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6029 breathes steam again!
11 years ago
General
Normally I don't post non-furry related items on FA unless I can include something furry (Eg: Being photographed in fursuit in front of historic trains). However this is a monumental event. The Australian Railway Historical Society in Canberra ACT (our version of London Eng, Ottowa ON, Washington DC, Berlin, Paris, etc) have recently finished restoring New South Wales Railways steam locomotive 6029 to running order. Below is a video of her trial run.
http://youtu.be/NImBrqECYlU
6029 is a Garrat class locomotive; a unique articulated design where the boiler & cabin section has no driving wheels but sits elevated between the tender and water tank, under which both have sets of driving wheels. This has a number of advantages including greater traction particularly around curves, and having a lower weight-per-axle ratio which means they can operate on tracks that otherwise would not be able to permit such a heavy locomotive (Australian track standards have always been mediocre compared with the UK & Nth America).
...or to put it another way... she's a bloody big beast of a locomotive!
The video footage is excellent, and also shows off some native bushland of the region.
The whistle sound is impressive, but I do still prefer the whistles on Nth American locomotives though. I also have no idea why they're running her tender first. Maybe they wanted to go faster on the return trip?
I like how they took a spare locomotive along just in case, and the NSWGR 44 class *is* my all time favorite loco (an Alco DL-500B).
(Just quickly, there's still no good news on the job front for me. I've applied for over 70 jobs since I was made redundant and have only had 3 interviews, 2 of which were just agencies wanting to know more about me. Thankfully I've had a little bit of temp work, but my savings are still going down nonetheless. I can't last like this.)
http://youtu.be/NImBrqECYlU
6029 is a Garrat class locomotive; a unique articulated design where the boiler & cabin section has no driving wheels but sits elevated between the tender and water tank, under which both have sets of driving wheels. This has a number of advantages including greater traction particularly around curves, and having a lower weight-per-axle ratio which means they can operate on tracks that otherwise would not be able to permit such a heavy locomotive (Australian track standards have always been mediocre compared with the UK & Nth America).
...or to put it another way... she's a bloody big beast of a locomotive!
The video footage is excellent, and also shows off some native bushland of the region.
The whistle sound is impressive, but I do still prefer the whistles on Nth American locomotives though. I also have no idea why they're running her tender first. Maybe they wanted to go faster on the return trip?
I like how they took a spare locomotive along just in case, and the NSWGR 44 class *is* my all time favorite loco (an Alco DL-500B).
(Just quickly, there's still no good news on the job front for me. I've applied for over 70 jobs since I was made redundant and have only had 3 interviews, 2 of which were just agencies wanting to know more about me. Thankfully I've had a little bit of temp work, but my savings are still going down nonetheless. I can't last like this.)
I love the high pitched whine of the 80 class. You can almost sense the power in those locomotives by the sound they make. I wish I knew more about engineering to understand why they sound entirely different to the chuffing noise of the older generation of similar diesels (80's and 442's - I never had the chance to hear a 422). I suspect they have some kind of turbine in them that the older beasts didn't, but that's just a guess.