ASTT’s publication of Porta Papers Volume 2 is now on sale. The volume includes three papers by Porta: Adhesion in Advanced Steam Locomotive Engineering Facing the Oil Crisis, 1984 (revised 1986); Fundamentals of the Porta Compounding System for Steam Locomotives, 2000; A Proposal for the Tornado Project, 1992. As a corollary to the Tornado […]
ASTTs 2019 Conference will be held over the weekend of 5th-6th October. at the Ibis Styles Hotel in Crewe. It is expected to include nine presentations from an international cast of speakers representing the UK, USA and the Netherlands, plus a tour of Locomotive Storage Ltd’s workshops. Details of the conference and a booking form […]
Volume 1 of a collection of technical papers by Livio Dante Porta is now available for sale – see the book sales section. This first volume focuses on the tribology and lubrication of valves and pistons, and should be essential reading for everyone involved in new-build steam, and wise reading for anyone who is interested […]
Two free seminars on mainline heritage operations will be run by the RSSB in December: on Tuesday 4 December at The Helicon, 1 South Place, London, EC2M 2RB, and on Thursday 6 December at the National Railway Museum, Leeman Road, York, YO26 4XJ. See the Mainline Heritage Roadshow website for details. [Click on “Read More” below […]
Last May we passed on news from our Beijing-based member, Liang Chenyuan, who reported that experiments were being conducted in Tianjin and in Inner Mongolia to power to preserved steam locomotives using compressed CO2 gas instead of steam – see https://www.advanced-steam.org/ast-news/news-from-china/. Chenyuan now reports that modification work on Tianjin’s SY1007 is near completion and that […]
A new book by Robin Barnes “From the Files Locomotives that Were & Locomotives that Weren’t” is now on sale through Camden Miniature Steam’s website. Robin is the artist who painted all the illustrations of the 5AT and 8AT derivatives that feature on the 5AT section of this website and in the 5AT Feasibility Study. […]
Bookings are now open for ASTT’s Autumn Conference to be held in the Transport Museum meeting room at Bury over the weekend of 29th/30th September – see attached booking form. The programme includes eleven technical talks on a wide variety of steam-related subjects, a steam-hauled ride over the East Lanc Railway in a reserved “conference […]
It’s gratifying to report that Dave Wardale’s Class 26 4-8-4 “The Red Devil” is once again back on track. On 4th July she moved under her own steam for the first time since August 2004, travelling from Worcester where she was overhauled, some 75 miles south to Cape Town. Her boiler certificate will see her […]
ASTT will hold its annual Autumn Conference over the weekend of 29/30 September 2018 on the theme “Building up Steam for the Future”. The conference will be held once again at the Transport Museum meeting room in Bury, Greater Manchester, Lancashire. Like last year, the conference will combine presentations with an outside excursion – this […]
Roger Waller has successfully completed the commissioning of the oil-firing system that he has installed in tank locomotive No 14A that operates on the Puffing Billy Railway in Victoria, Australia – see http://www.dlm-ag.ch/en/news.
ASTT member Liang Chenyuan has sent us a link to a video of an experiment carried out on steam locomotives in China recently. Chenyuan, who only recently joined ASTT, reports that the experiments were undertaken in 2017 by the Chuntian Company on QJ and SY locomotives owned by the Jitong Railway Company, which involved the […]
Nigel Day has almost completed his 3 year task of restoring the Ravenglass & Eskdale’s 1923-built 2-8-2 “River Esk” following the a disastrous fire in 2013 that caused severe damage to the locomotive. He hopes to start testing the engine over the railway in around two weeks, after next weekend’s naming ceremony for the Ratty’s […]