London and North Eastern Railway Peppercorn class A1 60163 Tornado

This morning I woke up my long-suffering mother at the ungodly hour of 5:45. 

That first sentence was written by said long-suffering mother. 

The LNER Peppercorn Class A1 60613 Tornado is a steam locomotive constructed as a continuation of the Peppercorn A1 series, following the original plan with some modifications (e.g., all-welded boiler as opposed to riveted and steel firebox instead of copper). All of the original A1 series were scrapped with an average lifetime of only 15 years, unlike the A2 and A3 series, of which 60532 Blue Peter(A2) and 4472 Flying Scotsman(A3) were preserved. The single experimental class W1 locomotive 10000(which is nameless) and 6 class A4 locomotives were also preserved: 4498 Sir Nigel Gresley, 4496 Dwight D Eisenhower, 4488 Union of South Africa, 4489 Dominion of Canada, 4464 Bittern, and 4468 Mallard. The locomotives are numbered in a couple different ways. I have listed the numbers written on the cab... obviously these are also the numbers they are known by. Flying Scotsman was marked down for preservation from its inception. 

Part of what's so special about Tornado is that it does mainline runs instead of being only used for special excursions.It was planned to do this from its conception to help revive steam. Some advantages to using steam include avoiding rising diesel prices- of course, then you have to deal with the cost of coal and water. Out of the frying pan, into the fire eh?

It was built at the Darlington Locomotive Works from 1994-2008. 

Today we saw the Tornado at the Paddington station in London. It was AWESOME! It hauled the classic Blood and Custard British Railway coaches for an excursion to Exeter. I had never dreamed of seeing Tornado in real life! 

The locomotive ejected steam onto the tracks just as it was leaving. I think it was to help evaporate some of the water on the tracks for better traction through the initial acceleration, but I will write to the Trust to ask. Update: it was in fact to expel any water in the cylinders that had condensed during the rest in the station.

It's pretty loud when it first starts accelerating, with a continuous noise, and then the noise fades to reveal the accelerating pfufff-pfufff-pfufff of the pistons contrary to the apparent belief that steam locomotives make a chug-chug-chug during the initial acceleration. Later on in the acceleration, a steam locomotive engine (in modern times, simply called a steam locomotive) produces a chug-chug-chug sound. Once it is running at speed, it makes a huhuhuhuhuhuhuh sound.

As it runs on the mainline, it has to meet up with modern specifications. For example, the two headlamps have the same style as the original A1s, but the lamps are LED. It also has to have minimal modern electrical design, and air brakes as apposed to steam brakes. Vacuum brakes have also been added for use with heritage rolling stock. Instead of being a replica of one of the original A1s, it is the next in the series, which I think is just swell. The A1 Locomotive Trust has now started to build Gresley class P2 2007 Prince of Wales. For more information, peruse these websites at your leisure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1_Tornado, http://www.a1steam.com/, and http://www.p2steam.com/

Jeremy