Farewell, City of truro!

[Steamdemon]

http://www.rail.co.uk/rail-news/2013/city-of-truro-withdrawn/

we will miss you!

 

[magickmaker]

This is one of the few cases where I actually think it's time to withdraw the locomotive. Truro is 110 years old. She's something that it would be horrible to lose due to a boiler accident, as let's face it, you couldn't replace her. She deserves the rest in a museum where her story can be told. Heck, for all we know, she may be looking forward to it.


(and yes, I do believe locomotives have souls. Think about it. The definition of life is for some thing to "eat" and "breathe" Steam engines eat coal, wood, or oil, and "breathe" air into their fireboxes.)

 

[clam1952]

Not what you want to hear but not entirely unexpected in this current financial climate, pure guess but may well have needed or been due a new boiler at the end of it's ticket which probably would have resulted in being converted to a museum exhibit anyway, this has just sadly bought the inevitable event forward.

 

[sawyer811]

This is one of the few cases where I actually think it's time to withdraw the locomotive. Truro is 110 years old. She's something that it would be horrible to lose due to a boiler accident, as let's face it, you couldn't replace her. She deserves the rest in a museum where her story can be told. Heck, for all we know, she may be looking forward to it.


(and yes, I do believe locomotives have souls. Think about it. The definition of life is for some thing to "eat" and "breathe" Steam engines eat coal, wood, or oil, and "breathe" air into their fireboxes.)

As sad as it is (and as much as I hate to say it) I have to agree with you. It would be akin to having Inyo or the General or the Eureka suffer a catastrophic boiler failure here in the states; there's nothing we could do to fix them, and untold volumes of living history would be lost, unable to be retrieved or replaced. In a perfect world, the National Railway Museum would hopefully restore City of Truro so that she could, say, undertake limited operation at a reduced boiler pressure--similar to what Inyo does currently in Carson City and what is planned for Pennsy RR K4s No. 1361 in the near future. But I can't predict the future, nor can I tell them what to do. I to believe steam engines have souls, but I'd like to think that steamers would want to be operable, rather than stuffed and mounted on permenant display, for which they were never designed. But hey, if any engine deserves retirement, at 110 years old, still going strong, and with such history behind her boiler, City of Truro is it.

 

[wholbr]

Hi Everybody.
I have to agree with earlier posters on this thread, I hate to see transport vehicles in museums as it all seems so sterile with them just standing there spotlessly clean and deadly silent. That is not how they were meant to be in their working lifetime. They were made to be noisy grimy and most of all moving about, carrying out the duties they were designed to do.

Whenever I get any spare time I like to visit the preserved railways of Britain such as the West Somerset Railway where you can still see the engines in full steam and travel along the 25 mile route complete with buffet car, beer and sandwiches. There you can enjoy the sounds of the engines both steam and old diesel in the environment they were built for and alive

I also like to visit the many transport festivals that are held around the south-west of Britain. Here you can see the old steam traction engines under power and also the old lorries still trundling around. The foregoing sometimes makes me feel very much my age as many of those now preserved trucks I actually drove for living years ago.

Aaaahh the old crash gearbox trucks which you had to double-de-clutch to change gear, there can't be too many of us that still remember driving those vehicles.

Bill