Edinburgh city is affectionately nicknamed Auld Reekie, or for some Scots Old Smoky, but past time views from the country of the smoke-covered Old Town led to such names. Allan Ramsay said, Auld Reeky. ... Some have called Edinburgh the Athens of the North for a variety of reasons! But nowadays a cracking place to visit of which Society member Nick Clarke did for a few hours having booked himself on UK Rail tours Auld Reekie from Doncaster, the trip featuring both A1 Pacific Tornado (and Deltic Alycidon on the return leg) seen our man travel to the Scottish Capital from Yorkshire in style. This tour offered over 250 miles of steam on the outward journey followed by high speed running with the Deltic on the return. All went well until the return part of his trip at Dunbarproblems started, the Deltic unfortunately having traction motor troubles from hell on the first bit of the return journey. The rest of our write up is from the Deltic Preservation Society Web page..... On 03/03/2019, whilst working the return leg of the A1 Trust's Auld Reekie Charter, DPS class 55 loco D9009 Alycidon appears to have suffered from a high voltage power surge, which has damaged No2 generator and all six traction motors of the fully freshly overhauled cast bogies that were being run in under Alycidon whilst D9009 and 8242;s own fabricated bogies are awaiting repair. The cast bogies are intended to help complete 55015 to mainline, standards and investigations into this event (which was not a flash over but an instant arcing across the brush boxes on the TMs to the frames and 1 generator brush box to frame) are ongoing. Initially, speaking with industry electrical experts, the voltage to damage all six motors in one strike must have been equivalent to the loco being struck by lightning. The loco at the time was travelling at around 85 mph keeping to booked time and on medium amps of around 1100. At the time of the incident a blanket ban was in place on the movement of electric traction on the route as there was an ongoing Overhead Line Equipment incident in place. Conditions on the day were deteriorating wind and rain. Alycidon has had An amazing 100% charter delivery record over the last 8 years and it is a great disappointment that this now leaves (hopefully temporarily) no Deltic option for the immediate future on charters.
Copyright of all pictures in this gallery belong to N Clarke.