A new personal self-hosted blog site and what better way to start than with this. . .

I find myself on a weekend in York, a strange set of events but nonetheless a free weekend sadly on my own.
What better way to fill the day than a trip to the National Railway Museum to see some old friends.

I was thinking about steam trains whilst having my evening meal, I was especially thinking about my favourite engine GWR 6000 – “King George V”, its in the main picture on this site (well a bit of it).

It is sleek, it is clean cut, it is very powerful and I guess dangerous and that is art of the appeal.

“You train spotter!” – well no, I have never stood on  a platform with a book full of numbers getting excited over the possibility that the next BR 4-6-0 will be number 70471 (whatever that is).

No for me it is an appreciation of the steam engine itself.

like any other living thing, it consumes food to generate energy and use that energy to move, George V is an express train, the biggest and fastest type that GWR produced. It has enormous power, it exudes charisma and but for a bit of iron its danger is the potential to explode – quite literally.

Several thousand horse power tamed and ready to accelerate away with 12 carriages behind it, 0-60 in a few minutes.

Yet this relatively pedestrian monster cannot compare to the performance out of modern cars, 0-60 in a few seconds but the internal combustion engine is born out of the external one, the very thing that drives cars that are ‘cool’ drives the lumbering, old steam train.

Pistons, valves, connection rods and a fire somewhere – which has the most appeal and the most charisma. . . my money is on GWR 6000 – “King George V”.