On Shed May 2011 edition

On Shed May 2011 edition

 
                            "Preserving the steam locomotive legacy..and more...on film"

FRONT PAGE

   Blue Kings debut at Didcot-2nd April 2011 (C)Dick Bodily




CONTENTS
Welcome..and site news..
Steam Tube Video and Photographic Highlights
ON THIS DAY
AN ANTONIOORGA FILM
AMERICAS NEWEST OPERATING STEAM LOCOMOTIVE!LEVIATHAN
The Stratford Upon Avon & Midland Junction Railway - The whole line in 2011
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 RAILWAYS:No 12. Irkutsk to Beijing
My Railway Career- Part 2. Robert Ife
Pennsylvania RailRoad "Opening a New Frontier" 1955 - American Trains
Copper Day - 100 years in the making (Cordova Times)
Pilatus Bahn - Cogwheel Railway Switzerland
Montserrat Cremallera Funicular Railway-simon389 on YouTube
One day in Severn preview - video125co
Christian Wolmar Newsletter
The Powerhaul Story


Welcome
It is a pleasure to welcome you all to this May 2011 edition of On Shed..Steam Tubes monthly news and features magazine.


On 1st May 2011, Steam Tube (TM) has a great new look! Andy Thompson (TFC) has been working hard to create the kind of easily accessible site for all members to enjoy to the full. We hope you enjoy the new look..and please feel free to let us know what you think..that way we can get to include items on the site..and here in our monthly newsletter and features magazine..that you appreciate.

We now have 583 members, along with the on 511 followers on Twitter, and the 1713 friends on Steam Tubes Facebook page. Total page views to the three main sites...Steam Tube, Stratford-on-Avon & Midland Junction Railway and The Railway Chronicle came to around 60,000 for the last month (March 2011) . This months features include a Blue King, a sad elegaic piece from antonioorga, an American new build steam locomotive(Leviathan), Robert Ifes recollections of his early railway career, a cogwheel railway, a funicular railway, a look at activity on the Severn Bridge signalbox, the Powerhaul story, and Christian Wolmars latest newsletter.

Enjoy!

Steam Tube Video and Photographic Highlights
Videos

Rowan uploaded a sequence of clips of CP2816 on a series of 6 short excursions east from Medicine Hat to Dunmore and back to raise money for Local Charities. This clip is a composite of those runs.


Mollsmyre uploaded this film report of the Chasewater Railways Spring gala (March 19/20th 2011)

..and here are some more videos to enjoy......




See more at www.steamtu.be



Photographs

March 19th 2011. Bishops Lydeard to Minehead(TFC)
                                         (TFC)

                                          (TFC)

                                         (Tim Stanger LRPS)

                                          On the WSR:John Pile AFIAP DPAGB LRPS
And here are some more!!









See more at www.steamtu.be


ON THIS DAY
02/05/1859
The Royal Albert Bridge, two 450 feet arched spans over the River Tamar, linking Devon and Cornwall, is opened

03/05/1903
The Mersey Railway, operating between Birkenhead and Liverpool by tunnel beneath the River Mersey, England, converts from steam to electric traction
03/05/1926
U.K. General Strike commences, continuing to affect railways until May 12
06/05/1994
The Queen and Frances President Francois Mitterrand have formally opened the Channel Tunnel during two elaborate ceremonies in France and Britain. After travelling through the tunnel, which took eight years and billions of pounds to build, the Queen said it was one of the worlds great technological achievements.

The tunnel is the first land link between Britain and Europe since the last Ice Age about 8,000 years ago. The first leg of the Queens journey took her from Londons Waterloo station through the tunnel by high-speed Eurostar passenger train. She arrived at Calais at the same time as the President Mitterrands train which had travelled from Paris Gard du Nord via Lille. Nose to nose encounter The two locomotives met nose to nose - a computer that prevents two trains travelling on the same track was switched off for the occasion.


Super Structures1/5 - Eurotunnel(Channel Tunnel). Discovery Channel

09/05/1904
City Of Truro heads the Ocean Mail special down Wellington bank at a reputed 102.3mph

                                                                  (John Edkins)

12/05/1911
Electric trains begin work between London Victoria station and Crystal Palace

15/05/1929 Golden Arrow 1st class Pullman service introduced Victoria-Dover and Calais-Paris

Courtesy: SouthernRailwayFilms
17/05/1906
The Simplon Tunnel between Italy and Switzerland, the world’s longest tunnel until 1979, opens to rail traffic
19/05/1907
Benjamin Baker, British civil engineer, designer of the Forth Railway Bridge dies. (b. 1840).
20/05/1892
Last Broad Gauge train runs from Paddington to the West of England.

                                        Iron Duke"(replica) at the G&WSR, Toddington. June 2010(P.Lewis)

22/05/1915
In the Quintinshill rail crash, four trains including a troop train collide, the accident and ensuing fire causing 227 fatalities and injuring 246 people at Quintinshill, Gretna Green, Scotland; the accident is blamed on negligence by the signalmen during a shift change at a busy junction
24/05/1900
Nottingham Victoria railway station opens in Nottingham, England
31/05/1879
The first electric railway opens at the Berlin Trades Exposition
--------------
AN ANTONIOORGA FILM
An elegaic film........

