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:
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
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).
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:
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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