Performance of The Rebuilt Locomotives
There is no doubt that rebuilding the class solved most of the maintenance problems whilst retaining the good features, thereby creating excellent locomotives. However, as a result of the implementation of Walschaerts valve gear, the rebuilts were prone to hammerblow on the track caused by the additional weights incorporated to balance the outside valve gear, an issue that had not arisen with the self-balanced arrangement of the original locomotives. On 26 June 1967, 35003 Royal Mail recorded the highest speed ever for the class. Hauling a train comprising three carriages and two parcels vans (164 tons tare, 180 tons gross) between Weymouth and Waterloo, the mile between milepost 38 and milepost 37 (located between Winchfield and Fleet) was covered in 34 seconds, a speed of 105.88 mph. This was also the last authenticated speed in excess of 100 mph achieved by a steam locomotive in the United Kingdom.
Read more about this topic: SR Merchant Navy Class
Famous quotes containing the words performance of, performance, rebuilt and/or locomotives:
“What avails it that you are a Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To vote is like the payment of a debt—a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.”
—Gabriel García Márquez (b. 1928)
“The flower-fed buffaloes of the spring
In the days of long ago,
Ranged where the locomotives sing
And the prairie flowers lie low:—”
—Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931)