hexagon789

Albeit not really Mk3

I don't think so, quite a niche design. While I believe in Ireland they were refereed to as Mk3A, they are really little like a Mk3. In the UK for instance, Mk3 referred to the HST trailers, the Mk3A were the first batch of loco-hauled Mk3s, Mk3B the second batch. The Cú na Mara set was ex-British Rail Engineering Limited, described as the "International Train" it being intended to demonstrate what BREL could produce to drum up orders from abroad that never materialised. The stock did run on a specific London Euston-Manchester diagram for a period in lieu of a normal Mk3 set, the coaches were permitted to run at 110mph.

Well that's all the Mk 2D gone, I thought about it but I think that's the world saying get them another time. The lack of EGV and diner made me hesitate. Still nice to know where to go in the future for any orders

That might be it then, trouble is you read so many things in so many places they tend to blur somewhat!

I think it says a lot though, that even after some decades, it's still quite a modern looking design. If anything I think the 'wings' enhance the roundel design, it gives more of an air of speed than one could hope to achieve on most of the tube in London and certainly would be achievable on a bus with dense London traffic. Perhaps it's just coincide that the snail makes things seem faster, or did the designers have a cunning plan to quicken people journeys without actually tightening the schedules?

You can see the difference in the "orange" too between batches, the latter is more brownish with less yellow in it and looks more "correct" to my eyes. If there were EGVs and diners still kicking about it would be tempted at the keen prices. Excuse me if I remember wrongly, but I seem to recall reading, not on this forum I add, that there would be another batch but I don't think they were to be Supertrain. Personally, I'd love more in Supertrain myself!

Effectively BR InterCity Sector livery with slight colour variation, picture here of an unconverted one at Inchicore on B4 accommodation bogies:

Yes, but that wasn't blue/grey. Still has the BR data panels as well, giving it a 100mph maximum speed. Does that make it the fastest Mk2 in Ireland?

1,200hp I think hence the LWT12 coding, designed to enable it to run at 100mph though it was downgraded to 80mph fairly soon after modifications and struggled on gradients so required assistance from much more powerful locos to bank it. I believe two power cars survive.

I suppose that would depend on where they took their inspiration from? Just so long as it wasn't the UK Great Western Railway, have you seen their utterly abominable attempt at the streamlining craze? And still no faster nor more frequent in spite of their replacement! The AM800s were supposed to give an improved service of eight to nine daily "rapides" taking 2hrs 30 Ajaccio-Bastia, yet I believe pre-Virus they were still using the previous 4 stoppers each-way 3hrs40-4hrs timetable. The saving grace is more time to enjoy the scenery one could say! It was to match a new set of coaching stock specially built for an improved East Anglian London-Ipswich-Norwich express.

Sorry, suddenly realised I forgot to put the photo in! New York Central J-3a 4-6-4 Hudson If I did a top 5 of steam locos, that's going in!

Funnily enough the NYC was one of the slower Railroad's of the period. It's MAS (Maximum Authorised Speed) was 80 except for the route of the 20th Century Limited which went up to 85mph. I think that's the only period in US railway history I can get excited about, when a huge profusion of railroads ran a plethora of named trains at decent speeds, with a wide variety of unique and much more stylish than now, locomotives. The NYC Hudsons are among my favourite American locomotives, if ever since steam loco could look futuristic I reckon it would look like that.

Sir Nigel himself only accepted Mallard had attained 125 and I believe the dynamometer rolls (which are in the National Railway Museum at York and can be inspected) only record a brief peak of 125.88mph so I think it's very, very tight. As for the Milwaukee Road, their F7s were reputed to require to exceed 100mph just to maintain schedules, at one point on the mainline from Chicago to the Twin Cities, at Rondout there was a famous sign at the interlocking: "SLOW TO 90", and that was in the late-1930s! Sadly the line is like so many in the US a shadow of its former self, and 79mph max. I find it ironic that was is now the fastest line in America, the Northeast Corridor was in US rail's heyday of the 1930s-1950s only 80mph maximum, while lines which then permitted 85, 90, 95 and 100mph are almost all much slower.

