'Tornado' steam locomotive exceeds 100mph!

David Benton wrote:

george matthews wrote:

ExCon90 wrote:In America there were commuter railroads into the 1940's on which the passenger coaches didn't have doors (some of those with vestibules had doorways, but nothing that could be closed, and even on those that had real doors with actual hinges the trains ran with all doors open between stations), and some roads still had open-platform coaches--even the passengers had to keep their wits about them, let alone the engine crews.

I have seen trains in Sydney New South Wales running with open doors, possibly because the passengers wanted some air on very hot weather days. I wonder if these trains are still running? There didn't seem to be automatic door closing apparatus.

All modern doubledeckers with Automatic doors in Sydney these days , George.
I do remember my first visit to Sydney in the early 80's, been surprised by the wooden carriages parked around central Station. But every train i rode was modern stock.

I think perhaps the air conditioning was either absent or not very effective. Also I suspect there had been a period when there wasn't enough investment in keeping things up to date. I was spending a couple of weeks leave from Saudi at the time. I seem mainly to have spent it on trains.

Funny that, I spent most of my time there on trains too!

David Benton wrote:Funny that, I spent most of my time there on trains too!

I don't want to be contrary, but I am a bus lover. George mentions riding a bus in the US. My second trip from New York to the Chicago was on Greyhound.
Wooden cars in Australia. That scares me. We had a subway wreck in Brooklyn, NY in 1918 involving wooden cars, that killed a 97 people. That was the Malbone Street wreck.
Photo of one of the cars in the Malbone Street disaster. Note: the third rail has no protection board.

Here's a link to the Wiki article. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbone_Street_Wreck" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I once attended a fascinating lecture by the head of coaching stock of Spoornet (which was then the name of the South African national rail network, before it became Transnet) on accidents involving wooden coaching stock. He had stories, statistics and photos which showed that even in quite low speed collisions, wooden coaches were destroyed or badly damaged, in particular when marshalled between steel coaches. There were very low speed collisions where the two locos and the rest of the coaches were virtually undamaged while wooden coaches marshalled somewhere in the middle of the train were reduced to matchwood. It certainly made us take seriously the current rules that wooden coaches must not normally be used, and if one is used it must be marshalled at the end of the train, not in between steel coaches. We have only one wooden coach, an old regional manager's saloon, which runs very rarely as a luxury saloon.

johnthefireman wrote:I once attended a fascinating lecture by the head of coaching stock of Spoornet (which was then the name of the South African national rail network, before it became Transnet) on accidents involving wooden coaching stock. He had stories, statistics and photos which showed that even in quite low speed collisions, wooden coaches were destroyed or badly damaged, in particular when marshalled between steel coaches. There were very low speed collisions where the two locos and the rest of the coaches were virtually undamaged while wooden coaches marshalled somewhere in the middle of the train were reduced to matchwood. It certainly made us take seriously the current rules that wooden coaches must not normally be used, and if one is used it must be marshalled at the end of the train, not in between steel coaches. We have only one wooden coach, an old regional manager's saloon, which runs very rarely as a luxury saloon.

There is a book about accidents in Britain which says the same. A particularly bad crash in about 1918 caused many deaths, in wooden carriages.