK loading gauge and these were known as the "King class". Note that both the Castle class and the King class were the worlds most powerful passenger locomotives at the time they came out. The USA was so impressed with them that with the Great Western Railways permission, a member of the Castle Class and then later a member of the King Class were shipped over to the USA for them to try them out over there. These locos were fitted with a lovely bell on the front (Part of USA regulation when passing railroad crossings) which they kept on the locos even when they came back to the UK. I think the castle class was Caerphilly Castle though I am sketchy on this, but the King class was number 6000 "King George V".
The GWR had a trick up their sleeve which gained them a power advantage over other railways and that was that they found that by advancing the walschaerts valve gear a few degrees, (I think it was five degrees) they gained a distinct power advantage which is why most Great Western Railway locomotives has a very distinct powerful blast through their chimneys that other locos did not have.
Incidently, Castleclass locos hadbeen recorded at 109mph with the odd class member touching just over that according to the drivers who worked them, and the King class locos were known to touch between112 to 114mph on a good run. They only made 30 King class locos but carried on making Castle Class locos even after the GWR was absorbed by the new nationalized British Railways in 1948. The Castle class was said by those that worked them to be a nicer locomotive to work and needed less coal to pull the same trains compared to the King Class. The Castles could also be used over more lines as King Class locoscould only be used on a few of the principle express lines due to axle weights etc which brought them to be classified as a double red loco. (Castles were red which meant "Heavy"). The GWR built a fair few similar but lighter classes of loco for the lighter weight routes, one of the lightest made 4-6-0's being the "Manor" Class locos. They made over 240 castle class locos and were making them right into the 1950's.

The GWR only ever made one 4-6-2 loco which was the largest passenger loco they made and was called "The Great Bear". It had an unique 8 wheeled tender to carry its water and coal. It was unsuccessful as was deemed too large to be of practical use, having de-railed on a few occasions after negotiating pointwork and coming close to hitting platforms etc.
It was stored for a number of years and rebuilt into a smaller Castle class loco (GWR had long adopted a "Standard Parts" policy which meant loco rebuilds were relitively easy).
The 8 wheeled tender ran for a number of years behind a. ex. Cambrian 4-4-0 locomotive and looked a bit odd as it was almost the same size as the locomotive! (The GWR absorbed a few companies under "Grouping" which took place between 1922 and 1923 where many smaller companies were reformed into four big companies as a type of predecessor to one big national company which took place after the war in 1948. The four big companies being the GWR, SR, LMS and the LNER).

In the movie "Dr. Zhivago," I think they used an actual short-stroke express locomotive in one scene.
Gresley was the great engineer behind the Flying Scot, etc.

I believe that was Hitlers record breaking loco that you saw. In the film its loaer portion was painted red to make it look somewhat Russian. I maybe mistaken but that is what it looked like to me. Was the loco in that siding (Diversionary route?) hidden from the other loco by the trees.

Good post (the long one), Mountain Goat. So could my model have been the "Royal Scot" like I seem to remember it was? It was very like the one in the photo except that it was green and the wheels weren't so detailed, though authenticity wouldn't have been terribly important to the makers. Still, they had very specific names on them, so they were clearly meant to represent something from the real British world, and I wish I could remember better. "Britannia" was definitely one of them, but the other could be false memory. And according to my research, "Britannia" was much more like my other engine, i.e. like this: