WHEELER'S WISDOM
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Over there in Britain, close to Santa and the North Pole, a very special steam engine is resting this Christmas in a nice warm roundhouse.
This is a story for daddies, not kiddies, because this is a real steam train, and probably the most mollycoddled young steam engine in the world.
Since it was born in 2008, it has travelled 70,000 miles hauling lots of happy passengers, including The Royal Train with The Queen, plus various members of the royal family.
This fairytale began in 1990 when a trust was formed to build a brand-new steam engine. This could only happen in Britain, do I hear you say? Well, yes, because Britain has the most extensive network of tourist railways in the world.
Forgetting the fairytale aspect for a minute, Britain attracts railway tourists from around the world. Railways are a massively important part of their tourism industry, up there with The Royal Family, castles, canals, viaducts and so on.
Anyway, back to the magic of this new steam engine. It’s name is “Tornado”, built more or less to the plans of the “Peppercorn” Class “A1” locomotives, originally designed for the LNER. That’s “London and North Eastern Railway” for any unfortunate daddy who did not have a green Hornby engine in his train set.
There were attempts to preserve one of this locomotive class at the onset of dieselisation, but they were all scrapped. So optimistic enthusiasts set about raising the money, about £3 million altogether. So generous is the British railway public, that the engine has now been made free of debt, with an appeal currently for £200,000 to pay for the tender.
The new engine has a larger water capacity for long distance trips, because there are less railside water facilities these days. It also has all the modern digital gear in the cab to make it suitable for mainline running.
A busy tour schedule keeps the cash flowing, and most importantly drawing the overseas tourists. However, steam engines are expensive to run, and this Christmas “Tornado” will be undergoing major maintenance at Darlington. Tornado’s immediate popularity has been a valuable reassurance to the Trustees that their foresight was indeed wise.
Big Boys reading this story may be thinking of asking Santa for a trip to Britain next year. Consider this description from a steam tour site: “These holidays range from our annual nine day Explorer in May 2014 which will return to the beautiful scenery of Northern Scotland and our shorter four day break to Cornwall in September 2014 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the last ever Atlantic Coast Express ... In 2015 we are ... planning trips in England, Wales and Scotland ...”
Daddy, have you been good? Go to http://www.a1steam.com or www.steamrailwaylines.co.uk and have a very Merry Christmas!