Martin Heywood's report..

For me, the best part of the experience was probably firing on the way up to Norden. I was kept busy most of the time and the fireman was very informative. I finally understand why they are able to drive a Bulleid at 25mph without it blowing off all the time - the grate is almost empty. Indeed, the fireman told me not to put much coal near the front of the firebox as the boiler would be impossible to control. Of course, in MSTS you drive with the grate full of coal, which explains why the boiler makes far more steam than the loco needs and the injectors don't have the desired effect. FYI, we kept around 200psi most of the way with a boiler rated to 250psi.

Nigel definitely had the better drive in that he was going forwards and up hill for much of the way. Driving in reverse was awkward and you don't see much with such a big tender in front of you. I have to say that I was quite underwhelmed by the driving part, mainly I think because I never really felt in control.

<- Ron (at far left) talking to Richard Scott.

Martin Heywood's report cont..

For one thing, you have someone telling you what to do, so you are really just an extension of his arms, but also the loco is such a dinosaur that you don't really feel much response to your actions (except perhaps when braking). For example, when setting off, you open up the regulator and nothing happens at first. Then, the steam chest needle rises and slowly you set off. Almost immediately, you set the cut-off at around 30% and that's it, the loco drives itself.

Of course, apart from the climb out of Corfe, you don't use the regulator much on the return trip, so most of my time was spent working the brake. I suppose I was more in control here, because the driver simply said slow down and left the rest to me. Having said that, the loco still seemed to know just what to do without me needing to try too hard. For example, approaching the home signal at Harman's Cross, I braked slightly to slow down, but because we're on a rising gradient here, we still slowed gently after I released the brake and stopped right in front of the signal. It was far easier than in the sim! Approaching Swanage I set the vacuum to 15 inches and we slowed down nicely. I wasn't quite happy with the deceleration, so I knocked the vacuum down by another couple of inches and again the loco seemed to know just what to do. I definitely need to take another look at the brakes on our locos, because the real thing was far more responsive than the sim, especially when I braked too hard stopping in Swanage station - I hope the guard wasn't drinking his tea at the time :-)

Nigel Apperley's report..

As Martin said, Ron was pretty much telling us exactly what to do during the driving part so we didn't have much chance to think for ourselves. When we set off I opened the cut-off to about 70 and then eased open the regulator, about half way at first and then full on, the lever was easy to move and cooler than I expected. The steam took a few seconds to get to the cylinder and then the cylinder pressure climbed quickly and the loco started to move off so I eased the reg back down to half way again. When we were passing the shed I opened the regulator right up and wound the cut-off back to 30, from then on most of the driving was done with the regulator wide open and making small adjustments on the reverser. I found that the reverser had to be locked off because if you didn't it crept round towards 75. The view from the driver's side was not too bad and you could get some view on a right hand bend by leaning right out of the window, but not much.

The train picked up speed on the climb to Harman's cross and was hunting quite a bit from side to side, I asked the fireman about this later on and he said that he thought we got up to about 35. The heat was quite fierce on the side of my leg as there are no metal shields on this footplate, I ended up putting my right arm across my body for some of the time to cool it off. When we were passing the crossing before Harman's cross, Ron asked me to shut off and I inexplicably reached for the reverser, Ron then shouted "No the regulator", so I grabbed the handle quickly, I must confess that this wasn't the last time I did this and to my shame he actually shut off the steam himself on the last occasion. Why I got confused over this is a mystery, If you can take off and land a plane without any trouble then a steam train shouldn't be a problem. I suspect that not being allowed to think for yourself had something to do with it.

Nigel Apperley's report cont..

Coming in to Harman's cross, the train ran more freely than I had expected without any power. I started braking somewhere past the distant signal and found the brake very responsive and easier to use than the one in the sim. I took the brake pressure carefully down to about 15 at first and then down to about 7, I eased off and kept it at12 until we reached the home signal, then I took the brake off. It took a surprising amount of time for the brakes to come fully off, I would estimate about 20-30 seconds, and the train coasted through the points at (I would guess) about 7-10 mph. I then braked it to a halt by the signal box while we waited for the DMU to come through the other loop.

I think I managed to whistle at every board (any excuse). We accelerated quite quickly out of Harman's cross and kept the power on down the bank with a much reduced cut-off (about 20) until we hit the next short climb which took some of the speed off, we then coasted down the gradient to Corfe Castle, again the braking started just past the distant signal and we entered the points doing less than 10 mph and coasted right through the station without stopping. I opened the regulator right up again with a cut-off of about 30 and this took us through the cutting and onto the viaduct. Because the ground is pretty level up to Norden I was able to cut the steam off and coast in at about 15, I braked just before the bridge and came to a halt at the platform. Ron then positively jumped onto the controls (which was a shame) and took the engine around the train. I would say that I enjoyed driving very much as an experience, but that I would have proffered to have someone explain what to do beforehand rather than telling me what movements to make at the time.

