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The Ultimate Steam Page

The Ultimate Steam Page
Steam News

   updated 7 March 2012


This page provides news on working operation of steam locomotives, construction of new steam, technical improvements to existing steam locomotives, and similar news items.  

Current Headlines:

Nigel Day- Update from Australia's West Coast Wilderness Railway

5AT Project Suspended

Grand Canyon Railway Resumes Steam Operations 

Second New Steam Locomotive Completed for the Nilgiri Mountain Railway

Update on A1 Tornado Boiler Repairs

2011 Summary/ 2012 Preview

Old Headlines

See the Steam News Archive for older news stories.



Nigel Day- Update from Australia's West Coast Wilderness Railway

WCWR
                  No. 1 Lempor

The photo above shows the results of Nigel Day's latest efforts at Australia's West Coast Wilderness Railway, where he has just fitted a Lempor exhaust to "Mount Lyell" No. 1.  Note the new tapered stack as well as some measuring instrumentation attached at the discharge.  Nigel had previously fitted Lempors to locomotives No.  3 and No. 5 last year with excellent results.  Nigel promises to send additional information as things progress.

Read more about the West Coast Wilderness Railway at:  http://www.westcoastwildernessrailway.com.au/

Read more about Nigel's earlier work at the WCWR at:  http://www.martynbane.co.uk/modernsteam/nday/wcwr/wcwr-home.html

5AT Project Suspended

Concurrently with the publication of an article in the April 2012 edition of Steam Railway magazine, the 5AT Group has announced the project to build an all-new Second Generation steam locomotive has been suspended.  The chief reason given for this is the current state of the world's economy, and hence the difficulty in raising funding for such a project.  More details can be found here:

http://5at.co.uk/index.php/home/alias.html

Grand Canyon Railway Resumes Steam Operations

The Grand Canyon Railway has announced the resumption of regular steam locomotive operations on their railway this summer using modernized steam locomotive #4960.  This engine was fitted with a Lempor exhaust and improved oil firing system under the direction of Nigel Day, and was subsequently fitted with a Worthington type feedwater heater imported from China.  The locomotive has numerous other improvements to reduce maintenance and increase avaialability as well.  Steam operations began this year with a special train on 24 January 2012 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Arizona's statehood.  Further steam operations are planned this summer.  The schedule can be found here:

http://www.thetrain.com/UserFiles/gcr/gcr-steam-021312.pdf

Second New Steam Locomotive Completed for the Nilgiri Mountain Railway

A second new oil-fired rack-and-adhesion steam locomotive was recently completed by the Golden Rock workshops in India for service on the Nilgiri Mountain Railway and has since been delivered to the railway.   This follows the first new locomotive which was completed last year (see here). 

2nd oil-fired steam loco
                    for NMR
photo by M. Moorthy from the Hindu newspaper site

These locomotives appear to be copies of the SLM-built X-class locomotives built in the 1950's, altered for oil firing.  Some of the newspaper articles (see links below) make much of the fact that these Indian-produced locomotives were much less expensive than the proposed new locomotives from DLM would have been.  However, they fail to note that the DLM versions would have been significantly improved with more power and higher efficiency.  Here's an artist's rendering of what the DLM versions would have looked like:

New DLM X-Class

Read more at these links:

http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article2866671.ece

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-02-08/madurai/31036753_1_steam-locomotives-golden-rock-railway-workshop-nilgiri-mountain-railway

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/article2940512.ece

Update on A1 Tornado Boiler Repairs

As noted in the news update in 2010 (see news archive), after a relatively short period in service (the all-new locomotive was placed in operation around mid-2008), the boiler of A1 Tornado required extensive repairs and was returned to the builder, DB Meiningen of Germany, where numerous welded stays were replaced and cracks were repaired.  The repairs were completed successfully, the boiler was returned to the UK and the locomotive returned to service around April of 2011.  See story at the A1 Trust's website.

The locomotive has been successfully operating since that time; hopefully the repairs and alterations will be successful in ensuring a long service life for the first all-new mainline steam locomotive to be completed in the UK since the 1950's.

2011 Summary/2012 Preview


2011 was a slow year for steam news; let's hope 2012 will be better. 




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For more steam news from around the world, I highly recommend:

Rob Dickinson's "International Working Steam Locomotives"
http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/steam/internat.htm

John Craft's "Steam Central"
http://www.steamcentral.com


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