DaveL
Old Oak
Some of you will know that I retired in January, just after my birthday, and Joe, large son what did a great job on the barbecue at the bashes I hosted some years ago, bought me a driver experience at Bressingham.
I spent the morning with an ex BR driver called Alan, who served his time as an apprentice on main line steam engines running out of London into the south east of England. We did not have a main line engine but a wonderful little narrow gauge engine called St Christopher on the Waveney Line.
The engine was cold when I arrived, after emptying the ash out the fire was lit and while the boiler was warming I was give a tour of the engine, cleaning and polishing the brass and then oiling the motion, topping up the oil caps.
Here is a very short bit of video, I did the first little bit while Alan was topping the water up and the LOML took the rest, she was not very keen on doing it so there is not a great deal to see.
[youtube]Y93JRG8_PEg[/youtube]
It was great experience, I did 6 or 7 circuits of the track, it takes about 18 minutes for a run. We had to top the water up twice but only needed one lot of coal. Driving the engine is a bit like spinning plates, you have to watch the track and obey the speed limits, made sure you have enough steam, while keeping the fire hole free and the water level up in the boiler.
In the afternoon I had a session on a traction engine, compared with the rail engine its very in your face, the fly wheel is ~4 foot and spinning just in front of the steering wheel. It was much harder to control, I was told by John the chap I was with the higher steam pressure was partly to blame. Steering was a full time job, I never managed to count the turns from lock to lock but it must of been 10 or 12, with half a turn of slack.
Steam engines are so different from internal combustion engines, you can get max torque as you let the steam into the cylinders, no need for any revs!
I spent the morning with an ex BR driver called Alan, who served his time as an apprentice on main line steam engines running out of London into the south east of England. We did not have a main line engine but a wonderful little narrow gauge engine called St Christopher on the Waveney Line.
The engine was cold when I arrived, after emptying the ash out the fire was lit and while the boiler was warming I was give a tour of the engine, cleaning and polishing the brass and then oiling the motion, topping up the oil caps.
Here is a very short bit of video, I did the first little bit while Alan was topping the water up and the LOML took the rest, she was not very keen on doing it so there is not a great deal to see.
[youtube]Y93JRG8_PEg[/youtube]
It was great experience, I did 6 or 7 circuits of the track, it takes about 18 minutes for a run. We had to top the water up twice but only needed one lot of coal. Driving the engine is a bit like spinning plates, you have to watch the track and obey the speed limits, made sure you have enough steam, while keeping the fire hole free and the water level up in the boiler.
In the afternoon I had a session on a traction engine, compared with the rail engine its very in your face, the fly wheel is ~4 foot and spinning just in front of the steering wheel. It was much harder to control, I was told by John the chap I was with the higher steam pressure was partly to blame. Steering was a full time job, I never managed to count the turns from lock to lock but it must of been 10 or 12, with half a turn of slack.
Steam engines are so different from internal combustion engines, you can get max torque as you let the steam into the cylinders, no need for any revs!
