A1 TRUST ORDERS FIRST MOTION COMPONENTS FOR NEW STEAM LOCOMOTIVE
The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, the registered charity that is building the first new mainline steam locomotive in Britain for almost 40 years, today announced that it had placed orders for the first motion components for Tornado with John Hesketh & Son Ltd of Bury. The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust is raising £1.6m to build a new Peppercorn class A1 No. 60163 Tornado at its Darlington Locomotive Works through Deeds of Covenant for ‘the price of a pint of beer a week’.
This first tranche of forgings include the slide bars and several parts of the reversing gear for the locomotive’s three sets of Walschaerts motion. These components will be delivered in June and will then require extensive machining before they can be assembled and fitted to the locomotive.
David Champion, chairman of The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, commented, “The order of the first parts of the motion means that work is now being done on every major section of Tornado remaining to be completed. Over the coming months orders will be placed for all of the remaining motion components, many of which are still available as dedicated covenants for supporters to fund.”
Since each batch of motion parts will require a tensile test to be conducted on a sample cut from one of the forgings, the Trust intends to order all the components from a particular material at the same time.
Sponsorship
Nickerson Fuel Oils (a division of Total Oil) has generously offered to supply lubricants to the Trust, starting with a quantity of machine oil for use in the machine tools at Darlington Locomotive Works. The next delivery will be several drums of grease to pack the roller bearing axle boxes for the locomotive. Additionally, specialist technical support for lubricants suitable for steam locomotive operation has been offered.
Construction Update
Work to enable Tornado to be wheeled continues. It is the first time that this very specialist and expensive job has been done on a brand new mainline steam locomotive since the completion of British Railway’s last steam locomotive in 1960.