----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, 26 February 2000
8:48
Subject: Re. New Railtour Operator
Aus loco discussion mailing list
1401 has to work under the wires at Armadale and is indeed permitted to.
Xa1401 has been modified to the extent that part of the roof has been cut
away to accomodate the muffler thus lowering its overall height. This took
some years to achieve successfully.All other locos have their mufflers
sitting on top of the roof. Mind you when introduced they
were unmuffled- the mind boggles!! To those on the eastern seaboard I
should point out that Armadale is on the southern extremity of the metro area
and for any tour operator to run a successful trip you need to pile the
punters onto the train at Perth, not Armadale or Midland where leaving one's
car parked for a considerable period of time will make it susceptible to
break-ins etc. unfortunately, due to the aformentioned clearance problems, it
is just about nigh on impossible to run a trip out of Perth with XAs or any
other class of loco.
it appears sadly, that ARHS WA has no interest in returning these
magnificent machines to operating condition, and hiring them out to an
accredited rail tour operator.
XA1405 is under cover at Midland workshops where it is undergoing radiator
repairs. XA1402 is unfortunately stored out in the open at the ARHS
Museum at Bassendean. It too requires radiator repairs along
with electrical work. It is not that the ARHS doesn't want to
repair it, it is just time and cost which is the bugbear.
I would love to see these machines running again to relive the old days
when with oil pouring down the sides they used to smoke their way around
Western Australia. Unlike Alcos which used to smoke when notching up, X (a
& b) locos used to constantly pour out volumes of smoke, blue-white when
starting up, then grey and finally black in 10th notch.
X1005,1011,1013,1021,1028,1031,Xa1407,1411,1413 and Xb 1032 were particularly
notorious.
Cheers
NMF
To unsubscribe, write to
Ausloco-unsubscribe@listbot.com
______________________________________________________________________
Advertisement:
Enter
to win $1000 at winfreestuff.com!
What else do you want to win? If you want
cash, gourmet foods, palm
pilots, and other great prizes don't look any
further than
winfreestuff.com! We've got what you want. Check it out
at:
http://www.listbot.com/links/winfreestuff2