Probably because it utterly destroyed the track in its wake! They also not only had to resort to using the second pantograph about halfway through the run but at the end of it discovered that the carbon strips hadn't simply worn away it had actually melted from the heat generated by the huge currents being drawn off the overheads!

They actually did 331km/h TWICE in March 1955, but with different types of loco from different manufacturers (the other class was the Bo-Bo BB 9000), identical speeds being attained so as to give neither manufacturer "favour" as it were. Technically the second record was only 325km/h but SNCF officially credited both as 331 for the reason I outlined.

Thanks for that jhb and the photo, they remind of another continental class aesthetically. I've ridden the Soller railway on Majorca but not the other system out to Sa Pobla and Manacor. The narrow guage system I would like to experience is that of Corsica with its 153km mainline across the hilly interior of the island, though it's a shame the 1940s Renaults have gone now.

If I may offer another piece of data which cements the Deltic's place as the top dog of British diesels? Only two years before they were withdrawn, one of the few top ECML expresses which had not become an HST, the Hull Executive was retimed in 1979, departing from King's Cross it's first booked call was Retford, 138 miles, 49 chains up the line in a blistering 91 minutes, a start-to-stop average of 91.3mph! And that was based on only 100mph maximum running, though 55s were capable of plenty more in their twilight years after the traction motors were beefed up accordingly.

A nice selection of motive power there, the only class I'm not familiar with is the J15, but then I'm not really au fait with Irish steam in general save the GSR B1a/800 Class.

@leslie10646 the SNCF CC7100 Class: 3,490kW; 150km/h And the famous high-speed run:

I appreciate the direction to Wikipedia, it just wasn't quite specific enough for me, but those figures does enable one to infer the approximate ranges, so thank you. A Super "A" I think Perhaps they could've used double "A", given the approximately double power compared to an 001!

Sounds interesting, I'm only familiar with the DMUs/Railcars of the non-electrified system pre-metric conversion, any idea of the power or manufacturer? I'm reminded of an episode of Great Railway Journeys, journalist Mark Tully I think it was undertook several journeys across Pakistan, including a steam tour up the Khyber Pass and a steam-hailed freight across the desert, that photo is very evocative of the geography out that way. The timing was 6 hours with one stop in 1973 - 86 to Preston and double 50s north. In one fell swoop the 87s cut it to 5 hours, no increase in speed limits simply the reduction in the Preston stop dwell and the ability to hold 90mph up Shap! The fastest ever booked timing with loco-haulage was in 1992, Class 87+Mk3, three stops and 110mph running - 4hrs 43 mins (85mph average). They were the class which broke the 200mph barrier in 1955 reaching 331km/h (206mph) on a test run. I also love the simple styling, rather like the French cassé nez designs, you just know it's French! Give us tick and I'll find a picture of one

Thanks Old Blarney, I did look at the Wiki page before posing my question - but it doesn't really explain exactly what each letter referred to only which letter each loco type was originally allocated. To explain what I mean, in the pre-1968 British Rail system each loco was classified by power then by manufacturer. A Type 1 was 800-1000hp A Type 2 was 1001-1499hp A Type 3 was 1500-1999hp A Type 4 was 2000-2999hp A Type 5 was 3000hp and over Effectively I'm looking to see what the horsepower range of each letter of the CIÉ system was. Was "A" 1200hp and over or 1,000hp and over? That sort of thing.

I've had a look on the forum for an answer but can't find anything specific, nor was Google or Wikipedia much help. So how exactly did the old letter system work? I know what became the 001 Class were originally "A", the 201s were "C" and all of 121, 141, 181 and the Sulzer 101s were "B" and various small diesels and shunters were lettered "D" through "G" and "K". My two questions are really: Firstly - were the letters purely to show power rating or were these actual 'Class' designations even given the large variety within the "B" designation. Secondly - what was the power range of each letter? Thanks.

Seeing as others have included non-Irish classes, can I do another list of 5 non-Irish locos? 1. BR Class 87 "Electric Scot" 2. SNCF CC7100 electric 3. DB Class 103 electric 4. BR Class 55 "Deltic" 5. LNER A4 pacific "Streaks" (And yes, I do have an obsession with speed and power! ;))

All of 6.5 inches! Besides, our's is "Standard guage" so surely your's must be broad rather than our's narrow, no?