Current State of what was the international station of Canfranc, March 2011.
This small village (altitude 1190 m.) was largely created due to the inauguration of a railroad crossing the Pyrenees on 18 July 1928. The trains continued running until an international train accident destroyed the bridge at nearby LEstanguet and severed the link on 27 March 1970. Canfranc Estación is most well known due to the rumours of "German gold" arriving here during World War II .
Also, British espionage smuggled information and people from Vichy France to the consulate in San Sebastián through Canfranc since the nearer Irún bordered with occupied France. The train station is the highlight of the village and was used during the filming of Doctor Zhivago. There has been talk for some time of reopening international train traffic between France and Spain[1], but until that time the area is profiting from its nearness to the ski resorts of Candanchú and Astún. The current population is 454. (Wikipedia)
---------------------------------------
AMERICAS NEWEST OPERATING STEAM LOCOMOTIVE!   LEVIATHAN
In 1868, the Central Pacific Railroad purchased four locomotives from Schenectady Locomotive Works. They were The Jupiter #60, The Storm #61, The Whirlwind #62 and The Leviathan #63. In 1999, David Kloke, owner of Kloke Construction and Kloke Locomotive Works, LLC., had a dream of replicating The Leviathan #63. And so construction began. After 10 years of work by several talented people Davids dream became a reality.
The Leviathan #63 is AMERICAS NEWEST OPERATING STEAM LOCOMOTIVE!

ABOUT DAVID H. KLOKE
David H. Kloke, owner of Kloke Construction and Kloke Locomotive Works, LLC., has been in the construction business for 40 years. His business started in Wisconsin doing construction work and renting heavy equipment. He moved to Illinois twenty years ago and set up shop in Cook county where he resides today. Of his many accomplishments through the years the Leviathan63 is his pride and joy. His "hobby" took him 10 years to create and it "WOWS" everyone who sees and hears it. The Leviathan63 is truly a beautiful site! With the help of many a non-profit organization has been created named Historic Railroad Equipment Assoc. Through donations he hopes to rebuild and replicate several historic railroad equipment for educational purposes. He can make this possible with donations from people like you. If you are interested in donating please email us @ DAVEKLOKE@GMAIL.COM FOR MORE INFORMATION, GO TO: http://www.leviathan63.com/

-----------------------------------------
The Stratford Upon Avon & Midland Junction Railway - The whole line in 2011

The SMJ was a small enigmatic line which ran across the empty heart of Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. Born out of a the 19th century railway boom and an iron ore discovery at Blisworth and gone by the mid 1960s. Trace the line as it is in 2011. For more information on the SMJ, go to www.smj.me
-------------------------------------
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 RAILWAYS:No 12. Irkutsk to Beijing

A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow of a travel blog to Ulan Batar, Mongolia by TravelPod blogger Surgeongeneral titled "From Beijing to Irkutsk via Mongolia." Surgeongenerals travel blog entry: "It was a 48 hour train ride from Beijing to Irkutsk, which involved passing by the great wall (which I missed), changing the rail gauge at the Chinese-Mongolian Border, passing through the Gobi desert, and hanging out at the Russian-Mongolian border in my train car hoping that the russian border officer wouldnt kill me ( He was pretty scary). It was a beautiful train ride, but when it was over I was coated in a layer of sand from the desert, which made my hair stiff and my body a bit grimey, and made me appreciate the next shower I could take." Read and see more at: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/surgeongeneral/trans-mongolian/1...
Photos from this trip: 1. "Baikal the beautiful." 2. "Brad" 3. "Ger." 4. "Getting aquainted with Lake Baikal by train." 5. "Gobi 1" 6. "I need one of these in my backyard too." 7. "I wish I could have spent some time here." 8. "Its cool I promise." 9. "Mike Chillin." 10. "Mongolian Bad Ass" 11. "Move em out! Move em out!" 12. "On the road again." 13. "Rural China." 14. "The changing of the train whell thingys." 15. "The Man." 16. "Ulan Batar" 17. "Ulan Batar train station." 18. "Us and the Man" 19. "Watch out!" 20. "Where are the dunes?" 21. "Wow!"
See this TripWow and more at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-00b5-cf22-0a52?ytv4=1 With thanks to "surgeongeneral" and A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow Copyright acknowledged

-------------------------------------
My Railway Career- Part 2. Robert Ife
The Training Continues
Training on multiple units was given by an Instructor/conductor name of Gill Cockcroft, who sadly died a few years ago. Lovely chap with an interest in sailing. Read boating magazines quite a lot. He taught us how to operate the doors systems on class 150 and 156 Sprinters and how to prepare the train for service. As usual, an inspector has to pass you out on them before you are allowed to work them by yourself.( A few years later I got to be with him again when we got classes 153 and 158).
During a demonstration run in the summer of 1985, unit 150001 stands in Platform 7 at St. Pancras

After this we were sent on a commercial training course in Birmingham, at a place called Quayside Towers. Here we learned how to sell and examine tickets, both using the then current ticket issuing machine which was called SPORTIS and how to write out tickets by hand if the machine had broken down. To actually learn how to use the SPORTIS machine we were sent to rail house in Liverpool. As can be seen, no centralised learning facility existed, which seemed a bit strange at the time, and still does, to be honest. For anyone who does not know SPORTIS stands for Superior Portable On Rail Ticket Issuing System. This was an upgrade of the original PORTIS machine so that it would take credit cards. During this course, again a certain amount of practical work was involved. I recollect going on service trains to Oxford, Blackpool and York: all from a starting point of Birmingham New Street. When you take into account that we were travelling from Nottingham to New Street every day it made for some very long days. At the end of the course we had to pass written examination. After that, back to home depot


On Shed May 2011 edition