Car Fix DIY Videos

@dominicbarden4436 says:

I followed this series a bit in the first season but not much in the second (and missed out on the title battle as a result!). It caught my eye thanks to the Rahal team and Katherine Legge being in it and introduced me to the likes of Sérgio Jimenez, Caca Bueno and Simon Evans. And there were some surprisingly good races as well overall.

Cool that you managed to get interviews with a couple of the drivers!

I'm just not sure SUVs make good racing cars. They looked quite cumbersome when racing, understandably so, and the fact that they were electric probably made them even heavier.

I don't have any off-topic journalist-esqe articles for you today. Or maybe I do, albeit one that's seriously off-topic and not even about motorsport! Maybe you might find it at least slightly interesting and in any case, it's certainly a change from the usual topic of Formula E!

As you might be able to tell from my profile picture, motorsport isn't my only interest! I've had an interest in trains and railways since I was a toddler (I live near a heritage railway, I grew up reading and watching Thomas the Tank Engine etc.), especially steam trains. And I'm admittedly biased, but I think British steam locos are the best. I'm generally not a big fan of American locos (no offence), but the Union Pacific Big Boy is an exception, I would love to see that in the flesh! And I quite like the various Denver & Rio Grande Western Mikados as well, and the USATC S160 2-8-0s built during WW2 for the Allied war effort, of which we have a few in preservation here in the UK.

Anyway, the photo in my profile picture was one I took over the summer at Minehead station at the West Somerset Railway, in the South-West of England. The two locomotives in it are both Great Western Railway engines. Idling in the platform having just arrived with a train is GWR 78xx (x = 0, so it's the 7800 Class) 4-6-0 'Manor' Class no. 7828 'Odney Manor', built in 1950 by British Railways as nationalisation (i.e. the railways came under the control of the government rather than being under the control of private companies such as the GWR) had occurred in 1948. The loco sitting unassumingly in the background in the siding, no. 9351, is the interesting one.

No. 9351 is a 2-6-0 Mogul type, but you won't find it in GWR or BR records. It looks similar to the 43xx Class 2-6-0s, of which 342 were built by the GWR between 1911-'32. During the late 1930s, several members of this class were withdrawn and essentially cannibalised to build both the 'Manor' and the 68xx 'Grange' 4-6-0 classes, but the breakout of WW2 put paid to the project. 20 Manors and 80 Granges had been built by this point, and then for some reason the still-pretty-new British Railways decided to build another 10 Manors in 1950, including the aforementioned 'Odney Manor'. This concept of converting locos from one class to another is the key here.

No. 9351 started life as a tank engine, a GWR 5101 Class 2-6-2T 'Large Prairie' tank engine to be exact. Numbered 5193, it was built in 1934 and was withdrawn in 1962 and like many of Britain's preserved steam locomotives, was sent to the Woodham Brothers' Scrapyard in Barry, South Wales, where it was saved in 1979.

The West Somerset Railway decided to use the loco as a donor for a design which apparently the GWR had drawn up but, presumably because of the Second World War, had never built. The loco was effectively converted from a tank engine to a tender engine, and is essentially a 43xx mogul but with a smaller boiler. It was renumbered from 5193 to 9351 and has served the railway well in preservation.

There is another interesting story about examples of one class of engine becoming another class entirely, and this one's actually a full circle.

In 1924, the GWR's chief designer at the time, Charles Collett, needed a new class of mixed-traffic locomotive. He picked a member of the older 29xx 'Saint' Class 4-6-0, no. 2925 'Saint Martin' and rebuilt it with smaller driving wheels. This engine became the prototype for the 49xx 'Hall' Class, a class of loco you might know of if you like Harry Potter, as one of its surviving members, no. 5972 'Olton Hall', was chosen to pull the Hogwarts Express in the films. As an aside, it was renamed 'Hogwarts Castle' for this purpose, which is a bit of a joke among British railway enthusiasts as the GWR also built a separate class of 4-6-0s which were named after castles: the 4073 Class, of which several also survive in preservation. So Olton Hall is affectionately known as "the Hall that thinks she's a Castle!" Never mind that the locomotives in the Castle class were bigger and faster than the Halls, built for express services while the Halls were mixed-traffic!

None of the original Saints survived into preservation. In the 1970s, the Great Western Society, based at the Didcot Railway Centre in Oxfordshire, decided to build a new one. It was decided that they'd use a Hall locomotive and effectively build it back into a Saint! To that end, in 1974 they purchased no. 4942 'Maindy Hall' from where else but the Woodham Brothers, and used parts from other locomotives as well, such as a connecting rod and a whistle from scrapped Saints and a chimney from a scrapped Grange (there's also an ongoing project to build a new one of those)!

The whole process took a long time, as you can imagine. In fact, the project lay dormant until the mid-90s! Eventually, construction began and the finished loco, no. 2999 'Lady of Legend' was completed in 2019 and entered service soon afterwards.

One thing I love about British steam locomotives is the variety of whistles they have. Here's a taster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juoA9fne2CM

@shamal17 says:

very informative video, thank you! i loved that you got some responses from the drivers

@rishikaul5048 says:

I watched the series ever since the first season. These cars looked nice and the races were quite nice. I could not believe that Simon Evans defeated Sérgio Jimenez by just 1 point in the final season. I just hope this series will return. At least there is a LEGO set of this car.

@mazdaroadster-mx5 says:

Legge always got the short end of the stick in the series. She was a lot better than her results would indicate