SSSIII - North West 1950's Day, 26th April 2012
The weather has changed quite a bit since my last post. Yesterday, the SSSIII Tornado 'Little & Large ' day was truly diabolical, with heavy rain and icy winds all day, and today wasn't a great deal better. Wednesday saw 60163 Tornado, N2 No. 1744 and 'Coal Tank' No. 58926 in action, and it seems that the latter was having problems with its safety valves as it was constantly blowing off and also unable to travel much more than a sngle journey along the line before having to refill its tanks. As 58926 was also used today, alongside Nos. 44806 and 49395, these problems may well explain why time was lost throughout the day, with services running some 45 minutes late by the early evening.
The highlight of today's North Western 1950's theme was the re-enactment of the final passenger train in January 1958 between Abergavenney and Merthyr Tydfil via the Heads of the Valleys route. 58926 was actually used on that train, and 49395 was renumbered as classmate, and the other participant, No. 49121.