WOW! I just now found this thread. Thanks SO much to Greg and Michael for these fabulous photos!
Greg well knows my affinity for SA steam, especially the large power.
Anyone who has made the wise decision to purchase his SA videos (recently updated and remastered to DVD, the best $100 value in railroad video--and Greg didn't ask me to say that either) will realize what 3436 sounded like as it lifted the 18 car daily passenger from the siding at Kraankuil. Accelerating carefully until the majority of the train was through the switch and then really pouring it on once the last car cleared. Greg caught it several hundred yards on the other side of the bridge and the engine had gained 15 mph and sounded like a racing car! Taken is scale (narrow vs. standard gauge) no Amercian engine would have exceeded that performance. The 25's were (are) amazing.
I'll add that I feel indebted to Greg for sharing his 1984 film. One cannot go over there today and find in-service steam on the main lines. I have quite a few SA steam videos but most are post or very late in regular sevice. Greg's allows us to see SAR steam as it was, despite fact by 1984 the diesels and electrics had encroached to a sizeable degree. Thanks, Greg!!
I don't share Greg's feelings about Red Devil. I have a number of video scenes in which she passes at high speed and while Michael's correct about her somewhat "thin" exhaust at lower speeds I can only hope each of you has the chance to witness a good shot of 3450 at speed. "Thrilling" is the least expansive adjective I can come up with.
The "maintenance headache" posed by many of the special appliances and arrangements fitted to 3450 were found to be difficult as much because the railroad had not geared to deal with them. She was a one-off. And, just as found in many similar instances in U.S. railroading both in steam days as well as the present, until something becomes more wide-spread and shop forces become accustomed, etc., the thing is going to receive less than optimal care and most work on the specialty items will be considered troublesome. Shop people are, after all, only human beings. Union Pacific's 9000's suffered as a result of their "differences" for their entire career.
BIEbing, 3454, sounds wonderful, too. I know of no other engine with side-by-side double exhaust.
Thanks again, Michael and Greg. By the way, it'd actually be just fine with me if you put up a few more images!!
John Bush
Omaha
