Never mind the colour of DP1 'Deltic' - which was singularly beautiful BTW, ranging from pale blue under overcast skies, through a cornflower blue in strong sunlight, and on to purple during a 'red sky at night' sunset - in those 20 years they made the greatest noise on the railway at any time before or since. The racket in the area I lived was beyond belief, there was the blue steel rocket motor test tower two miles away operating regularly, daily multiple test flights of numerous 'straight turbojet' powered aircraft right overhead at low altitude on the de Havilland runway final approach: and - one day only - the detonation of an ICI polymer plant a mile away, a mighty and inexplicable thud, followed ten minutes later by what looked like snowfall over our school sports field, strange thing for a summer day. But the Deltic, both protoype and production types, made the most noise of all, easily audible up to 3 miles away, so even at 100mph regularly covering the landscape with their almighty output of 'Dronium' for getting on three minutes. And further enhancement, one summer we had a considerable quantity of the filming for the 'Battle of Britain' performed locally. As connoisseurs of heavier than air machines (many of our fathers were merrily employed in contributing to the noise happen at de Havilland's) we watched the B17 camera aircraft at very low altitude misfiring on two engines as it went out of sight, rather expecting another almighty thud...ChrisGreaves wrote:... because the Deltics had a relatively short commercial service life of 20 years...Thanks for any input.
'Twas truly doubly a daily joy to be alive, firstly I was a kid, and secondly so much free entertainment!
A major pain in RTR OO productions, where the research has failed to identify 'original prototype condition' rather than anything from 20 to 100 years later 'deteriorated / altered in service / amateur restoration errors' - singly or combined - condition. Hornby's Gresley corridor coaches perhaps the worst victims yet seen, although the monster roof ribs on Bachmann's earlier BR mk1 coaches ran them close, but can at least be scraped off relatively easily.ChrisGreaves wrote:...That is [almost] anything goes....Thanks for any input.