The Train Appreciation Thread!! !

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Those smoke deflectors are to a later German design that was fitted to this loco. Earlier British versions were larger and came down to the footplate level, but the Flying Scotsman never recieved these, but many other locos did such as the Duchess locos.
The idea of smoke deflectors was to use the air to push the smoke up, as some locomotive designs had a tendency for the smoke to drift downwards and obscure the drivers view of the signals.
Only some locos needed them. For example, Great Western Railway locomotives used tapered boilers which their managing directors saw in use in Canada as a safety precaution if they hit snow drifts as parallel boiler designs were suseptable to exploding if the loco hit a snowdrift where thefront of the loco derailed and faced downwards thus allowing the fire to heat air instead of water. Hence the adoption of tapered boiler designs to prevent this which the GWR adopted in the very early 1900's. These tapered boilers also allowed the smoke to clear the drivers view of the signals, though the GWR chimney "Blast" due to advancing their walschaerts valvegear by three quarters of a turn (The secret to the success of GWR locos) ensured the smoke blasted upwards and also gave GWR locos incredible power output for their size. Example is a smaller Castle class had a greater tractive effort (Pulling power) than the much larger Flying Scotsman and also used less coal (Hence why when British Railways took over they kept making castle class locos alongside their standard class designs as it made economic sense), and when they took a Castle class to the USA, they was amazed how such a small loco had such an impressive power output as when it came out in 1923, the castle class was for a short period of time the worlds most powerful express passenger loco, which even locos twice its size could not pull as much. (Slower moving goods locos could but they were not built for speeds in excess of 100mph. Incidently, the introduction of the castle class loco enabled the GWR to be the first ever railway company to book speeds of over 100mph into their timetable with a service called "The Cheltenham Flyer" which pre-dates the Flying Scotsman. The GWR back in 1904 also had the first proven loco to pass 100mph with a loco called "The City Of Truro". The GWR did all they can to play it down as in those days they would lose passengers as they were a company with a reputation of safety. Before the days of AWS and TPWS, the GWR had a system that would stop a flat out speeding express train doing close to 100 mph and pulling 14 coaches behind in less than 750 yards to come to a standstill by using a third central rail which brake shoes on the loco would grip if thedriver passed a red signal.. British Railways did not adopt this system as it cost more to build than the cheaper AWS which did the same thing BUT used just the loco brakes on the wheels so took a lot longer to stop. Eventodays trains with all the technology would struggle to stop such a heavy train in 750 yards!

Re: Trains vs cars

Well I don't have a driver's license and I honestly don't trust myself behind the wheel of a large automobile or in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife so the fact that we actually have two options for rail transport down here in South Florida is definitely a plus.

https://youtu.be/ETeicUct-KQ

A point of interest.

In America you tend to have what you called a caboose. In Britain we had what we called a brake van. They are not the same though in one respect they both share one purpose and that is for staff to keep and eye on the train. While this is the main primary reason for the caboose (And an important one that is too!), the British brake van has a different job, as unlike our American partners who decided many years ago to adopt the knuckle coupling that included contineous braking on all vehicles operated by the locomotive itself, in Britain for many years we did not. So we relied on the skillsbof the staff (The guard) in the brake van to assist the driver to stop the train. So in this way they have very different uses.
One may puzzle how in Britain we went down steep hills. Was actually simple. Every vehicle (Wagons, vans, tankers etc) the locomotive was pulling had a handbrake which was operated manually from the side of the vehicle. So the driver and guard working together would know to stop the train at the top of the hill. The guard would get out and pin down the brakes on a certain number of vehicles according to the steepness of the hill (E.g. one wagon in every five). The guard would get back in the brakevan at the back and wave the green flag (Or green light at night) and they would proceed under control doen the hill. At the bottom of the hill they would then stop, and the guard would again walk out and release the brakes so they just has a locomotive brake and the brake van. The brake van typically didn't have much breaking until the brakes heated up which needed around 40mph. (Once tried a brake van after I had regularly operated a brake passenger coach on the main railway lines (Which themselves are a rare operation from the past so I had more enthusiasts on those trains than regular passengers!), and so when a few wagons needed to be moved into a siding under gravity after being uncoupled from the locomotive, the normal guard along with other volunteers went outside by the side of the wagons to control their speed on the handbrakes, and I operated the big wheel in the brake van. I was surprized to find that even though I tightened down that brake, it only slowly raised the coupling between the van and the wagons it was coupled to. Luckily enough handbrakes were also applied. When back on my normal railway job I asked some of the older guards as I assumed the brake van brakes were faulty. They told me about the 40+ mph and assured me the braking was good at those speeds. (Now I know why they used more than one brake van, or they put an additional locomotive at the back to assist in the braking of slower moving trains I used to see as a child on the Burry Port and Gwendreath Railway (Miss spelt on official documents. Is actually Gwendraeth), where three class 03's were used to haul 50+ slow moving screaming coal wagons through the flooded line (Stayed flooded through most of the year as used to be a canal). Memories!