After a swift cup of tea (while the fireman hosed the footplate) we headed back towards Swanage. The fireman was a very friendly man who drives EMUs for a living and fires steam trains for fun, he was pretty informative and told us a lot about the strategy he was using. I started off by shovelling coal into the two back corners of the firebox on either side of the firehole. The coal was in pretty large lumps and at first I found it hard to get more than two lumps on the shovel at once, in fact I dropped about three lumps onto the footplate. I used the technique of banging the shovel on the rim of the firehole so that the coal goes right into the corner (See "firing days" by H Gasson), whilst being conscious of Martin's warning about burning your hands due to the radiant heat. I then dropped some coal onto the very back of the fire underneath the firehole. A small hole was visible linear the back of the firebed so I filled that and then started working on the back again. At this stage we were moving off and it was becoming hard to get coal under the rim because the draught pulled it off the shovel, I worked out that flipping the shovel over at an angle seemed to hit the spot. This was enough coal for the first part of the journey, about four on each side at the back and four under the firehole, with a thin even bed maintained across the grate. It wasn't necessary to drag any coal down from the tender as the movement of the train kept it rolling down within easy reach.

The strategy was to use the small heap of coal at the back of the grate to keep a minimal fire going, whilst using the injectors to keep the boiler full and keeping the firebox doors open most of the time to cool the fire. The effect of this was to keep a steam pressure of between 200 and 225 whilst minimising the amount of black smoke from the chimney.

With the power on, the draught through the fire increased and it became very bright and hard to look at, the radiant heat increased to the point where it was uncomfortable to stand directly behind the firehole even at the very back of the cab, it was usually better to stand right over to one side. It was difficult to keep a good watch because of the coal dust blowing off the tender which kept getting in my eyes.

As the engine was going downhill most of the time, the water glasses showed near the top for the whole journey. I noticed that the water was cloudy red at first (treatment) becoming clear later on. I turned the injectors on twice during the journey, there are two sets of live injectors on the loco, with handwheels near the footplate under the right hand windows. The technique was to open the water valve first, then open the steam injector valve fully (about 6 turns of the wheel), at which point the injector comes on with a roaring noise. The injector stayed on for about 3-5 minutes, after this I turned the steam valve off before slowly and carefully closing the water valve. The fireman said that he would normally alternate between the two injectors, but on such a short trip it wasn't really necessary.

I put more coal in shortly after Harman's cross, so that the fire would be clean by the time we got to Swanage,. All in all a very enjoyable trip and over too quickly, as I said to the fireman, if only we were able to take that locomotive on a good run down the main line. As Martin said, the firing was actually more interesting than the driving and it is a pity that it wasn't better implemented in the simulator. I think that you could enjoyably spend your time just firing while some sort of autopilot drove the engine.

Martin Heywood weighs in with one more comment..

One of the things that the sim handles very badly is the effect of the draught on the fire. When I started shovelling coal at Swanage, the fire was an orange colour like a coal fire in a household grate, but within seconds of leaving it was bright yellow and incredibly hot. You can start the fire off cold in the sim, but once it burns up, it doesn't cool down again - it stays at 1000 degrees unless you put lots of coal on. I was tempted to adjust some of the settings in the eng file to make the fire smaller and cooler, but the problem is that with the automatic fireman on, the fire would soon build up to the "ideal" size and temperature.

Re the vacuum brake, I think one of the reasons why it took so long for the brake to release was that the handle stuck part way between lap and full release. I almost stopped prematurely coming into Swanage with the brake not fully released. I asked Ron why I was only getting 18-19 inches of vacuum and he gave the brake handle a good shove and magically we had 21 inches. I reckon I must have had the brake in this position most of the way from Harman's Cross to Swanage, which would explain why the train didn't run away down the hill.

The one thing that Nigel didn't mention was the engine brake. I used this a few times even though we had 4 vacuum braked carriages on. This brake works directly by pulling a lever, so is easier to control than the train brake (and quicker to release of course). The only problem with it is that it springs off when you let go, so Ron stuck a spanner behind it to jam it open. This same spanner was also used on the way up when one of the water valves stuck open. The fireman couldn't release it and it took Ron's experience to fix the problem. I asked him whether he had to use the spanner often on this valve. "No", he replied. "A good kick normally cures it".