1927

The title is the year that this engine was delivered to the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch railway - it's nigh on 90 years old! This is Hurricane; she's 27 and a half feet long, weighs more than 8 tons and is modelled on Gresley's A3 Pacifics so she's a 4-6-2.   If you look in the extras you'll see that she's not unlike The Flying Scotsman albeit in Caledonian Blue and a fair bit smaller. Real anoraks will note that the tender has a mock corridor connector which mirrors the real life corridor tenders designed for use on the London - Edinburgh route so that crews could be swapped out without the train stopping. 

There were only three passenger departures today and they were being pulled by a diesel and Hurricane; they swap at New Romney. Winston Churchill (see extras) was in steam for driver experience trips. The passenger trains were only running between Hythe and New Romney rather than all the way through to Dungeness.

Whenever I see an engine pulled up and waiting the driver is out with a cloth and giving it a polish. This tends to wander, unbidden, through my head...........

In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass
And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen
He likes to keep his fire engine clean
It's a clean machine

and this engine usually fires up........

Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For somethin’ that he never done
Put in a prison cell, but one time he could-a been

The champion of the world

I'd decided that I needed some steam action today; it's been too long because they tend not to run in January and you lovely folk have been starved of my steam stuff. I'd checked that RH&DR were playing out so I hit the road to grab you some blippage. The bonkersness of it all is that I didn't also go and see much sea. The weather is horridable so I got in, did the business and split.

Time for a cuppa methinks